Canadians are putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to political preferences. Data published late Friday by Elections Canada show the Conservative Party of Canada continues to dominate its political rivals when it comes to fundraising, just as the party dominates its rivals in opinion polls. For the three-month period ending September 30 — a period when it appeared the country was headed for yet another general election — nearly 40,000 Canadians wrote a cheque for the Tories. The total value of their contributions was about $3.8 million.

Governor General Michaelle Jean announced the list this morning of those who will receive next Thursday Canada's highest civilian honour, the Order of Canada. The order was created in 1967 and, since then more than 5,000 noteworthy Canadians have received it. This time around, Jean is lifting three exceptional types from the Officer class up to the top spot -- the Companion. The ceremony honouring the 3 new companions, 11 new officers, and 21 new members will be held at Rideau Hall in Ottawa next Thursday morning.

As a parliamentarian, as a man, a father, a grandfather, I call on the government's leadership to really get a grip on its members and set a higher standard.

Opposition politicians accused officials in the Prime Minister's Office of threatening the integrity of the independent Commissioner of Lobbying, in the wake of revelations that the watchdog was investigating a lobbyist firm with close connections to senior Ottawa Conservatives.

The Government Accountability Office -- Washington's rough equivalent to Canada's Office of the Auditor General -- gave itself what you might think is an esoteric question: If a global pandemic like the H1N1 flu forces a whole pile of to stay home and telecommute using our home Internet services, could the Internet handle the extra traffic and, more importantly, could financial markets continue to function given their dependency on the availability of plenty of bandwidth?

Three universities are in CPC ridings; three are in Liberal ridings; two are in NDP ridings, one is a BQ riding and 1 -- the University of Toronto, received money for three campuses, in NDP, Liberal, and CPC territories. Based on that sample, I'm not so sure excluding universities would show a much different trend.

I should also note that last week, there were perfectly appropriate and defensible analyses of other infrastructure programs that did not look at "qualifying institutions". I've adopted some of the basic methodologies and assumptions of some of my colleagues who did those analsyses and I plan to continue with the same "rules" as I look at other programs or -- if Prime Minister Stephen Harper ever keeps his word and releases the entire list of infrastructure spending -- as I look at the thousands of projects funded by the entire $62 billion economic stimulus plan.

But the Atlas of Canada, normally as an authoritative reference work as you can get, has Lebel's riding of Roberval-Lac Saint Jean coloured Bloc Quebecois-blue.

The Liberals will release Pink Book III tomorrow at 1145 at an event on Parliament Hill. The Pink Book is the policy ideas developed and advanced by the Liberal Women's Caucus and forms part of the party's platform during a federal election.

Here's a look back at the first two ...   more »

TD Bank's chief economist Don Drummond and his director of ecnomic analysis Derek Burleton take a look today at the books of federal and provincial governments [PDF] and, though they've been among the gloomiest of forecasters during this recession, their latest report, while grim, is not the most dire in the world. They conclude that, if federal and provincial governments want to get back in the black by fiscal 2016 -- which they believe to be an ambitious target -- it can be done but governments will have to slow growth in government spending to 2 per cent year. Of course, as they point out, no government in office has demonstrated anything close to that kind of discipline.