Former Senate Ethics Officer Michael Fournier says that the Auditor General should be called in to look at the books of both the Commons and the Senate every five years or so – but also discounts the characterisation of the Senate as some den of corruption that has been painted by the media and the likes of Charlie Angus. Angus, meanwhile, has a selective memory when it comes to the financial practices of the Commons, denying that the AG found any problems with their books when the last audit was done a couple of years ago, except that there actually was a number of problems found with things like procurement practices. And perhaps it also bears reminding that it was only a couple of years ago that a number of MPs were found to be in violation of their own using allowances, and that the Commons is far less transparent with its own attendance and travel records than the Senate is. But oh, the Senate is the one that needs to clean up its act (even though it’s been in that process for the past year).

The Prime Minister signed a devolution deal with the NWT that will see them control their own resource revenues and Crown lands once it is finalised in April of next year. Two of their seven First Nations in the area still need to sign onto the deal in that time.

What’s that? The government spent $21 million on Economic Action Plan™ ads last year? You don’t say! And believe it or not, ad spending is actually down from where it was in 2010-11. But just think of how much support they’re giving our media outlets as a result.

Correctional Investigator Howard Sapers is calling on Vic Toews to step in and get Corrections Canada to deal with the recommendations in his report around Aboriginals in the prison system. Given that the government line has been that they don’t want to create additional bureaucracy, well, it looks like he probably shouldn’t get his hopes up.

Speaking of Public Safety, the government has replaced three gun enthusiasts on its Canadian Firearms Advisory Committee with police leaders. Could this be a sign of *gasp* growing maturity on the issue? Maybe not – it seems that two of those three police leaders were against the long-gun registry, which does put an interesting spin on the story.

Outgoing Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page answers five questions for the Chronicle Herald about the future of his office.

Andrew Coyne savages the cognitive dissonance on full display at the Manning Conference on the weekend, where the conservative movement apparently holds no consistent beliefs about anything other than power, and will contort themselves into all kinds of shapes in order to keep a “movement” that is not really conservative united. Tim Harper meanwhile notes the efforts of Jason Kenney and Tony Clement at the Conference, both potential leadership candidates, and both continuing the strange victim narrative that the Conservatives seem to thrive on.

Liberal MP Scott Andrews shows some of the perils of travelling back to your riding on a stormy weekend.

Over in the Liberal leadership race, it is apparently newsworthy that Justin Trudeau got a haircut, while Joyce Murray went blonde and Martha Hall Findlay wears more makeup these days. Meanwhile, Trudeau’s campaign is asking for a one week extension to the registration deadline for voting because of “technical glitches” that are preventing supporters who signed up from completing their second-step registration process.

And here are the three things you need to see from last night’s political shows, including the fact that Chris Alexander should be pulled from panel duty after yet another incidence of devolution to white noise.