At his first stop on his Northern tour in Whitehorse, Stephen Harper announced a major Arctic research agenda to be spearheaded by the National Research Council. He wants to turn unique Canadian challenges into opportunities! Okay then. Michael Den Tandt notes that Harper is also in election mode, and is starting to flesh out his vision of the agenda for when that happens. (Den Tandt’s video file of the trip is here).

Also mentioned during Harper’s presser up North was his notion that the police were best placed to solve the individual crimes with missing and murdered Aboriginal women, but we don’t need an inquiry to look into the sociology of it. Because gods forbid that we actually look into the root causes of this disproportionate phenomenon, or try to prevent these crimes.

The Privacy Commissioner released a report yesterday about the need for companies to be more transparent about their privacy practices online, in particular with apps (which are notoriously promiscuous with private information), and for there to be more obvious ways for one to sign up for even free apps without credit card information (which, to be fair, is also about geo-locking and digital rights management).

The RCMP and Canadian Forces spent $11.5 million last year searching out and destroying illicit marijuana grow-ops. Because prohibition is totally working.

Stephen Harper trotted out the “liberal elites” line to attack Justin Trudeau at a party event in BC before he headed north, apparently oblivious to the fact that after being in power for eight years, he’s actually the elite one.

The premiers of Ontario and Quebec met yesterday, and to nobody’s surprise demanded more infrastructure funding from the federal government.

Here’s a look at how the self-reported Safety Management Systems of rail companies contributed to the Lac Mégantic disaster, and more to the point, the fact that they weren’t being audited regularly by the department nor was there any follow-up done. Regulation needs compliance and enforcement.

Jason Fekete finds out what was being discussed at Joe Oliver’s summer economic retreat. Among the topics, income splitting was one of those discussions that split the participants, in large part because it’s simply not efficient tax policy (not that such logic has stopped this government before *cough*GST cut*cough*).

The government spent $24 million on advertising in the US to promote our friendship – and the Keystone XL pipeline – but those ads had almost no impact. Value for money!

A number of police forces around the country are getting armoured vehicles, courtesy of the Canadian Forces turning over used ones to them. Isn’t this the kind of militarization of police forces that is turning into such a bad thing in America? Should we not have a discussion about this?

Despite talking about it for years, the CRTC is still saying that we should be able to have pick-and-pay cable options. There is plenty of resistance still in the industry, however.

Andrew Leach looks at how the current government has basically given up on meeting our Copenhagen emissions targets.

One Liberal Senator wants to move a constitutional amendment (of the housekeeping variety that wouldn’t need provincial support) to make the Senate Speaker a position that is internally elected rather than a Prime Ministerial appointee. Missing in his analysis is the diplomatic and protocol function that the Senate Speaker plays, which is different from the role of the Commons Speaker, and could have ramifications is the method of selection is changed.

Over in Alberta, leadership hopeful Jim Prentice made the boneheaded suggestion for term limits. I’m not going to get into how moronic a suggestion it is in a Westminster parliamentary democracy, but this analysis of which of his supporters that would affect was amusing.

And Paul Wells gives his review of Chantal Hébert and Jean Lapierre’s book on what might have happened if the 1995 referendum ended on a Yes vote. I think I might have to read this one too now.