It was the release of the Auditor General’s spring report, and among the findings are a major lack of long-term planning when it came to expansions in the prison system which will lead to more overcrowding in a few years, risks with the long-term sustainability of the public sector pension plan, the government’s relocation services contract being completely botched from the start, that First Nations policing is failing and falling behind provincial standards in some places like Ontario, that the CRA faces some notable gaps in how it deals with aggressive tax planning, that Statistics Canada isn’t adequately collecting data that reflects smaller geographic areas – a particularly salient issue right now with labour market issues, and that the company that manages federal buildings is getting billions in bonus payments for no apparent reason. The government, of course, thanks the AG for his findings and agrees with his recommendations.

Speaking of the Auditor General, he responded to the Liberals’ request that he look into the Temporary Foreign Workers programme and said that he’s aware of the issues currently being discussed, and he’ll keep it in mind. Not that I’m really sure what he would be auditing since the issues with the programme aren’t really about value-for-money or financial controls. On the subject of TFWs, economist Mike Moffatt looks at why there may be so many of them in Southwestern Ontario, a region of relatively high unemployment at present.

Despite Stephen Harper dismissing Beverley McLachlin as a “sitting judge,” here is a reminder that she is far more than that – she’s also the deputy Governor General, and a Right Honourable in her own right. Aaron Wherry wonders if Harper isn’t now trying to let the fire he lit over the issue burn itself out, given his QP responses yesterday.

The Assembly of First Nations executive has decided that for the time being, the executive as a whole will lead the organisation and appoint Quebec Regional Chief Ghislain Picard as spokesperson, and will decide on interim leadership once they meet with all six hundred or so chiefs coming up. This will likely delay the First Nations Control of First Nations Education bill that much longer, until there’s a way that the government can deal with the streamlined AFN process rather than the assembled chiefs.

Interim Privacy Commissioner Chantal Bernier isn’t going to launch an investigation into the Heartbleed Bug issue for the time being, given the nature of the security vulnerability and its Internet-wide scope.

While the volume of oil being transported by rail is on the rise, it’s still nothing compared to what is transported via pipeline, in case you were wondering.

Kady O’Malley looks into the Elections Canada filings around the Toronto Centre by-election last year, and the associated nomination races.

Philippe Lagassé notes the silence of the opposition with regards to the deployments to Eastern Europe in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine, and notes the ways in which the current government has muddied the Crown prerogatives around deployments, and the opposition is complicit in letting them get away with it.

Here’s a look at the three Canadian soldiers who are part of the observer mission in Ukraine under the auspices of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Also in the light of Russian actions in Ukraine, NATO is being forced to come up with a cyberwarfare strategy, which they have been lacking to date but which they clearly can’t ignore any longer.

My column this week talks about the electoral canard about leaders getting mandates and the belief that we vote for them directly, and how the system actually works.

And CTV uncovered Elizabeth May’s 1980s appearance as a game show contestant. No, really.