On diversions

It should come as no surprise that the Globe and Mail's ongoing paean to high-end charitable tax breaks is apparently linked to a request from the Harper Cons. But perhaps more noteworthy is the fact that the Cons are commandeering the agenda of the House of Commons' finance committee in the process:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has asked the Commons finance committee to study charitable donations incentives – including proposals to allow individuals an exemption from capital gains tax if they donate shares in privately held corporations or real estate.

“We await the study and its findings,” Chisholm Pothier, a spokesman for Mr. Flaherty, said in an e-mail Sunday.

Needless to say, that continued insistence on dictating what gets studied by nominally independent committees should offer all the disproof anybody needs when the Cons claim not to be centrally managing committee agendas.

But perhaps more important is the question of what's being pushed to the back burner in the meantime. Among the other topics of discussion for the finance committee are studying the Cons' budget legislation and analyzing the causes of the U.S.' economic turmoil. And should we be surprised at all if the Cons want to change the subject as quickly as possible?