Harper's Separatist in the Senate

Buckets points out a 2001 Andrew Coyne column on the links between the Canadian Alliance and the Alberta Independence Party. And there's one connection which seems particularly striking based on Harper's poor excuses for...well, pretty much everything he's done over the past two weeks:

Question 4: Who said, to which gathering of which separatist party, "I wish you every success." Was it a) Lucien Bouchard, then a minister in the federal government, in a telegram to the Parti Quebecois in 1990, or b) Bert Brown, member of the Canadian Alliance and "Senator-elect" for the province of Alberta, addressing the same Alberta Independence Party meeting that Mr. Thompson attended?

The answer to each, in case you were in any doubt, is b). Which raises a further query: What on earth were Mr. Thompson and Mr. Brown, as well as Darrel Stinson, MP, and Ted Morton, Alberta's other "Senator-elect," doing at a meeting of a party dedicated to the dismantling of Canada?

So while Harper is trying to make excuses for an orgy of patronage based on what seems to be an entirely Con-fabricated rumour about Bloc members being appointed to the Senate, one of his only two appointments so far has already been the Alberta equivalent.