The depopulation of the public affairs bureau continues. Earlier, we reported finance communications director Karen Johnston and health services and planning communications manager Suzanne Germain had left the bureau. And now Public Eye has learned Marylou Wakefield and Tamara Armstrong are doing the same thing.

Ms. Wakefield, who has taken a leave of absence from her second-in-command position at energy and mines, is being replaced (at least temporarily) by Colleen Sparks. Ms. Sparks was previously the stakeholder and external affairs manager at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. That pedigree will likely reinforce a long-held (pre-New Democrat era) belief by some "green" ministry bureaucrats that energy and mines is actually run by industry rather then the government.

Meanwhile, over at sustainable resource management, recently married communications manager Tamara Armstrong, who also worked as a communications advisor for the Environmental Assessment Office, is reportedly leaving for the Insurance Corp. of British Columbia. Ms. Armstrong, appears to be following in the footsteps of her former boss at environmental assessment Joanne McGachie, who is also now working for the insurance corporation.