I'm sure most New Yorkers, passing by this giant billboard, might have wondered who that was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their president. And I'm sure Michael Ignatieff never thought he'd see the day ...

A senior editor here came up with the moniker "The Beavertail Summit" for today's Obama-Harper meetings. Better than the Shamrock Summit (I think). Still, just as with the Shamrock Summit, some pundits were embarrassed by Canada's enthusiasm for Obama. Some other tweets, clips and other anecdotes including the stories I actually wrote like: Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his one-day guest, U.S. President Barack Obama, concluded a few hours of meetings here by proclaiming renewed commitments to fight climate change, the global recession and security threats to the North American continent. "I love this country," Obama said at a Parliament Hill press conference, the first he's given outside the United States since he became president. "We could not have a better friend and ally." Harper used the occasion to deliver a message he hopes American journalists travelling with the U.S. president will take to their readers and viewers, that Canada is as serious about security as the U.S...

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Barack Obama is on foreign soil today for the first time since becoming President. He's here, in Ottawa, for his first face-to-face meeting as president with a foreign leader, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

I've been busy all morning writing about it for our online sites and Twittering away at #obamawa.

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So here's the quandary: What question do you think Global National, National Post, the Vancouver Sun, Ottawa Citizen, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, CTV, CBC, the Canadian Press and others can all agree on?... I won't be in that room (I'm tasked with some other Obama-related work tomorrow) and won't have any input on that discussion but, if I if I did get a chance to ask the new Prez a question, I would argue that we should ask Obama about Maher Arar.

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Minutes after saying I was inching back towards Twitter, I'm almost ready to declare I'm a believer. That's because Carl Meyer, the Ottawa Bureau Chief of the Canadian University Press, just tweeted to say that Obama's luncheon guests tomorrow are all set and they include: Prime Minister Stephen Harper Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon Finance Minister Jim Flaherty Environment Minister Jim Prentice Clerk of the Privy Council Kevin Lynch PCO Foreign and Defense Policy Advisor Claude Carrière PMO policy advisor Paul Wilson PMO Chief of Staff Guy Giorno PMO Director of Communication Barack Obama Carl also tweets to say that the airport farewell party will include Transport, Infrastructure and Communities Minister John Baird.

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British Columbia's Auditor General tabled a report today that concludes that there's a lot of holes in the government-run wireless networks...

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Marleau said the decision by Canada's Foreign Affairs Department to systematically prevent the release of hundreds of thousands of government records, as first reported by Canwest News Service on Monday, is a symptom of a much broader problem, where bureaucrats are trying to use every administrative trick in the book to avoid a mounting workload.... Canwest News Service reported Monday that, since January 2008, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) has prevented the release of more than 160,000 pages of government records on everything from the mission in Afghanistan to new free-trade deals to the NATO briefing materials Maxime Bernier left at his girlfriend's home .

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Canada's Foreign Affairs Department has systematically prevented the release of hundreds of thousands of government records on everything from the mission in Afghanistan to the NATO briefing materials Maxime Bernier left at his girlfriend's, to new free trade deals, Canwest News Service has learned..."This is illegal as stink," said Amir Attaran, a law professor at the University of Ottawa . . .

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I try to keep my digital camera as I go about my business on the Hill and I do snap some pics from time to time but it can often take a while to publish them.... So here's a pic I snapped of Governor General Michaëlle Jean reviewing the troops just before entering the Centre Block of the House of Commons.   more »

DemTech 2009 will showcase cutting edge projects that use information technology encourage citizen access and foster democratic participation. DemTech is a pre-conference of the 2009 Annual Conference and Trade Show of the Canadian Library Association, organized by Apathy is Boring, VisibleGovernment.ca and other members of the CivicAccess.ca community....

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