Thomas Mulcair turned in a virtually faultless performance in Edmonton last night, proving once again that the federal Opposition New Democratic Party is attracting top-quality candidates as it completes its sad duty to replace Jack Layton.

Leastways, as far as this blogger could see, the 57-year-old Member of Parliament for Outremont, Que., never made a false step, except for a stumble that didn't much matter when he left the stage.

This wasn't because he was asked no tough questions. He faced a few of those, and a couple that bordered on truculent, from NDP traditionalists unhappy at the thought their church may be on the cusp of becoming a political party that really could form the next national government.

Daniel Paillé's election as the leader of the Bloc is a relatively good reflection of the kind of dark hole in which the Nationalists find themselves at this moment.

Paillé was one of the (few) golden boys of "Québec Inc" (the local bourgeois) who came in with Jacques Parizeau and Lucien Bouchard in the 1990s, more or less like François Legault, who now heads the rightwing Coalition pour l'avenir du Québec (CAQ). Paillé left the ship after Bouchard's departure and made a late comeback with the Bloc ten years later as a Member of Parliament. He was defeated by the orange wave last spring.

Why did Stephen Harper's Conservatives refuse to allow Members of Parliament from the Bloc Quebecois and Green Party to pay tribute to Canada's war dead in the House of Commons?

On Nov. 2, Veterans Affairs Minister Steven Blaney rose in the House of Commons to mark the start of Veterans Week, leading up to Remembrance Day. The Conservative MP for Lévis-Bellechasse gave a good speech in French and English that remarked on how Canada's two founding nations were once enemies on the Plains of Abraham and later "united to fight for the common cause of peace and freedom."