The financially-insolvent Sun News Network made a final plea for mandatory carriage last week to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, better known to Canadians as the CRTC.

Government budgets have been in the news for all the wrong reasons, as cutbacks and austerity measures seem to be the new reality. Here in Alberta, as we struggle to find a way to deal with shortfalls in revenue predictions from our oil and gas revenues, announced cutbacks in numerous areas may very well hit close to home for many this year and over the next few years.

Ask any schoolchild, and they will tell you Canada is an export-based economy, and much of our wealth is derived from exporting our raw primary resources to manufacturing-based economies that transform those resources into finished products that are then sold back to us and many other economies around the globe.

So the prodigal son — not surprisingly, perhaps — has returned. Supporters of the Liberal Party of Canada anointed Justin Trudeau as their new leader over the weekend in an 80 per cent first ballot sweep. Trudeaumania, it seems, has also returned to the ranks of the Liberal Party. And with a federal election at least on the horizon, if not in the immediate future, some Canadians are beginning to wonder if Trudeaumania — or some version of it, anyway — might not just sweep the country, and an election.