With the budget coming out on Tuesday, hints are starting to get dropped all over the place. Things like plans to extend or boost rural high-speed Internet access, and some infrastructure and job-creation money. Michael Den Tandt points out that the Conservatives may try to use this budget to try to reclaim their hold on the suburban middle-class voter, now that Trudeau has become real competition for them in that demographic.

Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand calls the new elections bill an “affront to democracy,” and says that it will muzzle him to the extent that he can no longer talk about democracy and encouraging voter turnout, which is a multi-faceted issue owned by no one group in particular. Mayrand also says that scrapping the “vouching” provisions will affect up to 100,000 voters in this country – something that analysts are calling unconstitutional after the Supreme Court’s ruling on the importance of the right to vote in the Ted Opitz case.

City mayors are sensing that the federal government is starting to back away from things like affordable housing and fighting poverty, not that said federal government will admit it, and instead talks about all the money they put into affordable housing under the Economic Action Plan™.

The Canadian Press gets a look at some of the complaints filed to the Canadian Transportation Agency, many of them about the treatment of passengers by airlines. Of course, seeing that the CTA doesn’t have the power to award damages, many of those passengers feel like they’re not getting what they deserve from their complaints.

Senators from both parties are continuing talks about possibly organising regional caucuses between them as a way to further reduce partisanship. It’s a good idea so long as it’s done in addition to maintaining national caucuses so that we don’t fall into further traps of regionalism, and so that broader viewpoints can be explored with national caucuses.

Poor Senator Brazeau. Now it seems that the bank is looking to repossess the home he still owns with his ex-wife over lack of payment or insurance.

And Susan Delacourt muses about the need for a different kind of translation system on the Hill and in politics in general, as the Fair Elections Act shows a government speaking largely to itself.