NDP MP Pat Martin, always quotable, came out with a gem on the subject of patronage the other day. “Stephen Harper learned early in his career that patronage is the K-Y Jelly of politics,” Martin said. “You can’t run a country without it.” But can we expand upon that metaphor any? Maybe to say that KY is a particularly inferior lube that only ends up getting sticky right after you apply it? That there are better lubes/appointment systems out there that you really should be using instead? No? Worth a shot.
In what is not exactly a surprise, Liberal immigration critic Maurizio Bevilacqua has announced that he will not seek re-election. He did not announce that he’ll run for mayor in Vaughan, but that’s expected to come sooner than later (along with a full-blown resignation).
Oh, look – Russia’s Arctic policy is really close to Canada’s! This news while Harper is currently in the North rallying the troops. And that “incursion” into our airspace that the PMO sent out frantic emails to the press about yesterday morning is a routine event, and not that they’re trying to create a case for their purchase of new F-35 fighters or anything…
The RCMP report on the gun registry says that it’s efficient – good to know. Meanwhile, Liberal MP Larry Bagnell, one of his party’s most vocal opponents of the gun registry, will in fact be voting with his party to keep it when the House returns. Like Wayne Easter, he too has been swayed by Ignatieff’s talk of a compromise position on the registry. (Of course, he’d better watch out, or Shelly Glover will call him a “flip-flopper” too!)
The science journal Nature has now criticized Harper’s position on the census. Those in favour of the decision – about three. Also, emergency-room doctors are coming out against scrapping the gun registry. But I suppose they’re a bunch of ivory tower elites. Oh, and the publisher of the police industry magazine Blue Line is not happy that the magazine’s forum was used to conduct the non-scientific survey the Conservatives are quoting as “front-line police support” to scrap the registry, but he also wants to remind everyone that the registry is less about preventing gun crime than it is for promoting responsible gun ownership and as an investigative tool when they are stolen or used improperly.
And finally, the BC Superior Court case to determine if laws against polygamy violate religious freedoms will not only consider the fundamentalist Mormon sect of Bountiful, BC, but also Muslims in North America.
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