Round two started with Charlie Angus asking the very same thing (Baird provided the same answer), Craig Scott cited sections of the law that the Wright/Duffy cheque contravened (Baird: Wait for the investigations to be completed), Alexandrine Latendresse remarked that this reeked of a cover-up (Baird: Nobody believes these expenses should have been claimed, and a reimbursement was made), Alexandre Boulerice wanted to talk about the TV ads for a jobs programme that doesn’t exist because the provincial negotiations haven’t been completed (Leitch: We’re addressing skills mis-matches around the country!), Robert Chisholm asked about the revelation of partisan hiring at ACOA (Shea: The Public Service Commission investigation concluded there was no political interference), and Pat Martin gave a rambling bit of outrage (Baird: If anyone is found to be in the wrong, they’ll be shown the door). Dominic LeBlanc returned to the laws likely broken by the Wright/Duffy cheque (Baird: Let’s wait for the results of the investigation), and wanted to know who told the Conservative senators on the audit committee to whitewash Duffy’s audit (Baird: There was a repayment and these are under investigation). Chris Charlton and Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet asked about EI Board appointees making donations to the Conservative Party (Van Loan: That board no longer exists, as it was replaced by the Social Security Tribunal), and Anne-Marie Day and Chris Charlton asked about the problems with EI training programmes (Leitch: We’re focused like a laser on jobs).

Round three saw questions on convicted bid-riggers still getting Public Works contracts, more questions on advertising the non-existent Canada Jobs Grant programme, the expenses by now-former head librarian Daniel Caron, the perversion of the Senate’s official report on Duffy’s finances, and funding for pure research.

Overall, I’d have to say that the performances were pretty lacking. The fact that even John Baird began mocking the NDP on being unable to roll with the answers given was an indication that MPs were not able to stage a coherent enough of an attack line to derail him from his talking points. Also, the Liberals were very repetitive in their use of “Ordinary Canadians can’t have their debts wiped out…” I’m not sure that such repetition is an effective strategy, but some people seem to think that it works. (At least they didn’t say “middle class” today).

Sartorially speaking, snaps go out to James Bezan for a dark grey suit with a pale lavender shirt, purple pocket square and purple plaid tie, and to Rona Ambrose for a dark grey speckled dress with a black jacket. Style citations go out to Susan Truppe for a yellow top and black jacket, and to Bal Gosal for a black suit with a pale yellow shirt and yellow and black tie.

While Senator Duffy remains silent, not speaking to media upon his return to Ottawa, Conservative MP Joan Crockatt was tweeting about ethics on Sunday, which created a huge backlash. According to Crockatt, apparently the resignations show a commitment to the “highest ethical standards” – only to insist that the comments were “misunderstood” after being blasted by replies. Apparently accepting the resignations was the right thing to do. Um, still not sure how that demonstrates the highest ethical standards. Liberal Senator George Baker says the scandal has smeared all of Parliament Hill and wants everyone to throw open their books. Andrew Coyne remains incredulous that Wright could not have known what he was about to do was unethical and illegal, and remains curious about just what the deal with Duffy was.

And in case you were wondering if you can fire a Senator, well yes, kinda, as the Senate is the master of its own destiny and could theoretically do it. But they would likely want to ensure that due process was exhausted first before taking such a measure, though that’s not to say that they may not decide to suspend certain senators under a cloud of suspicion at the moment – which would also put their expenses under tight lock – until more audits are completed and answers found. Oh, and Duffy may have indeed broken the law as well as Ethics regulations, if you look at Sec. 119 of the Criminal Code.

Oh, look, the NDP are launching their own positive ads to pump up Thomas Mulcair. And it’s his family talking about what a great guy he is, because we know that means everything when it comes to showcasing political leadership. Shockingly, Andrew Coyne is not a fan.

Bob Rae writes on Huffington Post about 1982 patriation of the constitution and the issue of Chief Justice Bora Laskin from the position of someone who as there, was involved, knew all of the players, and he throws more than a few punches about the conspiracy theories being offered by Quebec separatists and endorsed by the NDP – and he gets in a few good kicks at the Sherbrooke Declaration while he’s at it.

And those Economic Action Plan™ ads touting the Canada Jobs Grant* (subject to Parliamentary approval)? Are even more offside, since they’re not only subject to passage by Parliament, but also by buy-in from the provinces, and Quebec is not only saying no, but a number of other provinces are unlikely to be able to afford to buy-in. So yeah, there may be a problem.

1. Nigel Wright is entirely to do with the PMO, and is fair game. He was a Harper appointee, he is not a public servant, he serves the PM and his discretion, and his actions are the responsibility of the PM.
2. The appointment of Senators Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau are the responsibility of the Prime Minister. But that is as far as his accountability for them lies.
3. Senate reform questions, while they could be answered by the Minister of State for Democratic Reform, will be entirely red herrings. None of the proposals on the table currently, or any proposals period, have anything to do with this scandal. Abolition will also create more problems than it solves – never mind that niggling detail of the amending formula of the constitution. Not that it will stop the Conservatives or the NDP from their respective campaigns of constitutional vandalism where the Senate is concerned.
4. The actions of the Senate are not fair game. The Senate is not controlled by cabinet, and nobody can answer for them. It has nought to do with government operations. Asking what the government is going to make the Senate do about the current scandal is wasted breath, and out of bounds for QP.

But why, you ask, can’t these questions be asked? Why can’t the PM or somebody answer these questions? The answer is that the PM is not responsible for the Senate.

The point of Question Period is to ask the ministers responsible for the departments responsible for the operation of government questions about their activities. The Senate is not a government department that answers to any minister of the cabinet. Hence, there is no minister in the cabinet that can answer for it. The Senate is, in fact, a wholly separate and independent arm of Parliament. The NDP haven’t seemed to grasp this constitutional reality, however, judging from the kinds of questions they tend to ask about it.

And before I get into yet another argument over the Twitter Machine with someone about why this matters, about why I should be such a stickler for rules “that nobody follows anyway,” the answer is pretty simple. Democracy, my friends, is rules and process. This fact cannot be stated strongly enough. If democracy is to work, it is because rules exist and are to be followed, and rules and process are what translates everything into action. If you throw out these rules because it’s inconvenient, or because you’re not getting enough self-righteousness about what you think the government should or should not be doing, well, then you might as well grab your pitchfork and torch, because you have just joined an angry mob. And last I checked, democracy is not mob rule.

If Question Period is to mean anything, it has to be done with the understanding that these rules exist, that responsible ministers answer for their departments. Questions that have nothing to do with government operations – be it backbench suck-up questions, or the kinds of theatrical questions that the NDP are throwing around about the conduct of certain senators – should be disallowed. The Speaker should be standing up and making that point clear.

But he doesn’t, and on the occasions that he actually bothers to get up and remind the honourable members of this fact, the government nevertheless has a ready response of talking points designed to bash back at the opposition, and they are all to happy to be given the opportunity to recite them before the cameras in the hopes that maybe – just maybe – it’ll be a clip that makes the six o’clock news.

Opposition is an integral part of our democratic system. It should be incumbent upon our opposition parties to respect their role and ensure that these rules are observed so that their role and their hour to shine in the daily business of the nation – QP – has meaning. It’s not about the “decorum” distraction or the heckling, but the quality of the questions asked. And if the opposition can’t fulfil this basic role, understanding what it means, then our democracy is in a much sorrier state than any of us should be comfortable with.

Here’s a transcript of an interview that Terry Milewski did with former Parliamentary Law Clerk Rob Walsh, and it’s pretty damning as far as the business of Wright writing that cheque for Duffy is concerned. Walsh doesn’t see any way out for Wright to claim that this was all an innocent gesture – rather, it crosses legal and ethical boundaries, and there needs to be action taken on the part of the Prime Minister, lest we demonstrate that these things don’t matter. With Wright gone, it still doesn’t mean that Harper doesn’t owe a mea culpa – because he absolutely does especially as these were his appointments.

Senator Patrick Brazeau says that he has an email that proves that he was given the okay to claim his housing expenses in the way it was, but the reply seems devoid of enough context to know just what he was asking – not to mention the common sense factor of listing a primary residence where one spends a mere ten percent of his time. Jason Fekete reminds us of the appointment of all three of those embattled senators – plus 15 others – on back on December 22, 2008, while Aaron Wherry reminds us of the context in which those appointments were made, during that year’s prorogation crisis.

Liberal Senator Colin Kenny writes about how it should be those three or four errant Senators who should be punished and not the institution, and he outlines his problems with the coming restrictions on travel points and how that affects the work that Senators do without actually increasing the transparency involved. Conservative Senator Vern White says that loyalty is second to integrity, and it’s time for certain senators to go. With Duffy’s protectors now turning their backs, this is an actual possibility, where they may vote to remove him – or any of the other problematic senators – once due process has been followed.

Oh, and a number of Conservatives are going to try to use the Duffy incident as an excuse to bang the Senate “reform” drums – never mind that any of their proposed reforms would do absolutely zero about any of these kinds of problems, and would in fact create a whole host of other ones instead. Good job with the logic and consequence-based thinking, guys. Slow clap.

Meanwhile, in completely useless news, a few prominent Canadians have signed a petition to rename Victoria Day as “Victoria and First People’s Day.” Because apparently it’s gauche to celebrate our head of state (both the first head of state for this country and the official birthday of our reigning monarch) or our history, and because National Aboriginal Day, which is currently June 21, isn’t good enough and should be tacked onto an existing statutory holiday. Whatever.

And shameless self-promotion alert: I was on CTV News Channel once again on Saturday to talk about the whole Duffy/Wallin/Senate story (though I do apologise for the quality of the Skype). I was on again on Sunday, this time from studio to talk about Nigel Wright, but they didn’t post that clip online, unfortunately.

As for Senator Mike Duffy, last night’s revelation was that his audit report was indeed whitewashed as part of the deal he made with Nigel Wright for the cheque to repay his expenses. The Senate had already decided to take a look over his expenses yet again in the wake of revelations around his charging per diems while campaigning in 2011. The NDP, meanwhile, wants Elections Canada to check into this, though I fail to see how it’s anywhere near Elections Canada’s domain. It also goes back to their ridiculous position that Senators shouldn’t campaign period, which I will reiterate is ridiculous so long as they’re not charging the Senate for their expense, and it’s up to the Senate and not Elections Canada to check into that. SunTV has also distanced itself from the revelations that Duffy was trying to intervene with the CRTC on their behalf, and while Kory Teneycke labelled Duffy as “radioactive,” he also used the present tense in his disavowal of Duffy’s activities – make of that what you will. The Prime Minister’s spokesperson, however, continued to feed odd lines about the involvement of Nigel Wright in the case – that this was all an altruistic gesture to “protect taxpayers” (never mind the other two Senators also under orders to repay funds), that the supposed altruism should hopefully shield him from the ethics investigation, and that this should somehow be a rallying cry for Senate reform, never mind that none of the proposed “reforms” would actually do anything about this kind of a situation. Breaking rules is breaking rules – period. Both Chantal Hébert and Andrew Coyne write about how this Duffy situation has become a case in point of the culture of entitlement that the Conservatives have availed themselves of, no matter how much they may have decried it going in.

Here’s a curious little tale about a departing CRTC commissioner headed for a new career – at SunTV. He just won’t be able to appear before the CRTC on behalf of his new employers for a year during the cooling off period.

A performance evaluation of First Nations schools by the department of Aboriginal Affairs shows conclusively that First Nations children on reserves are getting an inferior education, though the government is promising to take action on this file.

Elijah Harper, the First Nations chief that was responsible for killing the Meech Lake Accord, passed away at the age of 64.

Susan Delacourt looks at the issues of pollsters getting things wrong, and takes a trip back to the first “scientific election” in 1962, and the ways in which the media continues to treat polling data and elections as though it were still the 1970s.

And Tabatha Southey takes her own crack at the kinds of implausibilities that Duffy and the PMO would have us believe when it comes to the whole sordid affair.

But this is the point where we have to back up and start with the first revelation of the day, where we found out that Duffy was claiming expenses for “Senate business” during the 2011 election – you know, when Parliament has been dissolved and there is no Senate business to conduct. And lo, it was matched up to his campaign events. “Senate business” indeed. How long before this too becomes a “clerical error” with yet another pained admission that people know he would never cheat the taxpayer? Of course, the NDP are crowing because they apparently raised the alarm about senators – including Duffy – campaigning during the last election, which was of course ridiculous because it’s like they somehow expect Senators, who are members of their respective political parties, to sit on their hands. Now, if Duffy was improperly claiming per diems while campaigning, that is a problem that needs to be dealt with. If he was simply campaigning, as other Senators do, that’s a ridiculous gripe. One might as well gripe that MPs fundraise outside of a writ period, because it amounts to pretty much the same thing. In fact, they should be grateful that our Senators don’t spend two thirds of their time fundraising for their re-election campaigns like they do in the States – but that’s an aside.

The Duffy issue doesn’t end there, though. There was more confusion around the $90,000 cheque as the story continued to change, where one minute it was a personal cheque to help out a friend in financial difficulty, to no, Duffy took out a loan from the Royal Bank, to no, the cheque was written but held in trust by Duffy’s lawyer while Duffy got the loan, to the fact that the apparent bank loan was a surprise to the PMO – but of course, nobody’s produced a paper trail, and this is largely coming from unnamed sources, so nobody knows what to actually believe here – including Duffy’s claims of financial difficulty, as there seems to be little indication of that. The Prime Minister still apparently has confidence in Wright, which also doesn’t make a lot of sense if this transaction happened without Harper’s knowledge, despite it being on the wrong side of a whole lot of rules and done at least in part in order to make the situation go away (which, I will remind you, was apparently how it was being treated by Duffy and his lawyer as they ceased cooperating with the Deloitte audit once that repayment had been made). And to top it all off, there are now allegations that Duffy was trying to influence the CRTC to find in favour of granting SunTV the mandatory carriage it’s been demanding. One now wonders what tomorrow’s revelation is going to be.

Add to all of that, Senator Patrick Brazeau broke his silence yesterday, and said that he’s fighting the order to repay expenses because he met all of the criteria Deloitte set out for primary residence, and the fact that he only spent ten percent of his time there is immaterial because there is no rule about how much time one has to spend there. Err, aside from common sense. He also is challenging the Senate Board of Internal Economy to hold an open meeting to air their criteria for making their finding against him, because all of that has been done behind closed doors. Brazeau seems to feel that he will be vindicated in this, and with his unrelated court case involving the domestic incident in February, where he was charged with assault and sexual assault.

Still confused? Here is a handy Q&A guide, as well as a timeline of the current whole Senate expense mess to date.

Elsewhere, Thomas Mulcair made the brief statement that he had spoken to the police over an incident when the mayor of Laval offered him an envelope of cash, back when he was a Quebec MNA in 1994. The question of course – and posed by Peter Van Loan – is why Mulcair has been silent all this time.

Liberal MP Denis Coderre at long last announced that he will be running for the mayor of Montreal, and that he resigns as an MP on June 2^nd, which marks 16 years in that position. Of course, his launch was marked by protests and arrests, but the big question of course becomes just what will happen in the by-election to replace his seat, which both the Liberals and NDP will be vying for, as will the Bloc (though leader Daniel Paillé won’t be contesting the seat even though he is currently without one).

Peter Van Loan served notice that he’s moving to extend Commons sitting hours to midnight starting next week in order to push through the last of the must-pass bills before the House rises for the summer – but also gives hints that they may rise earlier than the possible five weeks they are scheduled to before the summer recess begins, and more clues that a summer cabinet shuffle and possible prorogation are in the works.

Colin Horgan writes about Lockheed-Martin’s F-35 sales pitch to journalists as they take them to the production and testing facilities.

And because it wasn’t a busy enough news day yesterday, there now come allegations that there is a video out there of Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack, while calling Justin Trudeau a “fag.” So yeah, this could be very interesting tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Glen McGregor reminds us of how Duffy used to send other emails around bragging about one thing or another, or casting untrue aspersions, which fits into the story about how those emails about his deal with Wright eventually made their way to Bob Fife. Here is a look at how Duffy quickly became a star fundraiser for the party – and the attraction of fawning local press – while here is a look at other controversies that Wright has courted. John Geddes looks at the contrasts between Duffy and Wright, while Andrew Coyne calls for Duffy’s resignation – to which he is absolutely correct, but there also needs to be a reminder that there is someone we can hold to account for this, and that is Stephen Harper, for making such a spectacularly bad appointment to the Senate in the first place.

In case the latest Duffy revelations have you down, Ryan Flavelle reminds us of the kind of gruelling work the Senate does best, and why it shouldn’t be elected as a result.

Daniel Caron, head of Library and Archives Canada, resigned in the wake of the revelation he was charging the department for private Spanish lessons. It was likely a culmination of things, however, including the draconian Code of Conduct imposed on employees at his behest and the sinking morale within the organisation that contributed to his departure.

We only fought them in Afghanistan for a decade, but the Taliban was finally added to the list of proscribed groups under the Combating Terrorism Act.

In the wake of the BC election upset – and almost mythical comeback – here is some insightful analysis by Nancy Macdonald which points to what the Liberals did right and the NDP got wrong, a look at where the pollsters failed – once again, and Paul Wells looks at the advantage of incumbency – especially at times when the economy is still a bit weird. Pundit’s Guide takes her own lessons from the campaigns here. Thomas Mulcair is looking over those results and says that some of the problems were in the absolute no around the Kinder Morgan pipeline and the insistence on running a wholly positive campaign in the face of BC Liberal attack ads. Tim Harper, meanwhile, has decided the time has come to break up with pollsters and the sweet numbers they keep pushing.

That incident where partisan emails were sent to a handful of public servants is trying to blow up as the NDP are demanding an investigation. At last count there were a whole three incidents, and the rather dubious assertion by the union spokesperson that these public servants would never use their work emails to sign up for something. Colour me sceptical.

As Canada takes charge of the Arctic Council – and Leona Aglukkaq its chair – here are six issues facing it, and an interview that Aglukkaq did with Maclean’s.

It turns out that National Defence did indeed have concerns about the projected operating costs of the F-35s before the government hit the reset button on the whole procurement process. But don’t forget, this is the right plane at the right price, etcetera, etcetera…

Over in Labrador, Yvonne Jones says it was disgust with the Conservatives that fuelled her win on Monday. It probably didn’t hurt that she’s a popular local candidate and hasn’t lost an election in 17 years of provincial politics.

While the Governor General is over in Ghana on a state visit, our diplomatic officials across Africa are picketing outside of our embassies as part of their ongoing labour dispute.

Terry Milewski looks at how the Cree on the Quebec side of James Bay are thriving, unlike their counterparts on the Ontario side, and it looks like they’ve done it by getting out from under the Indian Act and taking matters into their own hands.

Anti-abortion protesters are blanketing Stephen Harper’s riding with graphic postcards featuring images of aborted foetuses in order to try and ignite the debate there, since Harper is keen to shut said debate down. Yeah, somehow I’m not sure this is going to end well for anyone.

Here’s an interesting look at the implications for Canada if a situation developed where Prince Charles became the regent for an incapacitated Queen, as our laws don’t have anything to deal with such a situation, ad it could create a constitutional problem if we do nothing.

And the BC Liberals managed to come in from behind and win another majority government, despite the polls assuring the NDP of a win. That’s yet one more poll failure – how long before we stop breathlessly listening to their every utterance?

Samara Canada has released a study that looks at the number of words spoken by MPs in the House of Commons. It’s a cute idea, but it ignores the words spoken in committee (where the bulk of work gets done), and highlights those members who pull House duty more often (such as Kevin Lamoureux, or Elizabeth May, who is only ever in the Chamber and almost never at committee as she is not a member of any). In other words, it looks largely devoid of the kind of context of how the business of the Commons operates.

Jason Kenney announced that convicted Palestinian hijacker Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammad has been deported after some two decades of legal wrangling, and said that convicted terrorists will never be allowed in Canada again. One wonders if that rule applies to Nelson Mandela. Terry Milewski remembers his encounter with Mohammad years before the legal drama began. While Jason Kenney likes to talk about how this was about Mohammad filing endless appeals, it is more the case that we couldn’t find a country willing to take him until now. What? Kenney was omitting the facts for partisan gain? You don’t say!

The unaccounted for $3.1 billion in anti-terror funding shows that the way MPs handle expenses is broken. Wow – that’s a newsflash. Of course, what is likely to happen is that the opposition will bray that the Auditor General or Parliamentary Budget Officer needs new powers rather than, oh, doing their own homework, insisting that there be better, more consistent reporting methods and generally doing their actual jobs of holding the government to account. But they don’t. (This applies to the government backbench as well, who should be just as up in arms about this but are curiously silent).

The head of Library and Archives Canada has been taken to task by the Heritage Minister for taking private Spanish lessons on the government’s dime, though he says it’s because of conferences he attends in places like Spain and Puerto Rico, nor does he sound too apologetic. It also sounds like he’s not too popular of a character around LAC amid budget cuts and a somewhat draconian code of conduct being implemented.

What’s that? The employees who lost that personal student data at HRSDC didn’t know they were supposed to encrypt their USB drives and complain that the rules were unclear? You don’t say! The lack of training and the absence of a culture of personal responsibility for theses kinds of documents within the public service never ceases to amaze me.

The Senate continues to look at its residency rules for eligibility to sit in the Senate as it continues to get a legal opinion in the wake of the Senators Mike Duffy and Pam Wallin questions. And while it sounds like they’re trying to keep things so that both of the two Senators in question can stay, it could also be a convenient way to dump one or both if the continued focus on the audits turns into criminal charges laid by the RCMP on Duffy’s part, or Wallin’s if her travel expenses audit goes badly.

Economist Stephen Gordon takes apart Thomas Mulcair’s recent article in Policy Options about the oil and gas sector and questions Mulcair’s underlying assumptions regarding the sector – and exports in general – while showing why Mulcair has it wrong. Meanwhile, business professor Mike Moffatt questions the government’s assumptions and talking points when it comes to increasing the preferential tariff rates for Chinese imports, and why the notion that we’re no longer giving tax breaks to Chinese companies actually doesn’t bear out.

Paul Wells looks at research dollars being spent by the government, and while the dollar figures are increasing, the way they’re being targeted is negatively impacting the reputation of research being done here, which will be a costly failure in the longer term. Meanwhile, it looks like the government got some pretty damning results back from its focus group testing of the rebranding of the National Research Council.

And Justin Trudeau is asking Canadians to submit questions for him to ask the Prime Minister in Question Period. You know, like Preston Manning and Michael Ignatieff tried to do beforehand. It has been jokingly suggested that the only questions that have a chance of getting read are those that contain the words “Middle Class.”

Senator Doug Finley, the architect behind many Conservative electoral victories, passed away from cancer at the age of 66 over the weekend. A collection of tributes can be found here. John Ivison offers his own tribute to his fellow Scot and sees something in their shared experiences that made both of them so devoted to this country.

There are questions about the propriety of the Conservatives sending Economic Action Plan™ prerogatives plus surveys designed for the benefit of their voter identification database to public servants using their work email addresses – especially as the ways of getting onto list for such emails seems to be increasingly broad lately.

David Akin notes that if the Liberals win today’s by-election in Labrador, it’ll be the first time they’ve picked up a seat at the ballot box in a decade.

And Conrad Black takes umbrage with the way that the NDP are wrapping Quebec separatist positions in the federalism flag – such as how they are playing along with the separatist mythology around the role of former Chief Justice Bora Laskin and the patriation of the constitution, and how intellectually dishonest that position actually is.