I thought it would be a short one - Week 112 - June 17-24

But no.  The stories just keep piling up.


This doesn't surprise me.  But it's still interesting to see some of the behind-the-scenes action as the Harper Government slowly turns itself into the marketing arm of large oil companies.  I understand that Governments are, by definition, supposed to set the strategy for a country.  But there's something very wag-the-dog about this.  Deciding on something and then using PR tactics to vilify opponents and change public opinion?  Shouldn't they be acting on the public opinion that is already there?

Certain people are questioning why the Prime Minister is launching attacks on Justin Trudeau using his taxpayer funded office.  There's a certain irony in using criticizable tactics to criticize your opponents.  The Tyee expands on this and shows the crazy extent to which the PMO's office is involved in political slagging and partisan story creation.  Taxpayer funded PMO's office.

The Tyee lays out the depressing story of Canada's submarines.  Why are we so incapable of buying military hardware?

Conservative Senators don't like Stephen Harper's union finances law.  It's taking some work to get them to vote for it.  I had never thought about it much before, but one of them mentioned the double standard of pursuing this but not pursuing doctors, lawyers and engineers professional organizations.

The RCMP investigation in to the Mike Duffy payment seems poised to unleash a shitstorm of awesome as records for nearly a dozen Conservative candidates have been seized.

Man.  How meta is this?  Dean Del Mastro called out Elections Canada and a witness against him for "sullying his good name" last week.  So the witness speaks out this week about the "sullying of his good name."  It is pretty chickenshit for Del Mastro to use his speech protected parliamentary privilege to suggest a witness is lying.  Or, as phrased in the CBC story, "a privilege to slander".

Another reason to hate the Census.  New data points out that 40% of native children live in poverty.

The biggest thing for me about building new pipelines, is that the companies looking to build these new pipelines do a terrible job of managing their existing pipelines.  The Tyee points this out that this is how it works in Alberta as well.


Sounds like Shelly Glover has caved in to Elections Canada expense demands.  Was this really all it took to get them off her back?

It seems sad that defeating a frivolous bill to strip the citizenship from "terrorists" is something to really celebrate.

I will admit that it seems pretty stupid for a sitting MP to collect speaking fees from a charity.  Perhaps some fees to cover travel expenses?  But $20,000?  From a charity (I'll admit, they do seem to be a pretty terrible charity).  And paying the money back once there is an uproar seems like a pretty disingenuous move.  This article outlines many of the bizarre allowances for MP's and Senators to earn extra income.The charity that requested money back from Trudeau is concerned that they created a giant political mess.

Oh Senate!  So, somebody thought it would be a good idea to bring in a bunch of high paid motivational speakers to boost the low Senate morale due to all of their expense scandals.  Gotta spend money to spend money, I guess.

Canadian Real Estate professionals are insisting that all is well with Canadian Real Estate.  Not sure which statistic they're using this time around.

I have a personal theory that no male children are born any longer.  It's all females.  Turns out that there might be something to this.