1. The Conservatives have unveiled their confidence motion. The Globe story says this will mark the first time in over 100 years that a government will fall on an outright non-confidence motion, but I’m fairly sure Diefenbaker went down on a non-confidence motion in ’63. To the best of my knowledge that’s the only other explicit non-confidence motion to ever bring down a government so at least Paul is living up to his promise about “Making History”:

“That the House condemns the government for its arrogance in refusing to compromise with the opposition parties over the timing of the next general election and for its ‘culture of entitlement,’ corruption, scandal, and gross abuse of public funds for political purposes and, consequently, the government no longer has the confidence of the House.”

2. Although the recent…uhh…roman orgy of spending has clearly been prematurely brought on by the upcoming election, for once I’m tempted to agree with the official Liberal position. The fact is, the Liberals aren’t pulling these announcements out of thin air – these are all policies that have been in the works for a while.

Were these policies written to win vote? Probably. Should they have been completed sooner? Maybe. Are they being rushed? Likely. Do I find it humorous that every Cabinet Minister on the news last night said their announcement had been “in the works six months”? Hell yeah! (apparently the whole government only started working the day Belinda crossed)

But it’s a little unfair to say the Liberals are making up spending announcements on the fly to win votes.

3. Star Candidates: Marc Garneau and Allan Cutler will be running for the Liberals and Conservatives. I’m not sure either will win, but they certainly will help. Cutler, especially, is huge because he’ll be able to keep the sponsorship issue alive.

4. It’s no secret that I’m not a huge fan of David Herle. But when everyone else is knocking the guy, there’s not a lot else I can add. There are only three reasons I can see for not tendering the contract they gave to him:

1. The Liberals rushed the mini budget, out of fear the government was going to collapse.
2. It was an example of PMPM rewarding his friends on the government purse.
3. David Herle is the greatest pollster ever! And no one else could have come up with as good data as he did!!! The brilliance! The insight! The bang-on analysis!

Regardless, it looks fairly unethical. I really hope Paul decides to call an inquiry into this. “Come hell or high water” and all that nonsense about “getting to the bottom of it”…