"“As you know, I have been working to determine a course of action by the end of the year pursuant to which I could seek election to the Legislature. Details of that course of action will be finalized between now and the end of the year. Since I am out of the province until early in the New Year, and since the proposed resolution of this matter also involves others, we have fixed a specific date on which I will outline my plans and answer your questions..."

Here's some details I received from the Department of Finance this morning --- breaking down their estimates by quarter. In the Economic and Fiscal Statement, the forecast was for growth to resume in the quarter beginning in April. That would mean that governments just had to get over a three-month hump before things would pick up again.Now Finance says growth will not resume until the quarter beginning in July, a much longer period for governments to now plan for.

An ancient cabal of weather fanatics operating outside any government, sometimes known as the Cloud Elders, sometimes called The Knights Doppler, influence our news ...

Things work a bit differently in St. John's, NF. There, the YMCA folks who want a new building can rely on the largesse of the federal government. The federal government, through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, is spending 1.5 million of the tax dollars collected from people in Oakville and Orillia and Thunder Bay and elsewhere to build a new $11.3 million YMCA facility in St. John's. (At $11.3 million, that will be one sweet 'Y'!)

"The persistence of the financial market maelstrom means that the economic downturn will undoubtedly be more severe than we previously thought, with the United States now in the throes of a fairly deep recession and Canada no longer able to avoid a short period of contraction. This bleaker context will have widespread negative implications for provincial economies."

"...If the Liberal Party is to be actively involved in the budget process, the first thing the Liberal Caucus and all Canadians need to know is the true state of the government's books. Meaningful discussion and input requires honest budgetary numbers. The government's recent Economic and Fiscal Statement has presented many questions for which we need answers in order to proceed further . . ."

Want to get into the Senate? This is the guy (left) you've got to get by first. His name is Dave Penner, an energetic, no-nonsense guy, with a young family who hails from Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont. Penner is best known to journalists as the 'wagon-master' during the last few election campaigns....

CBC in PEI is reporting: [The government of Prince Edward Island] is defending its right to publish mortgage information online in the wake of a complaint filed with P.E.I.'s privacy commissioner alleging that posting such details on the internet is an invasion of privacy. The government is fighting a complaint objecting to the kind of information available on Geolinc, an online database run by the province's taxation department, although just last week it moved to restrict the way Islanders can search information on another of its sites, the online corporate registry.

OTTAWA - A young Stephen Harper was first swept into the House of Commons back in 1993 on a wave of often idealistic western populism that, among other things, demanded a Senate that was "equal, effective and elected."... In the economic and fiscal statement that prompted the current political crisis in Ottawa, the Conservatives proposed doing away with public subsidies of political parties because, as they said, politicians had to do their bit to cut costs in tough economic times.

... the big news, it seems to me, from the Bank of Canada today was its assessment that by-and-large Canadian households are holding up very nicely, thank you, in this economic storm. Now remember, this is an economic storm that our prime minister two weeks ago said was as dangerous as anything we've seen since 1929. And yet, the Bank says, right there in black-and-white, that, so far as the average Canadian household goes, "the overall situation remains relatively positive." Now that's news!