A Kingston, Ontario, artist, Margaret Sutherland, has produced an oil canvas depicting a nude Stephen Harper, Canada’s prime minister. She claims it is art, “satire”, and that people shouldn’t have a problem because, as she puts it, all politicians have bodies.

Satire can be achieved in many ways. We see perfect and wonderful examples of that on the editorial pages of our newspapers every day. Canada has some of the finest and most pungent caricaturists. And who could forget Radio-Canada’s Et Dieu créa … Laflaque?

But what Ms. Sutherland describes as “satire” and “art” is neither. Like most in her community, she’s probably pro-socialism/communism, and as such she doesn’t like the Prime Minister’s politics much.

What she’s produced isn’t art, but her own personal way of ridiculing a public figure she doesn’t like (possibly even hates).

We can only hope that her “art” wasn’t produced at the expense of our hardworking and downtrodden taxpayers. They’ve already subsidized too many of those “works of arts” in the past before.

Engaging in ideological warfare is one thing, and all politicians do it, naturally. But starting an argument that isn’t based on facts is never a winning position, and will eventually make the author of such quarrel look ridiculous, and even dumb.

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair isn’t backing down from his fairy-tale story about the “petro dollar”, “Dutch disease”, and how it all has destroyed Ontario’s manufacturing industry.

Despite economists saying that he’s wrong, and a united front put up by the premiers of Western Canada, whom Mr. Mulcair has refused to engage directly, dismissing them as “messengers” of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he maintains that he’s right, and everyone else is wrong.

Thomas Mulcair versus Alison Redford

Even Liberal leader Bob Rae has reprimanded Mr. Mulcair for creating a hostile and divisive climate across Canada. It was then also revealed that the NDP leader had never even travelled to Alberta to see the oil sands for himself.

After initially staying out of the fight, Alberta’s premier Alison Redford has shown some backbone by saying that she wouldn’t meet with Mr. Mulcair unless and until he’d educated himself on fundamental economics and the oilsands. That’s a welcome change after the previous premier, Ed Stelmach, either ignored oilsands critics entirely, or swung to the other extreme and hosted them lavishly, as he did with Hollywood director James Cameron, who’s even less knowledgeable about the real world we live in than Mr. Mulcair.

Mr. Mulcair can continue on his chosen path of self-destruction. Winning only seats in Quebec, and the occasional outliers in Ontario, won’t be enough for him to become prime minister in the next election. His anger management issues, his reluctance to educate himself on the facts, and his arrogance will see to that.

Even the casual observer can be forgiven for thinking that the United Nations is no longer about doing good. It has become a group of left-wing fanatics, anti-Semites, and supporters of Islamist terrorism.

The UN’s special food envoy, Olivier de Schutter, was recently on a swing through Canada. Why the UN wastes its money on a food mission to Canada is anyone’s guess, but it certainly doesn’t make sense.

What does make sense is that Mr. de Schutter used his trip to stick it to Canada and embarrass it in an international forum. He was quick to complain that no federal cabinet ministers or other members of the federal government had been ordered to meet with him. Instead, he had to do with lowly civil servants, such as himself.

He also determined, for good measure, that food security was an issue in some parts of Canada.

Since Canada doesn’t any longer play along with the silly games played at the UN, it has become a foremost mission for the international body to attack and criticize Canada every chance it gets.

Mr. de Schutter should do his job in countries where people actually starve, instead of wasting that money on a trip to Canada.

But Canada has become a favourite target and whipping boy for the UN, because it has rejected the religion that is “man-made global warming”, which is championed heavily by the UN. It has advanced to being one of Israel’s best friends, something that irks the anti-Semitic UN, and it doesn’t kowtow to Islamist terrorists the way the UN does.

As one News Cruncher reader has pointed out, there’s only so much we can expect from an organization that allows countries like Saudi Arabia or Cuba to sit in judgment of the human rights situation of the world’s countries, including Canada.

Quips one newspaper columnist who doesn’t agree with a UN food mission to Canada and the concomitant waste of money:

If things are that bad, perhaps we should rethink the $5.2-billion we send overseas in development assistance to the tired, hungry, huddled masses in less fortunate countries.

Yes, a major rethink might be in order, including Canada’s continued membership in the international organization.

The students’ protests in Quebec have seriously gotten out of hand. Masked criminals are preventing law-abiding students from attending their classes and finishing their courses, while assaulting women and resorting to physical intimidation.

Courts have issued injunctions to ensure that students can continue their education, but those are being ignored by the masked, leftist criminals.

At this point, law-abiding citizens have to wonder how much longer this lawlessness and danger to the public will be allowed to continue. This is no longer a protest over a legitimate issue (in fact, it never was, given how low tuition fees are in Quebec), but full-blown left-wing terrorism.

As recent incidents have shown, including the bombing of Montreal’s subway, the left-wing terrorists have become a real danger to the public, as they have begun to resort to serious violence and also physically assaulting innocent students.

This has become an urgent matter of self-defence, and Quebec’s government must take any means necessary to protect the public, even if protesters are injured or even killed in the process.

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair isn’t listening to reason. He keeps attacking Western Canada, and particularly Alberta, creating a divisive climate that could one day rip the country in two.

All Western premiers, except for Alberta’s premier Alison Redford, have replied to Mr. Mulcair and told him that he was wrong and that he’d better stop his hate campaign. Even former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion has stood up in defence of Alberta and Western Canada.

But not Ms. Redford – people are beginning to wonder whether she secretly agrees with her ideological brother. It is only at the time of writing this editorial that Ms. Redford has finally issued a rebuke, sort of, of Mr. Mulcair’s tactics.

Economists have tried to inject reason into the debate, providing clear evidence that Ontario’s economy is in the dumpster not because of Alberta’s oil, but because of several other factors (mismanagement on the part of Ontario’s government is also a big contributing factor).

Mr. Mulcair is free to pursue his line of attack. It won’t serve him well at all. His personal anger management issues are well documented, and the more he talks, the less credible he becomes on the issue of oilsands as well as all other policy areas.

It must be nice to be able to walk on water. US President Barack Obama could tell us what this feels like it. Not long into his first term of office, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – for having done absolutely nothing.

Yes, President Obama simply can do no wrong, even when he does nothing at all. The most recent example of non-action: Mr. Obama’s announcement that he’s had a change of heart and now believes in same-sex marriage – not because he’s really had a change of heart, as a new poll of Americans shows, but because he didn’t want to be upstaged by his Number Two, Vice-President Joe Biden.

What will Michelle think?

As always, Mr. Obama wins praise and plaudit, whether he actually does something or not. Singing a few bars of Kumbaya is all it takes for the President the Great to boost his popularity numbers.

He won’t have to do any of the heavy lifting on this issue. Same-sex marriage is a state matter, and well over half the US states have already banned it. Gays and lesbians had better not get their hopes up, because the states will do what they want, and Mr. Obama can rhapsodize about his latest epiphany until the cows come home.

But the glorification of Mr. Obama has reached new, unreasonable, even ridiculous, heights: Newsweek has put him on its latest cover, declaring him to be America’s “first gay president”.

If this were high school, and Mr. Obama were a student being outed as gay when he’s not, that would be a case of bullying.

Alison Redford, Alberta’s new and shiny premier, is not your usual premier from Alberta. She wants to reach out to all of Canada, even going so far as to revive the decades-old National Energy Program (NEP), which a former Liberal prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, put in place to take from the West to give to the East.

That makes her suspect in most Albertans’ books, even if they did vote for her in the last provincial election. Every Albertan – conservatives, liberals, socialists, greens – is wary of Ottawa and what the federal government might do to Alberta and its wealth.

Dalton McGuinty, Ontario's premier

As if it wasn’t already bad enough for Ms. Redford to make such a proposition, it got even worse when Ontario’s premier Dalton McGuinty rebuffed her advances – to him, the “petro dollar” created by Alberta’s oil wealth is directly responsible for all the economic problems of his province (that he mismanaged the province for his first two terms in office is conveniently swept under the rug).

Mr. McGuinty holds Alberta responsible for the decline in Ontario’s manufacturing industry – again, ignoring the real causes, such as manufacturers who have neglected to work on becoming more innovative and more productive (despite stern warnings from a Liberal, former federal finance minister John Manley).

But life is full of irony, and now Mr. McGuinty, facing a crisis of healthcare costs, is counting on other provinces’ support and cooperation, including Alberta’s.

Mr. McGuinty plans to cut doctors’ salaries, especially in areas where technology has yielded efficiency and economies of scale, therefore no longer justifying some of the high fees paid to specialist doctors. He wants other provinces to join his efforts so as to have greater bargaining power vis-à-vis the doctors.

To recap: Mr. McGuinty would gladly and swiftly put an end to Alberta’s oilsands, thus killing the goose that lays the golden eggs that are shipped to Ontario and Quebec by the truckloads in “equalization payment”. He wants to do so to cover up his own failings as premier.

Yet, now he’s counting on help from the West with his push for healthcare reforms. Apparently, Mr. McGuinty thinks that a circle can be squared, because he’s asking for the impossible. You can’t destroy Canada’s most viable and most profitable industry to prop up a sector in Ontario that’s been dying for years anyway and will soon have exhaled its last breath, all the while asking for ever more money and support from the West.

The dream of a Triple-E Senate (equal, elected and effective) is dead. Even a long-time supporter of the idea, Roger Gibbins, the outgoing CEO of the Canada West Foundaton, has given up on it.

It was a nice enough idea, but in light of the constitutional changes this move would require, it was virtually unrealistic from the start that it would ever become a reality in Canada.

Canada doesn’t exactly have a strong track record when it comes to revamping the federal system, and with the eternal thorn in Canada’s side, Quebec, rolling a gigantic rock up to Mount Everest would be an easier undertaking.

The current temporary solution, with Albertans electing senators-in-waiting and the prime minister appointing them when there’s a vacancy, has worked so far, but only because the prime minister happens to hail from Alberta and is a Conservative himself.

But even under a Conservative prime minister, there was never any guarantee that the senators-in-waiting elected by Albertans in a separate, and expensive, ballot would actually be appointed one day. That probability would slip to nil if a Liberal or NDP government were to be formed in Ottawa.

On the senate issue, the NDP offers the best solution: just abolish it.

Every now and then there is an individual who used to be a big-shot and important, but then was forgotten. After years in limbo, he or she then makes one last desperate attempt at fifteen minutes of fame.

We have seen such behaviour from aging Hollywood stars, such as Robert Redford or Daryl Hannah. But actors aren’t the only ones addicted to being in the limelight. Washed-up NASA scientists also, apparently, vie for the spotlight.

This brings us to James Hansen, climatologist at NASA, who spewed the following nonsense:

If Canada proceeds to develop the oil sands, “it will be game over for the climate,” potentially half the planet’s species would be driven to extinction and “civilization would be at risk.”

Even others, that is, real scientists at NASA are laughing at Hansen. Not long ago, in fact, 49 of them, including former astronauts, signed a petition to stop nonsense-spewers like Hansen from ruining NASA’s reputation.

While the entire theory of “man-made global warming” is anything but proven or “settled science”, this latest outbursts of Hansen borders on nothing short of insanity.

Even when assuming that the theory is correct (but billions of years of history disprove that), Alberta’s oil sands are responsible only for a fraction of a fraction of greenhouse gas emissions, and thus completely incapable of wreaking the havoc that Hansen envisions.

If there is one scientific certainty, it is that Hansen’s scenario is utterly impossible and unrealistic even under the worst (or best, as the case may be) circumstances.

This is the problem with “climate science” today. Political (left-wing) ideology is running the show, and science is nowhere near that field.

A madrassah in Toronto that was recently exposed for its anti-Semitic teachings continues to be at the centre of controversy.

Imam Sayed Muhammad Rizvi, who is associated with the school, warned his followers about giving credence to news reports about the school, saying that “sinners” (i.e., anyone who isn’t Muslim) can’t be believed and that doing so would be a sin itself.

It’s not surprising that anti-Islam feelings are on the rise in Canada as much as elsewhere in the West. The West has opened its doors, in some cases too wide, to Muslim immigrants, given them a new home, and even allowed them to build their own mosques. (Building a church in any Muslim land would be a big no-no and invariably result in the brutal murder of any such brave architect.)

So, is this the thanks we get for allowing them to settle here? Do we have to accept being called “sinners” and evildoers?

Not all Muslims think that way, of course, but when an imam speaks up, it means something, and it must be taken as being representative of at least most of that ethnic and religious group.

Being called “infidel” is bad enough – and not true, as we simply choose to believe in different religions, which is anyone’s right. But being called insulting names is not something that Canadians must, or should, accept.

Going by the example set by the recent provincial election in Alberta, if a religious man says that gays will burn in hell, and such remark apparently qualifies as an affront to human rights, then the imam’s words are just as actionable under Canada’s human rights laws, and he should be dragged before a human rights tribunal and face the music of “infidels” and “sinners”.