Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Tim Harper writes about Scott Vaughan's final report as the federal environmental commissioner:

Scott Vaughan doesn’t have the profile of some of his contemporaries but as the environmental commissioner bowed out with a final report Tuesday, he reminded official Ottawa how much he will be missed.

Vaughan is leaving after five years of what he calls — in typical understatement — identifying “gaps” in the environmental policies of the Conservative government. More often than not, those gaps are more like chasms.

He also departs at a time when the environment and the economy has never been so intertwined in this country, a point he hammered home before taking his leave.

...

“We know that there’s a boom in natural resources in this country and I think what we need now, given the gaps, given the problems we found, is a boom in environmental protection in this country as well,” he said.

- Meanwhile, Aaron Wherry has some suggestions to make the Parliamentary Budget Officer more effective based on the U.S.' Congressional Budget Office. But I'm not sure there's much hope the Cons will accept "more resources" as an answer if it might cut into their advertising budget.

- The Star-Phoenix rightly called the Cons' robocall attacks against Saskatchewan's federal electoral boundaries commission "disgusting" - and just in time for the Cons to fess up only once the case had been proven against them.

- And Bill Tieleman is working on exposing the shadowy figures behind B.C.'s million-dollar corporatist media blitz.

- Finally, NDP MP Laurin Liu offers her ideas to make Parliament more effective and representative.