Robo-call court challenges

The Council of Canadians is backing court
challenges of the electoral results in seven ridings based on evidence of
misleading robo-calls and other voter-suppression techniques. It’s not enough to
overturn the majority, and it seems to be jumping the gun since Elections
Canada hasn’t completed its investigation. I have to wonder about the
effect on being able to keep asking questions about what happened, as the
government will henceforth say that “these matters are before the courts, and we
can’t comment on them,” like they did with the In and Out affair and so many
others. But it certainly could be very interesting if these challenges indeed
move ahead.

By now you’ve heard that Christian Paradis
has raised yet more new ethics questions over a hunting trip with the man who wants
to build the new arena in Quebec City. Harper, while over in Asia, sent word back
to Ottawa that there appears to be no problem; carry on. Thanks for that bit of
reassurance. The ethics commissioner, however, can’t seem to recall
investigating a single cabinet minister more often — not that she really does
anything about it, seeing as her investigations rarely get past the stage of
her reading the rules so narrowly that nothing goes forward.

Here’s what the company responsible for the
NDP convention’s online voting system has to say about the distributed denial-of-service attack that ground the process to a halt on Saturday.

Here’s what went down when Vic Toews went
to the committee for procedure and house affairs yesterday to talk about how Anonymous’s
threats against him were violating his privileges as an MP. Spoiler alert: he
wants the House to do something but won’t say what, despite being told that
they can’t really do anything. Jesse Brown offers to educate Toews about the
reality of Anonymous and the internet.

The budget will apparently revamp the
National Research Council, signalling the death knell of pure research in this
country.

What’s that? The government might have rigged the bidding process for the F-35 strike fighters? You don’t say!

Aww, the Cormorant pilot who flew Peter
MacKay on his bogus “search and rescue training mission” from that fishing
lodge was happy to do it in order to get face time with the minister. Bless
him.

And Paul Wells talks to The Current about the Harper Decade, which is a pretty fascinating conversation that you really should listen to.