As Stephen Harper made his big annual Stampede speech to the party faithful over the weekend, a couple of familiar themes emerged – security and stability, versus a shambolic European-style economic calamity and open season by “jihadist terrorists.” Because there’s nothing like cartoonish hyperbole to get people all excited, or a slogan like “choose security over risk.” The problem would seem to be that Harper might not have been paying too much attention to his own record, or the expert opinion on what he has done. You know, like pretending that the economy is going just fine, thanks, and that oil prices are going to rebound sooner than later. Or the expert commentary from his own security agencies who said that all of the new powers that they were given weren’t actually necessary or able to stop lone-wolf attacks like we saw in October, nor does he give them the resources they’re asking for, but rather letting them just reassign all of their people from combating organised crime to fighting terrorism instead. How is that working out for everyone? All of which to say is that it makes the case for four more years of the same to be one where people should be asking him some tougher questions – that is, assuming that he’ll take questions from the media, and that they won’t waste their questions asking about hockey. Again. Of course, the competing visions are “good competent public administration” and “Real Change™,” so we’ll see which message takes hold among the public imagination, but changing up governments every decade or so is a good and necessary thing in our political system, which makes the case for another mandate to be tougher to ask for and probably drives the cartoonish hyperbole. Will people buy it remains the question.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau says he won’t be running attack ads – he may run “contrast ads,” but won’t talk about “beards or hair.”
• An internal report shows the government isn’t prepared for an offshore Arctic oil spill. Gosh, you think?
• The Chief Electoral Officer has concerns about pre-election spending because of the fixed election date, which is no surprise because the whole thing should be repealed.
• An Ottawa-based charity is in Geneva to complain to the UN Human Rights Committee – itself a hugely controversial body – about the government’s charity audits.
• Here’s a look at the NEB and the policy void around upstream emissions.

Odds and ends:

A federal prosecutor – who is also the daughter for former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour – is defying the Public Service Commission to run for the NDP.

Anti-corruption investigators from Quebec will see Arthur Porter’s corpse in a Panamanian morgue today just to be sure he’s really dead. Did they bring a stake?

Can we please stop treating the Prime Minister’s occasional bouts of dad band soft rock to be news? Please?