It’s just three weeks until the House comes back, and I’m getting excited. Meanwhile, the Liberals are having their summer caucus meeting today in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, where they get to deal with the question of a possible autumn election. Susan Delacourt, meanwhile, takes stock of the Liberal Express summer tour, and hints that it’s going to continue into the fall in some form.
As for Harper, he wants you to know that his summer Arctic tour was totally about nation building and not politics. Really! Just look at all his staged photo ops, designed to make him look prime ministerial, to prove it.
Government House Leader John Baird is now blocking the release of emails sent by the former Public Works staffer who blocked that Access to Information request, citing “ministerial responsibility” – which, I will remind you, is an abuse of the term. But committees can demand any documents they want – so are we set for another showdown? Just possibly.
Conservative witness at the Industry Committee hearing on the census issue on Friday actually said that census data obtained “through coercion” was as reliable as information gained through torture – and then brought up the Jedi Knights excuse as proof. Even though that’s a completely bankrupt argument, as mandatory census data is proven the only reliable data, and the Jedi Knight thing is not so easily reduced to ridicule as the Conservatives and their mouthpieces like to point to. And this person once served as the chief executive of a Saskatchewan Regional Health authority? Cute.
And Conservative MP and chief apple-polisher Candice Hoeppner, “author” of the long-gun registry-scrapping bill, similarly believes in the truthiness of the RCMP report on the registry as not making a difference. Because it’s not what the facts say, it’s what we already know. Over in the Toronto Star, Antonia Zerbisias takes a closer look at the long-gun registry issue.
Why you can trust Xtra
