The government is enlisting the Canadian Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the College of Family Physicians to put their logos on a Government of Canada, non-partisan ad campaign designed to talk about the dangers of marijuana. Where this becomes problematic is because the Conservative party has been making a lot of hay attacking Justin Trudeau and the Liberals over their policy around marijuana decriminalization, and it starts to look like a partisan ad using the government and tax dollars as a shield. It’s bad optics, and even if the three medical associations want to sign on because they have genuine concerns with teenagers using pot (as well they should), the timing and the current environment does taint the whole exercise.

Ruh-roh! The text of the Canada-EU trade agreement has leaked from German sources, and that includes a look at some of the quotas on imports like cheese, but so far it looks okay, according to some of the experts in the field. The government, of course, refuses to comment on leaks.

It seems the RCMP can’t produce any figures to say how often they call the character references that people are supposed to provide with gun licence applications, other than those applying for restricted firearms. Seems like it might be a fairly important qualification to have, since you’re asking for the information anyway, right? And apparently this is an issue going back to at least 2003, and yet it hasn’t been acted upon? Really?

Those goof-ups at Statistics Canada with the July jobs figures (allegedly due to human error) are raising questions about the agency’s credibility after a series of other errors, not to mention it continues to highlight their other problems, like constantly terminating valuable datasets, or changing them so that they only go back a short period of time, making using their figures for research purposes nigh impossible. The other problem with that jobs data goof-up is that it affects EI claims around the country, which are tagged to the prevailing unemployment rate and so on, so it’s more than just reporting that is at stake.

Liberal MP Wayne Easter wants the government’s rationale for imposing a lifetime secrecy order on members of the new RCMP civilian complaints board. It should be noted that Easter is sponsoring a bill that would see a parliamentary oversight committee for security and intelligence agencies, the members of which would have a similar oath. The difference, one supposes, is the sensitivity of the information – one is national security, but are complaints of RCMP misconduct on the same scale of need for secrecy? That is the question that needs asking.

As they prepare to phase out home delivery, Canada Post will be sending surveys out to those who say that they can’t use community mailboxes, which will require some medical information, though they say it’s to help them tailor the right approach to service delivery since they can’t simply impose a “one-size-fits-all” solution onto these people.

Manitoba, PEI and Newfoundland and Labrador have now signed their agreements for the Canada Job Grant, a year-and-a-half after it was announced in the 2013 budget.

One quarter of MPs have taken free trips to Israel courtesy of lobby groups hoping to influence their viewpoint on that country. Fair enough. Don’t want MPs to go on these trips on these lobby groups’ dimes? Give MPs a travel budget so that they can take fact-finding foreign trips without someone trying to buy their goodwill. Oh, but we couldn’t possibly because that would mean spending money…

Here’s an interesting look at the next steps in the cleanup of the Mount Polley tailings pond breach, and how the best course of action may in fact be to do nothing at all with the tailings that have settled at the bottom of the nearby lake. Perception, on the other hand, may be the bigger challenge.

Energy economist Andrew Leach offers another way of looking at the debate around the economics of the Keystone XL pipeline, by looking at the issue of rail capacity and how it would affect prices and consumption.

Dr. Arthur Porter was apparently injured during a prison riot in Panama. He could avoid that unpleasantness by returning to Canada anytime he likes.

Here’s an interesting piece that asks whether political scandals are actually good for democracy – and it’s a thought-provoking read.

And Stephen Harper unfollowed Russian PM Dmitri Medvedev’s Twitter account! OH NOES! CRISIS OF INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY! (And seriously, CBC – stop making this kind of nonsense “news” because it’s not).