Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to give the late NDP leader Jack Layton a state funeral can be parsed two ways: a noble gesture or a Machiavellian political manoeuvre to further marginalize his original foe, the leaderless, languishing Liberals.

But no one, least of all Harper himself, could have predicted Canadians' week-long outpouring of emotion. Was it a fleeting historical moment? Or something more profound? If the former, political normalcy will return with the opening of Parliament Sept. 21. If the latter, the state funeral could turn out to be Harper's biggest political mistake yet.

Ottawa's $130 million out-of-court settlement with forestry giant AbitibiBowater has created a precedent undermining provincial ownership and control of resources under Canada's constitution, an international trade policy expert says.

"This is a decision that should concern all Canadian provincial governments, in terms of regulating and developing their publicly owned resources, and concern all Canadians," says Scott Sinclair, a former senior trade policy adviser with the B.C. government, now a senior research fellow with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Remember the attack ad the Paul Martin Liberals used in the 2006 federal election campaign that backfired so badly it helped galvanize Canadians to turf them out instead?

Aimed at terrifying Canadians about the militaristic and undemocratic impulses of Stephen Harper's Conservatives, the Liberal ad intoned over a war drumbeat: "Soldiers with guns... In our cities... In Canada... We did not make this up."

Today the tables could be abruptly turned on the Conservatives with this far more sinister message: "The prime minister's office. In a first-world democracy. Controlling a major media network. We did not make this up."

Industry Minister Tony Clement's tweets aside, Stephen Harper's Conservatives know that changing the 2011 long-form census from compulsory to voluntary makes it useless for public and private Canadian decision makers. That's exactly why they're doing it.

An economist, the prime minister understands the value of statistics. He appreciates that authoritative statistics on the relative social and economic well-being of individual Canadians empower the disempowered to demand government programs (higher taxes) to reduce poverty and disparity and promote upward mobility.