In a perceptive article entitled New research council mandate shows Conservative's hostility to free market, National Post columnist Andrew Coyne takes aim at the government's recent announcement of plans to shift the focus of the National Research Council from fundamental scientific research to an industry-orientated one.

Albert Einstein famously said that insanity was "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." On that basis, Canadian politics have now entered a realm of insanity. Like a demonically possessed hamster we race furiously on a circular treadmill while staying in exactly the same political place under a delusion that this will take us to a different destination.

The stark political landscape

The Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) has been at the intersection of political controversy. The Harper Government's Bill C-18 (which came into effect on August 1, 2012) legislated an end to its monopsony (a single buyer facing many sellers) as purchaser of Canadian wheat and barley. Given the importance of the CWB in protecting individual grain farmers from the immense marketing force of multi-national corporations on the one hand, and the determination of the Harper Conservatives to splinter the collective muscle of the CWB on the other, this is hardly surprising. What is surprising is the normally staid CWB being at the center of a controversy in a clumsy attempt to foster participation with a sexually charged advertising campaign.

In the wake of the death of 26 people in Newtown, Connecticut, inevitable calls have surfaced for a re-examination of American gun laws. In a departure from the customary platitudes of American leaders, normally homeopathically watered down to complete emptiness in deference to the gun lobby, United States President Barack Obama said something that sounded like it might actually portend action on this issue: