Former U.S. presidential candidate Al Gore will be giving his much-publicized presentation, An Inconvenient Truth, to a Saskatchewan audience later this month.
Gore, a former vice-president under Bill Clinton, was invited to speak at Regina's Brandt Centre April 23 by Premier Lorne Calvert.
SaskTel, the provincially owned phone company, is fronting the $208,000 cost of the event, which includes Gore's $125,000 speaking fee.
Some 5,000 people are expected to attend the event, paying $25 to $75 for tickets, and officials believe there could be a small profit if there's a sellout. Tickets go on sale Saturday at Ticketmaster outlets.
Calvert said polls show that the environment is not as hot a political issue here as in other parts of the country.
He's hoping Gore's presentation — which shows the links between carbon emissions and global warming and was turned into an Oscar-winning documentary — will help raise the profile of the issue in Saskatchewan.
Saskatchewan has a record on carbon emissions that it cannot be proud of, Calvert said.
But he noted the province has a "tremendous opportunity to pull above our weight … whether it's in our biofuels endeavour, whether it's in carbon sequestration, whether it's the work in clean coal technology."
Calvert said he'll announce his new strategy to reduce greenhouse gases around the time of Gore's visit.
The Opposition Saskatchewan Party says Calvert ran on an environmental platform in the last election and hasn't done much to improve things since then. Saskatchewan Party critics also suggested Calvert is going to use the Gore appearance as a photo opportunity.
Since the Oscar win earlier this year, Gore's public profile has been on the rise and many observers have touted him as possible candidate for president again. The Democratic presidential candidate in 2000, he lost to George W. Bush.
