If there was one exchange on the campaign trail yesterday that speaks volumes for the way the current government is operating, particularly the lying about who knew about the cheque as opposed to Duffy himself repaying, it was between Hannah Thibedeau and Stephen Harper while in Hay River, and it goes thus: “You just mentioned in that answer a vast majority of staff believed that, but there were staff and very high profile staff that knew otherwise. For a few days, you have been evading that question about the deception done by many of your senior staff in the Duffy case including Mr. Ray Novak – he’s your current chief of staff, and he was told about Mr. Wright’s cheque in emails directly with Mr. Wright. So why have you tolerated Mr. Novak’s lying and even promoted him to current chief of staff who’s travelling with you right now?” Harper, predictably, rejected the premise of the question and insisted that only Wright and Duffy were responsible and they were being held accountable, which is clearly not the case. This was the party that rode into government on the white horse of accountability. It’s funny how that horse is nowhere to be seen these days.

On the campaign:

• Stephen Harper went to the NWT to announce further paving of the highway to Tuktoyaktuk.
• Thomas Mulcair made a “major economic announcement” that the NDP were running the former finance minister of Saskatchewan against Joe Oliver, and reiterated their promise to make the PBO more independent.
• Justin Trudeau had no events.
• Adorably, Gilles Duceppe says the Bloc can recapture those NDP seats in Quebec.
• Here’s a recap of the first two weeks’ worth of travels.

Good reads:

• In the Duffy trial, there was some more connection between Wright’s emails with some of Harper’s personal circle. Recaps from Cobb, and Kady O’Malley’s liveblog.
• Andrew Coyne expands on his thesis of the $90,000 cheque as a means of fending off the Deloitte audit.
• Here’s an explainer about the foreign condo ownership issue that Harper pledged to look into.
• It cost more than double what the government said it did to find the Franklin Expedition.
• Paul Wells talks to Kathleen Wynne about the federal election.
• Jean Chrétien’s former chief-of-staff Eddie Goldenberg discusses the Nigel Wright emails (video).
• Donald Savoie remarks about what the Nigel Wright emails reveal about the state of centralized power in the PMO.
• Susan Delacourt spoke to voters in Toronto trying to make ABC a Thing.

Odds and ends:

A woman getting a voter outreach call from the Conservatives, asking for her daughter who died 10 years ago is an object lesson for parties to check their lists.

The “robocall registry” won’t be public until after the election.

Those red-and-black themed Liberal signs in Quebec have spawned a series of parodies.