What a pleasure it is here in the nation's capital to be the one from the only province on the Prairies where grownups are still in charge!

I speak, of course, of Alberta -- but I speak of my home province in the context of the goings on in Saskatchewan earlier today, where the premier according to the best-known candidate to lead Alberta's Progressive Conservative Party is "the real leader of Western Canada."

Premier Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party Government -- which all Albertans have been taught by the opposition conservative parties can do no wrong -- has decided to amalgamate their province's 12 localized health regions into a single massive province-wide health region this fall.

Since Alberta conservatives seem to believe everything Wall does practically amounts to earthly perfection -- Progressive Conservative uniter-o-the-righter candidate Jason Kenney calls him "the real leader of Western Canada" -- it's fair to wonder what they'll do now that the Saskatchewan premier has done something a lot of them fervently believe is perfectly wrong.

News Ottawa is at long last going to move Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada's national case-processing centre from the scrubby boondocks of east-central Alberta to where it belongs -- a large Canadian city that actually attracts immigrants and where future staff needs can be filled -- appears not even to have been formally announced.

The city in question will be Edmonton, which will considerably simplify the move from Vegreville scheduled for 2018. After all, Alberta's capital is only 100 kilometres west of the town of 6,000 souls that is soon to be best known once again as home of Canada's largest Ukrainian egg.

Today marks the official opening of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party leadership race, although it's probably not the most important date in the third effort by the former Natural Governing Party of Alberta to recover the mojo that went missing when premier Ed Stelmach threw up his hands and announced he was quitting back in 2011.

Alberta's Tories are praying there's enough truth to save their bacon in the old saw "Third time's a charm!"

Stelmach -- whom I suspect hadn't expected to win when he ran up the middle to victory in the 2006 race to replace Ralph Klein -- was a decent person, but didn't really have the constitution required for the rough-and-tumble that comes with being a premier, a game played with elbows up at the best of times.