Kevin Libin

The illusion that allows Canadians to permit to run their health care system officials who would, in any other context, be considered inadequate and hopeless central planners, is that, at least, they, you know, care and mean well and have our best interests at heart — and never, of course, something as shabby as the rationing of scarce public health care dollars. For 10 minutes, Stephen Duckett forgot to play the part of the compassionate, concerned central planner trying his best to fight diseases, against all the odds. Instead, he wanted a peaceful opportunity to eat a cookie. Meanwhile, Raj Sherman played the part beautifully. And so we have Alberta’s newest health care scapegoat and Alberta’s newest health care hero.

Alberta’s cookie craver munches while health care crumbles

Meet the folks who have turned hippie-dippie environmentalism into a powerful political force in Canada. They’ve got American billionaire trust funds, business leaders and government officials on their side. They plan to reshape the way Canada is run and, amazingly, you’ve probably never heard of them in your life.

A charity with plenty of very long tentacles

Despite the headlines, the odds of getting blown up, murdered or falsely imprisoned in Mexico have got to be ridiculously low. Still, you won’t catch me there. It’s Mexican murder, mayhem and malfeasance on the Full Comment Forum

Drugs, crime, murder, corruption … but the beaches are great

Meet the plain-talkin’, no-nonsense, Rocky Mountain justice who’s seen enough Natives marching through his courtroom to stand up, speak out and call for … democratic accountability on reserves. It ain’t a Clint Eastwood movie, but John Reilly may be worth listening to, just the same.

Judge’s frank talk unwelcome on reserve

Can Americans push back against their increasingly abusive and senseless airport security theatre, or will they march, sheep-like, into naked scanners and public fondlings? My money’s on the latter.

Will you let them touch your junk?

There aren’t many folks left, even at the National Post, willing to mount a spirited defense of the Dubya presidency. Just one more thing that makes yours truly so special. And so, I take on the Full Comment Forum in praising Bush for his uncommon humility and reflectiveness. He’s handsome, too.

George Bush, president who made mistakes, or presidential mistake?

When America is the only country in the world that responds to the collapse of unsustainable spending and debt by not demanding more of it, could there be reason to start listening to Mark Steyn’s theories on widespread civilizational suicide?

Just something I ask in my post-U.S.-midterm profile of Steyn:

What do the U.S. mid-term elections, China and Omar Khadr have in common? Mark Steyn knows.

James Carville thinks the Democrats are doing a great job, have locked up all the right demographic groups, and will rule unrivaled for the next 40 years.

Except for when they get their ass handed to them in 2010.

Carville predicts a punchout

Socialized medicine kills libertarianism dead. Want proof? Witness Alberta, where even the wild west is ruled by a government that’s more worried about paying for head injuries than it is about the ethics of forcing people to wear helmets on snowmobiles.

Alberta Tories taking the Wild out of West

What’s wrong with Ottawa breaking the nexus of responsibility between First Nations citizens and their governments? Start with people sleeping next to fire extinguishers because they no longer trust the band to protect them. Finish with the band leaders themselves admitting they no longer trust the band to protect anyone.

‘Help Us’; Remote Ontario First Nation dives headfirst into chaos

Barack Obama’s administration may talk tough about Alberta’s oilsands. Except when they’re fighting off anti-oilsands groups in court.

Court victory helps push pipeline ahead; Alberta’s oil vital to ‘national interests,’ U.S. says

Why Calgary’s mayoralty race paid virtually no notice to Naheed Nenshi’s ethnicity—even while the rest of the country can’t stop talking about it.

Why race doesn’t matter in Calgary

I went to Parliament Hill to find out what all the handwringing about Question Period behaviour is all about.

Turns out, if we want more polite politics, we’re looking in all the wrong places.

‘A mudslinging theatre’

What’s the point of spending public money on hockey rinks? Not because the do a damn thing for economic development. But because sports fans want it. Isn’t that what government’s for?

It’s all there in my column in October’s edition of FP Business magazine.

Another Rink Coming?

Justin Trudeau knows his panty-moistening good looks may not be enough to sell his dad’s warmed-over ideologies to Canadian voters. But they just might be enough to sell his leadership potential to his fellow Liberals.

LIBERALS PLACE NEW HOPE IN THE OLD SCHOOL

What does the world’s most powerful film director and hero to environmentalists and aboriginal rights activists have to say after seeing their detested oilsands first-hand?

“It’s complicated.”

Exactly.

My surprising column on the surprising reaction of James Cameron in Fort McMurray.

Geeking out over Alberta’s ‘black eye’

Bonus: My live “tweets” as I accompanied Cameron on the tour.

The thing about the Tea Party is it only really feels like a party if you’re onboard with their vision for the American right. Could be why David Frum, once considered to be Voldemort by liberals is getting most of his grief these days from conservatives.

Strife on the Right; Conservatives turn on David Frum

An unregistered U.S. lobby group sets up a Canadian office, spends a boatload of money on election ads aggressively testing legal boundaries that regulators don’t have the resources to monitor, and then closes up shop after the vote. If it was the NRA, you can be sure the Canadian media would be setting its hair on fire. Instead, it’s Avaaz…

The third party no one talks about

Get it straight, people: the Tories are “divisive” because they complain about “Toronto elites” overruling average Canadians on gun control. But the Liberal and NDP leaders in Toronto who favour portraying average gun owners as dangerous? They’re not.

We know this because… the Toronto elites tell us so.

No wonder they’re so offended at being called a name like that.

Placing owners under the gun; Insulted ‘elites’ finally know how other side feels

Aren’t you worried about today’s kids? And their obsession with cellphones? The sexting? How they’ve lost their moral bearings?

You’re not?

Oh… how about how they’re meeting each other and having sex!

Sure, that’s nothing new, but now the Internet’s involved!

Now are you worried?

We’ll just keep coming up with moral panics until you are worried. Even if they’re based completely on bogus information, like the one about the sociopathic Calgary teens who supposedly stood by and took cellphone photos while a 12-year-old was raped.

Shock and horror but not true

Hong Kong’s first ever minimum wage law isn’t a blow to capitalism; it’s proof that free markets make societies so rich that they’d rather have a little less of it now and again.

Really.

Don’t believe me? Read my column in the September issue of FP Business Magazine.

You get what you pay for

Major American consumer firms want you to know: all this talk about boycotting Alberta’s oilsands? Totally, totally not true. They’re just, um, promising to….uhhh…. look at considering…hmmm…. avoiding, er, fuels from, ah, places that emit, ehh, a lot of carbon. So…whatever you do, keep shopping with them!

A Crude ‘Boycott’

Hmmm. There are no salmon in the Fraser River. There are too many salmon in the Fraser River. Better get government bureaucrats to manage things.

Oh…they already do? Well, that explains a lot.

Salmon’s bittersweet return

If being ‘conservative’ means sticking with failing health care models, then Alberta’s Wildrose Alliance party can now honestly say it’s nowhere nearly as ‘conservative’ as the province’s Conservatives.

Of course, that will only make them that much more popular with…er…conservatives.

Right time for thorny debate

What a lousy hand for a city to be dealt, this business of having your character instantly linked in millions of minds around the world with positive images of Western independence, grit, and hospitality. Poor Calgary.

Luckily, the brand experts are on the job to fix all that.

Nine months and still no brand birth

Invite a few dozen freedom lovers to your property to talk about ways of shrinking government intrusion into their lives, and what do you get?

Duh. A whole whackload of government intrusion into their lives. And worse.

Bureaucratic ‘bullies’ foil annual libertarian retreat

Whoops! Maybe Canada’s efforts to attract foreign capital to the country are working too well when the Tamil Tigers are looking at moving their headquarters here.

Will Canada play host to a Tamil government-in-exile?

What do you do when boatloads of questionable asylum seekers swamp your country’s generous immigration system—as may be starting to happen with a second Tamil ship washing up on Canada’s coast? Ask the land down under.

What Australia can teach us about the Tamil asylum seekers

Or at least a ridiculous amount of construction material is. I try to find out why… and fail.

Caution in Calgary: Objects continue to fall from work sites

So, you’re the World Health Organization, and you’ve basically been dead wrong in predicting millions of deaths by pandemic. What do you do?

You try again.

Who cancels its false alarm