As the Conservatives try to keep the Mark Norman affair in the news – currently demanding committee hearings with a laundry list of witnesses, as though that had any chance of happening this close to an election when Parliament is seized with trying to get as many bills through the process as they can – there are a couple of new bits of information that I have a hard time fitting into the established factual matrix. The one that the CBC published yesterday was that it was revealed that Norman was authorized by the Harper Cabinet to communicate with Davie Shipyard – because they were using Norman to doing an end-run around the then-Chief of Defence Staff, who was opposed to the lease and refit of the supply ship. I’m not sure entirely how this would be the piece of information to exonerate him, given that he’s alleged to have leaked the news of the pause on the process to a lobbyist and a reporter as a way of pressuring the government to restarting it (which they did in short order). You also have to wonder why Peter MacKay would have sat on this bit of information for all of these months only to pull it out now rather than defend Norman in public with it. None of it makes any actual sense, but that’s where we are.

In light of the case, the National Post has a piece about the use of leaks in Ottawa, and the currency around them – how governments use them to manipulate journalists, how bureaucrats use them to even scores, and very occasionally they’re used to hold people to account. The question the piece asks is why, in a city of leaks, Norman was being made an example of, but I’m not sure it’s a question we’ll get an answer to anytime soon. While it’s a good overview, I keep going back to The Thick of It, and the discussion around leaks during the Goolding Inquiry, when Malcolm Tucker described leaks as essential to release the pressure going on in government, lest things get dark if they didn’t. And I do think there’s an element of that, but given the exercise we just went through during the Double-Hyphen Affair, and the competing leaks and denials, I find myself wondering if We The Media need to exercise a bit more self-reflection in our use of them, rather than simply allowing ourselves to be manipulated because we think it’ll be good for our careers. (Or maybe I’m just being naïve).

Good reads:

• Marie-Claude Bibeau says that she’s raised the canola issue with her Chinese counterpart at the G20 agriculture ministers’ meeting.
• Ralph Goodale is defending the fact that the terms “Sikh,” Sunni” and “Shia” were removed from threat assessment reports, to focus on ideology over religion.
• Environmental groups are alarmed that Conservatives senators are trying to push the rewrite of Bill C-69 proposed by oil groups like CAPP.
• The head of NSICOP says that their report on the threat of foreign interference in Canada, but likely won’t be finished before the election.
• The reduction of consular services at the embassy in Havana is having a detrimental effect on immigration cases.
• Here’s a look at the issue of taxing Netflix, who say they’ll collect and pay GST when asked, but nobody has thus far.
• Maclean’s has a very interesting longread that looks into the problems of sexual assault and harassment with the “man camps” associated with resource projects.
• The Supreme Court of Canada has announced they will hold two hearings in Winnipeg in the fall, for the first time in their history.
• Andrew Leslie’s provincial counterpart, Marie-France Lalonde, apparently intends to make the jump to federal politics to run to replace Leslie in the fall election.
• Jagmeet Singh has unveiled part of his party’s climate plan with more significant targets and backs away from former support for the BC LNG sector.
• Doug Ford’s government has started advertising against the federal carbon price, but the ads show money raining on people – kind of like the associated rebate.
• Jason Kenney says he’ll pull the plug on the province’s carbon tax by May 30^th– which just means that the federal government’s will kick in instead.
• Stephanie Carvin writes about what Canada is doing and still needs to do with regards to cyber-security both domestically and internationally.
• Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column previews the Committee of the Whole appearances this week, focused on the SNC-Lavalin and Mark Norman affairs.
• Chantal Hébert wonders if the RCMP are really up to the task for investigating political matters, per Mark Norman and Senator Duffy.
• Andrew Coyne worries that no good can come of this US-China trade war.

Odds and ends:

Here is the odd case of a person who refuses to give his identity being held in immigration detention for six years.

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