Justin Trudeau’s Monday night speech in Toronto certainly has a lot of people talking, and it’s not just the trolls on Twitter! His attempt to reclaim “liberty” for the Liberals instead of the Conservatives, who like to talk a lot about freedom (particularly from taxes and big nanny state governments) is certainly going to cause a reaction, and did it ever. Jason Kenney, not surprisingly, was not a fan and railed about “politically correct Liberals” not thinking critically about Muslim women wearing niqabs. Michael Den Tandt sees the speech as trying to create a narrative framework for the Liberals going forward, and notes it gained from the timing of things like Chris Alexander conflating the hijab and the niqab, Jason Kenney’s Twitter Machine misadventures, or John Williamson’s racist statement about “whities” and brown people. (The NDP, conversely, are going on about how Trudeau can talk liberty when he plans to vote for C-51, which they see as a threat to liberty). Terry Milewski sees this as another shot fired in a nascent culture war about the niqab, and notes that just as Trudeau compared the current climate against Muslims with the anti-Semitism during the 1940s, while Stephen Blaney turned around and invoked the Holocaust to defend C-51. Aaron Wherry looks at the speech in contrast to the Federal Court ruling on the niqab in citizenship ceremonies, and the subsequent debates about religion and feminism that the Conservatives and Liberals are having.

Good reads:

• The Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner issued a harsh report saying that Diane Finely had massively broken the rules in giving a community centre preferential treatment to help a Rabbi who seems to be a friend of the party.
• As would be expected, Stephen Blaney before the Commons Public Safety committee to defend C-51 turned out about how you’d expect it, right up to invoking the Holocaust.
• Here’s a look at some of the prominent Canadians that Pamela Wallin claims to have been meeting with, but they don’t seem to agree.
• The Military Police Complaints Commission handed down a damning report into the investigations into the suicide of Corporal Stuart Langridge.
• The National Council of Canadian Muslims has denounced Jason Kenney’s recent Twitter misadventures, which the Prime Minister shrugged off in QP yesterday.
• Six years after being flagged by the Auditor General, the Canadian Police Information Centre database remains hopelessly backlogged.
• Andrew Leach looks at the effect of falling oil prices and the Canadian dollar on the oil sands.
• My column looks at how the gong show that was the NDP leadership in Manitoba, and how it’s just a preview of what the Reform Act will do to Canadian democracy.

Odds and ends:

The Baffin Island Correctional Facility has been the subject of yet another damning report, but the premier of Nunavut cancelled fixing it to build a learning centre.

The government is being secretive about any plans to create a raspberry promotion and research agency. No, seriously.

Here’s a look at where Stephen Harper has been spending his time, as a possible clue to his election strategy.

Mike Duffy has re-mortgaged his “secondary” residence in the Ottawa suburbs to help pay for his legal bills.