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It’s not easy being Joe. NDP Finance Minister Joe Ceci has a career-killing job at the worst possible time.

While Ceci blankets Alberta, talking to dozens of groups about the fall provincial budget, the economic news has drifted from dangerous to downright dire.

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Oil wallows below US$45 a barrel. Alberta’s unemployment rate now tops six per cent, highest in the West. Calgary unemployment has jumped to 6.6 per cent.

The Keystone XL oil pipeline, which U.S. President Barack Obama seems determined to keep on rejecting, appears to be beyond resurrection.

I’ve talked to Mulcair and still don’t know quite what he means. Does he approve oilsands development on principle, or not?

The other options to move Alberta oil — Northern Gateway, Kinder Morgan and Energy East — are tangled up in a hot federal election campaign where only one party, the Conservatives, calls flat-out for building them, but never manages to do it.