Oct 6/10 - Pt 1: Alberta Premier - Ed Stelmach

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PART ONE

It's Wednesday, October 6th.

Conservative MP Maxime Bernier -- who once said he got thousands of complaints about the mandatory long-form census -- now says the decision to cancel the long-form was about "the principle" not the number of complaints.

Currently, it's known in political science circles as "The Principle of Gross Exaggeration."

This is The Current.

Premier of Alberta - Ed Stelmach

We started this segment with a clip from an ad from a group called Corporate Ethics that has been running for a couple of months now. It's just one of the campaigns that portray the Alberta oil sands as a blight on the earth.

Those campaigns have helped trigger a renewed debate about the oil sands. And that has attracted a high profile parade of curious visitors from high-ranking U.S. politicians to Hollywood directors like Canadian James Cameron to see the situation for themselves.

Over the last few weeks, they have all descended on the oil sands, with the idea of assessing the situation for themselves. And now, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach has launched a campaign of his own.

The Alberta Government has countered with giant ads in Times Square in New York City that will run until the middle of this month. And Premier Stelmach and some of his cabinet ministers have been reaching out across Canada and the U.S. offering their own picture of the oil sands. We reached Premier Stelmach in Edmonton.