Dear Conservatives;

If people are going to vote Liberal, they’ll vote for real Liberals, not fake ones.
Further, as Conservative leadership candidates, has it occurred to you that these days you spend almost all of your time aping Trudeau on immigration, while he spends zero time aping you?

Joe Oliver on equalization.
An excellent article detailing the problems with equalization and asking important questions about the viability of the program or whether it’s even worth keeping.
However I’m not sure I fully appreciate the veracity of the former Canadian Minister of Finance making arguments meant to shore up Western Canadian conservatism. The same guy who had the power to change the system not 10 months ago.
Between this and Tony Clement calling for the end of the CBC, I get the feeling the Ontario Conservatives are feeling a little heat in the leadership race.

Maxime Bernier starts the week with a solid policy announcement.

I think she’s onto something here.

Conservative party leader candidate Maxime Bernier is calling for a phase-out of the Canadian broadcast regulator’s role as telecom watchdog as part of his plan to deregulate the industry.
The full text.

Maxime calls for the end of supply management in eggs, poultry and milk.

I wonder what Martha Hall Findlay thinks.

Don’t know if you’re watching the Manning Conference on CPAC2 or not, but conservatives could do a heck of a lot worse than elevating Bernier to leadership.

The beginning of the public audits.

If there are folks out there saying there must be a decisive move to occupy some other space on the political spectrum, that’s just crazy. We’ve seen that fail in Canada, we’ve seen that fail elsewhere. That doesn’t work.

And because it’s never too early for leadership speculation:
There are two ‘litmus tests’, if you will, for my next Conservative leader. Fiscal prudence and a decided preference for decentralization. My current favourite is Maxime Bernier, but for only two reasons. I know he tends towards liberty and he isn’t afraid to voice his views, I don’t know his views on spending.
One of the downsides of the Harper years is that I don’t actually know what other contenders think.