Are there no adults in Ottawa these days?

The question is neither facetious nor entirely rhetorical. There are days when Parliament Hill resembles a giant daycare centre more than the seat of serious government.

Where to begin? Well, let’s start with the bizarre episode of Peter Goldring, the Conservative member for Edmonton East, who last week made his inane "contribution" to the controversy over alleged sexual misdeeds on the Hill by issuing a three-paragraph press release. In it, he referred to the two female MPs (unnamed) from the NDP who have accused two male MPs from the Liberal party (both named, shamed and suspended from caucus) of sexual abuse.

Back in the olden days, when prime ministers still deigned to speak to provincial premiers, they would hold gatherings called First Ministers' conferences. This happened fairly often, perhaps once a year, depending on what was happening in the country at the time.

The prime minister would invite his provincial counterparts to Ottawa to talk about the economy, the Constitution, the state of the federation, pensions, medicare or even that old chestnut, the reform of the Senate.  The premier of Ontario always sat on the PM's right, the premier of Quebec on his left, with the others placed around the table in the order of entry into Confederation.

Now that MPs are back in Ottawa from their week-long Remembrance Day break and the Prime Minister has returned from telling off Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit Down Under, might one venture an impolitic question? 

Who is responsible for pulling the wool over the Canadian public’s eyes on the F-35, that hugely expensive stealth warplane that Ottawa has been dithering over for the better part of a decade?

Love them or hate them, you have to concede one thing to the Harper Conservatives: They are persistent. Some might say stubborn or high-handed, even when wrong-headed. Once they have embarked on a course, they do not let themselves be deflected -- not by public opinion, not by the courts (the restoration of anti-prostitution laws being a current example), not by Parliament, not by expert opinion and certainly not by common sense.

The Jian Ghomeshi saga, sordid though it is, has been fascinating on several levels as it played out over the past week or 10 days.

On the most fundamental level, there's the serious issue of violence against women. Yes, in some situations, the state does have a place in the bedrooms of the nation.

Reflecting on the events in Ottawa last week, the most striking thing was not the violence that took the life of a young soldier, Nathan Cirillo, at the National War Memorial and that of his murderer in a shootout in Parliament's Hall of Honour. The most striking thing was the response to that violence from politicians, the police, the press and the Canadian public.

True, there was some silly talk on the airwaves about how this "assault on the heart of Canadian democracy" would change Canada and Canadians forever. That was nonsense. For the most part, the response was measured, restrained and thoughtful. Concerned, yes. Panicked, no. Conspiracy theories did not attract enough oxygen to survive.

Back in 1972, when his Liberal government lost its majority in the election against Robert Stanfield’s Progressive Conservatives – coming within two seats of losing the government entirely – Justin Trudeau’s dad, Pierre, struck a pose of supreme unconcern, calmly reassuring his supporters that “the universe is unfolding as it should.”

Trudeau the Elder was quoting a fragment of a prose poem called “Desiderata,” by the American writer and lawyer Max Ehrmann, who wrote: “(And) whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

Whenever an election appears on the horizon, political strategists attempt to frame a "ballot question" to offer voters a bite-sized synopsis of the key issue, as the strategists see it.

For Conservatives planning next October's federal campaign, the ballot question has been the economy and the Harper government's wise management thereof since the crash of 2008. A federal surplus is within reach, the economy is growing again (at least a bit), interest rates are low and a brighter future lies ahead, or so it can be argued. Why risk everything by changing horses now?

Every once in awhile, politics produces a story that manages to be both profoundly sad, yet instructive. Such is the story of Herb Gray.

Herb – I will call him by his first name because that’s how I knew him in my years in Ottawa – was first elected to the Commons in 1962 and was re-elected 12 times in his Windsor, Ontario riding. He was there for the introduction of medicare and the Canadian flag, for the entry of Pierre Trudeau on the political scene, and the rise of Stephen Harper. When he retired in 2002, after 40 years on the Hill, he was the longest continuously serving MP in Canadian history.

Imagine, if you can, that you are Stephen Harper.

You've had quite a career. You've gone from being an obscure economist on the political right to the leader of a national political party. You've fought four federal elections and won three of them. You've been prime minister of Canada for nearly nine years, and you love the job. There is nothing you would rather be.