So long, electoral reform! Welcome back, first-past-the-post!

Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party, said yesterday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's announcement that his clear promise of electoral reform back in the 2015 federal election campaign was going over the side left her feeling "more deeply shocked and betrayed by my government today than on any day of my adult life."

Those of us who are old New Democrats, or old Tories for that matter, may not feel quite so much shock.

It is Groundhog Day, after all, and we've seen this movie before -- over and over and over. Every time we're persuaded to vote Liberal for one reason or another, as a matter of fact.

What's black and white and red all over? The Canadian newspaper industry's balance sheets.

But as has been said here many times before, no industry had more warning of the extent and nature of the coming digital revolution than the Canadian newspaper industry, and it has turned the wrong direction at every step along the way to its current disastrous destination.

But that doesn't mean these newspapers' well-heeled owners won't demand tax-supported subsidies to support their badly run businesses if they're given any encouragement -- which is exactly what the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to have been doing.

Premier Notley just pledged to work with Trump administration on Keystone XL. WTF?
-- Environmentalist Mike Hudema, Tuesday afternoon on Facebook

It's hard not to feel Mike Hudema's pain.

Hudema is a Greenpeace Canada campaigner, well known for his anti-tar sands activism in Alberta. I suppose some people in the oilpatch don't like him very much, but he's generally viewed with respect. God knows, he's consistent.

Hudema ran for the Alberta NDP in the Edmonton-Meadowlark riding back in 2001. He was 25 at the time.

Saskatchewan appears to be suffering from a serious economic malady.

Nobel Prize-winning economist and journalist Paul Krugman calls it "Austerity Fever."

Canadian economist and journalist Toby Sanger calls it Sudden Apocalyptic Deficit Syndrome (SADS).

Call it what you will, a new case has now been diagnosed in Manitoba, and conservatives here in Alberta appear to have been afflicted as well -- although, thankfully, not our social democratic NDP government.

As a result, for the time being at least, we will likely be spared the worst symptoms of this tragic condition, which Sanger noted in correspondence with your blogger is "mainly a disease of affluent older white males, in which the 'cure' is inflicted on others, and is far worse than the disease."