It’s not a huge surprise, but Jim Prentice won the PC leadership in Alberta, and now needs to win a seat in a by-election. The turnout for said leadership was incredibly poor in comparison to leadership contests past, which some are reading as a bad sign for the state of the party. The fact that their e-voting system was one giant colossal disaster didn’t help either, and once again serves as a warning as to why paper ballots remain best. It also serves as one more reminder as to why we need to return to the system of caucus choosing the leadership, given how ridiculous the whole contest was from start to finish. (Also, please stop using the term “premier-designate.” It’s not a Thing.)

Phillipe Couillard met with Stephen Harper, and spoke about the importance of Quebec finally signing the constitution by 2017, which will mean that he wants concessions from the federal government. I guess we’ll have to see what Couillard wants in exchange for that “signature.” He then turned around and said that his priority is really the economy and not the constitution, so there’s that.

In case you had forgotten, we are without a Commons Law Clerk at the moment, which seems a bit inconvenient given the drama around the NDP’s mailings and satellite offices, and those flawed bills that have gone to and through the Senate…

Oh look – another story about the massive numbers of emails chains for an attempted interview request with a federal scientist, this time about “rock snot” – a kind of algae that might have something to do with climate change, hence the government suddenly becoming skittish about it. Sigh.

Paul Wells interviews Thomas Mulcair, who starts laying out some of his plans for the next election, including some bad maths around corporate tax cuts being reversed. He also gets electoral mechanics completely wrong at the end of the interview – our system gives the incumbent the first chance to form government, not whomever won the most seats. Mulcair later said that the NDP would start laying out key platform planks this fall, a year in advance of the election, to put them on the table. It’s a risk, not only because other parties could steal them (not that the NDP aren’t strangers to proclaiming everything was their idea first), but because it also gives time for all kinds of holes to be drilled through those plans – especially ones based on dubious calculations, one would imagine, as their “$50 billion in corporate tax cuts” line would indicate.

And former PMO Comms Director Andrew MacDougall likens Harper to Nickelback – critically panned but still top-selling. Um, okay. I’m also not sure that Justin Trudeau is a “hot new indie band,” considering that he’s probably even more mass media and likeable.