Roundup: Back with a countdown

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Parliament is back! Yay! Now let’s obsess about how everything is a pre-election narrative, start polling relentlessly, and speculate wildly about the mere possibility that there would be an early election call without any hint of a justification for there to be one! Oh man, aren’t fixed election dates and the year-long campaigning in advance of them just the bestest thing ever?

At an event in Vancouver on the weekend, Thomas Mulcair said that not only will his party reintroduce a federal minimum wage were they to form government – for the tiny group of federal employees who it would actually apply to – and raise it up to $15/hour by the end of their first mandate. Apparently the logic is that it would set an example for the provinces to follow. But to top it off, they’re trying to sell this as “giving Canadians a raise,” which it has nothing to do with, nor is raising the minimum wage even remotely an effective means of fighting poverty. But let’s not spoil that narrative.

As part of a wide-ranging interview on CBC Radio, Justin Trudeau spoke about his belief that the Charter rights of a woman’s right to choose an abortion trumps an MP’s freedom of conscience, as well as discussions about what to do about groups like ISIS, or that we shouldn’t fall into the simplistic narrative that simply raising corporate tax rates will solve our fiscal woes.

This notion that ministers are “lobbying for surplus dollars” is kind of rich considering that any surplus is not going to be big, and will be dependent on continued austerity. And don’t take my word for it:

The list of items being tagged “cabinet confidence” to exclude them from Access to Information requests seems to be growing, and as the example illustrates, now includes cuts to a National Defence programme that give soldiers Viagra.

In more embarrassing news, continued procurement delays for getting new search and rescue aircraft has forced the Royal Canadian Air Force to turn to the National Air Force Museum to try and source spare parts. No, seriously. Procurement problem? What procurement problem?

400 academics signed a letter calling on the CRA to stop its “politically motivated” audit of the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I am troubled by the description of motivation, because it implies that CRA is taking political direction, and it implies that any organization who receives charitable status should be exempt from audits if the audit is unpopular. I’m not sure I buy either of those underlying assumptions.

Chris Hall takes a look at the Senate audits being conducted by the Auditor General currently, and how they will likely up the pressure on MPs to start opening their own books.

The Ottawa Citizen has a Q&A with new MP John Barlow, who will be one of the four new MPs to take a seat in the Commons today for the first time.

There’s some newly discovered evidence that may help pinpoint the location of Sir John A Macdonald’s birthplace in Glasgow.

And here’s a look at how some MPs spent their summer.