The Harper decade

Holy cripes! Yesterday marked 10 years
since Stephen Harper became leader of the Canadian Alliance Party and the beginning of his slow
march to 24 Sussex. Over at Maclean’s,
Paul Wells marks the occasion with an e-book of columns over those 10 years and talks about the man and his rise to power.

As we await the NDP leadership convention,
just days away now, here are four themes that have emerged from the contest. Also
up at the convention is a decision to rename the party’s headquarters on Bank and Laurier in Ottawa the “Jack Layton Building.” Meanwhile, Aaron Wherry looks at the

populism of Layton’s messaging as NDP MPs refute that he took the party to the
centre, while Stephen Marche gives a rather unflinching look at the legacy.

Today in Robocon, RackNine has identified the mysterious employee who didn’t actually exist and revealed it was simply a
name that one employee used to work with the firm’s clients “online and offline.” Over
in Guelph, the former Conservative candidate refutes knowledge of the misleading
robo-calls and defends his campaign staff.

While we await the auditor general’s latest
report
, the former assistant deputy minister of procurement at DND describes the
F-35 procurement process as having been “hijacked and bastardized,” allowing the military
to dictate the civilian-run process.

Air Canada’s pilots are taking the
government’s back-to-work legislation to court, claiming it’s unconstitutional —
legislation that civil servants warned against using — while acrimony settles
into the relationship between the pilots and the company.

And here is the Queen’s speech to the
British Parliament for her Diamond Jubilee. Sixty years, 12 UK prime ministers
and some 3,500 bills signed into law — she’s still going strong.

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