Now that he’s in Calgary for the Stampede, Thomas Mulcair says that they should open up access to the oil sands – but not with new pipelines. Um, okay, because the ones that exist have all that much excess capacity, apparently. (Hint: They don’t really). And he wants more east-west pipelines, but there really, really isn’t enough pipeline capacity there, and it’s way, way more expensive to build such an east-west pipeline than it is to build one to the refineries in Texas, or to the west coast to sell it to Asia. Oh, wait – we don’t want to refine oil in Texas, we want to do it in Canada, where we don’t have refinery capacity in the West, and it would cost billions of dollars to build upgraders and refineries (and would come with a major cost in terms of carbon footprint). And while Mulcair may want the shuttered Shell refinery in Montreal to process oil from the West, assuming they can get pipeline capacity to it, well, no word on how he’d convince them to go for it economically. So…yeah.

Mulcair also appears to be tone-deaf on the “white hatting” tradition of Calgary, for what it’s worth, seeing as he decided to wear a white hat to oppose Harper’s black hat. Seriously. The National Post’s Jen Gerson recounts Mulcair’s day here.

The Supreme Court has scrapped royalties on musical downloads (meaning that essentially you’re not paying an additional royalty simply because you’re downloading it as opposed to buying it in a store) but said that you still need to pay royalties for streaming, deemed that 30-second preview are a-okay, as well as ruling that there teachers photocopying material for students should also be allowable as fair dealing. Michael Geist gives his reading of the decision here, and calls it a win for fair dealing.

The Immigration and Refugee Board was ordered to reopen the case of a Nigerian claimant because the first adjudicator didn’t believe he sufficiently proved that he was gay, which is a persistent and pernicious problem with the IRB.

So that military truck contract that was out for tender? Got cancelled literally three minutes before the deadline. The government cites cost escalation, while the suppliers cite government mismanagement and incompetence as the problem.

The government is deploying its diplomats in the States to counteract ForestEthics’ anti-oil sands campaign.

It seems that Peter Penashue may be in some trouble over political loans from an Innu development company.

As it turns out, there were problems with the donor agreement for Carleton’s new school of political management, including the fact that the key donor could withhold $10 million if he didn’t like the direction things were going. They say they’re going to fix this.

Harper’s Senate “reform” bill remains stuck on the Order Paper – as well it should be, considering that it’s a monstrosity that is unconstitutional, doesn’t define the problems it seeks to solve nor offer a proper solution, and generally creates more problems when there are actually none to solve. But hey, apparently all one needs to do is wave their hands and say “democratic” and we’re supposed to fall for it.

And here’s the roundup of the top political leaders who attended the Calgary Stampede and what they said.