The government doubled down on their leaked plans to change copyright laws to give political parties unfettered access to using news clips in political ads, and accused media outlets of essentially “censoring content” by not broadcasting ads that have material that was taken without permission or compensation. Shelly Glover then went on to misquote copyright law expert Michael Geist to justify the position, leaving everyone to wonder just what exactly they hope to accomplish by picking this fight with the press and with broadcasters, especially after leaking a cabinet document to do so. Paul Wells parses the government’s reasons for this move, and what the unintended consequences will be.

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In case you were wondering, our CF-18s being sent to Iraq will be based in Kuwait – but they won’t get there for another three weeks, given the logisitics of moving 600 support personnel and parts and ammunition to the region.

Because apparently you can’t stoke fears too much, the government used a discredited NBC report on terror threats in Canada and resurrected the talking point about Justin Trudeau visiting a mosque that was a hotbed of extremist talk in the 1990s as means of trying to influence public opinion in advance of yet more laws they plan to pass to combat domestic terrorism.

The Ebola vaccine should be on its way next week after paperwork delays (note: not the intellectual property issue) and the fact that it was easier to store it here given the temperatures it requires.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer put out a brief report on the questions raised by the government’s EI tax credit, and in his office’s estimation, the credit would create a mere 800 full-time equivalent jobs over the next two years – a far cry from the 25,000 person years of employment that the CFIB says. Mind you, there are questions as to the methodologies employed and whether those jobs/person years of employment are comparable, and the fact that the government apparently went with this tax credit as a means of paying back the CFIB after the aggravations caused to them by the Temporary Foreign Worker limits and anti-spam legislation should raise a few more eyebrows, as politics again trumps good policy it would seem.

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto has come out and said that legalization and regulation of marijuana is the way to go to keep it out of the hands of children, like provincially-regulated liquor stores. Funnily enough, that’s the Liberal Party’s position. And the Conservatives? They’re not going to take that expert advice, and plan to keep up their tough on crime measures because they say they have just as many credible organisations backing them. Not that he’ll name them.

In advance of the fall fiscal update, the government announced that they would double the children’s fitness tax credit and make it refundable by the spring. The refundable aspect is actually big because it means that low-income families that don’t pay income taxes would still be eligible for the credit, and get better use of it. Kevin Milligan gives some background on the tax credit and raises the questions about its efficacy.

The National Energy Board has delayed approval of Enbridge’s Line 9B pipeline – which would reverse the flow from Sarnia to the east coast in order to carry diluted oilsands bitumen – because of concerns about bodies of water that it would cross over.

The government is considering putting the live-in caregiver programme under it new “express entry” immigration system after it excluded it from Temporary Foreign Workers programme changes earlier this year. There are concerns that it would make it harder for new caregivers to head to Canada, and for existing caregivers to attain permanent residency.

NDP amendments to the Canada-Korea trade bill have been rejected.

The Trans rights bill was back before a Senate committee yesterday, where a number of groups including the Ottawa Police were in favour of it. REAL Women, of course, was not, and Senator Don Plett continued to make bizarre suggestions as to why the bill makes women unsafe, leading to much online mockery of his fears.

The Council of Canadians is planning to take the Fair Elections Act to court, not that this is much of a surprise.

John Geddes gives a critical assessment of Stephen Harper’s record on foreign affairs, which is a pretty interesting read.

Paul Wells looks at why MPs are so tempted to start heading back to their ridings on Wednesdays and Thursdays rather than sitting five days per week (and those reasons are actually worrying for the role that parliament plays in our system).

And Andrew Leach writes about the problems with calls to ban raw bitumen or crude oil exports.