Mid-Week Post

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After decades of Tory rule, Alberta votes in the NDP:

The NDP has won its first majority government in Alberta by toppling the Progressive Conservative colossus that has dominated the province for decades and driving leader Jim Prentice from public life.

The New Democrats, under leader Rachel Notley, swept all 19 constituencies in Edmonton on Tuesday and made significant inroads in previously barren NDP territory in Calgary, Lethbridge and rural Alberta. ...

The NDP, a party that had never won more than 16 seats, captured 53 seats to secure a majority in the 87-seat legislature.

The Wildrose party took second place with 21 seats and will form the official Opposition, while Prentice and his battered PCs were relegated to third with 10 seats.

Liberal Leader David Swann and Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark were also elected. One riding was undecided as PC incumbent Linda Johnson and Anam Kazim of the NDP finished in a tie.

It was a crushing defeat for the Tories, who had steered the ship of state since 1971 — longer than any party anywhere in the country.

 
Businesses are so confident in the NDP that they are preparing to leave:

Canadian oil and gas shares tumbled and the country's main stock index hit a one-month low on Wednesday after the left-wing New Democratic Party surged to power in the oil-rich province of Alberta on promises that included energy industry reforms. 

"Even now our inboxes are filling with messages expressing something between disbelief and dismay," analyst Andrew Bradford of Raymond James brokerage said after the party won an election on Tuesday to end 44 years of Conservative rule.

New Democrat Premier-elect Rachel Notley offered conciliatory words after her party swept to crushing victory, capitalizing on anger over the impact of the drop in oil prices on government programs.

The NDP is expected to be less accommodative of the energy industry and its Alberta oil sands operations, the target of heavy environmental criticism. Alberta is the largest source of U.S. oil imports. 

In her victory speech, Notley moved to assuage oil-industry worries, saying she would work "to build Canada's energy sector so we build bridges and we open markets instead of having a black eye."

She proposes a review of energy royalties, tighter environmental regulations and reduced support for some pipeline projects such as TransCanada Corp's controversial Keystone XL project. She also promises to raise corporate tax rates by 2 percentage points to 12 percent.

The front page of the Globe and Mail newspaper said the election "changes everything Canadians think about Alberta," while pundits on Twitter suggested the outcome was as unlikely as socialists taking power in Texas.

Financial analysts focused on the potential hit on the oil industry, which already has been stung by slumping prices.

"Companies will need to take money out of Alberta and spend more in British Columbia, and more in Texas," said Benoit Gervais, a portfolio manager at Mackenzie Investments.

Jim Prentice has stepped down:

Alberta Premier Jim Prentice, who led his Conservative party to a stunning election defeat on Tuesday, said he will resign as party leader with immediate effect and also quit his seat.

Alison Redford was a wreck and Jim Prentice had too much baggage.  It is no surprise, therefore, that Albertans would commit suicide vote for the NDP.


Andreas Lubitz, the pilot who flew the doomed Germanwings Flight 9525 into the French Alps killing one hundred and fifty people, practised descending hours before the flight:

The co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 appears to have practiced sending the jetliner into a deadly descent on another flight, just two hours before he intentionally crashed it into the French Alps, investigators said Wednesday.

The revelation appeared to support the theory that the Germanwings crash was not only deliberate but premeditated. It came in a 30-page interim report from the French accident investigation agency BEA.

 See! Culture does matter:

The protest against a new sex-education program in Ontario schools continues with no sign the provincial government is ready to revisit the controversial curriculum.

Parents opposed to the new curriculum on cultural and religious grounds are staging a boycott, pulling their children out of school and holding rallies. The protest is centred mainly in Metro Toronto, where CBC News reported more than 40,000 kids were absent on Monday.

Andrew Morrison, a spokesman for the Ontario Ministry of Education, said pockets of absences have been reported in other communities, including London, Windsor and Ottawa, but had no figures.

Not everyone opposed to the new program is keeping their children out for the whole week.

“Today we’re not doing protest,” Christine Liu of the recently formed Parents Alliance of Ontario, told Yahoo Canada News on Tuesday. “Among the Chinese community we’re only doing protests for one day in May but we will do protests in September in a bigger scope.

Chinese-Canadians may be back in stronger numbers in September if the Liberal government doesn’t alter the curriculum to reflect parents’ concerns, she said. 

(Sidebar: strangely enough, this article avoids the MUSLIM word in much the same way Islamist apologists blame Pamela Gellar for being alive.)

Utterly stunned that political multiculturalism is an apparent failure, leftists are at a loss to understand why they can't persuade unassimilated immigrants into letting over-paid teachers convince their kids that they may be five different genders, something they don't care or think about.

In case one is in doubt about what the revised curriculum actually says...

Well, as long as these kids aren't learning math or anything.


Four Afghan men will be hanged for their part in the mob killing of a woman:

Four Afghan men were sentenced Wednesday to death by hanging over the filmed mob killing in downtown Kabul of a young woman falsely accused of burning the Qur’an, a case that horrified the country and showed the dangers women face in the conservative society.

But the family of the 27-year-old woman, a religious scholar named Farkhuna, immediately denounced the verdict as unfair as the judge dropped charges against 18 men for a lack of evidence. Judge Safiullah Mojadedi sentenced eight others to 16 years in prison. Nineteen police officers accused in the case will be sentenced Saturday, their verdicts publicly announced the next day.

Savages.


I guess money means nothing:

The first of three votes on a natural gas benefit offer worth over $1 billion has been unanimously rejected by a First Nation on British Columbia's northwest coast.

All of the more than 180 eligible voters at a meeting in Port Simpson stood up to oppose the plan to build a liquefied-natural-gas pipeline and terminal in their territory, said Lax Kw'alaams band member Malcolm Sampson.

Pacific NorthWest LNG, which is mostly owned by Malaysia-based oil and gas giant Petronas, has applied to build an export terminal on Lelu Island, just south of Prince Rupert at the head of the Skeena River.

Residents have raised concerns over the project's environmental impact, citing the site's problematic location and the threat it poses to the watershed.

"Why would you build an LNG plant right at the mouth of the Skeena River?" said Sampson, who spoke at Tuesday's meeting. "There of all places."

Sampson said the $1.15-billion offer in benefits over 40 years was not discussed at all during the meeting, which took place in a school gym so packed that some band members had to stand outside.

The pretenses of piety notwithstanding, one is at a loss to explain what can supplant that one billion dollar offering.


And now, a woman begs for rescue online:

Employees at a Pizza Hut in Florida were praised on Wednesday for helping rescue a customer who wrote a message in her online pizza order that she was being held hostage and needed someone to call 911, authorities said.

The note led to the arrest of Ethan Nickerson, 26, who used a large knife to hold his girlfriend and their three children hostage, said Highlands County sheriff's spokeswoman Nell Hays.

The Pizza Hut employees "not only saw something but they acted on it," Hays said.

Cheryl Treadway, 25, was a regular customer at a Pizza Hut in Avon Park in central Florida, which took seriously her plea in the comments section of an online order on Monday.

"Who would have thought of that?" Hays said.

After deputies arrived at the house, Nickerson surrendered peacefully. Treadway and the couple's three children, ages 1, 5 and 6, did not appear seriously harmed, authorities said.