The Department of National Defence plans to turn five Sea King helicopters (that's one on the left) -- which have a history of reliability problems -- into troop carriers.
The Sea King troop carrier version could end up in Afghanistan, according to some military sources I spoke to.
In Afghanistan, ...   more »

Laurent Beaudoin, the CEO of Bombardier Inc., complained yesterday that Canada’s dollar is now too expensive relative to the U.S. dollar and that it is hurting Canadian industry. Mr. Beaudoin called on the federal government, through the Bank of Canada, to do something.

He did not call for a devaluation ...   more »

A Reporter's Ottawa is my map/guide to the nation's capital from the perspective of a working journalist. I posted it this morning and asked for suggestions of other sites. A few came in: One fellow kindly wrote in asking about the Mayflower and about the Tim Horton's on Sparks Street. ...   more »

The keen-eyed among you will have noticed a new feature today. I've added a new section too the left-hand column. It's an RSS feed of headlines for press releases, announcements, and information distributed by the federal government. I am not the author of the headlines -- a federal government PR ...   more »

If you're curious about where things are in Ottawa relative to everything else, then you might want to bookmark this handy little map/guide to "A Reporter's Ottawa" that I put together using Wayfaring.com. It's still a work-in-progress and   more »

News item:

Harper to avoid national media, claiming bias
..."We'll just take the message out on the road," the Prime Minister said. "There's lots of media who do want to ask questions and hear what the government is doing for Canadians, or to Canadians. So we'll get our message out ...   more »

I am a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. I got that membership when CTV brought me to Ottawa in January, 2005 to join its bureau there.
For most of my career, though, I worked for what the Prime Minister and his communication advisers would likely characterize as local ...   more »

Oh, heart be still — speeches by World Trade Organization are now being podcast. How long have I waited to rollerblade while listening on my iPod-like device to Pascal Lamy muse about sustainable development!

Seriously though — good on the WTO to do start up this service, which was announced ...   more »

The Bank of Canada today raised its trend-setting overnight interest rate to 4.25 per cent from 4 per cent.

Merrill Lynch was among the nine of the 13 Bay Street brokers who correctly predicted the rate hike. Merrill’s chief Canadian strategist David Wolf now predicts the overnight rate should stay ...   more »

I’m waiting for the most well-connected Iranian I know personally to blog about the remarkable report — apparently unverified — that the Iranian Parliament is considering a law which would require non-Muslims — i.e. Jews and Christians — to wear a coloured label on their clothing. Until Hoder chimes in, I ...   more »