Roundup: I dream of Turks & Caicos

Visions of Turks & Caicos were abounding on the Hill yesterday, as premier Rufus Ewing visited to talk trade, and while no doors were closed on the subject of annexation (except, more or less, by John Baird), everyone had their fun. Even Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall decided to get in on it, offering to make the islands part of Saskatchewan so as not to need to open up the constitution to add an eleventh province, and PEI Premier Robert Ghiz playfully suggested that his island province would be a better fit. Err, except that Nova Scotia beat them to it by a decade, when their assembly passed a unanimous motion back in 2004 to have Turks & Caicos join them. Oops. Regardless, trade and security would be beneficial, where it could be a Canadian trade port to the Caribbean, and possibly even a supply base for our DART teams. It wasn’t all without hiccups either, as a Caribbean news site listed some complaints that the islands have of Canadians, and that they have no idea where Conservative MP Peter Goldring came up with the notion that 100 percent of the islands support a merger with Canada.

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Roundup: Commence the final stretch

It’s the final stretch, as there are four scheduled weeks left for MPs to sit before we send them back to their riding for the summer. And they want to put on a good show of being productive, so they’ll be doing evening sittings the whole way through. Here’s a look at what’s on the agenda for those four weeks. It’s likely the Senate will sit for another week or so after the Commons rises, but it will all depend on how many bills the Commons passes at the last minute, and how much certain Senators want to push back at the government over things like the Fair Elections bill (for which I know there are Conservative senators who are still not happy with it).

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