So far in her short career as Alberta Premier, Alison Redford seems to have been coated with a layer of Teflon deep enough to have been donated by Ralph Klein!

Surely, one would think, one of these days some of the stuff that has been flying around the rather inept operations of her government these past few weeks would stick to her. So far, virtually none of it has.

Here's poor Gary Mar, pilloried and now unpaid because the invitations to a fund-raiser to help pay off his quarter-million-dollar-plus Progressive Conservative leadership campaign debt made mention of his current job as Alberta's chief oilsands pitchman in Asia.

What are we to make of the calls by Ken Hughes, defeated front-runner in the now "disallowed" Progressive Conservative nomination race in the Calgary West riding, for a new nomination vote?

Oddly enough, there actually was a lesson that could be learned from the first budget of Alberta Premier Alison Redford's government.

While the Budget Speech read yesterday by retiring Finance Minister Ron Liepert was self-evidently an election-year creation designed to offend no one who might wield influence, one ox was gored: post-secondary education.

While the media were reporting a 2.7-per-cent increase to post-secondary operating funds, they weren't saying anything about the effects of inflation, huge population increases and big cuts to maintenance budgets that critics estimated would put the system back $80 to $100 million.

The Alberta Progressive Conservative Party has now given the bum's rush to Shiraz Shariff, the 30-year party supporter and former MLA who had the unmitigated cheek to defeat Ken Hughes, the premier's anointed candidate in Calgary West, in the riding's Jan. 28 nomination vote.

The PC Party "received several written complaints about the eligibility of some of those who voted in the recent nomination for Calgary West," Party President Bill Smith said in a terse news release late yesterday morning. Nevertheless, according to the release, the party "does not hold any one candidate or campaign responsible for the unfortunate situation."

It was either the best of Throne Speeches or it was the worst of Throne Speeches. Heck, maybe it was both at the same time.

Yesterday being the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, maybe there's something powerfully symbolic in that assessment of the first Throne Speech by the Progressive Conservative government of Alison Redford.

As the beloved Scottish poet Rabbie Burns so famously observed, "the best-laid plans o' mice an' men gang aft agley."

The best-laid plans o' mice, of course, are usually wrecked by people with traps. But those of men often go awry because of what might be termed an over-exuberance of democracy.

Consider the sad case of Alberta's newest unemployed person, Ken Hughes, who on Dec. 28 last year announced he was stepping down as the first and only chair of Alberta's giant public health-care board, known nowadays as Alberta Health Services.

Even with Alberta Premier Alison Redford in a mood to tarry just a little and not call an election until after her government has passed its first budget, only one centrist political party is likely to be in a position to challenge her in all 87 ridings come election day -- the New Democrats.

With 73 candidates already nominated, the Alberta NDP under Brian Mason will have no trouble going into the election with a full slate capable of confronting Redford's Progressive Conservative government from the left, while the Wildrose Party led by Danielle Smith takes them on with a full slate from the right.

Not only that, but the New Democrats will be the only Alberta party, including the government, with a leader who has actually led his or her party through an election.

Well, of course he's running for office.

With a record like his, how could he not?

I refer, of course, to Ken Hughes, the first and so far the only chair of Alberta Health Services, the massive province-wide health board created in May 2008 to … well, it's never really been all that clear just what AHS was supposed to do.

AHS has managed, one supposes, to realize a few economies of scale -- especially among traditionally overpaid top health region executive positions -- but at the cost of some pretty fantastic dis-economies of scale.