Roundup: Your Conservative Earth Day present

In order to mark Earth Day this year, the Conservatives will be launching their public access portal to oilsands monitoring data. It won’t be entirely populated with data, mind you, and last I checked, the governance structure still hadn’t been entirely decided (which is kind of a big thing), but hey, they’re actually putting it out there, right? Meanwhile, the National Energy Board is putting out stronger pipeline regulations going forward.

Vic Toews says that lessons can be learned from the Boston bombings as far as Canadian security and law enforcement is concerned, and he’s sure that our police forces are re-examining their own plans to see what best practices they can employ. And hey, they’re pushing ahead with the anti-terrorism bill, so that means something – right?

Meanwhile, we also learn that Vic Toews found it “urgent” to have public servants spend a month on preparing splashy national ads to celebrate the demise of the long-gun registry, including speeches and everything. And when the day arrived, they quashed said plans, no explanation, and even the actual announcement of the change isn’t on the website. One theory is that the Prime Minister’s office called it all off, possibly because they didn’t want this kind of thing turning up in the next election. And that does sound entirely plausible.

The government is demanding that soldiers on the training mission in Afghanistan repay hardship pay and hazard pay because an “administrative error” didn’t put the reduced rates into place in time. Because seriously, we want to be that petty about it.

What’s that? The government has been actively funding studies into the root causes of terrorism? You don’t say! Better not tell Stephen Harper – apparently an unequivocal condemnation is all terror really needs to knock it off.

The French have been showing off their new warships to the likes of Peter MacKay in the hopes of being able to build new ships for Canada – or at least components thereof.

Paul Wells provides a short history of “backfiring” Conservative attack ads. Funny how every time we’re told by polling data that they’ve backfired, well, another Liberal leader bites the dust. Mick Gzowski takes a look inside the making of attack ads, and when they can go wrong.

Thomas Mulcair spent the weekend campaigning for Adrian Dix in the BC provincial election. Apparently a provincial victory in BC will somehow translate into a federal victory in 2015. Err, okay.

The fundraising numbers are in, and over the course of his leadership campaign, Justin Trudeau raked in some $2 million. Joyce Murray, his next closest contender, came up with a mere $250,000.

And Tabatha Southey looks at the growing – and disturbing – trend of crowd-sourcing justice over the Internet and social media platforms.