| This week, we got updates on two important bids by the federal government to muzzle its employees.

In the first instance, plans to subject MPs' staff to an indefinite gag order have apparently been ditched. Last March, MPs' staffers were told they would be subject to a lifetime ban on discussing any of the details of their time working in Ottawa.

The gag order was only one of several new guidelines for staffers, which included new rules on conflict of interest and disclosing gifts and payments by third party.

It was a number that leaped off the page at me.

According to national survey conducted by Samara, a non-profit group that promotes civic engagement in Canada, only 10 per cent of respondents had volunteered for, donated to, or joined a political party in the previous five years. Only 17 per cent had taken part in a political discussion on social media, or written a letter to the editor on politics or a political issue in the last year.

Reading this reminded me that I recently also read that only 20 per cent of Canadians still smoke.

Imagine that. More people smoke than use the brave new tools of social connectivity to discuss political issues. All this at a time when smoking is considered unfashionable, and the internet makes it so much easier for us to engage, debate, organize and mobilize.

For those of you following my Bomber game-day transit deliberations - all two of you - here is the final report.

Went at 5:30 sharp to the Osborne Street rapid transit station to take the 161 Super Express to stadium. The 161 did not materialize, for reasons not entirely understood by the two dozen Bomber fans waiting with us at the platform. At least one 161 did appear northbound from the U of M campus, leading some to speculate the root STARTED at the U of M. If that's so, that's dumb given the need to move people south.

Waited 25 mins and finally caught a 162 to the stadium. There were a ton of buses moving southbound on Pembina Highway. So many that we were able to leap frog several and didn't have to make every stop. It was a semi-express and got us into the stadium in 25 minutes.

Total time needed to get to the game - 50 mins. Not bad.

| I can't be absolutely sure because I was only able to check every five minutes all afternoon, but I'm going to suggest that Winnipeg Transit finally posted updated transit information for Bomber game days at 4:40 p.m. Tuesday. I'll let you decide whether, based on previous commentary, that was "urgent" enough.

The information posted on its site is helpful, although I did find it a bit incomplete. And the presentation is very cumbersome.

For example, it did not contain information about the temporary diamond lanes (open buses and bicycles only) that will be established to help get buses into and out of the campus on game days. That information was contained in a great story by WFP reporter extraordinaire Bartley Kives. The diamond lanes will be in effect on Bishop Grandin and University Crescent. Why is that information important? Consider my dilemma.

Like many of you, I have read and heard much over the past two weeks about the experience of getting to and from the new Investor's Group Stadium -- home to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and sundry other sports and entertainment events. I get to experience, first hand, the game-day experience on Thursday, when I take my family to see the regular season home opener.

We haven't yet decided how to go to the stadium. Might hitch a ride with friends. (Carpooling is the intelligent person's solution to traffic problems after all.) My wife, a regular Winnipeg Transit passenger, has suggested we try out the Bomber express buses from a park and ride site. Just for the experience, I thought that might be the ticket.

Went to Winnipeg Transit's website and found out that the page with all information on how to get to and from the stadium on game day is down. No information at all. Nothing as well on the Bomber website. It's all being updated, and team officials have promised that it will be available sometime Tuesday afternoon.

As I write this, it's now officially Tuesday afternoon. In fact, it's just after 12 noon. Nothing yet. I'm going to watch carefully to see what happens in the next few hours.

The debate in Manitoba over infrastructure funding is still pretty heated, two weeks after the NDP government announced it was raising the sales tax by one-point to essentially double the annual cash contribution to capital projects. When fully implemented, and combined with current cash-to-capital contributions, in theory the proposal will generate about $560 million annually for infrastructure (based on current PST yields).

The debate over the PST hike has been, as could be expected, pretty shrill stuff. Citizens, special interests, lobbyists and opposition politicians are all jockeying for position. There is no consensus yet, but it's fair to say there aren't a lot of people outside the government proper who like Premier Greg Selinger's plan to implement the tax, and do it without holding a referendum.

Of course, Manitoba is not the only province involved in a debate about politics, tax increases and infrastructure. Our neighbors to the east have their own debate going, and it's a doozy.

Newly-minted Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne last week introduced a provincial budget which calls for, among many things, a new array of surcharges, levies and taxes to help pay for 'the Big Move,' the name given to her ambitious $50-billion transit improvement strategy. The Big Move would see $2 billion spent in each of the next 25 years on new highways, bus rapid transitways, and extensions to the Go Train and Toronto Transit Commission subway systems.

Score another direct hit for the Canadian Taxpayer Federation. Our friends at the CTF grabbed headlines this week by revealing, through an access to information request, a personal expense scandal involving Red River College President Stephanie Forsyth. CTF chief prairie sleuth Colin Craig, acting on a tip from a "whistleblower," revealed several questionable expenses claimed by Forsyth over the past two years. These included $200 for golf shoes, $130 for a duffle bag and automobile expenses, including her driver's licence fee.

Let it be said that Forsyth should have known better. The golf shoes in particular are one of those expenses whose symbolic value far exceeds its monetary value. Forsyth said she needed the shoes to attend a golf tournament as a representative of RRC. Most golfers know that a) you can get a decent pair of golf shoes for less than two C-notes, and b) a lot of non-golfers (which she admits to being) have been known to get through a round of golf in a pair of trainers. Either way, it was a silly expense that a highly paid civil servant should have known was a lightning rod for axe-grinders and dissidents.

As for the other expenses, you could make a strong case that they are rather mundane. Perhaps there were explanations for why Forsyth claimed a duffel bag or her licence fee. We'll never know because the CTF, as is its style, did not call the president for clarification before posting the expenses online. 

This publish-first-ask-questions-later-style is well practised by bloggers and other self-proclaimed, Internet-fuelled watchdogs. Get your shot in, worry about whether you were on the mark later. The CTF, like a lot of bloggers, would argue that it is not part of their job to call the people they skewer for comment; that's the work of hack journalists like me. However, not calling and getting clarification or reaction means that you don't really care if what you're saying is accurate, fair or even worthy of publication.

She's running way behind in the polls, is mired in debt and deficit and facing a provincial election in just 10  weeks time. Could things get any worse for BC Premier Christy Clark?

Apparently, they can. Last week, the opposition NDP, frontrunners in the pre-election polls, released exerpts of an internal memo from B.C.'s Liberal government that outlined its strategy to woo ethnic voters in the upcoming election. The 17-page document, prepared by Clark's chief of staff, described ways of earning "quick wins" among ethnic voters by unleashing a wave of apologies for historic wrongs and creating a team of partisans to flood open-line radio shows catering to ethnic audiences with pro-Liberal callers. 

Ethnic-gate, as it's been dubbed, prompted a tidal wave of protest, both from within and without the party. Not surprisingly, the NDP were morally offended by the cynical strategy, and that government resources would be used to facilitate it. More surprising was the fact that a group of 89 Liberals who claimed to be of "ethnic background" met last weekend and voted to ask Clark to step down as premier.

Perhaps I've spent too much time breathing the same air as political operatives, but I had trouble figuring out where the scandal part comes in here. I spent the weekend reading everything I could on ethnic-gate, and found some interesting other facts of the story. It serves, I hope, as a bit of a reality check.

We laid down a challenge to all hockey fans: test your knowledge of the rules of the game. You responded in remarkable fashion.

Last week, the Free Press posted the Great Canadian Hockey Quiz to test the average fan's knowledge of the rules of hockey. There were 14 questions on everything from offsides and icings to more complex queries on specific infractions. Hockey Canada, the guardians of the rules of the game, get a big assist for helping us compose the questions and answers.

So, how did you fare? More than 3,000 readers have taken the quiz so far. The average score was slighly more than eight right answers out of 14, or about 60 per cent. That's a solid 'C' grade. Only 120 people got a perfect score; that was about four per cent of the total number who took the quiz.

For those who self-identified as referees, the results were, perhaps not surprisingly, better.  Referees scored 83 per cent on the quiz, a solid 'A.' That's important to remember next time you're hounding a zebra at the rink.

Optics are a funny thing in politics. Thanks to attack ads, talking points, Question Period rhetoric and good old-fashioned retail political manipulation, we develop certain impressions of politicians, parties and even government. These impressions could be well-earned and accurate. Or they could be completely unfair. Sometimes the only way to really assess the labels we put on politicians is to look at the hard numbers.

That's not always a panacea for accuracy. But it can be the stuff of great debate.

Consider that last week, Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty offered a fiscal update that essentially framed his continuing deficit worries as a "revenue problem."

It was a surprising shift in lexicon for Flaherty and the Conservative government. Going into the current fiscal year, Flaherty had earned the label of a hard-line fiscal manager thanks to significant spending cuts and civil service reductions.

He’s not leader of anything right now, and even if he does win the Liberal crown, it’s a long shot that he will ever get the chance to lead a government. Still, that hasn’t stopped Quebec MP and presumptive leadership front-runner Justin Trudeau from acting like he’s already prime minister.

Trudeau is scheduled to appear at a Liberal rally in Winnipeg on Saturday October 20. This is the first time he is visiting Winnipeg since he announced his intention to run for the leadership of the federal Liberals earlier this month. Once he declared, and even before he confirmed his appearance this weekend, a cadre of Free Press journalists began rousting their contacts in the party to secure a sit-down interview with him whilst in our fair city. In particular, we attempted to get him to do a live webcast interview at the Free Press News Café on McDermot Avenue, where we have interviewed federal politicians such as Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Heritage Minister James Moore, among others. Heck, we even had then-interim Grit leader Bob Rae in for a chat.

After nearly two weeks of back-and-forth with local Liberals working on his campaign, and his federal handlers, we were told Trudeau “isn’t doing one-on-one interviews” at the moment. We were free to scrum him after his Saturday gig, the Grit handlers said, but that was the extent of his availability.

The fact is Trudeau is doing one-on-one interviews. He did an “exclusive” interview with the Globe and Mail’s Jane Taber, a veteran ‘inside the ropes’ journalist, for a story that appeared October 6. He also did a sit-down with Maclean’s Magazine for their October 11th issue.

The Free Press has written numerous articles in the last few days on the rising cost of corrections, and concerns by the Manitoba Government Employees Union about prison overcrowding. I weighed in with a column pointing out that maybe it was time for the strident law-and-order advocates to figure out a way of paying for the increased costs of longer sentences and new criminal code offences. The provinces claim it will cost them billions of dollars to pay to administer and incarcerate the increased numbers of prison inmates that will accrue from the federal government's omnibus crime bill, expected to become law later this year.

The focus of the MGEU story was on prison overcrowding, but that is, of course, only one part of the total justice portfolio. Policing, court administration and prosecutions all have their own budget lines.

The following is information provided by the Manitoba government on the increases in spending for the four main areas of justice programs:

 2004/20052005/2006 2006/2007 2007/20082008/20092009/20102010/20112011/2012 BudgetCOPS (RCMP, WPS, BPS, Dakota Ojibway)$72,223$81,789$86,978$92,994$104,273$112,132$120,794$126,601COURTS $39,747$41,326$43,618$45,067$46,483$52,840$52,255$50,970CORRECTIONS$102,932$111,590$121,401$134,003$155,928$176,915$188,918$180,889PROSECUTIONS$16,366$17,094$17,713$22,878$21,457$24,929$25,713$26,293