Laying to rest and moving forward

Jack Layton, who has been described as
our Diana,” has now been laid to rest. His party feels no shame in using
his death for its political ends, saying that it’s what Jack would have wanted.

Those donations the NDP was collecting
on behalf of the non-existent Broadbent Institute appear to contravene the
Elections Act. Oops. And thus, the party had to do a bunch of scrambling on
Friday morning to sort this out, eventually settling on sending those funds to

the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation (as in Tommy Douglas), which will then grant the
Broadbent Institute the funds. It was also pointed out that channelling
the donations through the party expanded its voter
identification database, creating a new list containing the names and email addresses of sympathetic voters, which could be used for future fundraising or election
purposes.

Oh, and the NDP is ready to roll up its sleeves and carry on Jack’s vision, which starts, of course, with the
forthcoming leadership campaign.

Uh-oh! Liberal multiculturalism critic
Jim Karygiannis is being accused of verbally abusing civil servants at the Immigration Department and using a racial slur when asking why a particular group
wrote to ask interim leader Bob Rae to remove him from his position. Can a
critic shuffle be too far behind?

Oh, and the Liberals dispute that Harper
faces no opposition with Layton’s death, saying that Bob Rae will be the one
telling Harper “Just a minute here” as he moves forward with his agenda.
Liberals are currently holding caucus meetings in Ottawa to analyze their loss
in the last election (there are some pretty frank discussions taking
place) and are looking forward to a future in which Layton no longer dominates
the opposition discussion.

In Yukon, Harper said that cuts to
water-monitoring stations weren’t authorized and that the environment minister

 

was reversing the decision made by department officials.

And here’s a very interesting essay about political coverage and why it needs to be reformed.

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