Julie Payette’s throne speech delivery was followed by Justin Trudeau taking to TV to highlight how his governmental aspirations relate to worries about another pandemic lockdown. “It’s all too likely we won’t be gathering for Thanksgiving, but we still have a shot at Christmas,” the PM said, even if plans related to the latter are vanishing fast.
Running from a safe distance
With her campaign underway to retain a Liberal seat in the Toronto Centre riding, Marci Ien posed with the outgoing Bill Morneau, who was recently fined $300 for promoting other candidates while finance minister. Now he’s free to endorse his likely replacement as MP in a byelection set for a week after the We investigation resumes.
The third strike has kicked Jim Karygiannis out of Toronto city hall. A story about his exceeding campaign spending limits on a victory dinner led the former Liberal MP to be removed last November. Karygiannis argued it was a clerical error, only to lose his city council seat again in June. Now he’s run out of courts wiling to hear another appeal.
This rap sheet remained clean
Doug Ford’s streak of memes from pandemic press briefings is sure to continue, based on the leaked document draft about plans to take “targeted action” if second-wave closures are required. Meanwhile, it’s been six months since the premier was enraged by overpriced Lysol wipes, but it looks like no charges were laid for such infractions:
Wendy Mesley remains employed by the CBC. But her show The Weekly has been cancelled in the wake of apology for using “a word that should never be used” during a production meeting. Coverage of the situation by CBC News was also reviewed by its ombudsman, after a complaint from someone with the name Neil Macdonald.
Finally, a holiday cheese plate
Countdown to Christmas, the Hallmark Channel’s perennial leveraging of Canadian production benefits, released its 2020 movie lineup. Most newsworthy is Mean Girls star Jonathan Bennett in a gay adoption plot, and Love, Lights, Hanukkah!, in which Toronto actress Mia Kirshner’s character “Christina” discovers she’s Jewish through DNA testing:
