Peter MacKay’s judgement is once again being called into question after he showed up at a party fundraiser wearing a t-shirt with the logo of the National Firearms Association on it. He later said it was because he was showing support for an Afghan veteran, but one readily suspects that if an Afghan veteran asked him to wear a t-shirt with a pot leaf on it, say to show support for medical marijuana being used to treat an operational stress injury, I doubt MacKay would go for it. The NFA meanwhile declares that MacKay “believes in freedom!” by which they mean less restrictive gun laws. I’m not sure that MacKay’s explanation will quite get him out of declaring that tacit support.

With the federal government putting its foot down on a national inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal women, Aboriginal leaders and the premiers are talking about a national roundtable instead with federal ministers as a compromise. The premiers have also committed to a socio-economic action plan to be ready for the next Aboriginal women’s summit. Back in Ottawa, Thomas Mulcair has declared that calling an inquiry would be a priority in the first 100 days of an NDP government, for what it’s worth.

In order to keep under the new data limits in their new Shared Services email accounts, public servants are being asked to delete any emails “of no business value” rather than archive them, thus opening the door for all kinds of things to be deleted that shouldn’t be, because most public servants have zero clue about records management and what should be retained (and I speak from experience here). Yep – the whole Shared Services experiment continues to go well.

While he’s going around the country for “justice roundtables,” Peter MacKay seems to be ignoring sex workers as groups he’s consulting with about the justice agenda – because you know, it’s not like they have any stake in Bill C-36 or anything. Then again, given how those groups were pretty thoroughly ignored during committee testimony, it seems pretty clear that the government has little interest in talking to them.

Andrew Mayda gets a glimpse into the secret security panel that vets foreign takeover deals, which includes the heads of CSIS and CSE, the deputy minister of public safety and the Prime Minister’s national security advisor. The process remains opaque, and leaves a lot of questions as to what they’re evaluating, especially when it comes to things like state-owned enterprises looking to invest in Canada.

Government documents undermine the rationale for needing to give cabinet a heavier hand in negotiating the collective agreements of Crown Corporations. While the excuse was that their salary increases were out of control, they’re apparently in line with that of any other public servant, and close to the private sector as well. Oops.

A group of veterans say that the government is spending too much money commemorating old wars while they’re not spending enough time and resources on newer veterans suffering from PTSD, especially as they shut down Veterans Affairs offices across the country.

David Reevely looks at the tawdry practice of private sponsorship for Council of the Federation Meetings, which premiers pat themselves on the back for since it’s not costing taxpayers any money, never mind that it’s de facto buying access to them by these sponsors. But this is what the culture of cheap outrage has wrought, were groups like the CTF go apoplectic when premiers spend money to meet, and certain journalists publish big numbers without context. We have reaped what we’ve sown, everyone. Well done.

Speaking of cheap outrage, the digging into retired General Andrew Leslie’s moving expenses continues, and we find out that the company who handled the move claimed mileage and per diems as part of the moving expenses. You know, expenses that he was entitled to as part of the programme for his years of service, and again, was not claimed by him but by those handling the move that he was entitled to. But he spent money! It’s unseemly! And lo, the department says that they will put in a new policy not to reimburse for any same-city moves, which I have a hard time seeing how it will pass any kind of fairness test before the courts, because these soldiers will have put in the same time and should be entitled to the same benefits. Just because some people have made an issue out of Leslie’s compensation – be it for partisan or cheap outrage purposes – it seems like it’ll be an even bigger problem to deny people this compensation going forward.

An assistant deputy minister responsible for the procurement file, who has helped to make the process more transparent, is set to retire.

Philippe Lagassé looks at the confusing state of Ontario court rulings around the Queen, and the mess it makes for the sham bill our government passed on changes to the line of succession.

Andrew Coyne makes the case to abolish charitable tax credits.

And the Canada at NATO Twitter account, as well as the Canadian Embassy in Poland, have recently been sending out some cheeky tweets.