The shocking news last night was that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty resigned suddenly – and prorogued the Legislature to let the dust settle. His party was facing contempt proceedings, and prorogation collapses them, but he did just resign, which is the ultimate accountability measure. Meanwhile, a team has been assembling to try to encourage him to run for federal leader for a while – not that it’s likely to happen. Here is reaction from Stephen Harper and Bob Rae. Paul Wells looks back at McGuinty’s career, and the situation his party now finds itself in.

Incidentally, I’m really not that outraged about this prorogation, possibly because I actually know what a prorogation means, and I’m not of the belief that it’s illegitimate for a government to exercise its Crown powers. He wasn’t facing a confidence motion, and it was well within his right as premier to do so – especially to allow time for the dust to settle from his resignation. I’m a little less keen if he plans to keep it prorogued until after his party’s leadership contest, but they’re planning on a quick one, so I wouldn’t expect it to be out for six months. And if anyone can tell me what exactly the piling on by opposition parties would contribute at this point when the premier has already taken that ultimate step and resigned, well, be my guest.

That debate on the bullying motion went ahead yesterday, but it’s not sure that the Conservatives are going to sign on. Susan Delacourt offers her thoughts on the bullying culture that is pervasive in federal politics.

There has been clearance granted for some Canadian soldiers to serve as part of joint operations in combat roles in Afghanistan – a practice that is fairly well-established between allies. The NDP are furious because it goes against the vote in the Commons about ending the combat mission – never mind that a) this isn’t an actual combat mission, it’s Canadians tagging along on an allied mission; b) matters of national defence are a Crown prerogative; and c) the vote in the House was non-binding, and attempts to conflate its importance won’t actually make it more meaningful.

Meanwhile, back at DND headquarters, three mid-level civilian managers have been fired inexplicably. Apparently it’s an attempt to “change the direction of each organisation” that they headed within the department. There was also a fairly large shuffling of Deputy Ministers yesterday afternoon.

There are concerns that the bill on First Nations accountability is simply punitive and won’t actually do anything about accountability for those governments. It has also been noted that the government hasn’t made any move to eliminate duplicative processes in these kinds of measures since the last Auditor General reported on them.

The plan to rebrand the Museum of Civilization into the Museum of Canadian History will be part of a network of history museums across the country. Predictably, there is outrage and this belief that it’s just more about military history (even though we already have a museum dedicated to that). Oh, and this isn’t the first time that museum has been rebranded – it used be called the Museum of Man, for the record.

In the ongoing debate of environmentalists versus economists, another reality check – it seems that economists overwhelmingly think that the environment is a key issue, and they like carbon taxes as the best way to deal with it.

No, Mark Carney doesn’t want to run for the Liberal leadership. Please stop asking.

Here is your recap of last night’s politics shows.

And Kady O’Malley discovers that when Rona Ambrose hinted she’d be getting a UN award before it was announced, well, there were some questions.