The government is launching a new cyberbullying awareness campaign, which includes TV commercials. You know, for the “cyberbullying” law that a) has little to do with cyberbullying and more to do with lawful access, and b) still hasn’t passed. One has to wonder, however, how effective it’ll be since many teenagers don’t see it as “bullying” but just “drama,” and may not relate to it in the way that the government intends. Let’s also not forget that this is the same government that put out some of the lamest and most ineffective anti-drug ads aimed at families, so we’ll see just how effective these cyberbullying ads will be. Michael Den Tandt says that the Conservatives need to address the bullying culture and lack of decorum in their own ranks first.

Transport Canada quietly adopted new rail safety rules on Boxing Day, as well as the Minister of Transport issued a new emergency directive without fanfare as the previous one – issued after Lac Mégantic – was set to expire. Thomas Mulcair called a news conference to accuse the government of deregulation and said that any transport by crude needs to be done “safely,” but replacing all of the aging tanker cars with the newer standard will cost billions and will take time, and I’m not sure that we can really halt all transport of crude until that happens.

Court records show that prior to being elected in 2008, Paul Calandra was involved in a family dispute where he was accused of draining his ailing mother’s bank accounts and acquiring a piece of her property though underhanded means, and of threatening to kill one of his sisters. It’s certainly not the kind of material found in his Question Period homilies, and he now demurely says that this is in the past and that his family loves each other. Reading through it, though, is pretty hair-raising.

Ontario’s health minister has said that she’d going to present the federal government with a bill for refugee healthcare that the province is providing, but immigration minister Chris Alexander told her that if the province wants to provide that care, they will have to pay for it – before trotting out the canard that these refugee claimants are getting “better care” than Canadians. Which of course is false, but why let the truth get in the way of a good moral panic?

One former chair of SIRC says that Chuck Strahl may not have broken the rules, but the lobbying simply looks bad and he should stop, while another former chair says that the position should be made full-time and be more robust. The problem, of course, was that there used to be a full-time Inspector General for CSIS that the government recently cut under the aegis of cost cutting.

The Canadian Forces have been found in need to review and modernise their practices when it comes to the destruction of top-secret data and the hardware that stored it, as many of the practices are dated and aren’t being standardised.

An analysis produced by CIDA before it was folded into Foreign Affairs showed that the department was looking at its aid programmes and that Canada’s commercial interests were indeed becoming a key consideration in order to determine how much aid that country would receive. The department says that global poverty can’t be addressed in isolation, meaning that security, governance and trade needed to be taken into account.

The federal taxpayer’s ombudsman has declared that the CRA does indeed have a systemic issue of declaring people dead when they’re not. His report on the issue is on the way.

The Prime Minister is launching a new video channel, no doubt as part of his ongoing social media strategy that his office does on his behalf, in an attempt to humanise him for the viewing public.

Maclean’s tracked down someone on the “wanted by CBSA,” and found that it was pretty easy – he left Canada years ago, accompanied by bureaucrats, and has since returned to Serbia. But now that the Canadian government accuses him of being a war criminal (which he says he’s not), the “wanted” designation is costing him in his new life. It nevertheless raises questions about how hard CBSA looked for the guy in order to put him on their wanted list.

Some very smart people, including the former Commons law clerk, believe that Nigel Wright may get away without any charges if the RCMP stick to the criminal code, whereas Section 16 of the Parliament of Canada Act would provide them with sanctions and fines to be applied. The problem is, nobody has used that section before, and it seems like they’re too nervous for the time being.

Kady O’Malley looks at the way in which Senate rules and procedures makes private members’ bills a bit of an easier ride in the Upper Chamber – not that they have too many that pass the full process either.

Economist Stephen Gordon looks at the issue of the aging population as it regards the labour market. The over-65 population is affecting the numbers on labour participation rates, which he argues should be adjusted to reflect that.

I have an op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen that responds to an earlier piece by Don Dennison, where he proposed a “more regional, less partisan” model of Senate reform. I took apart Dennison’s arguments and set the record straight as to what he was asking for.

And Sir John A. Macdonald and George-Etienne Cartier are finally getting their own Heritage Minutes. About time.