It's a lovely photo. Justin Trudeau and his family spending part of their Canada day helping to harvest vegetables for an Ottawa food bank.
It's another reason I admire our prime minister, another reason I love this peaceful country so much.
But unfortunately because Trudeau is so decent, and so Canadian, a lot of Cons and other haters want to kill him.
Ever since Andrew Scheer began driving his Con cult down the Far Right Road, I've always thought that his obsessive virulent hatred for Justin Trudeau would take this country to a very dark place.
Where Canada would look a lot like Trump's America, and our precious values wouldn't stand a chance.
And sure enough, with only weeks to go before the election, Scheer's angry Cons are howling at the moon, and looking and sounding more deranged and more dangerous than ever.
Like these yellow vested goons waiting for Trudeau in Barrie, Ontario...
As we all know, Andrew Scheer likes to sniff for fake scandals like a hog sniffs for truffles.
And for a very simple reason, he has nothing else, no policies, no nothing.
But while he was able to keep the SNC-Lavalin fake scandal going for twelve weeks, with the help of his shabby media stooges.
The case of Admiral Mark Norman that Scheer and his grubby Cons were trying to turn into the latest fake scandal has apparently blown up in his face.
Jody Wilson-Raybault had barely finished telling "her truth" the other day, before Andrew Scheer came running out to demand that Justin Trudeau resign, claiming he had lost the "moral authority" to govern.
Which of course was absolutely absurd, and in normal times would have had many wondering whether the desperate Scheer was losing his marbles.
But of course these are not normal times. The grubby Cons and their shabby shuffling media stooges are in a fevered frenzy, trying to use the fake scandal to destroy Justin Trudeau.
So the sleazy Scheer has felt empowered to take his never-ending campaign to destroy Trudeau, to a new level of depravity.
It was for me the burning question at the heart of the Mike Duffy scandal. The one that never got answered.
Why did the RCMP charge Duffy with bribery, and not charge Nigel Wright for paying that bribe out of his own pocket?
And now we finally know the answer.
Who can ever forget Stephen Harper's Great Tour of India back in November of 2012?
The trip was an absolute disaster, he managed to alienate his Indian hosts, there was no trade agreement. Not even a photo-op with the country's Prime Minister.
But he did manage to get his picture taken at every sacred temple of every Indo-Canadian community in Canada.
He did bring his own samosas with him...
And his own tank...
It seems only appropriate that on the very day Mike Duffy returned to the Senate, the RCMP Commissioner should appear before a Senate committee and show once again why he still doesn't get it.
And that a time when the RCMP is being rocked by allegations of incompetence and sexual harassment.
He should defend the force.
Almost two years ago Gilles Michaud, the RCMP's Assistant Commissioner, held a splashy news conference to announce that the force had laid no less than 31 charges against Mike Duffy.
And despite the way the trial went, a few hours before the verdict came down, he sent out a memo to staff members.
Which in retrospect couldn't be more absurd.
Yesterday I wrote that the RCMP owed Canadians an explanation about the way it handled the Duffy case.
Because it has raised some disturbing questions about the relationship between the police and the Harper regime, that strike at the heart of our democracy.
And now Michael Harris has a lot more questions for everyone involved.
When Justice Charles Vaillancourt acquitted Mike Duffy, he brought down his gavel on the head of quite a few others.
He savaged Stephen Harper's PMO for the way it had tried to cover-up a scandal.
He heaped scorn on the Senators who had treated Duffy so badly, and on the crown for the way it prosecuted the case.
And as Neil Macdonald points out, without singling them out for special treatment, he also raised some disturbing questions about the conduct of the RCMP.
When the RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson was working for the Con regime, I couldn't help feeling that he was turning the force into the Harper Police.
Or help wondering whether he was willingly collaborating with that sinister mob, or whether like so many others he was being held hostage by them, and their depraved leader Boss Harper.
And was suffering from the so-called Stockholm syndrome.
I still can't decide what the real reason was, but one thing is for sure, Paulson just doesn't get it.
A few days ago I wrote a post where I wondered why the RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson has so far failed to explain the reason his investigators decided not to charge Nigel Wright for his role in the Duffy scandal.
Even though he promised to do that more than a year ago.
Now Michael Harris goes a step further and wonders whether the Mounties have become Harper's private police force.
Now that we know that Stephen Harper's lawyer believed that Nigel Wright had Harper sign off on a five-point plan to payoff Mike Duffy.
That good to go really meant good to go. And now that we know this:
Donald Bayne, Duffy’s defence lawyer, read from the transcript of a police interview Perrin did a year ago: “He [Wright] was explicit the prime minister approved of the responses to Ms. Payne [Duffy’s lawyer], so as I said at the time, the prime minister had approved all of the five points articulated by Mr. Wright.”
“That was an accurate statement,” Bayne asked. “You said that to the police?”
“Yes,” replied Perrin.
I think it's about time that the RCMP be asked to explain why it didn't charge Wright, or Stephen Harper's intimate advisor Ray Novak.
Well as you know, Stephen Harper has turned the RCMP into the Harper Police.
And sadly the Musical Ride isn't what it once was.
Is there no place now where Canadians can be spared the Conservative government’s jingoistic militaristic bleating with its conjured-up images of dangers lurking around every corner, nurturing the fear that “others” are out to rob us of our freedoms?”
But every now and then the Mounties still do get their man.
I'm not big on conspiracy theories, although I do believe that when living in Harperland paranoia can be a higher state of consciousness.
But here's one for you:
Why did the RCMP choose yesterday to release the unseen video of the crazed gunman who stormed Parliament Hill?
Sometime today Canada's Information Commissioner is expected to recommend that charges be laid against the RCMP, for withholding and destroying gun registry documents, before Parliament had finished debating whether they should be shredded.
But if she does it will now be a meaningless gesture. For it too will be shredded.
Because it seems that buried deeply in the Harper regime's latest foul omnibus bill, is a bill to protect the RCMP by rewriting history.
Ever since the trial of Mike Duffy began, I keep getting asked the same haunting question:
If Duffy is being charged with accepting a bribe, why wasn't Nigel Wright charged with bribing him by cutting him that $90,000 cheque?
And I have to explain that the RCMP has yet to explain that decision. But it seems that they didn't believe that Wright obtained any "personal benefit" from that blatant bribe to try to keep Ol' Duff from opening his big mouth.
And then I have to explain that yes it's true, and no I'm not insane, and since I'm not a lawyer, and legalese gives me headaches, I'm really glad to see that Democracy Watch is still demanding justice.
It was a chilling moment in Question Period yesterday, that should raise questions about whether Stephen Harper is still mentally fit to govern, and whether we are already living in a police state.
The moment when Tom Mulcair asked him whether his totalitarian bill C-51 could be used to spy against his enemies, and he replied by accusing the NDP of being a "black helicopter fleet."
Even though it was a very good question, and his sinister black helicopters are already threatening our democracy.
If you remember that the judge who sentenced Michael Sona to nine months in jail, for his role in the robocall scandal, said he didn't believe the former Con operative had acted alone.
And that during the trial, the Crown's star witness Andrew Prescott suggested that Sona's former boss was involved.
And you remember that another judge, in another robocall case that went nowhere, also suggested it was a conspiracy.
You might think that Elections Canada would keep trying to crack the case.
But if you did you'd be wrong.
Almost as soon as the shooting stopped, and not long after he emerged from his closet, Stephen Harper declared that Canada was under attack by the dark forces of ISIS.
And starting calling the dead gunman, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, an ISIS terrorist. Even though he was a mentally ill crack addict.
And a few days later the RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson claimed the RCMP had a video that showed that Zehaf-Bibeau had acted for ideological motives.
But now it turns out we may never see that video, and as Tim Harper points out, that's a real threat to our democracy.
