The economy, the French language and terrorism were the winners of last night's Conservative Party debate. Winners in that they got the most attention. The losers though, well, that would be anyone who tuned in hoping to hear something new from the Conservative Party status quo.

The Conservative leadership debate in Quebec City, the largest yet, was Stephen Blaney and Maxime Bernier's night to shine, and they did, as the candidates who could pack the clearest and fastest punch. 

Blaney's riding just south of Quebec City in Lévis made it easy for his supporters to pack the room. Maxime Bernier's support was nearly equal and the two unsurprisingly outperformed the other candidates.

John Tory, the right-wing mayor of the City of Toronto, has put forward a plan to help correct Toronto's budgetary deficit, and he's getting support from some progressive corners of the city.

Tory wants to toll two highways, and it's a hill (or two roads) that some progressives have decided to die on.

Perhaps it's a noble reaction. Only rich people drive, only suckers take the TTC, and in a city plagued with the WASPy morality of the 1800s, it makes sense that a policy of collective punishment should be shared broadly, regardless of how you commute.

Forget harm reduction. It seems anything that makes driving in Toronto an even more wretched experience should be embraced and generalized, even if it's a regressive flat tax that will hurt poorer people the most.

At the entrance were three photograph collages of those who have fallen to fatal overdoses, many of them youthful and vibrant British Columbians.

It is intended to be a reminder that this scourge isn't something confined to the back alleys of the Downtown Eastside. One B.C. presentation showed a photo of a smiling young couple from North Vancouver with their baby.

-Vancouver Sun

Fentanyl has been in the news a lot this past year. As the synthetic opioid reaches deeper into Canadian towns and cities, there's a rise in reporting about overdoses.

Just after the dust settled in Toronto in July 2010, a broad coalition of community organizations and individuals came together to defend the right to free expression through protest.

The G20 meetings were over. Bruises were starting to heal and groups who had mobilized in the lead-up to the G20 now organized to condemn state repression. They were mostly comprised of social movement organizations, student groups and unions.

But there were two individuals in particular who became synonymous with defending our rights to protest.

Back when Stephen Harper was Prime Minister, he signed a pact with President Obama that made many Canadians uneasy.

The Integrated Cross Border Law Enforcement Operations Act was part of the 2012 omnibus budget package. It allows for American law enforcement agents to cross into Canada and gives, "Every designated officer has the same power to enforce an Act of Parliament as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police."

The program, called Shiprider, is limited to waterways between Canada and the United States. Law enforcement isn't supposed to be able to use these powers on land.

But there were plans to expand Shiprider.

This week, CBC officially launched its "new destination for debate," CBC Opinions.

It's unclear why the public broadcaster thinks that this venture makes any sense this late into the blogging game.

"The goal is to give our audience a destination for intelligent, provocative debate and commentary on the issues of the day," said Jennifer McGuire, General Manager and Editor-in-Chief.

Police in Quebec are spying on journalists.

The revelation started when La Presse discovered that the Montreal Police put its columnist Patrick Lagacé under surveillance. It's grown to include some journalists at Radio-Canada who are being spied on by the Surété du Québec, the provincial police force.

There are two ways that one could react to this news, and both include outrage. The first is outrage over the intrusion into the privacy of journalists, who are a privileged class of individuals. The very foundation of their work requires that they not be intimidated or spied on by state security forces.

If you happened to read Terence Corcoran yesterday, either because your eyes were bleeding and you needed to pick up the closest rag you could find, or because you were trapped on a flight beside a business fellow who manspreaded his way into your personal space, you would have read a fascinating work of fiction.

In a screed that sounds something like "Won't somebody please think of the children?" (except replace children with "the capitalist class"), Corcoran takes one for the team and does his best to make a Union Boss look like Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is lecherous and repugnant. The floodgates of allegations have been opened and dozens of women have come forward.

These dozens probably stand in for hundreds. But who knows? We never will.

What's been so frustrating about the mainstream coverage of Trump's sins has been the tone of outrage towards these allegations. Not the kind of tone used by women who have courageously taken to social media to detail their own experiences with sexual assault, but the tone only a dominant male voice from within the mainstream media could use.

That voice that is shocked to hear that this kind of "locker room talk" ever happens.

The coup d'état that happened at Wednesday's Halifax Pride meeting is an important warning for progressives everywhere -- our organizing work is never finished.

I won't get into the details of the meeting. El Jones was present and her take is in-depth and required reading if you're following the saga.

What I'm more interested is the weaponization of free speech over the course of this debate.

Free speech is a fundamental value of Western society, just like democracy and equality among citizens. There are elements of free speech that are critical and must be defended vigorously.