A courtesy meeting

Stephen Harper met with Nycole Turmel last
night to talk about the upcoming budget. No, seriously, they did, and
apparently it was really cordial. I’m quite certain that Harper isn’t going to
do absolutely anything the NDP wants him to do, but hey, no harm in giving
Turmel her few minutes of time, right? It was also pointed out that during the era
of minority government, Harper would still meet with the NDP, but not the Liberals,
but considering his utter hatred of the Liberals, this shouldn’t really
surprise anyone.

Harper also had a sit-down interview with Postmedia,
where he indicated that the Conservatives are still looking at various options when it comes

to “transforming” OAS in the future, as well as talking about the need to
diversify energy markets as part of the push toward Asia and repeating
nonsense about Iran and nuclear weapons.

The chief of Attawapiskat has lost a court
battle to try to reject the third-party manager. It wasn’t a total loss, as
the manager was ordered to disperse a bunch of money for the incoming modular
homes.

The Citizen’s
Glen McGregor crunched the numbers and has found that the Conservatives have
gone out to meet the media in the foyer even less than they did before the
election.

The federal government announced its joint federal-provincial
monitoring program for the Alberta oil sands, which will take some three years
to roll out. The lack of an independent monitoring commission at this point
is already leading to calls that this is just another PR stunt on the
government’s part.

Alison Crawford at the CBC finds Vic Toews
is being evasive in question period about the RCMP air fleet when she can get the information
directly from the RCMP website no problem. That makes one wonder if Toews
simply isn’t using “secrecy” as an excuse for ignorance and not learning his
file.

And as the official date of the Queen’s
Diamond Jubilee approaches, here are 10 fun facts about Her Majesty.

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