There is unrest in the Conservative Senate caucus, as they feel increasingly sandbagged and abandoned by their own party in the wake of the spending scandals of those four embattled Senators, three of which are Harper’s appointees. And while they may feel like there should at least be some mention to the Senate made in the Throne Speech – such a promise for new accountability measures or promises for reform measures in line with what the Supreme Court rules after their reference case – it’s unlikely to happen since the government has deliberately put distance between itself and the Senate as a whole. It’s not the wisest move ever made either, considering that their decision to keep the Leader of the Government in the Senate out of cabinet will come back to haunt them the moment they want to introduce a government bill in the Senate, as they are wont to do, only to find that there is no minister to shepherd it through. Oops. But it doesn’t help that Conservative senators are hearing tales about how when Claude Carignan was sworn into the Privy Council as part of his new job as Senate leader, that Harper simply told him “Good luck with that.” And Harper may soon find that there could be nothing more dangerous to his own government and agenda than a Senate caucus who that is tired of being pushed around and ignored, and indeed being dumped upon by their own party and the public at large, and they may decide to start flexing their muscles, to show that they do have a job to do – as with the “union transparency” bill that they gutted and sent back to the Commons.

With the return of Parliament just days away, PostMedia put together a briefing package on the challenges facing the main three parties. For the Conservatives, the challenge is trying to keep the momentum going as they head toward the next election, and whether they can achieve a fourth consecutive victory. For the NDP, it the two-front war they face against both the Conservatives and Liberals while they try to shake off a couple of devastating losses by their provincial counterparts in BC and Nova Scotia. For the Liberals, it’s playing the long game as they rebuild the party, attracting more money and people, while they build up a narrative about the embattled middle class.

The Hill Times turns their eyes to the Senate, and finds that at least forty senators’ expense claims dropped in the wake of the spending scandals around those four embattled senators, that Pamela Wallin is not the highest spending senator (that belongs to Senator Sibbeston from the NWT, which makes a certain amount of sense given the travel costs there, though Wallin is number three on the list), and that Senators spent more than a million dollars in travel claims between Ottawa and their home region in the quarter during the last election – though that one I have a hard time finding much fault with considering that Senators’ workload isn’t necessarily dictated by the Parliamentary calendar when they’re on special projects, and that work still goes on even when Parliament isn’t sitting. It is by no means an indication that they were campaigning either.

Here’s a look at trade minister Ed Fast’s quest to win over support for trade agreements in the Asia Pacific.

A tourism expert thinks that the growth of that industry in the North is one more reason for protecting the region from the effects of climate change – not just the concerns of shipping and resource development.

The search is on for a new head of Library and Archives Canada after the somewhat disgraceful departure of the previous head. This time, they actually want someone who is an archivist or librarian to fill the post, rather than a career bureaucrat like the aforementioned previous head was.

Former foreign affairs minister (and current ambassador to France) Lawrence Cannon was grilled by lawyers under oath as part of a lawsuit against the government launched by Abousfian Abdelrazik after he was trapped in the Canadian embassy in Khartoum for months.

And Andrew Coyne calls out the government’s inconsistent and incoherent foreign investment rules, as a series of telecom investments were all shutdown for the flimsiest of excuses – as the government laments the lack of investment for the sake of competition. Which is pretty much the point.