"BRIEFING NOTE: Respond to criticism about economic impact of high-Loonie, everything-for-petrochemical-industry policy by making voters see Thomas Mulcair as recklessly un-Canadian…"

This isn't an actual quote from the Tories' current list of talking points, but it seems to be what the Strategic Heavy Lifters in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative brain trust have in mind for their main attack on the leader of the NDP Opposition. Expect them to trot out that French passport momentarily.

They promised us the Mother of All Battles, and the best they can come up with before Harper's Republican Guards bug off to the dusty hills of Alberta is to call the NDP leader un-Canadian?

Pathetic!

Brian Mulroney's success in leading the Progressive Conservative Party to a second majority victory in the general election of 1988 was the last hurrah of the old Conservative Party, the party whose lineage extended back to the great days of the Liberal Conservatives of the 19th century, under the leadership of Sir John A. Macdonald. It is ironic that the party's final electoral victory was in aid of the implementation of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement that had been negotiated between the Mulroney government and the Reagan Administration.

Since 1984, when Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives won a large majority of federal ridings in Quebec, the federal Liberal Party has failed to win a majority of seats in Quebec in any subsequent election, although they came close in 2000. Contrast the last three decades with the era from 1896 to 1984.

In 1896, Liberal leader Wilfrid Laurier led his party to victory in a large majority of Quebec seats on his way to power. Since 1896, the Conservatives have won a majority of federal seats in Quebec only three times, in 1958, 1984 and 1988. Beginning in 1993 and in every federal election since then, the Bloc Quebecois has won a majority of federal seats in Quebec.

It was either the best of Throne Speeches or it was the worst of Throne Speeches. Heck, maybe it was both at the same time.

Yesterday being the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, maybe there's something powerfully symbolic in that assessment of the first Throne Speech by the Progressive Conservative government of Alison Redford.

Today we mark the passage of Tom Kent, the man who got it right about the state of Canada's news media and was ignored to the country's great disservice.

Kent -- who had a distinguished career as a journalist, code-breaker, senior civil servant, Liberal Party activist, adviser to prime ministers, businessman and academic -- was asked in 1980 by the government of prime minister Pierre Trudeau to lead an inquiry into what was then so clearly going wrong with the Canadian newspaper industry, and by extension the rest of the media.

Growing up in Western Canada after prime minister Lester B. Pearson's Bilingualism and Biculturalism Commission was set up in 1963, it was always easy to find someone who wanted to bellyache about the use of the French language in Canada.

These people were forever complaining about how "French was being rammed down their throats with their cornflakes." I'll leave it to readers to consider the psychological ramifications, as it were, of why that particular meme stuck in the minds of so many Western Canadians.

Some stories are just too complicated for ordinary bloggers to explain. That's when we turn to the expert knowledge offered by Perfesser Dave, the Answer Guy. Perfesser Dave knows practically everything there is to know about politics, economics and labour relations in Canada. In fact, if he were any smarter, he'd have to be hired by the Calgary School! You know, like Ted Morton, Tom Flanagan and Stephen Harper! If you have questions, don't ask me! Ask Perfesser Dave!

The latest chapter in the Tubby Black saga is enough to make us almost like the old reprobate.

Not enough, mind you, to conclude Lord Black ought to be readmitted to Canada, permitted to hang onto his Order of Canada gong or for that matter remain a member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada.