Over in the Ottawa Citizen, David Reevely has a wonderful little piece about the ways in which Mike Duffy conducted himself as a Senator – and that was to basically farm out work to friends, including a $7000 speech about “Why I am a Conservative.” Apparently a former journalist writing about his own political convictions was too much work, and so he fobbed it off on someone else, on the taxpayer’s dime. Reevely is right to point out an emptiness to the way that Duffy treated the job, but it misses another aspect to the pathology – that Duffy wanted to be a player. Certainly by spreading the largess around to those who he thought would be impressed by it is indicative of that. We’re seeing more of this desire to be a player as more things come out of his diaries, and one of the most eyebrow-raising examples were his meetings with Enbridge. As it happens, those meetings were unsolicited. Duffy was trying to ingratiate himself and so he made busywork about trying to get some action on the Keystone XL pipeline, having conversations that weren’t reported to the Lobbying Registry, and then reporting them to the PMO. Apparently it got to the point where Enbridge officials themselves complained to the PMO about it, in the hopes that they could call Duffy off. And really, there was no point to Duffy’s efforts – the PMO was onside with the pipeline, and Enbridge has had no issues with reporting their meetings. Oh, but Duffy wanted to be a player, to show that he mattered in the corridors of power – the reason why he’d been begging for an appointment to the Senate for decades, from successive prime ministers, both Liberal and Conservative, who had no time for him. The NDP, incidentally, want those Enbridge meetings investigated, but I’m not sure it’s really necessary because it certainly appears that there is nothing to investigate other than Duffy’s inflated sense of self, and while the NDP may think that it’s some kind of smoking gun on Harper, it’s far more about Duffy’s ego than it was about corruption from the centre.

Good reads:

• A government report shows that wait times at the border are “negligible” for commercial traffic, but there are those who question the methodology of said data.
• The government’s plan to create Afghan war memorials across the country using LAV III shells is being delayed because they need American approval to use them.
• The Canadian Press takes their Baloney Meter™ to the government’s claim that they paid down $37 billion from the national debt (spoiler: it’s mostly baloney).
• The government has signed an agreement with the US and Mexico about protecting migrant bats and Monarch butterflies, but there doesn’t seem to be any new money to go with it.
• Some big names in the country’s tech sector are voicing their opposition to C-51.
• Mauril Bélanger writes about the misleading poll about changing the lyrics to O, Canada, which he has a bill about doing for the sake of gender equality.

Odds and ends:

Outgoing Toronto police chief Bill Blair is signalling he wants to run for the Liberals in Scarborough Southwest (which is already a crowded nomination race).

The Conservatives are recruiting some big names to run in Quebec in the election.

It sounds like Jordan’s King Abdullah II is going to pay Harper a visit here in Ottawa.