Congratulations to all the volunteers and organizers of the Spectrum celebration - took in the excitement Friday night and it was a great time had by all. Thanks for all you do - our city is richer for your hard work!

Apparently for over the last hour, Medicine Hat High School has been on lock down. details are of course blurry, but initially I heard that one kid threatened another with a gun. Now I heard three kids are outside with guns…?

If I hear more, I will update.

We finally have the site moved to the new hosting company. over the next day I will be trying to get it back to the old style (or possibly a new style) and putting back up the recent article’s and comments. hang tough and we will back to semi-normal shortly.

Its been many moons since I last tried my hand at this type of blog post. DM’s first Mad Hatter Blog - was a look around town at Beef Dips. Sort of a tongue and cheek look at how unscientific food reviewers were. I am usually the last person in town to try a new restaurant… I figure if they stick around long enough they must be OK …so I then I give them a try, let them work all the kinks out.

I might change that strategy based on recent experience. I am not sure how long they have been there, but recently some co-workers and I went and ate lunch at the Menggu grill. Its located across from the mall in between McDonald’s and Visions. I know that many years ago another restaurant had health issues in that same spot so many people like me have probably avoided it like the plague…but this is a brand new restaurant with different owners, different food.

The restaurant is similar to the Mongoli grill restaurants - you choose raw foods - fresh vegetables, seafood, meats, sauces etc and create your own custom stir fry, you pay by the weight for your dish - mine came to just over $10.00 and they grill your selection and serve it to you at your table. Here I make no attempt at any sort of scientific analysis, going purely on the subjective opinion of a very fussy eater - Menggu grill is one of my new favorite restaurants in Medicine Hat. Great food, great atmosphere ….about the only thing it was missing was a big crowd.

Danger Mouse awards them 9.5 out of 10!

Medicine Hat MLA Rob Renner has been rewarded (or punished?) for all his years of hard work by reclaiming his post as Alberta Environment minister - Now I should mention that I am about the furthest thing from a “tree hugger” environmentalist that there is, I still use incandescent light bulbs (gasp!) and struggle to recycle my newspapers. Yet even non tree huggers like me are starting to be a little concerned with the environmental impact of our provincial tar sands business.

Alberta sometimes likes to buck the trends of the rest of the country. Western Democracy’s of late seem really concerned about global warming and the environment - Federal party’s are trying to paint themselves greener than their rivals and in the US - American voters are insisting government policy reflect voter concern for the environment. Yet until this past week the Provincial Conservatives have tended to duck most of the tough environmental questions (Har!)

(FYI - Did you know Alberta has its own embassy in Washington to promote our energy sector? Alberta’s image in Washington is big business) For some time now Rob Renner and the Provincial conservatives have tried to pitch to Americans that Alberta is vigilant in its protection for the environment. They go though a lot of effort to tell this to Americans, Canadians and even Albertans. The problem is that it just isn’t true.

This week hundreds of ducks were killed in a chemical lagoon in Fort McMurray, hundreds more may have been contaminated and flown away - but in spite of the Alberta governments claims of environmental stewardship it has long been known that the Oil Sands developments are coming at a tremendous price to the environment. The World Wild Fund & others have reported that:

Alberta currently has 10 open pit tar sands operating. Of those:

only 1 has an independently accredited environmental management system. The other 9 work on the honor system. Alberta has some strict environmental policies on the books, but has virtually no oversight to actually check on or enforce these policies.

The tar sands in Alberta burn as much natural gas during the extraction process in one year as to heat every single home in Canada. (worse they can do it another way, but natural gas is so cheap so they don’t bother…and Medicine Hat is running out)

Despite over 40 years of mining, not a single hectare of land has been certified as reclaimed under those tough but toothless Alberta guidelines. - Whole books have been written on these shortfalls - this list is really quite small - and far from exhaustive….and they want to double production by 2013.

Despite a long and near hopeless track record on environmental protection the Alberta government is trying to portray an image of environmental concern. Odd because until the recent leadership change they didn’t even really pretend. Ralph Klein was pretty unapologetic about the environmental impact of the tar sands developments and the policies today still aren’t much different than under Ralph Klein. Klein (just before the last election)- when asked about the environmental destruction going on in Alberta told us all not to worry because there are really smart people in University who will find solutions to our environmental problems later.(CBC radio January 2008) To me that answer sounded a lot like “let them eat cake”

It seems to me that Rob Renner has inherited a near impossible portfolio to manage. It must be difficult to stand firm and portray an image of environmental concern while all this news coverage lays bare our obvious environmental short comings. The part I don’t understand is why Rob Renner and our provincial government wastes so much time pretending to be protectors of the environment when they could actually protect it.

Lets not be naive - we all know that the western economy needs the oil in Alberta. It is coming out of the ground - and there seems to be no limit to how much the economy is willing to pay for oil. Why cant the province put strict environmental protections and policies in place? Why do they let the industry pretty much police themselves? Have some faith in the innovative private sector. When there are BILLIONS of dollars in profits on the line company’s will be very resourceful. I believe oil companies could develop technologies that produce the oil while safe guarding the Alberta landscape, water and natural gas - but the sad fact is they don’t really have to and so they don’t.

There is one Medicine Hatter who has a tremendous opportunity to influence and change that. Its an awesome responsibility, will he do whats right? Enough trying to spin Alberta’s policies as environmentally sound …why not just actually make them so?