The Conservatives held both ridings in the two by-elections last night, Jim Eglinski winning in Yellowhead and Pat Perkins in Whitby–Oshawa. That said, the Liberal numbers are probably the ones to keep an eye on, because they increased a whole lot between last night and the last election. In both cases, they went from third-place to second – from something like two percent to 19 in Yellowhead, and from 14 percent to 42 in Whitby–Oshawa, taking the lead at some points in the evening. (Note: Both figures were before all polls had reported in). Liberals will tell you that it means that they have momentum in two ridings that they didn’t previously hold, while the NDP will dismiss these as unimportant by-elections in Conservative ridings, but it does seem to complicate the narrative that they’ve been trying to tell of New Democrats being the only ones who can defeat Conservatives. Their numbers didn’t tell that story once again.

Good reads:

• Laura Payton looks at the rules around the Peterborough Conservative riding association issuing tax receipts for their Dean Del Mastro legal defence fundraisers.
• Glen McGregor looks at the Justin Trudeau documentary.
• Aaron Wherry looks at the gong show that was Colin Carrie’s appearance on The West Block on Sunday morning.
• Andrew Leach excoriates the government for their lack of realistic talk on GHG emissions, which does them more harm than good.
• The government has had problems living up to its commitments when it comes to their Syrian refugee resettlement commitments.
• Matthew Fisher writes about how Harper wasted the opportunity for more press around his frosty exchange with Putin.
• It sounds like the two MPs who are alleged victims of harassment won’t be filing formal charges, so there may not be a formal investigation into what happened, leaving the fate of their alleged harassers in even more doubt.
• Oh look – the government has underspent on security in our foreign embassies for over three years in a row. Because that’s a smart place to make cuts.
• John Ivison calls out the government for their hypocritical use of blatantly partisan advertising with the new blitz to promote their new “family tax cuts” that are small-printed with “subject to parliamentary approval.”

Odds and ends:

Here are some of the rumoured contenders for Speaker of the Senate (though one would presume that Nolin has it in the bag considering his time as Speaker pro tempore).

The Science and Technology Museum is going to be shuttered until 2017 for needed renovations, but it sounds like they’re not going to get a new building anytime soon.

My column this week looks at why we need to stop talking about the harassment issue between MPs as though they were employees. They’re not.