If you have any doubts left there are only four more sleeps before the end of the Progressive Conservative Era in Alberta, look no further than the video and website called "I never thought I'd vote PC."

Whether or not the PCs under Alison Redford had anything to do with this vain effort to encourage hip, edgy young people to vote for the clapped out Conservative party in a last-ditch effort to prevent a Wildrose Apocalypse, there could be no surer sign of the imminent demise of the once mighty Tory dynasty.

When Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman crashed the premier's "photo opportunity" early this afternoon, it got me thinking how the Conservatives aren't the only Alberta political party that needs their old leader back. I mean, really, where's Kevin Taft now that the Liberals need him?

Planning his retirement, presumably, without having to worry about Ms. Redford's panicky decision this morning to suspend "from this day forward" the retirement payments to departing MLAs.

Sooner or later, all conversations about the Alberta economy in the modern era come down to one key question: Where the hell did all the money go?

I guess you could rephrase this: Where the hell is all the money going? Regardless, it's been going somewhere and, over the past couple of decades, that destination has been a matter of lively discussion among Albertans and other Canadians.

This question is so often asked because, while Alberta is known to be rich -- Alberta's GDP per person in 2008 was $81,121, compared with $44,121 for the rest of Canada -- to those of us who live here it feels poor.

Does the kind of man who would call immigrants to Alberta from Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada "bums" and "creeps" deserve the Order of Canada?

Surely one would think not! But anything can happen in the weird and wacky world of Canada's "honours system," so one supposes that, with a noisy campaign under way by the corporate media and various far-right bloviators, an Order of Canada for Ralph "Katastrophe" Klein is a virtual inevitability.

Yesterday, Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman emailed out a press release announcing big changes to his staff.

Key among these were the additions of Jeff Melland, a former spokesthingy for the British Columbia Liberal caucus, and Ryan Pineo, a former legislative assistant with the same West Coast Liberals.

If he loses his seat in the next provincial election, will Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman run for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada?

He can if he wants, if the timing works out. And what the heck, he's even a Liberal now. It's said here that losing his seat is a virtual certainty.

At any rate, we are reliably informed that the federal Liberals yesterday adopted the same nutty leadership voting rule as their Alberta counterpart, the one that will allow any interested Canadian to vote for their next party leader.

If you want a useful yardstick of the relative health of Alberta's opposition parties, you need look no further than the number of candidates they have nominated for the next provincial election.

Using this measure, it is very unlikely the increasingly marginalized Alberta Liberal Party under Leader Raj Sherman will be capable of fielding a full slate of candidates on election day.

There will be 87 seats in the provincial Legislature after the next election. Here is a prediction: The Liberals will be unable to field a slate of even two-thirds that number, and may only be able to find candidates for about half the seats in the Legislature.

No one can say the Alberta Liberals don't have movement. The trouble is, it's all downhill.

That the slow-motion implosion of the Alberta Liberal Party is gathering speed was evident on two fronts yesterday, as one of the party's veteran MLAs skedaddled for the government benches and a new poll by Environics Research Group confirmed the party is mired in third place among the province's opposition parties.

The planned departure of Hugh MacDonald from the crumbling Alberta Liberal Party became official yesterday when paid reporters finally tracked down the Edmonton-Gold Bar MLA and got him to confirm what's been discussed here in the blogosphere since last week.