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Macleans.ca

Canada’s magazine

The House: Further reading

For their assistance when I was putting together last week’s piece on the House—and for the indispensable sites they respectively maintain—I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Michael Mulley of openparliament.ca and Cory Horner of howdtheyvote.ca. I also must thank Ned Franks, both for his writing on Parliament and omnibus legislation and his perspective.

‘More functional and hence more meaningful’

The Public Policy Forum is set to convene a day’s discussion on the state of Parliamentary discourse, with specific attention to Question Period and the committee system. Assuming the day itself does not descend into mouthed platitudes and character assassination, it should be a worthwhile exercise.

Monster hospital

Some thoughts now on Mark Kingwell’s recent essay, not necessarily in response, but at least inspired by. Andrew Potter has posted some of his thoughts here. Both Andrew and Mark are exceptionally smart and have offered valuable perspective and insight. I apologize for the complete lack of references to Aristotle in what follows.

This actually happened

Mark Kingwell has an essay about political civility in the new issue of the Walrus that I encourage you all to read—though it doesn’t appear to be online yet—and which I’m going to write about next week. In the meantime, here is Marlene Jennings’ supplementary question yesterday.