According to the Department of Finance, a former Conservative staffer with Toronto-based consulting firm Playbook Communications was playing by the book when he landed an sole-source contract to help the minister’s office prepare for the budget, the Ottawa Citizen reports. Playbook founder Mike Van Soelen, who worked as communications director for then-Treasury Board president John Baird until he left government in 2007, provided “communications strategy and support” for the release of the 2009 budget.
Categories: Need to know
What a difference a loonie makes
Untendered $24,999 contract to Tory-linked firm flies under the radar—by $1
From Macleans
Sports
Is hockey becoming America’s game?
More kids, more rinks, and now, more popular than basketball
Inkless Wells
Debating the Office of Religious Freedom
Welcome to The New Missionaries series, in partnership with the Canadian International Council
World
Syria: ‘Now this is a war’
Pro-democracy protesters talk to ‘Maclean’s’ about the toll of fighting the regime and their fears for the future
Jesse Brown
The Internet is the opposition
Teh Internets have been saying one and the same thing about Vic Toews’ Lawful Access
Jesse Brown
Vic Toews, meet Fake Ann Cavoukian
Ironically, Ontario’s privacy commissioner (a harsh critic of Lawful Access) also has a detested Twitter doppelganger
Canada
Canada’s foreign worker boom
Since 2006, Canada’s low-wage temporary workforce population has ballooned by 70 per cent
