So, it’s confirmed – the cabinet shuffle takes place today between 10 and 11 AM at Rideau Hall. Who will be shuffled? Who’s in, who’s out? Well, at last the wait – and the breathless speculation – will be over. It’s expected to be “substantial,” and Canadian Press sources say that Peter Kent and Stephen Fletcher are out, and the fact that Gerry Ritz cancelled a function scheduled for today could mean that he’s out as agriculture minister – though not necessarily out of cabinet. And Shelly Glover has come to town, so she’ll likely be getting a portfolio, though nobody knows just what that might be.
Peter MacKay has asked for details from CFB Gagetown as to why they refused to allow one of their soldiers to do a charity walk for veterans suffering from PTSD. The soldier in question decided to resign rather than be denied permission, though MacKay wants answers. (I guess we’ll see if he’s still minister when those answers come back).
Members of the Canadian Army spent a week training youth from a remote First Nations community about survival skills, teamwork and leadership, in what could be a promising pilot project to help engage those youth – and maybe giving some new direction for the Army as well, as they complete their last tour in Afghanistan.
What’s that? Canadian companies are vulnerable to cyber-attacks because they don’t seem to be willing to make the investment into securing their databases? You don’t say!
On that note, Senator Pierre-Hughes Boisvenu’s Facebook account got hacked and started both scamming people – including the Senator’s sister – and threatening others with blackmail. And it took a reporter’s calls to Facebook before they suspended the account, which is all the more worrying.
Remember when the Canadarm came to town for its permanent retirement, and how Marc Garneau was not invited to the event? And remember how the government blamed the museum for the screw-up? Well, as it turns out, staff from James Moore and Christian Paradis’ offices were tightly involved in the planning of the event, and when other astronauts were considered for the invitation, Garneau’s name conspicuously remained off of the list. Funny that.
Susan Delacourt writes about Andrew Griffith’s forthcoming book on the backroom tensions between Jason Kenney and the department of Citizenship and Immigration, as he made a big deal about his political knowledge being worth more than their years of data, and how that tension between government and bureaucracy is playing out under the Harper government. A preview of that book can be found here.
And there is an interesting national survey about people’s conceptions about Canada’s founding dates – not just 1867, but that it also gets competition from 1608, 1812 and 1982.