Another day, another minister who appears tone-deaf to the issues of their files – in this case it was Peter MacKay on questions of gun control as we reach the anniversary of the École Polytechnique shootings. It shouldn’t have been a surprise – these kind of questions get raised every year, and the Conservatives have fairly consistently made some kind of gaffe, but normally it’s the Status of Women minister who gets into hot water. This time, MacKay made a couple of nonsense answers during Question Period about the gun control aspect of the anniversary, when he fell back on his bog standard “respect for victims, punish offenders” talking points rather than addressing the issue at hand. The government could sell a case for their bill, C-42, if they would actually bother to do so rather than just accuse the Liberals of trying to resurrect the long-gun registry (which, for the record, Trudeau has said that they would not do), or bringing up the supposed plight of the law-abiding duck hunter. Instead, MacKay put his foot in things again, tried to claim the reason for the shooting was mysterious, tried to backtrack when he got called out on it, and again the government looks worse for wear.

Good reads:

• Acting upon whistleblowers’ complaints, the Public Service Integrity Commissioner investigated and found that the RCMP’s air division had been falsifying flight records in order to cover for the fact that they were flying overweight, and then the government tried to stop the report from being released.
• Documents show that the National Science and Technology Museum is quite literally falling apart. Imagine if we had a government that didn’t treat institutions in the nation’s capital with contempt.
• Suzanne Côté was privately sworn in as the new Supreme Court Justice yesterday, after Justice LeBel retired on Sunday. A public swearing-in ceremony will take place later, and we’ll see if Côté sits on any of the remaining cases before the Court in the next two weeks.
• Stephen Fletcher’s bill on assisted dying is now in the Senate under Senator Nancy Ruth’s name, albeit with what she considers a few improvements. She hopes it will pass by spring, but the timeline will be tight.
• The Liberals are sending out questionnaires to their membership, including asking about alternatives to the government’s income splitting plans.
• Aboriginal women are now the fastest growing prison population in this country.
• David Bertschi is trying to appeal his being denied being green-lit as a nominee candidate.
• The NDP want to spend today debating Mixed-Member Proportional Representation. In other words, unicorns and two-tiers of MP – one tier beholden to a constituency electorate, the other tier beholden to the party.
• My column this week looks at the Auditor General’s report on Library and Archives, and why it’s a sign of a bigger institutional problem.

Odds and ends:

The Liberals are offering their donors free mittens. No, seriously.

Maclean’s has created a searchable database of First Nations chiefs’ salaries, while John Geddes writes about what it all means.