I must say, I’m downright giddy after reading this gem from Paul Wells. Apparently my best buddy Jim Dinning personally donated $25,000 to the Paul Martin campaign back in 2002 (this certainly won’t help to dispel the frequently made comparisons between Dinning and Martin). Here’s the text of the letter which I can only hope will be reprinted in every newspaper in Alberta over the next few days:

February 7, 2002

Mr. Jim Palmer
[Address]

Dear Jim,

Further to your conversation with Steve Snyder, I am pleased to provide you TransAlta’s support for Project 2000.

On a personal note, I worry that our governments across the country have become a ‘hotbed of rest’ and I can only hope that Mr. Martin and others might be able to re-inject a sense of urgency, passion and priority into the affairs of our nation. Soon.

Kind personal regards,

[Signature]
Jim Dinning
Executive Vice President
Sustainable Development and External Relations

Now, for those of you confused as to why this would be a major scandal (besides the misleading statements Dinning gave back at the time that Wells gets into), let me explain a bit to you about Alberta politics. Albertans are very forgiving people. If you make fun of people on AISH, they’ll forgive you. If you throw a book at a young girl, they’ll forgive you. If you say that ranchers should have “shot, shoveled, and shut up” rather than reporting Mad Cow cases, they’ll forgive you. If in a drunken stupor, you go and berate homeless people at a shelter, they’ll forgive you.

But there is one thing Albertans will not forgive you for.

And that one thing is being connected to the federal Liberals. So I suspect donating $25,000 to Paul Martin’s campaign will not go over extremely well with the PC members in this province. Just a hunch.