Last weekend, International Trade Minister Stockwell Day was the guest on a new feature that's being jointly produced by Canwest News Service and Global National. It's called In Person and, each week, Global Bureau Chief Jacques Bourbeau and Canwest News Service Politics Editor Mark Kennedy will grab a beat reporter for an in-depth interview with a top Ottawa official, usually a cabinet minister. You'll be able to watch a video excerpt of this interview and read a news story out of this interview at our Web sites or in one of newspapers.

Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan was this weekend's In Person subject. My colleague Janice Tibbetts is the beat reporter on the justice file so she joined Jacques and Mark to interview Van Loan. Day, as I mentioned, is part of my reporting responsibilities. Here's an edited transcript of that interview.

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t's been a remarkable political turnaround for Day. . . . but Peter Julian, the NDP's trade critic, says that whether it's Day or his predecessor David Emerson, the government is not doing enough to protect Canadian jobs . ..

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After Kady blogged about a big black-tie gala here in Ottawa that featured politicians, journalists and a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan music, one of her commenters, J@ack Mitchell, came up with this witty gem, with apologies to G&S: I am the very model of a modern Tory Minister, My public views are circumscribed, my private views are sinister, In wetsuits I look chiseled, for I’m hardly roly-poly, oh! And that’s why they have given me this wonderful portfolio On weekends you’ll appreciate my hardy grassroots-mustering But weekdays I’m in Parliament and smugly filibustering I can’t decide if Harper likes me only for my shyness or Because I like to talk to my invisible pet dinosaur!

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the PMO's attempt to control the Press Gallery via The List is nothing, it seems to me, compared to the control the White House has over the press corps there. "Canadian journos decide on their own who gets ?s and what they will ask. We, on the other hand, at Gibbs' mercy" wrote Christina Bellantoni, White House correspondent for the The Washington Times . . .   more »

The national Conservative caucus met this morning, as they do every Wednesday morning, and today all those attended a got a gift: A hard hat with a big bue sticker that says "Creating Jobs". Transport, Infrastructure and Communities Minister John Baird was handing them out.

"He's the one who created these and there'll be lots of announcements about the infrastructure projects that are in our economic plan," Flaherty told reporters as he emerged from caucus holding one of those hats. "It's very important, as it says, to create jobs in a difficult economic time."

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