With mere days before an expected election call, the Redford Tories have suddenly found an appetite for convenient stunts.
It was March 12th in the Legislature when Premier Alison Redford took aim at the Opposition MLAs who announced they'd be repaying the money they received for sitting on a committee that hadn't met since 1998.
Redford declared that repaying the money was a , quote, "convenient stunt" meant to polarize the issue.
Now, suddenly, the Tories see some merit in the notion of paying back some of that money.
Of course, some opposition MLAs are paying back all the money - over $40,000 in some cases.
These Tory MLAs, however, will be paying back much, much less.
The announcement yesterday didn't even come from the Premier herself. Instead she sent out Tory whip Robin Campbell to inform reporters that they money would be repaid.
He didn't intially say how much. It wasn't until reporters prodded that Campbell revealed that the paybacks would only go as far back as October of last year.
That's six months ago, meaning that these MLAs will pay back $6000 each and keep the rest.
The Tories seemed to have convinced themselves that the public will accept this as something meaningful. In all likelihood, they're fooling themselves.
What's more likely, is that the Tories have reminded voters about this controversy, revealed their own hypocrisy, and offered nothing more than an empty gesture.
The Tories are running out of feet to shoot themselves in.
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