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If consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, the Harper government must be broad-minded indeed.

As the NDP's Don Davies pointed out in an op-ed the other day, Harper advocates free trade while raising tariffs.

On the Syrian conflict, the Prime Minister describes the prospect of intervention as a "grotesque dilemma" one day, then, a few days later, laces into the Syrian regime's close friend, Russia's Putin, using the kind of gratuitously aggressive and dismissive language other G-7 leaders generally eschew.

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In the election of 2011 the Conservatives did terribly in the 22 ridings of Montreal and Laval.

In the predominantly francophone east and north of Montreal, and in Laval, they generally finished in fourth place, behind the NDP, Liberals and Bloc.

In the central and western Montreal ridings, where there is a large population of non-francophones, Harper's Conservatives did a bit better.

They managed mostly third place finishes, ahead of the Bloc Québecois.

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Soon the Parliamentary session will give way to festival season in Ottawa.

There will be a dance festival, fringe festival, chamber music (two festivals for that), folk and blues festivals, an Italian street festival, a hot-air balloon festival, and, of course, the inevitable jazz fest.

Jazz festivals -- starting at Newport, Rhode lsland, in the 1950s -- have been around for a very long time. They are charter members of the festival club.

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Sometimes strong wording and firm denials don't add up to much.

Take the Conservative Party's official, if belated, reaction to Greg Weston's CBC story about the secret Conservative Party "slush fund" controlled by the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff.

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Here are a few facts.

The Prime Minister's Chief of Staff is part of what is known as 'exempt staff,' that is, he or she can be hired outside the normal civil service process.

However, that same Chief of Staff is employed by -- and paid by -- the Government of Canada, not by a political party.

The Prime Minister is, at one and the same time, leader of a political party -- currently the Conservative Party -- and chief executive of the Canadian government.

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The Rideau Institute, an Ottawa-based think tank, gave a leadership award on Wednesday to Steven Shrybman, the lawyer who handled the so-called 'robocall' court case.

Shrybman represented six Canadians who sought to overturn the 2011 election in their ridings because of fraud.

In one sense, he and the six lost that case.

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The Government of Canada's official website has lots of information about Canadian Environment Week, which runs June 2 - 8. The Harper government, however, seems to have forgotten to mark the occasion. Neither of his official Twitter accounts -- @PMwebupdates and @PMHarper -- have shared any information about the week. 

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The Conservative government is now running Orwellian television ads touting its environmental record.

After reducing the federal environmental role to virtually nothing, radically limiting fisheries protection, scrapping the Navigable Waters Act, chopping the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, and withdrawing from the Kyoto Accord, the Harper government now wants to convince Canadians it is has a strong environmental record.

That effort is a textbook case of chutzpah.

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Here are a few facts for the Minister of Canadian Heritage, James Moore.

First, unlike all the other provinces, Quebec does not have an agreement with the federal government to collect its taxes.

Quebeckers must file separate federal and Quebec tax forms.

For other Canadians, the federal government collects the taxes on behalf of the provinces, according to an agreed formula in each case.

The House of Commons became a court room on Tuesday, May 28.

Opposition and NDP leader Thomas Mulcair carefully and precisely questioned Prime Minister Harper on the Senate scandals (there are, in fact, more than one).

Mulcair eschewed the usual rhetoric. He did not preface his questions with florid denunciations.

He asked simple, open-ended questions to which there should be equally simple and clear answers.

The answers had the appearance of clarity, and for the most part Harper steered clear of the usual Conservative tactic of attacking when attacked.

However, he did not always candidly answer the questions.