In case you hadn’t heard, there are two national political policy conventions happening this weekend, both at the same time, so Kady O’Malley came up with a viewer’s guide to both events. Last night we heard from Stephen Harper in a pretty canned speech that was mostly the same talking points that were in his retrospective video, and he wants the party to look forward. The rest of the Conservative convention is to be dedicated to reinvigorating the party as opposed to giving it a complete overhaul, so say its attendees, but there is a push to get a better organization in place to engage youth in the country – something the party has not been good at doing, officially eschewing a youth wing – and the “draft Rona Ambrose” movement continues to try to get enough support to modify the party’s constitution to allow her to run (never mind that she’s stated repeatedly that she’s not interested in the job).

As for the Liberals, it’s not just a victory lap for them as they went from third place and from talks of their time being over and needing to merge with the NDP to forming a majority government. No, they’ve got a very serious debate on their hands as it relates to whether they adopt a new “streamlined” constitution or now, and by “streamlined,” it means more than just the actual streamlining of having 18 different constitutions, but it centralizes all of the power into the leader’s office and eliminates pretty much every accountability mechanism that exists in the party for the sake of becoming a party of Big Data. So while some streamlining is no doubt necessary, I’m not sure that this is the way that the party should be run. There is also a movement to have an emergency resolution debated to pressure the government into amending C-14 to make it more Carter decision compliant, but it appears that the party has quashed it.

Good reads:

• Senator Sinclair wants a National Council for Reconciliation set up to help guide the government through the reconciliation process.
• Paul Martin says the Conservatives’ mandatory minimums targeted Indigenous Canadians, then called the Supreme Court deadline on assisted dying “arbitrary.”
• CRA auditors found that companies owe some $100-million to the government because of contractors overcharging the government or excessive profits.
• People using social media to lobby the government for a cause will need to register with the Lobbying Commissioner.
• The government is looking to start accelerating the new surface combatant procurement process. Price tag to come in 2019.
• The Canadian Press’ Baloney Meter™ takes on the justice minister’s statement about what happens after the Supreme Court deadline expires on assisted dying.
• Michael Den Tandt looks back on all of the scary things we were told to expect from Harper that never did happen.

Odds and ends:

A couple of academics looked into portrayals of masculinity during the last election (radio interview here).

Kevin Vickers grappled a protester at a commemoration he was attending in Dublin. More from a witness and the protester.