The plant goes down. The industry is weaker. The price of the commodity has lagged. Any of those things can push people into unemployment or lower income categories, and that hurts.

E-mail importance is defined by the receiver, not the sender.

Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.

I'm totally in favour of meeting our Paris commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But I don't think we should do that by making ourselves uncompetitive.

We are involved in a historic restructuring of the world economy. Virtually every country that matters has been striving to pursue the same economic model, and has bought into a set of market-based principles that has brought new players on the stage and new markets. We have to take full advantage.

Despite 18 years as a non-partisan public servant, my deeper "tribal" affinity has always been Tory. The Afghanistan file has given me an additional reason to cleave to that side of the spectrum. Canadian Conservatives have generally been more comfortable and confident with hard security issues.

All politics are local, whether in Kabul or in Canada.