Jumping the (long) gun

Because its usefulness as a fundraising
vehicle has not yet abated, the Conservatives continue to milk the long-gun
registry for all it’s worth. Err, except for the fact that they have already declared it “scrapped” on one of their websites, though the bill remains in the House
and is about to be subject to a court challenge from the government of Quebec.
That preemptive declaration is likely voicing the inevitable, but one never
does know for sure.

In another ministerial decree, Jason Kenney
says that immigrants who engage in polygamous marriages can have their
permanent residencies revoked. He hopes to use the immigration fraud hotline

to gather tips about people coming in as aunts or relatives when they are
really the other wives in such polygamous marriages.

Bob Rae and Carolyn Bennett visited Attawapiskat on Saturday, which Rae terms “our Third World” and says that the
insistence on third-party management is the continuation of a colonial
attitude.

Finance ministers are meeting in Victoria
to talk about things like future healthcare transfer payments and pension
plans.

Is anyone else troubled by Kathy
Dunderdale’s anti-democratic rhetoric in Newfoundland and Labrador? First she
shutters the legislature until March, saying that no useful discussion happens
there, and now she says that bills are already getting enough scrutiny and
don’t need any more. This after the New Democrats changed their position on a bill when
they studied it further – but Dunderdale says that they should have been more
diligent in the first place.

And psychic medium Blair Robertson predicts that Thomas Mulcair will win the NDP leadership and the party will spiral
into backstabbing and disarray, that there will be a sex scandal within the
Conservative ranks, and that we’ll see a couple of floor crossings. Interesting if
any of it actually comes to pass.