Roundup: Different lessons before the by-election

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Not that Parliament has risen for the summer, the leaders can begin their summer tours in earnest, without having to take those inconvenient breaks to show up for the odd Question Period or a vote here or there. Because you know, they’re meeting with “real Canadians” as opposed to doing their actual jobs. And with by-elections happening a week away, both Trudeau and Mulcair are in Toronto today to campaign there, both of them drawing different lessons from the Ontario election, while the people who study these sorts of things aren’t necessarily sure that voters are committed to the same parties provincially and federally, and that they may be making a different calculation electorally.

As part of restructuring the Department of Justice plans to cut 65 lawyers and 15 managers over the next three years, along with an overhaul of legal services. Why is this important? A few reasons – the growth in outsourcing of legal services has been noted, they have stopped publishing their research and are being restricted in the areas of research that they have been doing, and we are seeing an increase in the number of bills being brought forward that aren’t passing the constitutional smell test by the courts, and we’ve heard the stories that the government will push ahead if their legal advice is such that if they have a five percent chance of succeeding a constitutional challenge, they’ll go for it. These cuts could exacerbate the issues within the department going forward.

If you needed any more proof that it was time for MPs to go home, there were some salty words exchanged between Paul Calandra and John McKay during a departmental briefing on the Rouge Park bill.

Saturday was National Aboriginal Day, with events taking place around the country. Meanwhile, the AFN is facing an existential crisis as its members meet to discuss the new leadership selection process and timing, as there are questions as to whether it can survive its current internal divisions and those rebellious chiefs who are trying to make a bigger profile for themselves.

Here is more about the secondary pipeline that is part of Northern Gateway, which goes from Kitimat back to Alberta, carrying the pentane diluents that will be used to make the heavy bitumen flow from Alberta to Kitimat.

The Canadian Press took at Access to Information to find a panicked email chain involving no less than 17 public servants back in Ottawa after John Baird made some Keystone XL remarks at a Washington speech.

The NDP are trying to push the theory that they’re being ganged up on in the Board of Internal Economy because they put the heat on Harper over the Senate issue. Or maybe it’s because they were caught having broken the rules, and the other parties couldn’t resist letting the purer-than-pure NDP fall from their lofty pedestal a little? Maybe.

Conservative-turned-Independent MP Dean Del Mastro goes to trial today on charges stemming from his 2008 election spending. Here’s a preview of what the issues are.

Thomas Mulcair took to the op-ed pages to talk about how the public service needs better protections from politicization – and yet he and his party were accusing Daniel Therrien, the new privacy commissioner, of being in line with the government’s agenda around privacy rather than being a civil servant and doing what his political masters asked of him. So in other words, he too was politicizing a civil servant. Oops.

If you want to read more about the lack of diversity in judicial appointments, here’s a paper by University of Ottawa law professor Rosemary Cairns Way that examines the issues. Peter MacKay, meanwhile, doubled down with a whiny post on his Facebook page and claimed that he’s been misrepresented, and that judicial appointments for women have gone up 17 percent since the Conservatives came to power. The problem, however, is that the numbers don’t support that conclusion.

150 years ago this week, a key juncture on the road to Confederation happened, as John A. Macdonald and George Brown, bitter rivals, agreed to put aside their differences in order to form a coalition with Coalition as the end goal.

And Tabatha Southey delivers an epic takedown of Peter MacKay’s utter ineptitude, dubbing him the Minster of Wrong Again. And it’s glorious.