On full responses

I'll weigh in quickly on the controversy surrounding Jean-Francois Delisle - and start by noting that his comments yesterday reflected a desire to alter law to discriminate against a particular group that we shouldn't accept from any political candidate or party.

That said, today's follow-up statement also signals that responsibility will fall where it should for a comment which has nothing to do with party policy. Delisle will answer personally for the content of his opinion, with voters in Megantic-L'Erable getting to judge his comments in the context of their other choices on the ballot.

Meanwhile, voters elsewhere can rest assured that Delisle's personal views are completely apart from the position of the NDP as a party. And it will be particularly interesting to watch whether the NDP's opponents who claim to value candidate and MP independence (and concurrent responsibility) over command-and-control politics will recognize that's exactly the principle being applied here - or whether they'll try to push the NDP into the same type of top-down termination we've seen so frequently from other parties.