If he's going to have a truly national government, and if the Conservative party is going to have a chance of replacing the Liberals as a truly national party and (form) stable, sustainable national governments, he's got to build on that base in Quebec.

I think that's a scenario that we're unlikely to encounter in the years ahead but it's something that is in the back of our minds.

It's been a twisted tale in the last couple days that I don't pretend to fully understand.

Having a number of mini trust funds makes sense. We can consider doing the same thing for postsecondary education, perhaps creating a wellness fund and have a revenue stream where we could pursue wellness initiatives within the province.

Ultimately we want to invest it so it generates income and then be able to use that income for a variety of purposes within the province.

We are talking about the responsible stewardship of public funds coming from non-renewable natural resources and in this context the prosperity dividend makes no sense.

From 1980 on, we've spent every nickel and dime of natural resource revenue and that's not an acceptable go-forward strategy.

[Martin was in Edmonton this week to meet with members of the Calgary-based Canada West Foundation think-tank (interesting that Tory-blue Calgary was not on the PM's itinerary).] Two years ago the prime minister staked out addressing Western Canadian discontent as a marker for his success, ... Since then we haven't seen a whole lot of movement.