Famous last words before a leadership

NDP party members are in Quebec City for their
pre-session caucus retreat, and with a leadership campaign now gearing up, they’re all swearing up and down that they’ll be civil to one another throughout. You know, the way everyone else always starts out saying that before they break off into acrimonious camps. They’ve also drafted a “four-year plan”
to make it to government by the next election and “leaked” the 2011/2012 plan,
which is full of political buzzwords and platitudes but doesn’t exactly explain
how they plan to achieve any of these lofty goals.

In case you missed it yesterday, Brian

Topp also shares the NDP position that when it comes to representation by
population, one should forget math and that magical thinking lets everyone win!
In other words, sure, give more seats to Alberta, BC and Ontario, but make sure
Quebec gets more seats, too, so that the other provinces remain
underrepresented.

The Conservatives, incidentally, are testing a new attack line against Topp.

Thomas Mulcair says he’s not going to
announce any decision as to whether he’ll run for leader… until he’s got a
team in place. So that was basically saying he’s running, right?

It looks increasingly doubtful that the
Conservatives will be able to fulfill their election promise of a new Air Force
unit in Quebec because they lack sufficient personnel. Oops. You mean they made
promises without checking their feasibility? You don’t say! Meanwhile, Colin Horgan looks at the various dates flying around regarding the F-35s and finds that most of them don’t make any sense, and yet Peter MacKay is sticking to his guns.
Yeah, this is going to end well.

The governor general doesn’t want to
provoke a constitutional crisis by vetoing any bill on the Canadian Wheat
Board. You don’t say!

John Baird won’t take questions on the
conduct of his parliamentary secretary, Bob Dechert. The opposition, meanwhile, isn’t demanding Dechert’s resignation (for a change).

And Kady O’Malley wonders about Jason
Kenney’s activities during the Ontario provincial election.