Steve's Honeymoon may not be over yet

This week has seen two independent officers of Parliament slam "Canada's New Government" over serious breaches of the Elections Act and the Access to Information and Privacy Acts.

The Hill Times has had the story for months here, and the LPC put out a release here about the Tories illegal $1 million scheme to circumvent the Canada Elections Act. If Steve-O is really serious about transparency, he'd open up the Conservative Party's books to a judicial inquiry.

This follows the developing "Culture of Control and Secrecy" (CACAS) in the PMO, criticized by Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart and ATI Commissioner John Read. Hopefully, the Commissioner's review will expose this government's shady actions.

The appointment of a Christian, social conservative to the bench shows that PM Harper is acting as if he has a majority and is starting to tip his hand on his real agenda.

But the cherry on top has to be the assinine comments of Quebec Conservative MP Daniel Petit who went farther than the Globe's Jan Wong in comments that PM Harper called prejudiced.

Petit suggested at a Caucus meeting that Quebec's treatment of immigrants inspired school shootings in the province. When asked about Montreal's Dawson College rampage, Petit drew attention to the fact that none of the three gunmen who blasted their way on to Montreal campuses since 1989 were old-stock francophones.

He even suggested scrapping the gun registry and using the savings to help immigrants integrate better in Quebec. (Get it? Immigrants bad, gun registry bad, melting pot to make Quebec immigrants more pure laine good).

"We had the case of Marc Lepine (at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique in 1989)," Petit said after a Tory caucus meeting last Friday. "He was really (named) Gamil Gharbi and he was Algerian. We had the case of (Valery) Fabrikant (at Concordia University in 1993). "Now we have Mr. Gill" -- last week's Dawson College shooter, he added.

Harper needs to turf Petit from Caucus.

Now riddle me this dear readers: "How is it that with this kind of political storm brewing, Steve can get headlines and kudos for getting tough on emissions when he has scrapped Kyoto?"

The Liberals need to pull their socks up and take these guys on.