In a piece that bothers me immensely, Susan Delacourt puts forward the notion of abolishing political parties, and then applies a bunch of marginal reasons like branding and narrowing voter pools. The problem is that she ignored the whole point of political parties under Responsible Government – to have a group that can maintain the confidence of the Chamber in the formation of government. Which is actually a pretty big deal and why coalition governments don’t really work as well in our system as they might in others. “Oh, but Nunavut doesn’t have parties” or “most municipalities don’t have parties” people – including Delacourt – will cry, but it’s a nonsense argument because they have a small handful of members, and it doesn’t scale up to 308 MPs on any practical basis. You could not adequately run a government or maintain confidence with 308 “loose fish.” Also, the notion that brokerage is “antiquated” is false – otherwise we’d see all kinds of “bridges to nowhere” riders in government bills to get MPs onside to win support – again something that would be endemic with trying to get the support of a chamber of independents. That’s not to say that there aren’t problems with parties right now, because there are, but the solution is to have more people engaging with them so that the power doesn’t remain concentrated – not to simply throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sorry, but Delacourt’s argument has no merit.

In light of the discussion on the prostitution bill and the fact that “sexual services” are not defined in the bill, there’s no way to know if someone who gives a lap dance will be charged, let alone someone who gets paid to lick someone’s feet, or to give a non-sexual bondage session. That seems to be a pretty big deal for the breadth of the sex or adult entertainment industry that exists in this country, and could widen or narrow the scope of who the bill targets. That could also leave police with broad discretion as to who to charge, which would make for disproportionate impacts based on the biases of individual departments, and makes it all the more arbitrary. Also on the page is an eight-minute video of Evan Solomon talking with sex workers, both on the street and who work as escorts, all of who want the government to stay away.

After meeting with his provincial counterparts in Charlottetown, Jason Kenney said that he might be willing to consider some local exemptions to the new Temporary Foreign Workers, but wasn’t budging much, particularly with Alberta’s concerns, as well as those of PEI’s seafood processing industry. But you know – one-size-fits-all approaches to complex problems and all of that.

Despite the government insisting that refugee claimants from countries they designate as “safe” are automatically bogus, IRB claims show that the acceptance rates even from those “safe” countries are high enough that they can’t automatically be labelled as “bogus.” One example is Hungary, which is our fourth-largest source of refugees, yet the government lists it as “safe.” Not that Chris Alexander or Jason Kenney will ever veer from their talking points on the issue.

The Supreme Court ruled in favour of Ontario on a case involving industrial logging on a First Nation’s traditional territories, owing to the way in which the Confederation-era treaty by which those lands are governed. The province nevertheless does have a duty to consult and accommodate the First Nation in question where possible.

Veterans Affairs is looking at capping its medical marijuana programme so as to limit how much it will pay for those veterans who have been prescribed it. Never mind that the government’s recent reforming the system that will force users to go through commercial distributors rather than being able to grow their own will increase the costs dramatically.

What’s wrong with military procurement? Besides everything? CBC Mainstreet spoke with a former navy commander about the tensions in the system, in particular the way the government likes to buy in bulk to bring the per-unit cost, but that winds up creating more problems than it solves.

Here’s an interesting look at the state of the Space industry in Canada, which explores how it might change under a potential future Liberal government.

It was another day of testy exchanges with Dean Del Mastro on the stand in his trail over election expenses. Del Mastro continued to insist that he had no knowledge of a great many things, and that the trail of evidence didn’t mean what it appears to, such as a large cash transfer into a bank account just before a cheque was cashed from it that is at the centre of the expenses in dispute.

Paul Wells looks at Stephen Harper’s taking credit for defeating separatists in Quebec.

And Tabatha Southey wonders about the silence of the Conservatives after Robert Goguen’s oh-so-clever questions at committee about rape as freedom of expression, and posits that they are busy acquiring new territory in order to better distance themselves.