There are days ...

... where I wonder just how incredibly clueless our premier is.

Listening to CBC this morning, I heard Ralph Klein speak at possibly his most arrogant. He was commenting on "meaningful public consultation", and trying to slam the Alberta Liberals for "acting as if it can be done at the drop of a hat" {not a literal quote}.

If anyone has been watching, Ralph's "public consultations" to date have qualified as leading at best, and fundamentally useless for gathering any meaningful consensus. The most recent attempt at such a "consultation" is the "It's your future" pre-election campaign. A quick survey of the questions shows them to be leading, superficial and overly simplistic. There are motherhood statements all over the place, and many things are simply not adequately qualified. (Just what is a "world class education system"???)

What really got me irritated was the Premier's closing statement - "The Liberals have no idea what's involved in government, and they never will, thank god". Mr. Klein appears to be a little to 'fat, dumb and happy' in power. He clearly believes that the Conservatives will automatically form another massive majority government in November.

Given the proclivity of the Alberta voter to act like a bunch of sheep, there's a good possibility of this. However, it is vitally important to the long term future of this province that the electorate start sending back something other than a Conservative. The absence of any effective opposition in the last ten years has allowed the Conservatives to become arrogant, and ideologically dogmatic. They do not feel they have to listen to their constituencies unless they feel like it.

In a perfect world, we'd all have fired Ralph about 5 years ago - largely for failing to do the job we've elected him to do - govern. Realistically, I'd be happy if we sent back a near-minority government this time. Give Klein his majority - by one or two seats - max! The rest needs to be opposition. In this province, we do ourselves no favours to continue electing what amounts to a dictatorship time and again.