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Kady O'Malley points out that for all the talk about PMS' ability to shape the direction of Canada's political debate for his party's benefit, the Cons couldn't have been much further from succeeding in their effort to turn last week into a showcase of their crime policies:

It was the sort of tightly-managed communications strategy that gave the Conservatives control of the agenda during the 2006 election. A campaign-style theme week would not only highlight the Tories' best efforts to make Canadians safer with law and order legislation; it would simultaneously expose the opposition, particularly the Liberals, as "soft on crime" for refusing to fast track the bills.

But as is so often the case with the best laid plans of minority governments, Justice Week went off the rails before it even made it to the floor of the House of Commons.

It began over the weekend, when The Globe and Mail ran a serendipitously timed investigative series on the judicial appointment process. Finding several failed Conservative candidates and other party faithful filling vacancies, the feature ominously raised the possibility that the government was also stacking the deck in favour of more conservative-minded candidates by adding police officers and victims rights advocates to the roster.

At the same time, what was supposed to be a pro forma debate over whether to renew two controversial provisions of the post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws introduced by the Chrétien government turned into a standoff that pitted the minority government against the combined opposition forces after the Liberals decided to oppose a three-year extension.

While several former senior Liberal ministers came out in favour of the law, Stéphane Dion remained implaceable. Fearing the inevitable result if the motion were to go to a final vote, the government abruptly pulled the motion from the agenda for the rest of the week.

All told, by the following Friday, not only had the government made little headway in moving the legislative ball down the field, but it was the Conservatives who were on the defensive.

Of course, there should be no doubt that the Cons will try to make political hay later on out of the failure of the opposition parties to play along.

But it's still worth noting that while the Cons may be making progress in their efforts to define Stephane Dion, their concurrent efforts to put a focus on their own lock-'em-up crime strategy resulted in nothing but abject failure. And if the Cons' successes can be limited to personality politics rather than substantive policy issues, that should go a long way toward minimizing the long-term damage of their stay in office.