Stephen Harper spent his Remembrance Day in Hong Kong, where 283 Canadian Soldiers are buried. He once again dodged questions about the Last Post Fund to assist poor veterans with their own burials. In a not unrelated story, the Veterans Affairs minister defended his decision to call off an investigation by the Veterans Ombudsman into the privacy breaches in the department, saying that he the Privacy Commissioner was looking into it – never mind that the focus of her investigation is different. Much like how they shut down the office of the Inspector General of CSIS by claiming it was duplicating the work of SIRC (which it wasn’t), the government once again takes two things that sound similar but really aren’t, and cutting one while claiming duplication, where the end result is more secrecy and less oversight.

In Harper’s previous stop in the Philippines, he downplayed the leadership change in China as a likely exercise in continuity, and in looking to boost trade with the Philippines, that country’s president declared themselves to be “open for business under new management,” referring of course to the quest to clean up corruption in that country.

What’s that? The government made the changes to refugee health coverage without doing any consultation because stuffing it into the first omnibus budget bill allowed them to do it behind closed doors? You don’t say!

Here’s a look at how the electoral boundaries in Toronto will be shaking out, and the headaches it’s causing for some of the established MPs.

Over in Alberta, the PC party has decided to still allow federal Conservatives to vote at their conventions, but will no longer offer automatic delegations to federal riding associations. They have also done away with the preferential ballot system for future leaderships, since that system allowed everyone’s second choice of Ed Stelmach to come up the middle (which wound up being a bit of a disaster for the party). The new system will see only the top two contenders move to a final vote. They retained the ability for anyone to buy a membership right up to voting time (which builds no connection between either the party leaders or its membership), and have decided to lower the voting age for leadership contests to 14.

Here’s a cool look at Marc Garneau’s astronaut training, and how that might prepare him for the Liberal leadership. Meanwhile, over in PEI, Justin Trudeau says the party needs to stop its infighting. Because nobody has ever thought of that one before.

Here is your recap of yesterday’s political television, where the veterans affairs minister avoided answering any of the questions put to him.

And Tabatha Southey looks at the American post-electoral landscape like an animal habitat, and the denizens that inhabit it.