U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney is visiting Alberta in early September after he received a special request from Michael Walker, executive director of the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute. Walker, who told the Straight that Cheney has been a fishing buddy for more than a decade, said he finalized the details of the trip during a visit with the vice-president at the White House in June.

"We invited Vice-President Cheney to come to Canada, although I heard yesterday, now, the deputy prime minister [Anne McLellan] is claiming she invited him," Walker said. "He is coming up for a private visit with myself and another friend of his up in Alberta, where we'll go off up in a lodge for a variety of purposes."

On August 17, the Globe and Mail reported that Alberta Premier Ralph Klein had claimed that he invited Cheney to visit.

Walker wouldn't identify the friend who will join him and Cheney, possibly for goose- and duck-hunting. He said that Cheney will also give a talk to a "small gathering" of people in Calgary and visit the tar sands near Fort McMurray.

"One of my objectives was to get him to the tar sands so he could see what is going on there," Walker said.

Walker said that he thinks Canada needs to attract $200 billion in new investment to develop the tar sands, which he described as "the largest hydrocarbon stock on the face of the Earth". He added that he doesn't know President George W. Bush but he has met his father, who was president from 1989 to 1992.

Walker declined to answer the Straight's question about whether or not he played any role in facilitating Premier Gordon Campbell's visits to the White House during his first term to meet with Cheney. In 2004, then-NDP house leader Joy MacPhail said in the legislature that Campbell had twice visited Cheney without making any headway in addressing U.S. intransigence on resolving the softwood-lumber dispute.

Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson, cochair of Lawyers Against the War, told the Straight that many people in the peace movement oppose Cheney's visit to Canada. Last November, her group wrote to the federal government to try to stop George Bush from entering the country because of his alleged involvement in war crimes.

Canada's War Crimes Program annual report for 2003-04 stated: "Canada will not be a safe haven for persons involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity or other reprehensible acts."