Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Pogge is absolutely right to see the Bloc's threatened withdrawal from the Afghan cover-up commission as utterly useless:

(T)he serious consequences expected to result from the Bloc's withdrawal?

"Our withdrawal could weaken the political committee and would take away its credibility," he told La Presse.

I think that train left the station some time ago. So the Liberals and the Conservatives will vow to carry on and we'll never hear another word about it.

- Silly CCPA, bothering to report on massive increases in government outsourcing costs. Don't they know that public money used to enrich private consultants is free?

- There's some remarkable follow-up to Erin's calculations on potash royalties, as PCS isn't bothering to challenge the conclusion that Saskatchewan is seeing less return on PCS' massive mining operations than Trinidad and Tobago take in from a single nitrogen facility:

I suggested that the company may be paying less corporate income tax to Saskatchewan than to Trinidad. PotashCorp could clear things up anytime by simply disclosing the amount of corporate tax it paid to the Saskatchewan government.

Rather than doing so, its spokesman argues that the province of Saskatchewan is not comparable to the country of Trinidad. He has a point: most Canadian corporate taxes flow to the federal government as opposed to provincial governments. That fact underscores the need for higher provincial royalties to collect a fair return on potash, a provincially-owned resource.

- Finally, I'll be hoping to see much more from LeadNow, including some more effort to paint public involvement as downright desirable rather than merely something not to be ashamed of. But this is a great start in looking to normalize political participation: