Roundup: Del Mastro found guilty

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Conservative-turned-Independent Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro has been found guilty, along with his official agent, of election overspending in 2008, and Del Mastro faces the possibility of three years in jail plus $6000 in fines. Del Mastro, obstinately, believes that the conviction is just the judge’s opinion, and that it’s not over, though there’s no indication on what grounds he would appeal. He told CBC that there’s more evidence of his innocence that wasn’t introduced at trial, but if he thinks he can introduce that at the appeal stage, well, good luck, because they almost never allow that. The question of his fate comes next, because there is some ambiguity as to whether he will be forced to vacate his seat and lose the ability to run in another election for five years – as stipulated by the Elections Act – or if they plan to wait until he is out of appeals, which could be a lengthy process. Del Mastro says he plans to be at work on Monday (sentencing isn’t until near the end of November), but the Government House Leader has recommended that the matter be referred to the Procedure and House Affairs committee, where a determination could be made there. It appears that Del Mastro had been offered a plea deal earlier that would have had him pay a fine, probably enter into a compliance agreement, and have it be over with. Instead, he went to court, and had the judge call out his credibility, which is going to be very, very difficult to recover from. And while the former Law Clerk of the Commons, Rob Walsh, said that it would be in Del Mastro’s best interest to resign to minimise the damage, Del Mastro’s behaviour to date would seem to indicate someone who doesn’t know when to quit, and who will likely obstinately push this to the bitter end.

Our deployed aircraft have all flown sorties over Iraqi airspace now, but we haven’t dropped any bombs as of yet in large part because of cloud cover, and our GPS-enabled missiles won’t arrive until the weekend.

Moncton police shooter Justin Bourque was sentenced to consecutive life sentences, and won’t be eligible for parole for 75 years – by which point he’ll be 99. This is the harshest sentence meted out since Canada abolished executions in 1962. Bourque’s lawyer is also critical of our gun laws, saying that if those kinds of semi-automatic weapons weren’t available, that the tragedy could have been averted.

The government has announced that they will deny visas for those travelling from the three most affected countries in the Ebola crisis for the time being. Never mind that the WHO says it’s a bad idea and that it might be against international law, since this government doesn’t like to hear things like that.

The Federal Court of Appeal has rejected the government’s request for a stay of the refugee healthcare ruling, and they now have until November 4th to put in a new system, or revert to the previous one. Chris Alexander insists they will still appeal.

The government announced its plans to change the live-in caregiver situation, and one of those changes is to make the actual living-in part optional and not mandatory for inclusion in the programme. It remains to be seen if this change, like so many others they’ve made, turns out to make things worse and not better.

Former AFN national chief Shawn Atleo says that he didn’t overstep his mandate with regards to the First Nations Education Act, and that he was acting as instructed by the regional chiefs to force the government to meet their five conditions, which the government actually agreed to, at which point Atleo resigned. (And for the love of all the gods on Olympus, stop treating that application for judicial review like it’s serious. It’s not because the courts have no jurisdiction there because of a little thing called parliamentary privilege).

The Economist calls out the Canadian government for poorly photoshopping the Canada wordmark on images of the Canadarm2, saying that it gives us an air of massive insecurity. They’re not wrong.

Here is a curious case of Health Canada using a Croatian predatory vanity publisher to publish their journal articles, bypassing the normal peer-review process, and nothing resembling value for money either. It’s a curious thing that nobody seems to quite understand, particularly the more that you learn about this publisher.

This tale of an Ottawa man arrested as part of a national security investigation provides an interesting window into some of the tensions present in mainstream mosques as they try to reject extremist ideology and are being challenged within their own ranks for doing so.

And Thomas Mulcair dressed as an Angry Bird to hand out candy at Stornoway.