Stephen Harper made his speech before the Knesset yesterday, and largely accused the “Stop Israel Apartheid” movement as being a new breed of more sophisticated anti-Semites. So there’s that. Ahmed Tibi, an Arab-Israeli MK and leader of the Arab Movement for Change party, heckled Harper’s speech and walked out, because he took exception to Harper’s characterisation of Israel as a democracy – considering that most of the Palestinians are disenfranchised – and that he feels that it is an apartheid state, contrary to Harper’s assertion. Michael Petrou live-blogged the speech – complete with drinking game – and made some quite apt observations about the reality of the situation in the region along the way. Petrou also dissected Tibi’s heckling criticism of Harper’s speech, and notes where Tibi gets things right and wrong. Meanwhile, Harper did announce an additional $66 million in aid for the Palestinian authority. And CBC has a full list of the delegation that Harper brought with him, while Liz Thompson finds that a large number of them are also Conservative donors.

Access to Information documents show that the government needed a cash advance from the deputy minister of Natural Resources’ special reserve fund in order to complete the Responsible Resource Development™ advertising campaign, which didn’t really resonate with the public anyway because it was utterly lacking in hard facts. But hey, it’s important to keep Canadians informed of these vital programmes – right?

Kady O’Malley notes the language used by the various parties in describing their fundraising numbers as they try to keep their bases motivated to keep donating. The Conservatives, meanwhile, are looking to fill a few high-ranking positions in the party in advance of the forthcoming campaign.

Neither John Baird nor Foreign Affairs are commenting on reports that the government has cancelled a visit by the president of Nigeria, allegedly over the country’s new anti-gay laws.

Apparently things are settled and it’s going to cost the government $8 million to settle the legal claims for cancelling the Joint Support Ships back in 2008, only to restart the process from the shipyard angle first. We also find that poor financial planning within National Defence is leading to error-prone estimates, capability trade-offs, and a general disregard for published guidelines.

There are concerns about the state of Health Canada’s library, which was relocated offsite to the National Research Council’s library, and is handled now by a private company where books take too long to access and with an inordinate fee structure.

Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant has returned the money she sent to the Timmins-James Bay riding association under rubric of helping her fight the ban on incandescent light blub ban that her own government introduced.

Now ex-MP Brian Jean says that the pace of development at Fort McMurray needs to be slowed down in order for other infrastructure, like roads and hospitals, to catch up. Note that the moment he steps down from caucus, he starts opening up. But I’m sure he’d insist that his party isn’t too whipped in their message discipline.

Economist Stephen Gordon writes about currency devaluation and the effect on real wages, which appears to be happening in Canada right now as our dollar continues to fall.

Mike Moffatt ATIPed the emails at CBSA around his criticism of the tariff changes related to iPods, and finds that he was vindicated – that his interpretation was correct, and that the government’s was not only wrong, but CBSA’s own lawyers said that they were perpetuating a fraud. That’s pretty strong language that should be stressed. The government was not only wrong in defending the tariff changes, but they deliberately misled the public in saying that new tariffs wouldn’t be imposed. That’s a big problem, and the fact that the Globe and Mail took Flaherty’s word for it presents another problem that should also be addressed.

Former Prime Minister Paul Martin is set to unveil a new entrepreneurship programme for Aboriginal youth.

Yesterday marked ten years since Belinda Stronach launched her bid to become the leader of the newly united Conservative party, and PostMedia recalls that particular leadership run before her time as an MP.

And Jean Chrétien’s old foes and rivals are putting aside their differences to pay tribute to his fifty years of public service in a major gala in Toronto tonight.