No, really: ITQ was there — although not liveblogging for some reason. She has berrypics of the whole thing, even!
Which isn’t to say that she won’t be hanging around outside Langevin this afternoon, of course, but it seems to her that this is just the start of the recent tradition of pre-session meet-and-greet-and-pretend-we’re-all-trying-to-make-parliament-work between the prime minister and the various opposition leaders.
Which means that unless the PM is on one of his periodic ‘This government will never negotiate with separatists’ kicks, Gilles Duceppe will almost certainly be next on the invite list for a cosy one-on-one-chat, with a Ignatieff/Harper tete a tete as the grand finale, likely sometime late next week, just before the pre-Labour Day round of Senate appointments.
Oops. Should I have put that in spoilertext? Sorry about that.
Anyway, ITQ will also be heading to the National Press Theatre for Layton’s post-meeting media availability, so check back later for the designated liveblogging thread.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, in Yellowknife, Ignatieff is “[trying] to dispel rumours of a fall election,” according to Canadian Press, with vague platitudes about wanting “good government, not an election”, and then immediately falling into a self-dug logic hole by pointing out the “50 billion deficit and 1.5 million unemployed,” and saying that “the Harper government isn’t doing enough to deal with the situation.”
