Being released today is the new election reform act brought forward by the government which promises to reshape Elections Canada. And yes, the opposition is nervous. Already there are questions as to why Pierre Poilievre was selective in his answers to the House yesterday during QP when he said that he had met with the Chief Electoral Officer about the bill. That meeting, however, was before it was drafted, and not about the actual provision or language of the bill, which is kind of a big deal. One of the big questions about the bill is the provision that the new Commissioner of Elections be appointed by the Director of Public Prosecutions rather than the Chief Electoral Officer, and how that will affect his or her independence. Oh, and the most egregious part? That Poilievre is having his press conference to announce the bill before the technical briefing for reporters takes place. You know, so they won’t have time to read it or understand it before asking questions. Because that’s not a cynical move designed to frustrate the media and keep things as opaque as possible.

The heads of CSIS and CSE, along with the Prime Minister’s national security advisor, appeared before the Senate National Defence and Security Committee yesterday. They largely defended the WiFi data collection, and said that the airport collection was just a model they were testing to track a user’s activity but that nothing was tracked in real time. More curious were the discussions around metadata, which the agencies described as largely harmless, in contradiction to privacy commissioners both federal and provincial, and while the agencies said that they eventually discard that data, they wouldn’t say how long they retain it. Also, they say that the level of oversight is fine as it is, thank you very much, which almost sounds like the point at which reasonable people should start getting nervous.

The NDP spent yesterday debating capping ATM fees – but only those from federally regulated banks and not the private machines which I generally refer to “rape and pillage machines” given the outrageous fees they charge. Not only that, but the industry data shows that 75 percent of customers who use bank ATMs don’t pay fees, and none of the NDP MPs debating could answer basic economic questions about acceptable levels of bank liquidity if they’re capping profits, or where the tipping point of service availability versus profit was – as in, at what point it made more sense for banks to pull their ATMs and let people use the unregulated and more expensive private machines. (And major props to Michelle Rempel for asking those fundamental questions in debate).

In reaction to the story about the RCMP cutting back on national police services, the government has said that they are looking to streamline forensic laboratory services to reduce the backlog – but wouldn’t explain exactly what that means.

Transport minister Lisa Raitt told a lunchtime audience that there needs to be better insurance on dangerous cargoes, which is a sure signal to industry that the government doesn’t want to pickup the costs of disasters like those in Lac Mégantic. Raitt also said that her department is reviewing three reports about the aforementioned disaster, which will be available to the public in the coming days.

The window for applications to the parents and grandparents immigration stream was open for a whole 33 days before reaching capacity. It’s now closed for the remainder of the year, in order to not create a backlog. Meanwhile, the government’s attempts to defend itself against criticism around the refugee healthcare cuts has taken on a rather nasty and partisan tone with accusations that the doctors criticising the move are connection to the Liberals and NDP.

On that note, the new bill to reform the Citizenship Act is to be unveiled on Thursday.

A recently retired soldier and veterans advocate has torn up his Conservative party membership and is especially disgusted by not only the incident with Julian Fantino last week, but hearing MP Cheryl Gallant talk about the “self stigma” in mentally injured soldiers.

Julian Fantino is vowing a full investigation into the mishandling of a file of one veteran who committed suicide over Christmas. This is the same veteran whose family was sent a bill for her benefits after death.

With construction season on the way, nervous municipalities want the details of the new federal infrastructure programme so that they can plan accordingly, but so far the federal government isn’t talking.

The RCMP have seized Senator Pamela Wallin’s audit documents.

Access to Information is now able to get Cabinet documents from 1993, and they show that Chrétien’s first cabinet meeting saw the budgets of his own office as well as those of all cabinet ministers cut.

John Geddes points to some very interesting things that Mark Carney said about monetary unions, fiscal transfers, and how that works in the context of both the Canadian economy and the European Union.

And Canadian Dissensus discusses Trudeau’s Senate move, and reminds us that the civil service was once a partisan affair until the creation of the Civil Service Commission, which ushered in an era of non-partisanship there.

Up today: It’s the Liberals’ opposition day, which will be devoted to their proposal to have a national security committee overseeing our intelligence agencies.