The Liberals are up four points to 30 per cent. When it comes to the who's-a-better-leader type of questions, poll respondents overwhelmingly picked Harper over Dion on all characteristics but one: When asked which leader they rated as honest and trustworthy, Dion was picked by 38 per cent; Harper by 33 per cent. And 58 per cent of those polled say the credibility of the Conservatives had been damaged by the RCMP raids.... Susan Delacourt, in her reporting on this poll, sounds a note of caution for election-hungry Liberals: Despite all this bad news for the Tories, however, the poll does not provide any strong encouragement to Liberals to provoke a snap election when the Commons returns Monday after a one-week break.

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James Woods reports on the front page of today's Regina Leader-Post that the flattest of provinces has the fattest of bank accounts: Saskatchewan's ever-fattening bank account may yet burst as extra cash appears likely to fall into the government's hands thanks to stratospheric resource prices.... With oil prices reaching $119 US a barrel on Friday, the province appears likely to reap more -- perhaps a great deal more -- in oil royalties than projected in the budget, with its estimated oil price of $82.36 US for the fiscal year.

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For a long time, the most valuable company in Canada, as measured by their stock market value, was the Royal Bank of Canada. Banks are a nice steady business that throw off lots of cash every year and it made sense that RBC was king of the hill.

But ...   more »

ANZAC Day, which will be marked April 25, is Australia's most important national commemoration. It marks the anniversary, according to information in my inbox this morning from the high commissions to Canada of Australia and of New Zealand, of the first time Australian and New Zealand military forces fought ...   more »

I tore myself away from all the Conservative election scandal stuff to write this one up for tomorrow's papers: OTTAWA - Canadian Forces personnel learned to operate Canada's newest military plane, the giant Boeing C-17, by training on American jets, including flying those planes into Iraq in support of the U.S. war, according to a memo written by Canada's top general and obtained by Canwest News Service.... "Canadians have been very clear from the beginning that they wanted no part of George Bush's war on Iraq," said NDP MP Dawn Black, her party's defence critic, "and they certainly don't want to see Canadians getting involved through a back door."   more »

While some of my colleagues like Glen McGregor -- who, along with Parliament Hill freelancer Tim Naumetz, first reported on what we now know as the in-and-out scheme -- dug into the details of the nearly 700 pages of documentation that the Elections Commissioner put in front of a judge last week in order to obtain a search warrant, Elizabeth Thompson, a few desks over from mine, remembered what Tom Flanagan had said about the concept of moving money in from the national campaign to the local campaign and then back out again from the local campaign to the national campaign.... And, keeping in mind that one of the defences mounted by Conservative MPs in the House of Commons in the wake of the RCMP raids was that it just wasn't fair, that every party engages in the advertising financing schemes that they did.

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Digging through the nearly 700 pages filed by the Elections Commissioner to support his request for a search warrant is well worth the effort. There's lots there that's already part of the public record or part of the record in the lawsuit against Elections Canada.

Here's one paragraph from a ...   more »

The application for the search warrant served on the Conservatives this week was released this afternoon by the party itself but not to Canwest News Service, CBC, Maclean's and The Canadian Press. CTV, La Presse and The Toronto Star got their own private briefings with party brass but when I ...   more »

It has three projects on the go -- and it hopes to add many more -- one of which is working towards creating some kind of standardized database for the disclosure of the expenses of politicians and their political staff.... Visible Government is also working on a forum for tracking and discussing bills before Parliament, following the example of the U.S. site, OpenCongress.

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Ken Dryden, you might have heard, once played a little hockey. I'm told that James Moore laced up the skates, too, and racked up a lot of penalty minutes playing junior hockey on the West Coast. Dryden and Moore are now Members of Parliament and this week, during Question ...   more »