The Tories are doing so much backpedaling this week, you think it'd be easier for them to just turn the bike around. I discussed the firing of a scientist for refusing to use the new Tory catchphrase "Canada's New Government" here. Well apparently the heat from that was too much and as of yesterday he was reinstated. Now listening to As It Happens last night, I was able to hear the minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn's side of the story.

On my way into work this morning I was listening to the local CBC morning show when I heard about an upcoming meeting between government and industry to discuss the employment problem in Alberta. Now when I say employment problem, I mean there aren't enough workers to go around which is causing problems for small employers who can't afford to pay huge salaries to attract workers. This meeting is interesting in what it tells us about business people and conservative government as well as what it means for the economy.

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.

It would seem that the latest polls in the US have the Republicans running scared. Signs include President Bush admitting that they have secret prisons but that those prisons are being shut down, oh, and the prisoners will be given their Geneva Convention rights. There will also be new rules for US troops in their "questioning" of prisoners where US troops will no longer be allowed certain "techniques" for questioning prisoners (read torture).

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.