As the Speech From the Throne gets closer, we’re starting to hear more about the populist consumer-friendly agenda that will be laid out in it. Not content with just cellphone bills and airlines, James Moore was on television on Sunday talking about things like cable channels, where they will break-up the packages that the cable companies offer in favour of a la carte channel selection. Which is great, except that the CRTC has already mandated that this will actually start to happen, and some cable companies have started to offer it as a way of trying to retain customers who are starting to cut their cable in lieu of other online options, so it’s not like the Conservatives are coming out of the blue on this one. But hey, anything to try and claim some populist credit. Of course it makes one wonder what supposed free market conservatives are doing promising tonnes of new regulations when they’re supposedly in favour of smaller government, but I think we all know that these aren’t really free market conservatives we’re dealing with anymore.
Speaking of the Speech, hours after delivering it in the Senate chamber, His Excellency the Governor General will board a plane and head out on a state visit to China – since Harper needs to look serious about his commitment to trade relations with that country. Our last State visit to China was when Harper sent Michaëlle Jean on a State visit while the Queen was in Canada for Canada Day in 2010.
The former head of the Canadian Security Establishment laid out a case for greater parliamentary oversight on CTV’s Question Period Sunday morning, and once again reassured us that CSE doesn’t engage in industrial espionage for the benefit of Canadian companies.
The department of Public Safety is looking to conduct a study on the ways in which criminal gangs attempt to infiltrate temporary foreign worker programmes as a way of doing human trafficking and forced labour.
The government spent some $458,000 on private legal advice for Christian Paradis during the time that he was Public Works minister for the various lapses he found himself embroiled in, from the issue of his staffer blocking Access to Information requests to his hunting trips with people lobbying the government.
Aaron Wherry wonders if the federal NDP aren’t being underestimated after a summer of very little media traction. Paul McLeod looks at why the NDP lost the Nova Scotia election.
Susan Delacourt writes about how corporations are starting to learn from political campaigns in the kinds of data they collect and in how they deploy it.
Carolyn Harris writes about the monarchical origins of Canadian Thanksgiving.
And Tabatha Southey amusingly speculates about why Mike Duffy needed to pay his friend all that money for little or no tangible work.