Earl Provost, one of Mayor Rob Ford’s top advisors, personally urged Queen’s Park to help bankroll $2.8 million in renovations to Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School’s football facilities, the Star has learned.

The unusual appeal for financial help for the football team coached by Ford was made on March 3 — a Saturday — and there was urgency to the request, sources say.

Despite controversy swirling around his gridiron activities, the mayor refused comment on Thursday.

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Me in the company of Lord Black.  Who woulda thunk it.

Of such things is Carleton’s reputation made.

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The Toronto Public Library event’s worth attending just because Noah’s going to be there!

Oh yeah – and I’m on with Strombo next week!

Here is a picture of George and Noah.  I, meanwhile, am invisible.

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Been hearing a lot about this character from fearful-sounding Cons, lately. “Harper’s Schreiber,” one told me.

Big political graves are dug with small shovels. Meet Harper’s newest tiny shovel.

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Some of them have waited a lifetime for this moment.

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This pollster is the same pollster that called Alberta and Quebec wrong – big time.

Trudeau-maniacs, don’t start measuring the drapes at Langevin Block just yet, okay?  There’s a long, long way to go.

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The NDP are four points ahead of the Conservatives? Wow!

Sets up my Sunday Sun column, nicely, however.  Free snippet:

Among Liberals, there isn’t much dispute that the cabal of staffers who did the work, the Conservative Research Group (CRG), did their jobs very well. CRG helped remove Paul Martin from power, and made mincemeat of Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff.   They folded, spindled, and mutilated successive Liberal leaders – and policies – with brutal efficiency.

Since obtaining a Parliamentary majority, the CRG kill machine has gone napping.  They have barely taken note of the selection of Angry Tom Mulcair as leader of the New Democrats.  They have done nothing to maul Mulcair in the way that they mauled Martin, Dion and Ignatieff.  As a result, successive polls have shown the NDP at, or near, Conservative Party support levels.

A very senior Harper-circle thinker recently acknowledged that the Conservatives have, indeed, cooled it on the daily campaign stuff.  The reason? Finally securing a Parliamentary majority.  That, and staffer fatigue.  “It was exhausting,” said this fellow, who would know. “But they’ll be back.”

 

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Seriously? The author of the Green Shift?

Trudeau’s doomed.

UPDATE: One of McNair’s friends has now been in touch to gently protest the minuscule tongue-in-cheek post, above.  The suggestion that the Cons and the Dippers will attempt to associate Trudeau (and all leadership contenders) with past perceived Grit misdeeds isn’t particularly news, or in any way novel.  That’s what they do.  It’s also the subject of my Sunday Sun column.  As to McNair, I’m sure he’s a nice fellow, and I wish him the very best that politics has to offer.

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Ibbitson:

Both political strategist Warren Kinsella (Fight the Right) and former journalist Paul Adams (Power Trap) have new books exploring what is wrong with the left and how to fix it. Both identify the core weakness of progressives in Canada: They cannot describe their values.

Everyone knows what Conservative values are: promoting self-reliance; getting government out of your face; keeping taxes low and finances sound; encouraging business growth; going after criminals, relentlessly.

The Harper government makes sure that every policy, every action, every word speaks to and reinforces those values, which the party shares with a large and loyal base.

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