Sunday Morning Links

- skdadl's post applying G20 security standards to that all-important question, "should I go out today?", is of course a must-read. But I'm surprised skdadl missed one of the most important questions of all: "do you plan to carry or transport any weapons such as rope, tennis balls or books?" Because I'd hate for an unwary citizen to fail to ask that question and end up contributing to Bill Blair's travelling road show.

- Sean Bruyea and Allan Cutler rightly point out that the Cons' stifling of creativity and dissent within the civil service has done far more to hurt the chances of public servants coming up suggestions to improve efficiency than their incentive scheme can possibly do to help:

This government implemented legislation and a Public Service Integrity Commissioner, purportedly to protect whistleblowers in a civil service where 400,000 employees are responsible for administering more than $50 billion in annual expenditures. However, in the three years since taking office, the commissioner has apparently not found one incident of government wrongdoing, nor has she apparently identified one whistleblower who needed protection.

In such an unsupportive atmosphere, it is unlikely that most federal civil servants will jeopardize their career, retirement, health and dignity to confront a system merely in the hopes of receiving a cash incentive, especially when any protection is either too weak or non-existent.

- Pundits' Guide features a guest post from Chanchal Bhattacharya which compares the types of strategies normally used in the U.S. and Canada, then nicely summarizes where each of the Canadian political parties stands in trying to adopt the type of social-network-era grassroots organization that served the Obama campaign so well in 2008.

- Finally, Richard Shearmur nicely sums up the questions Canadians should be asking about the Cons' move to gut our census:

Canadians need to ask themselves: Why does this government not value accurate information about Canadian society and its regions?

Is it because it wishes to protect people's privacy? Or is it because an ignorant and ill-informed society is easier to manipulate and govern?

(Edit: corrected author of the first link.)