q the toading to neo cons by people like you is considered detestable to the majority of canadians.
you can develop and reap the rewards or you can give them away to foreigners like the neo cons are. norway in a ten year period collected 90 billion in royalities from a resource smaller than albetas by profit, while in thierty year alberts collected a third of that. in additon the tar sands are poluting the last great water shed, the mackenzie, because there are no real enviornmental protections in alberta.

as well norway saw that you want to pace you growth or a lot is destroyed by inflation and aveerage people lose all they make to soaring costs of living. even peter laugheed has said that albeta is going too fast. only the rich foreign controlled companies get any long term benefit that way, and we get the clean up costs.

as to elections. in france they have run off elections between the two leaders on the first vote. simple and effective. i like proportional representation but runs off are a much less radical solution for the time being. but first we need one person one vote. we allow as much as thirty per cent diferentiation between ridings in the same area, and more for some provinces.. this is heavily tilted towards rural ridings. toronto montreal and vancvouver often have a hundred thousand voters per riding--or more in toronto. while most rural ridings in the praries and maritimes have less than eighty five thousand voters and a few have thirty thoudsand voters.

if we had equal numbers per riding the first harper government would never hqavre happened. martin would have had the minority again. and dion would have had a hundred seats.