Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Nick Taylor-Vaisey follows up on the point which I put aside yesterday, and notes how absurd it is for the Sun Media Party to be portraying the status quo as some horrible new development:

Akin calls the current language of the regulation “outmoded and impossible-to-enforce”, and perhaps that’s true. But if truth squads have existed, they must have been in hiding for the last couple of decades. Because that’s how far back the current regulation can be traced.

Twenty-five years ago, the CRTC set in stone that no licensed radio station shall broadcast “false or misleading news”. That was 1986. The following year, the CRTC did the same the same for TV stations. In 1990, the commission did the same for pay TV.

Now, perhaps the proposed changes are for the best. Perhaps not. But Angus was simply defending the status quo. And if that status quo includes truth squads roaming the streets in search of journalists, it’s been a pretty invisible campaign.

- James Travers points out that while any gains from a perimeter security deal with the U.S. are likely to be illusory, Canada's concessions will once again be all too real:

Nudged along by Stephen Harper, Canadians increasingly mistake their prime minister for a U.S. president. Now, as construction begins on a border perimeter, they are making the flip-side error of assuming Barack Obama has Harper’s power to deliver promises.

Few of the checks and balances constraining the president limit the Prime Minister. In practice that means Obama can’t guarantee the cross-border free flow of people, goods and services that Harper hopes to secure with sovereignty concessions.
...
Forgetting that the world’s most powerful leader doesn’t wield the unfettered influence of the Prime Minister, (Canadians) are ignoring two inescapable facts of cross-border life.

One is that trade pacts are only as strong as their capacity to equitably resolve disputes that jeopardize entrenched interests. The other is that the president’s promise is only as good as what other Americans are willing to deliver.

- By Cheryl Gallant's logic, shouldn't the Cons be cancelling their F-35 purchase and suggesting that communities band together to buy locally-operated fighter jets if they think it's so important?

- Finally, I'm far from sure that the declaration that municipal and provincial dollars will absorb the cost of a Quebec City arena is anything short of the best-case scenario for the Cons.

Sure, it'll be painful for them to watch the usual PR stunts take place without being able to participate. But it also allows them to take credit among less-informed voters without actually contributing anything useful - and I'm far from sure they won't get just as much mileage out of that as they would have in actually tossing in some money.