The 19th century British schoolteacher, social reformer and mathematician George Boole was not what you would call a 'market-oriented' kind of guy.

His life and work had little connection to the worlds of business and entrepreneurship, and the profit motive was almost entirely alien to his central preoccupations.

And yet, nearly 160 years after his death, Boole is viewed as one of the fathers of computer science -- the scientific foundation of the hugely profitable, multi-trillion dollar business of digital electronics.

Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry, IBM, Intel -- they all owe their existence to an obscure mathematician who died in 1864.

You can't get more market-oriented than that.

Are the Conservatives interfering with the CBC in a dangerous way -- or just seeing to it that salaries at crown corporations fall in line with those in the private sector?

One thing is certain: this government is definitely inserting itself into collective bargaining at the CBC, and at other crown corporations -- entities which, historically, have operated at arm's length from government.

The Conservatives are quite unabashed about this, and they are not fazed by the argument that this sort of interference has never happened before.

Predictably, Parliamentary Secretary (and Harper's current chief purveyor of anger), Pierre Poilievre, characterizes this Conservative initiative as taking on the "union bosses."

For the Conservatives, the gloves are off when it comes to Kevin Page, the very recently departed Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO).

While Page still had the job, the Conservatives held themselves back, a bit. They didn't openly say the PBO was a partisan and favoured the opposition.

That's their line now.

The Prime Minister used that line on Wednesday, when asked about the Federal Court decision on the PBO's request for information the government refused to share with him.

Prime Minister Harper yoked Page and the NDP together and claimed that the Federal Court case was entirely partisan.

An ominous promise to find someone 'non-partisan'

Justin Trudeau's first day as Liberal Leader in the House was inevitably a challenge for him.

It was also a challenge for Official Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair.

The NDP leader gets to lead off in Question Period, and there might have been some who wondered whether Mulcair would trot out the new friendlier Tom his Party had featured at the Montreal Convention.

No way.

Mulcair decided to be himself and show some of his legendary anger.

What skills does Tim Horton's need that it cannot find in Canada?

The Opposition Leader honed in on the temporary foreign worker program, pointing out that the Royal Bank has apologized, but the Harper government has neither apologized for nor tried to explain the abuse of the system.