Innovation without leadership

The premiers have emerged from their
meeting in Victoria saying that they want to create an innovation working
group, so that we can start harmonizing our 13 different healthcare
jurisdictions and talking to each other about best practices and all of that.
Which is great. But usually the federal government has a leadership role in
this kind of thing, except this government hasn’t exactly been keen on taking
up that torch – especially as the Conservatives dropped it when they took government in 2006
and didn’t follow through on any of the agreed-upon issues from the 2004
accord, like pharmacare, homecare and health human resources. In fact, Harper
went so far as to dismiss such an innovation group and won’t give them any

additional funds to get it going, likely because he’s all for the silos and competing
interests at play, letting the provinces do their own thing.

Here are some NDP members’ statements past about the
revelation that Stéphane Dion has dual French citizenship, and they were not
impressed. Mulcair says that he spoke to Layton about his comments, for which
Layton apologized. Sure, but did he apologize to Dion as well?

Here are some thoughts from Maclean’s John Geddes on the Liberal
convention last weekend and the need for the party to sell its message on
“evidence-based policy.” Considering how utterly necessary it is to have an
effective framing device for political messages to sell to the public, this
will have to become a major issue that the Liberals will need to address going
forward.

Emmett Macfarlane looks at the issue of recognizing foreign marriages in the context of the same-sex divorce issue,
while Irwin Cotler asserts that there is no actual legislative gap (especially
as residency requirements for divorce go across the board) and that Harper’s
government could be opening a much bigger can of worms on the recognition of
any foreign marriage if they’re not careful.

The government has remained mum on the case
of an accused intelligence officer turning over intelligence to foreign
agents.

Conservative MP Jeff Watson has just adopted a baby girl and wants to work across party lines on a national

adoption strategy.

And the Star’s
Joanna Smith compiles a list of policies proposed by the NDP leadership
candidates to date.