Stephen Harper has celebrated the first anniversary of his majority by reminding Canadians of the moral tone he offers his country.

A week ago, Mr. Harper announced Canada would examine "all options" as the 2014 deadline for pulling our troops out of Afghanistan approached. Since Parliament had voted unanimously for that deadline and for no other options, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair asked the Prime Minister when Canadian troops would actually be brought home.

Thunder Bay MP Bruce Hyer resigned from the NDP caucus this week for an interesting mix of reasons. He was disappointed he didn't get appointed to the NDP shadow cabinet. He is concerned the party will reintroduce a long-gun registry. And he rejects, in principle, the idea that the political party whose colours he carried in the last election can tell him what to think, what to say, or how to vote.

Now let's look at the Alberta election -- a true "Dewey beats Truman" fiasco for Canada's political commentariat, which predicted victory for Wildrose on the basis of the latest crop of junk polls, and then got to cover an impressive (as measured by seats) landslide for the Alberta Progressive Conservatives.

Why did Wildrose lose so convincingly?

Stephen Harper first became Prime Minister in 2006 and has already dramatically transformed the old Canada. But with no election due for four more years, we ain't seen nothing yet.

It's in the nature of true believers and ideologues to believe that any means to their sacred ends are justified. This makes them extremely dangerous people. It's also typical of such people that they're often motivated by unfathomable resentment and anger, a compulsion not just to better but to destroy their adversaries. These are good descriptions of Stephen Harper and those closest to him.

Canadians aren't used to parliamentary government, in large part because we aren't used to federal politics built around real differences between our major parties over real issues. Instead, we are used to two conservative parties squabbling over mutual (often accurate) accusations of corruption, and over symbolic issues -- most with little meaning to the daily lives of citizens.

Canadians have therefore long tuned out federal politics between elections. But that all changed on May 2nd.

We now have some real choices on offer in federal politics, and real debate over real issues. Like, for example, whether or not people have the right to withhold their labour if they don't like the pay they're being offered by their bosses.

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: 

From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back into bondage."