Former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove is coming to Vancouver next Monday, Feb. 18th, to be feted by a conservative policy institute and pick up a handsome (and undisclosed) speechmaking fee.

It'll set you back $500 (or $750 a couple) to hear George W. Bush's political guru talk about "motivating the base," or perhaps hear his opinion of Ambassador Joe Wilson and wife Valerie Plame.

Rove is being sponsored by The Fraser Institute. The institute is a 34-year-old Vancouver-based think thank renowned for its critiques of Canada's health care system, the leftist bias of its press, the influence of organized labor . . . and its diehard opposition to the Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park in far-north British Columbia.

The park prevented development of a massive open-pit mine in land flanked by the U.S. Glacier Bay National Park and Canada's Kluane National Park.

The institute has also served as a place of rest and study for such retired politicians of the Canadian right as Reform Party founder Preston Manning and former Ontario Premier Mike Harris.

The Rove dinner will be in the "spectacular forecourt of the Vancouver Art Gallery," the Fraser Institute said in its invitation.

As of mid-afternoon Tuesday, only seven tickets were left.

Rove was not "frog-marched out of the White House," as Amb. Wilson suggested in an exuberant Seattle speech, but chose to move on after unexpectedly heavy Republican losses in the 2006 elections.

He is working as an election year pundit for -- who else? -- the Fox News Channel.

The Rove appearance in Vancouver demonstrates an old adage: Both sides can play this game.

Ex-President Bill Clinton has been through British Columbia twice in recent months, picking up six-figure speech fees.

A global warming lecture by former Vice President Al Gore drew a capacity audience at the University of Toronto.

In what is surely a first for an Al Gore speech, students were scalping tickets outside.