Because they are never short of such ideas, the NDP held yet another press conference yesterday to announced new proposals to make Parliament “more accountable.” What that really was code for was “let’s try to punish some Liberals, and in particular, Justin Trudeau.” You see, of their three proposals, the main one was to ban MPs and Senators from “double-dipping by banning payment for work that is part of their job as an MP or Senator.” Which is news to me because nowhere in any legal or constitutional text does it say that it’s part of a Parliamentarian’s job to be a motivational speaker. In fact, that’s the reason why certain MPs and Senators sign up to speaker’s bureaux – in order to do these kinds of gigs without having to expend their parliamentary resources on it, and because they’re not talking about matters that are related to their parliamentary duties, but usually their careers before they were in public life (Marc Garneau’s astronaut career, or Larry Smith’s football commissioner career for example), it makes sense not to treat it as part of their duties. Oh, but Justin Trudeau was able to make a successful living at this and still accepted speaking gigs after he got elected, therefore it must be awful and should be banned. Never mind that he almost always made money for the organisations that he was invited to speak at (with that one notable exception, where it was a case of organisational failure), or that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics commissioner cleared these gigs – this is strictly a case of cheap punitive politics. There can be cases made for the other two suggestions – banning parliamentarians from being on corporate boards (but family businesses are okay), and strengthening the powers of the aforementioned Commissioner – but they are less about scandals than perception. Parliamentarians have any corporate board work cleared by an ethics regime, and sure it could be strengthened, but there has yet to be a demonstrated case of any kind of influence peddling, and one suspects it’s simply a case of “corporations bad!” at work. And as for strengthening the role of the Commissioner, well, it seems to me that it’s the NDP who are in charge of the Commons Ethics committee and this has yet to make it onto the agenda when the review of her legislation is a year overdue. Perhaps if they made an effort to actually focus on that rather than play partisan silly buggers and constantly demanding investigations into the wrongdoing of individual MPs, then perhaps they might make progress on such a change.

The BC Court of Appeal ruled that the ban on doctor-assisted suicide was constitutional – but more because of the jurisprudence currently available rather than because that’s how they feel about it. While this will end up going to the Supreme Court, it also adds to the pressure that Parliament should be dealing with it, which is precisely what MPs don’t want to do with such a charged issue, and would rather that the courts drag them along, kicking and screaming, as they did with same-sex marriage.

John Ivison talks to Thomas Mulcair, who says he wants to raise corporate income tax back to pre-2006 levels (because apparently workers don’t wind up being the ones to pay it), and he brings back such disproven notions as “dead cash” – that corporations are allegedly sitting on (rather than using as self-insurance against a future economic shock). Ivison believes that Mulcair needs the corporate tax revenue to make-up for the revenue that his proposed cap-and-trade system won’t be bringing in.

Elections Canada investigators say that the evidence provided by the Conservative Party lawyer in the misleading Guelph robocalls is hearsay and needs to be backed up by witness testimony in court. Part of the problem has been that they can’t compel testimony, and very few people seem willing to talk.

The government is planning a two-year ad campaign to promote the oilsands to business and political leaders, as well as media in the US, Europe and Asia. The planned price tag is some $24 million to correct what they call preconceived notions not based on science.

Over at Maclean’s, Erica Alini breaks down the Brazil cyber-espionage accusations in a non-hysterical fashion, and in consultation with experts, finds the theories of industrial espionage to be far-fetched, but finds that this was more likely done at the behest of the NSA. Brent Rathgeber blogs about the need for better oversight for CSE. PostMedia looks at whether these espionage allegations will harm Canada’s reputation in other Latin American countries, where our mining companies are already having a tougher time lately.

Rising costs are raising yet more red flags for the military’s purchase of close-combat armoured vehicles. Part of the increase is because they would need to be housed indoors during the winters. Cabinet may have to weigh in as to whether or not to continue with this purchase during a time where the military’s budget gets increasingly squeezed.

Elizabeth Thompson takes a look back to the last Throne Speech in 2011, and how many of the promises were delivered upon (hint: around half).

Here is a preview of some of the “democratic reform” measures likely to come up this fall.

The RCMP is conducting an internal survey to help figure out what areas they need to improve on as they continue to work to reform their internal culture.

It seems that the Receiver General was not notified about the cheque received from Mike Duffy until after the fact, and that it was simply part of other deposits made by the Senate. This was part of why they were unable to say if they had received the cheque from Duffy at the time. If you need a refresher on the various Senate disturbances, PostMedia has you covered with this timeline.

Over in Brandon-Souris, the Liberals’ open nomination has taken place, and Rolf Dinsdale will indeed be the candidate after he nearly wound up unchallenged if it wasn’t for the Conservative shenanigans that had one of the local mayors decide to contest the nomination to take a stand.

The Huffington Post has a Q&A with the Chief Electoral Officer, including posing questions from readers. One of the things that Mayrand says that concerns him is the way in which parties micro-targeting voters means that they are writing off whole segments of the electorate.

Economist Stephen Gordon casts his eye on the PBO report about public sector wages, and remains unconvinced that there has been little real wage growth.

And from his trip to China, John Baird tweets photos of his visit with pandas there. Because pandas.