The president of Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway visited Lac-Mégantic yesterday, but managed to strike all of the wrong tones in his delivery, giving a performance that mystified public relations experts. Meanwhile, Thomas Mulcair insists that he didn’t link the Lac-Mégantic explosion with budget cuts – and yet there’s video with him saying it. Huh. Andrew Coyne warns against those – including Mulcair – seeking to use the disaster to further their own agendas.
Liberal MP Scott Brison says that the weak labour market and high youth unemployment is “scarring” both those youths and their parents.
Maclean’s talks to Georges Laraque about his plan to contest the Bourassa by-election, and notes that he has the name recognition of a professional athlete and that it’s a riding with a fairly high Haitian population.
Senator Carolyn Stewart-Olsen says she’s learnt a lot since the whole Senate expenses issue came to light, and promises to do better when the Wallin report is completed, to balance the issues of privacy with the public’s right to know. That audit is due to be released August 13th.
Here is some more pre-shuffle speculation about the fate of Jim Flaherty, despite his continued public lobbying to keep his job as finance minister.
Despite our allies asking us to be involved in the next phase of assisting development in Afghanistan through more police and military training, Canada is walking away from the country, removing all boots from the ground.
The federal government has been neglecting promises it made during the creation of Nunavut 20 years ago, and that neglect could negatively impact our Arctic sovereignty claims.
The creation of a working group to deal with resource sharing issues with First Nations – one of the promises that came out of the January meeting with the Prime Minister – is more than a month behind schedule because the Assembly of First Nations hasn’t nominated its members for the group yet.
Nova Scotia is changing their election laws that make it possible to vote pretty much any day during the four-week writ period. You know, to avoid waiting to see if your local candidates can acquit themselves in debate, or not make unforgiveable gaffes, or don’t drop out mid-race for one reason or another. And hey, why not make the notion of an election day meaningless in the name of trying to remove excuses from people who wouldn’t vote otherwise.
The US has approved a transfer of “Prince of Pot” Marc Emery back to Canada to serve the remainder of his sentence here – but it still requires the Canadian government to sign off.
It’s the 50th anniversary of the Hinterland Who’s Who videos, but the creators are unable to find surviving copies of the first four black and white films.
While everyone says that they’re turned off by negative stories in politics, it turns out that it’s what more people actually read when these measures are tracked. It’s almost like it operates by consumer demand!