CFIA says that XL Foods didn’t follow some safety procedures – and then the press conference suffered a meltdown as the minister’s staff shut the whole thing down and offered “one-on-ones” instead – err, except there were some forty reporters in the room. Add to that, during caucus outs, Thomas Mulcair was quoting CFIA cuts in the past tense – err, except that they’re booked for the next two fiscal years and haven’t happened yet. Oops. Meanwhile, the union representing meat inspectors says they can’t find the “700 net new inspectors,” since that figure relates to classification levels, and not job descriptions. In fact, 200 of those “inspectors” are people hired to deal with invasive species of plants.

John Baird is calling for calm after mortar shells were exchanged over the Syria-Turkey border yesterday. Remember that Turkey is a NATO ally, which could bring us into that conflict.

It looks like the Supreme Court may have to weigh in on the sticky question of when life begins due to a case already headed its way of a woman who had the remains of a foetus in her apartment.

NDP MP Peter Stoffer introduced a Private Member’s Bill to scrap the Veterans’ Review and Appeal Board, redirect the costs and radically revamp the application process, which is all well and good except oh, yeah – that’s pretty much well beyond the scope of what a PMB is supposed to accomplish. It may be a noble goal, but these attempts to govern from the opposition benches are detrimental to the general state of our system of parliamentary governance.

The Conservatives are distancing themselves from the man they wanted to be appointed head of the Port of Montreal. Perhaps not so coincidentally, it may be because said man has been linked in the ongoing corruption inquiries in Quebec. That said, the NDP’s trying to link his corruption allegations to the Conservatives during QP might be taking any legitimate questions a bit too far.

Justin Trudeau’s entry in the leadership has “forced” some of the undeclared-yet-mulling-it-over hopefuls like Dominic LeBlanc (who has been virtually invisible on the national stage the past couple of years, despite high-profile portfolios), or that paramedic from Winnipeg (who was already balking at the entry fee) out of the race. Trudeau, meanwhile, made a stop in Calgary where he distanced himself from his father’s energy policy – while taking shots at Harper and Mulcair about using energy as a wedge issue. It also seems that maybe the Trudeau name isn’t as “toxic” in Quebec as some people like to claim.

Here is your recap of last night in political shows.

And Andrew Coyne rails against the “mythical economic thought” that makes politicians pander to the middle class. Now if we could only get them to also stop pandering to “families” when singletons have concerns too…