There were some who were surprised when Sun Media gave qualified props to Alberta MP Brent Rathgeber when pulled the pin on the Harper Conservatives to sit as an Independent.
But, despite his grandstanding, he had a point.
The private member's bill Rathgeber introduced, only to be gutted by his own Tory MPs on the access to information committee, would have publicly exposed the salaries of all public-service employees making at least $188,000.
Sun Media, in fact, has always supported Rathgeber's small-c conservative approach that the public has the right to know where its money goes.
So we, like Rathgeber, were astonished when the Tories jacked up the number to $445,000 a year.
While we would like to know who in hell has a public service job that pays $445,000 a year, this rather odd dollar figure the Tories picked out of the air suggests there is a embarrassing truckload of mandarins and CBC talking heads making more than $188,000 that the government wants to keep secret.
There is no other conclusion to be drawn.
While we are still two years away from the next election, the time is now for the Tories to give their heads a shake, and re-focus on the small-c conservative promises that first got them elected.
Rathgeber is not alone in his concerns.
