The situation in Ukraine consumed much of the news this weekend, and Stephen Harper even took the unprecedented (for him) move of announcing an emergency cabinet meeting, and gave several media readouts over the weekend, which included news that we are recalling our ambassador from Moscow “for consultations” and that we have stopped our preparations for the G8 meeting in Sochi, as have the Americans and other allies. Of course, while the government put in travel advisories, it looks like the Paralympic games in Sochi plan to go ahead next week regardless, but I guess we’ll see. On Sunday, Baird ruled out the possibility of military intervention in the region, while experts felt that recalling the ambassador happened too soon, if only because this is a time for high-level diplomatic engagement. They also said that Canada has been largely reduced to making gestures, while others said that Canada needs to better re-engage with NATO allies. Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland is headed to Ukraine on her own to show solidarity and meet with both government and civil society leaders.

At the Manning Networking Conference, Preston Manning himself came out against many of the provisions in the Fair Elections Act, which seems like a pretty strong indication that there are some real problems. (He did, however, praise other portions of the bill on Power & Politics the other day, it should be noted). Pierre Poilievre, however, wasn’t in the mood to listen to the criticism and focused on his prepared non-sequiturs about advance polls. Elsewhere at the conference, Poilievre defended his vision of a reformed Senate against calls for abolition – except his vision is full of unicorns and gumdrops because it has absolutely zero grounding in reality. (Hint: An elected and/or provincially equal Senate would not have stopped the NEP, and anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves). One of the big hits, apparently, were Rob Ford buttons, which presented him in a more favourable light to Justin Trudeau – no, seriously. Because we all think enabling alcoholics/drug addicts is fun! Paul wells notes that for all the talk about the Conference being a beauty pageant for would-be leadership hopefuls and fringe opposition to the Conservative party, no one was actually willing to criticise Harper or call for his ouster, which is telling about the state of the party.

BC’s former chief electoral officer, who wrote a report on the problems in the last federal election that Pierre Poilievre is so fond of citing, says that the Fair Elections Act will give the parties too much power if incumbents are allowed to appoint central polling offices, as the bill would allow.

A lone civilian public affairs officer at the Department of National Defence has stood up to the department in support of Access to Information laws, and refused to follow the new directives about clearing legitimate information requests.

Thomas Mulcair is trying to cast himself in the role of this great federalist defender in advance of a Quebec provincial election – which must be pretty awkard considering how much effort he’s put into attacking instruments of federalism like the Clarity Act in his bid to court the soft nationalist vote in Quebec.

Brian Storseth and Brent Rathgeber got into a snipe-fest over Twitter over the votes on Rathgeber’s bill. At the Manning conference, former government whip Jay Hill criticised the government’s actions in forcing amendments into the bill, which is a pretty serious condemnation.

And the author of a new book on Mike Duffy paints a picture of someone who was so desperate to become the “ultimate insider” that he started to believe his own self-aggrandizement, and who now feels both aggrieved by what has taken place and who has vowed to try and take Harper down with him.