Coming out of the Liberal policy convention, the party’s top five resolutions were pharmacare, mental health, decriminalizing small amounts of drug possession, decriminalizing sex work, and protecting pensions. Some of the resolutions are controversial to members of caucus, and there’s no guarantee that any of these will show up in the party platform (or the Order Paper beforehand) despite its what the grassroots members allegedly want (big caveats here given how centralized and top-down this process has become under their new constitution), but maybe there will be pressure to implement them. Maybe. Trudeau doesn’t seem keen on decriminalization talk while the marijuana bill is still being debated (and he’s expending political capital on it).

Their big exciting Obama-connected guest (because that’s what the Liberals and NDP have grasped onto for the past eight or nine years) was David Axelrod, who said that the party needs to show that they are still change-makers and not the status quo, while he and Gerald Butts talked about political life. Dr. Danielle Martin, who makes the case for healthcare in the US, spoke about the need for universal pharmacare in Canada. Among the ministers who got up to speak to delegates, Ahmed Hussen talked about being racially profiled while he encouraged Liberals to combat racism. Trudeau’s own speech to the faithful included its share of digs at the Conservatives as still being the party of Harper, so good thing they can still draw on that particular bogeyman. New party president Suzanne Cowan spoke about how they all needed to be fundraisers going forward. And hey, the rank-and-file members were expressing some particular concerns about the rash of self-inflicted wounds that the party keeps enduring.

And because it wasn’t all sunshine and roses coming out of the convention, MP Francis Drouin is now facing an allegation of sexual assault from an incident that happened during the convention, and he’s put out a statement to say that an allegation has been made and he’s cooperating with the investigation – nothing else. It’s probably worth noting that there were harassment workshops at the convention that both Justin Trudeau and Kent Hehr attended, and the facilitator of said workshops noted that Trudeau simply listened and took notes throughout, which impressed her. So we’ll see what transpires from here.

Good reads:

• Bill Morneau won’t offer a timeline on the Kinder Morgan pipeline, which sounds about right.
• The Conservatives plan to use their next Supply Day motion to demand to know how much a $50/tonne carbon price will cost median households.
• Chrystia Freeland is meeting with G7 foreign ministers in Toronto ahead of the June G7 summit in Quebec.
• To ease some of the strain on Quebec, some of the irregular border crossers could be shunted to Ontario if that’s where they hope to end up, in an expedited manner.
• It looks like a settlement has been reached for LGBT civil servants and members of the military who were “purged” from 1955-1996.
• Oh noes! Some MPs still maintain some outside employment, mostly practicing law. Not sure why this is supposed to be a big deal.
• Despite the fact that it says it hasn’t met the 20 percent threshold for lobbying activities, Facebook says it will now register nevertheless.
• Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz says that even if inflation is above two percent over the next year, that’s fine.
• Kevin Carmichael looks at how the nostalgia for factory jobs is distorting our economic picture, given that they only make up five percent of our economy.

Odds and ends:

The Aga Khan plans to visit Canada in May as part of his diamond jubilee.

The government is looking at ways to “green” the Centennial Flame, and try to find alternate fuel sources for it.

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