It's worth remembering as unite-the-right conservatives of all stripes completely melt down over the supposedly job-destroying, economy-destroying, soul-destroying 4.5-cent-per-litre increase in the price of gasoline introduced as part of the Alberta NDP Government's climate strategy, that if Jim Prentice's Progressive Conservatives had won re-election in May 2015 his government would have raised the gasoline tax roughly the same amount.

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ST. ALBERT, Alberta

The St. Albert Catholic school board has spent at least $367,188 of taxpayer money to keep a transgender former teacher named Jan Buterman from ever working there again.

Just when you think you're finding your way out of the woods, there's that damned Bitumen Bubble again.

This time, it's crude oil prices that are declining -- or, as they say in journalese, the official language of the Internet, "plummeting."

This is handy for conservatives once they're elected and want to cut the crap out of public services they promised to protect, but not so good in the lead-up to an election during the phase when conservative governments of all stripes go into a tax-and-spend-liberal-spree mode and shower dollars on electors.

Senior Alberta government managers had to be rejoicing yesterday -- and presumably resolving to update their lapsed memberships in the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party.

Leastways, word leaked out yesterday to us in the Hoi Polloi that the government's three-year freeze on civil service executive salaries, which began amid great fanfare on April Fools Day 2013, had ended after being in effect for only a single year.