During his whirlwind tour of Canada's North, Stephen Harper has thrown Arab-Canadians a bone. Harper announced $25 million in aid for Lebanon. He emphasized that this was a large amount and that it would be funneled through "legitimate" aid agencies. A more important announcement was that Canada would not be sending troops to take part in the UN peacekeeping force that will be deployed to the region.

It would appear that some Saskatchewan Conservative MP's are concerned with getting re-elected. It would seem that the Harper government's laxidasial approach to equalization is causing some political heat in the prairie province. In a leaked letter, the Saskatchewan caucus urges the Prime Minister to quickly resolve the equalization issue or they will be feeling political consequences back home.

The problem with micromanagement is that even if you manage not to do it, people still think that you're still the one pulling the strings, no matter how much you deny it. This is the case with a Tory MP who's pulled out of an all-party fact finding mission to the Middle East.

It would appear that Canada is heading to a system where you only get the justice you can afford. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada was stating in a speech to the Canadian Bar Association. The story is from the CBC here. There apparently is an epidemic of unrepresented people in the court system, sometimes upwards of 40% of those a judge will see on any given day. The Chief Justice opined that this is seriously hindering the ability of these people to a fair hearing.

Every time I see an article dealing with the so-called "War on Terror (TM, Pat. Pend)" it strikes me how badly we (the West) are losing. With every change to our rights and freedoms, our very way of life that governments impose on us in the name of security, it's one more victory for those we are "fighting" in this "war". Here's why:

It's been a while since I've written anything about politics as I have been on vacation. Now that the vacation is over and I'm getting back into the routine of my working life, my mind is again pondering the wonder that is Canadian politics.

What I'm looking at is the impending implosion of the Conservative party at it's top. From what I have gathered in the press, Stephen Harper is a micro-manager of immense proportions. For example, a Canadian citizen is currently charged with terrorism, and all the announcements about this are coming from the PMO, or at least the Prime Minister's Parliamentary Secretary who is basically a mouthpiece for the PMO. This is unusual as this is normally a Department of Foreign Affairs matter, as it deals with another country and as such the Minister of Foreign Affairs should be the one speaking on this.

*Update July 2006* There have been changes to the WMR. In November 2005 my wife and I moved into a house from a townhouse, so the railroad had to move too. This allowed for some changes to the line to make it a little larger and ease some curves. The virtual tour link below is the WMR as it is now, to see the old WMR click here.

Over the long weekend Mrs. Evil and I went to visit my mom in Penticton. It was a nice visit, walked a lot, bought a whole lot of tasty fruit and vegetables to bring home. The trip home was interesting to say the least. There's a lot of construction along the Trans-Canada Highway in B.C. at the moment. The primary reason is to reduce the number of accidents along this road.

Here at Castle Evil I get a fair amount of comment spam. Not really a big issue as I tend to keep on top of it with the help of some software that runs with Geeklog. The only time it's really an issue is when I've gone away for a few days and don't have net access. This is an issue because I then rely on the software to find the spam. Unfortunately, after returning from my visit with my mum in Penticton thiw long weekend, the anti-spam software went a little nuts and deleted a bunch of non-spam comments. I have restored most of these from the backup but since I haven't done a backup since my return, comments from the month of July have been lost. Just thought I'd let you know where your comments went, the hapless victims in the war on spam.

During my morning cruise of the internet, I came across this little item from Bourque which links to this blog article by cardinal47. It would appear that Harvie Andre, the former Tory cabinet minister under Brian Mulroney, has been given an untendered contract worth about half a million dollars for six to eight months of work. The contract is here.