It would seem that the Tories are purging the civil service of people that won't play ball with the Tories "re-branding" of government in the Tory image. The latest casualty was a geologist with the Geological Survey of Canada.

Back here I opined about why the Harper Tories were protecting the seats of some of the more, shall we say, "radical" members of their caucus. I have come up with another theory. This one is quite simple and Occam's Razor may make this one the winner.

It would appear the Tories are starting to backpedal on their environmental policy, or at the very least pay lip service to backpedaling. There are also rumors that the new Tory "Green Plan" will look an awful lot like the Liberal one they canceled. So what does this mean? Did the Tories have a road to Damascus conversion on the environment? I suspect not. I think it means that somehow someone has managed to crowbar into Stephen Harper's brain that voters in Central and Eastern Canada like the environment, and unlike voters in Alberta, are likely to vote for someone else.

... and so little time to do it. With school back in full swing, I find myself with less and less time to blog. So for today I have to decide on what to write about. There's US Secretary of State Rice's visit to the Maritimes to give Canada a pep talk to stay in Afghanistan (and the resultant gushing of Peter MacKay over Condi). Further the Alberta Minister of Health has been making statements about privatizing more and more of Alberta's health care system. There's also the escalation of our involvement in Afghanistan with sending our tanks in as well. All in all a busy week for sure. I have decided to write about an interesting development with the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party.

So the supposedly "open" Conservative party is now being sued by it's own members. It would appear that the party apparatniks are going out of their way to protect the wing-nuttier members of their caucus. So far the Tory "central committee" has stopped challenges to Rob Anders and now Myron Thompson.

During my travels of the blogosphere, I came across this article on Harper's upcoming address to the United Nations. This lead to this article by Esra Levant demanding that the Harper government pull Canada out of the UN. This article and the comments left at Buckdog's got me to thinking about the rocky relationship between the UN and neo-conservatives.

Stephen Harper has said he wouldn't govern by polls. He isn't above governing by focus group it seems. Since it would appear that the oil companies and the Bush Administration have convinced the Tories that they should back Canada out of Kyoto, the Tories are looking for something to replace it. It would appear that they are looking for something that allows greenhouse gas emissions, but not other pollutants. To find what will be palatable to the Canadian public, they commissioned a focus group of 75 Canadians to look at the issue.

Well today was Ralph Klein's last day in the legislature. Some thoughts about this event. First was a comment he made on the radio about how his government didn't have a plan for the boom economy. Second is how bad things could get with his replacement.

The Harper Conservatives seem to be unable to help themselves, or at least their supporters, with yet more patronage appointments. It would appear that the new board of directors of the Toronto Island Airport just happen to all be Tory supporters. Naturally, the National Post, which printed the story, spent most of the article trying to spin things in favor of the Conservatives and discredit the NDP MP who made the discovery.

...of $450 million dollars. To be accurate, the Harper government, through the softwood lumber deal that they've negotiated, provide as part of the $1 billion that won't be coming back to Canada $450 million into a slush fund that the Bush White House can spend as it sees fit. No congressional oversight, no real strings on how the money can be spent. Under the deal, the money has to go to the White House by the 1st of September, just in time for the campaign kick off for the mid-term elections.