Looking through the government documents made available to the public during the court challenge on the government’s niqab ban during citizenship ceremonies, a pattern emerges quickly – that the department knew this was a non-starter, and they tried to offer alternatives for accommodation. Jason Kenney, the minister at the time, would have none of it, and pressed ahead anyway. And lo and behold, he used an instrument to implement a ban that was out of order. The Federal Court has said so, and the Federal Court of Appeal upheld it in a ruling from the bench, and this didn’t even touch the Charter arguments. But it shouldn’t be a surprise given the frequency at which this government’s legal and constitutional positions keep getting struck down by the courts, whether it’s with certain mandatory minimum sentences, or the Senate reference. People wonder what kind of legal advice they’re being given, and as this particular case clearly demonstrates in the documents, they’re being told that their positions don’t hold water – and yet they push ahead anyway. As we saw in the Duffy trial that the government created their own legal advisor position within the PMO, never mind that they have the Department of Justice who should be providing them with legal advice. The plain reading of what this means of course is that they didn’t like what Justice had to tell them, so they found a workaround to give them legal advice they found was more palatable. It all seems like such a waste of time, energy and taxpayer’s money – this from a party who insisted that they were going to put an end to waste in government.

https://twitter.com/michaelplaxton/status/646638431653765120

On the campaign:

• Stephen Harper promised to restore College Militaire Royal de St. Jean as a full-fledged degree-granting university, while Rob Nicholson promised tougher international sanctions.
• Thomas Mulcair said he wouldn’t challenge the niqab ruling in court (but was muddled about pretty much everything else).
• Justin Trudeau was prepping for tonight’s debate.

Good reads:

• An NDP candidate apologised after making a dick joke about Auschwitz, saying she didn’t know what it was until the day before yesterday. And she’s a school trustee.
• Joe Oliver says that the country wasn’t in recession earlier this year – despite his own balanced budget legislation saying that we were.
• Kady O’Malley looks at some of the fundraising pleas going out.
• Oh, look – even the Pentagon says that Canadian firms would still be part of the F-35 supply chain even if we don’t buy any of the fighters.
• Bylaw officers in Calgary removed NDP signs in Harper’s riding thanks to a series of errors in judgment.
• Early runs of the new passports had more security flaws, and yet the government opted not to halt the new ones until they could be worked out.
• Susan Delacourt writes about the Conservative capacity for self-inflicted wounds.

Odds and ends:

Stock photo fun from Conservative livetweets during the Globe and Mail debate.

Conservative incumbent Joe Daniel seems to think the refugee crisis is a Muslim plot; another Conservative compares abortion numbers to the Holocaust; and an NDP candidate in Saskatchewan dropped out because of the financial strain.

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/646769494069768192

https://twitter.com/emmmacfarlane/status/646773029213634560