I reproduce, below, Hearn's farewell statement and you very much get the sense that he'd dearly love to have a crack at Danny Billions: After two decades of elected service to Newfoundland and Labrador and my country, I will not run in the next federal election. I want to thank everyone who has supported me over the years, and who gave me the honour of serving as their elected member at both the provincial and federal levels.... While it is admittedly tempting to throw my hat in the ring one more time to fight the misinformation campaign underway in our province, I told my family after the 2006 election that it would be my last as a candidate.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, as my friend Paul Vieiria reports today, concludes that the Conservative federal government went on a spending spree this summer issuing 294 press releases that, when you add up the dollar figure in each one, comes to about $15-billion.... But there's some other spending announcements that surely must raise an eyebrow or two in what used to the Conservative Party's base, a base that favoured aggressive spending cuts and once upon a time, frowned on these sorts of things on the eve of an election.... The Honourable Peter MacKay, Minister of National Defence and Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency announced a $50,000 contribution to the Nova Scotia Curling Association in connection with the Sobeys Slam 2008 international curling tournament in New Glasgow in November.

Just as it did during the last general election, the Bloc will pay a third-party firm to offset each tonne of greenhouse gas emissions produced by the BQ's campaign tour. Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe uses the occasion of making this announcement to point out how difficult it can be to actually calculate his campaign's carbon footprint because there are no clear benchmarks for emissions produced by the manufacturers of the three buses that will carry BQ types around la belle province for the next 38 days. "Ceci réaffirme la nécessité d’imposer, comme nous le proposons dans notre plateforme, des normes d’étiquetage écoénergétique pour les véhicules neufs et usagers vendus au Canada," Duceppe said.