Ways not to avoid a panic

I know we’re all playing the Champlain Bridge drinking game at this point, but here it goes. The government received a report on the state of the bridge, which is crumbling, and the opposition parties have been hounding that it needs to be replaced. But now that they have this report, they’re not going to release it to the public, so that people won’t worry. Erm, by not releasing it, you’re going to avoid the panic? So that people can project their worst fears about the bridge’s condition onto said unreleased report? This sounds like a good plan how, exactly? Oh, right – it doesn’t.

Here’s another MP – this time a Conservative – saying that we could improve the system when it comes to spending estimates and the level of scrutiny they receive. The parliamentary budget officer says we need to find a way to make the spending estimates “more interesting” for MPs. Because doing their jobs isn’t interesting enough. Oh wait – math is hard, and they’d rather be giving a press conference for their fifth private member’s bill that will never, ever see the light of day. How silly of me to have forgotten.

The prime minister’s outgoing press secretary has added a cheesy Harper quote to his email signature line. No, seriously. And it’s more of that kind of fear-mongering that Harper’s been peddling about the uncertain future of our country, too.

Internet service providers were before the CRTC to discuss usage-based billing, which the populist government has declared war on.

John Baird is off to China to talk trade, and then Indonesia to attend an ASEAN ministerial conference.

Jason Kenney called a press conference to crow about the fact that a ship carrying Tamil migrants was stopped in Indonesia, and it *might* have been headed to Canada. Err, okay. Then he reminded everyone about the Conservatives’ “human smuggling,” bill which won’t actually address the problem and will only punish legitimate refugees. Because that’s the way he rolls.

The US ambassador to Canada wants to assure us that our privacy and sovereignty will be respected in any perimeter security agreement – really! We can take his word for it!

And like a flashback to every question period of the spring sitting, the Liberals are calling on the government to reverse the closure of those search and rescue centres.