I was shocked by the revelations of the LEO officer (as well as the school staff) assigned to my kids' school (back when they were at school) about the limitations of his (their) role regarding drugs .

If there is ever a fire, no way anyone could sleep through the sound. Poor dog was scared to death.

(Not a real alarm, they are doing the annual fire testing today.)

Yeah but a load of us has just got rebate cheques, so they are all happy now

Wasn't it Alberta a few years ago where there was a surplus of budget funds so everyone got a rebate of a few hundred?

Yeah, 2005, the year we arrived, now Alberta is in deficit

That long ago? Wow.

I remember reading about it and thinking why didn't they just keep it in reserve or put it into a health budget or something.

The battery went in one of our CO alarms over Christmas, so it did that annoying repetitive beep. Which was made worse by trying various batteries to try to find good ones. The dog was seriously unhappy.

Or put it towards further education for the kids!

Because AB has a habit of building a surplus and then blowing it on bribes to keep the voters happy.

Pedestrians in parts of Ottawa have abandoned sidewalks (inadequately ploughed) in favour of pristine cycle lanes.

Apparently a lot of cyclists are narked. That's about par for the course with the holier-than-thou cycling brigade.

I'm sure that if the ploughing regime were switched, cyclists would soon be mowing people down on the sidewalks.

The country held as example for excess oil revenue funds is Norway. Its fund is approaching a trillion dollars.

Norway can do that because they charged me sufficient for the beer I drank there to support the health service during the decades of oil production.

Which, if properly managed, as it is, produces about $60 bn pa returns. Half of this goes to capital preservation, meaning roughly $30 bn pa is distributed to sensible Norwegian projects and social policies.

The UK could have done that but Maggie chose to give it all to rich people.

Unfortunately they believe a sensible social policy is to make alcohol unaffordable.

Seems that the burner, is a nice little earner. So many arbitrary taxes these days. I don't see any issue with it.