Monday night will see the election of four new MPs to fill the vacancies left by Bill Casey, Dawn Black, Real Menard and Paul Crete. The results of these four races will no doubt be incredibly important and meaningful. At least for about 24 hours or so, after which everyone will move on to some other shiny object.

Wikipedia has past results for Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, Hochelaga, Montmagny—L’Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup and New Westminster—Coquitlam. Pundits’ Guide has that plus plenty of other stuff.

By-election results on Monday night will be available through Elections Canada beginning at 10pm EST.

Various other points of note.

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Our little pamphlet celebrated the parliamentarians of the year last night—and the written testaments to each MP’s excellence are now online, including salutes to Jason Kenney, Bob Rae, Peter Stoffer, Meghan Leslie, Paul Szabo, Bill Casey and Joe Comartin. The short profiles of Stoffer and Rae are particularly eloquent and insightful.

This is the third year we’ve handed out awards—previous winners include Bill Blaikie and Ralph Goodale.

Bill Casey bid adieu to Parliament yesterday with a classy final speech (the Chuck Cadman story was particularly poignant). Tributes from Peter MacKay, Geoff Regan, Peter Stoffer,Claude DeBellefeuille and the Speaker followed.

Full speeches after the jump. Continue…

Members of Katimavik, Canada’s leading youth service program, were on the Hill for a reception which they do several times a year. Joining them was Montreal Liberal MP Justin Trudeau who used to be Chair of the Board of Directors of Katimavik. Trudeau poses below with a youth and loaf of bread.

The kids were also joined by Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

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The Scene. The early reviews are in and Michael Ignatieff is a disaster. A blight upon our democracy. A threat, no less, to the very notion of this nation we hold dear. Ottawa, it is safe to say, is unimpressed.

“Just who is running the Liberal caucus?” begged the Globe and Mail’s editorial board this morning, thoroughly perplexed at Mr. Ignatieff’s decision to let half a dozen Liberal MPs from Newfoundland vote of their own volition. “Whether or not this proves to be a ‘one-time pass,’ as Mr. Ignatieff has claimed, it could have far-reaching consequences for him, for his party, and potentially for the country.”

“I think it’s a total lack of leadership,” concurred Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe, he of nearly two decades in Ottawa.

“It can be described lots of ways but it can’t really be described as leadership,” scolded the NDP’s Jack Layton, speaking from his 26 years of political experience.

“Certainly,” chirped baby-faced Conservative Pierre Poilievre, a keen student of this stuff, “Prime Minister Harper is a strong leader and you’ll notice that his caucus is unanimous in voting with him. I think that is the mark of a strong leader.”

Anonymous Liberals were said to be perplexed. The men on the CTV nightly news were positively aghast, shocked at the Liberal leader’s unprecedented decision to emasculate himself so publicly.

Trying to grasp the sheer enormity of Mr. Ignatieff’s misstep, the Globe consulted professor Tom Flanagan, a former associate of Mr. Harper’s and, consequently, a man intimately familiar with the mystical qualities that make one a proper leader of men. ”It is a sign of weakness in the brutal world of politics,” the professor concluded. ”Harper, would never do something similar.”

No doubt Mr. Ignatieff thought that last bit a compliment. But then he and the herd don’t know quite what to do with each other. Continue…

An enterprising Ottawa Citizen reporter discovers that two members of the Finance Minister’s economic advisory council stand to benefit from the Finance Minister’s budget.

Total number of related queries posed by the opposition in subsequent sessions of Question Period: 0.

Generally respected independent MP Bill Casey stands in the House and suggests someone with the governing party has falsely accused him of embezzlement in an attempt to defame him.

Total number of related queries posed by the opposition in yesterday’s session of Question Period: 0.

I’ve updated my original post to add the latest reports on the alleged smear campaign against Bill Casey, the most detailed and interesting of which, not surprisingly. comes from Casey’s local paper, the Halifax Chronicle Herald. Along with considerable background information on how the allegations against Casey were floated to at least two journalists during the last election, it also includes multiple on-the-record denials from various national party officials of any involvement by the federal party in filing the complaint with the RCMP.

Conservative Party president Don Plett, who was involved in putting together the campaign team for the parachute candidate that his party ran against Casey after the local riding association sided with the now-independent incumbent, claims that the first he heard of the RCMP complaint was when Casey went public with his allegations on Tuesday.

The party’s national communications director Ryan Sparrow says that the party had “looked into the financial dealings” and found nothing amiss. “The Conservative Party of Canada never thought there was any financial wrongdoing involving Mr. Casey, his local riding association or the election campaign,” he told the Herald.

Finally, PMO director of communication Kory Teneycke is adamant that the government “didn’t have anything to do with the complaint”, adding that “we don’t have a political axe to grind with Mr. Casey.”

ITQ has to confess to being a bit rushed at the moment and don’t have time to add much in the way of original musings, but will do so later today. To tide you over in the interim, here’s a timeline – ITQ does love her timelines, doesn’t she? – of events related to the accusations that unnamed party volunteers were apparently trying to push to the media during the campaign, and the complaint to the RCMP. I’ll update this, too, as we learn more.

September 7, 2008

The federal election begins.

September 19, 2008

Unnamed “Conservative party members … report the embezzlement of funds by a member of Parliament” to the Bible Hill detachment of the RCMP.

September/October 2008

According to the Halifax Chronicle Herald, “a party volunteer who was working for Conservative candidate Joel Bernard in Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley approached Nova Scotia journalists pitching a story about the $30,000 but no media outlet reported on the allegation.”

October 10, 2008

Conservative blogger Stephen Taylor receives an email from an unnamed source that appears to repeat the allegation that Casey “and his cohorts stole and embezzled a large amount of money.” The source also faxes a copy of the cheque. After looking into the claim, Taylor determines that the allegations were unfounded.

January 29, 2009

La Presse reporter Hugo de Grandpre contacts Casey’s office to ask if “there is any update on the charges against [him] on the accusation of embezzlement”.

February 3, 2009

Casey goes public with the allegations against him by raising a point of privilege in the House of Commons.

UPDATE: CBC.ca Nova Scotia has a story up.

EVEN UPDATEDER: … and so does Canadian Press.

MORE UPDATE-IER STILL:  Conservative blogger Stephen Taylor reveals that he, too, received a virtual “brown envelope”.

Halifax Chronicle Herald Ottawa bureau chief Steve Maher provides the most detailed account yet.

AND AGAIN THE UPDATES: Scroll down for the awesome poetizing of Jack Mitchell!

Y’all, I’m totally trying to catch up after missing this morning’s excitement, and I promise that I’ll update this post when I have a better idea of what’s going on, but here’s  a partial the full transcript of the point of order that Independent and Proud of It MP Bill Casey delivered a few moments ago in the House of Commons, at least:

Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, Ind.): Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. I hope to be able to present a prima facie case that my privileges as a member of Parliament and even as a Canadian citizen have been breached.

I never, ever thought that I would stand in the House and have to defend myself against false accusations of theft and embezzlement—I can hardly say the word.

Last Thursday a member of the press, Hugo de Grandpré from La Presse called my office and asked if there was any update on the charges against me on the accusation of embezzlement.

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His is a cautionary tale.

Two years ago, Bill Casey objected to his government’s budget—something to do with an obscure agreement with some obscure East Coast province or another. He voted against that budget in the House of Commons and was subsequently told to go sit on the other side of the House where his poor example would be less likely to influence the sorts of impressionable government backbenchers who might be tempted by the notion of free will.

Stubborn to the end, Casey ran for reelection this past fall. So shamed by their duly elected representative’s refusal to put Parliamentary tradition and partisan allegiance ahead of personal conviction, the people of Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley publicly admonished the partyless Casey with 5,000 more votes than he’d received as a Conservative in 2006. And so scolded, Casey quickly announced he would soon retire from federal politics, resigned to returning to his obscure East Coast province to live out his life as a mere folk hero. Or possibly run for premier.

For sure, the Newfoundland Four—Siobhan Coady, Scott Andrews, Judy Foote and Scott Simms; three of them rookies, the other just very short—may be full of righteous indignation now. They may think they are doing what they should.

But, rest assured, the good people of this country take their three-line whip votes and caucus loyalty very seriously. And no attempt to undermine the historical foundations of our democracy goes unnoticed.

Bill Casey announces his eventual adieu.

Must-reads: James Travers in Nova Scotia; Christie Blatchford on Julie Couillard; Jeffrey Simpson on the debate.

What debate were you watching?
This much we all agree on: Elizabeth May didn’t win.

The Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson calls last night’s leaders’ debate for Gilles Duceppe—and really, how could you not? The Bloc Québécois leader “has never made a decision in government to defend, and never will, [so] he could keep complaining, criticizing and implying, which he does with exceptional cleverness,” that Stephen Harper’s Ottawa, like all the Ottawas that preceded it, is out to screw Quebeckers. If anyone changed his or her mind last night, Simpson predicts, it was probably in the Bloc’s favour—which is to Harper’s considerable disadvantage. Stéphane Dion didn’t wow, Simpson adds, but had at least one very good moment when he attacked Harper for what Simpson calls “his excessively partisan governing style.”

The Calgary Herald’s Don Martin “fearlessly declare[s] there was no runaway winner or obvious loser.” Harper didn’t douse the flames of arts funding and youth justice, and probably didn’t win over many “sovereigntist fence-sitters” unsure of how a majority government would treat Quebec’s interests, but Martin says his performance was “calm and surprisingly laidback,” and that he often “seemed bemused by the group gang-up” instead of annoyed. (His bemusedness seemed somewhat forced to us, but was no doubt a good strategy). As for Dion, Martin suggests he stop raising his hand—We disagree! Take the high road!—and “dive into the debate” tonight.

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