2021 G7 Summit Cornwall, UK – Masonic Signs & Sights

The Queen has held a rare face-to-face audience at Windsor Castle, meeting the Australian prime minister, who told her she was “quite the hit” at the G7 summit.

The monarch chatted to Scott Morrison in the Berkshire royal residence’s Oak Room on Tuesday.

It is the first time the head of state has been photographed carrying out an audience in person, rather than virtually, since March 2020, just before England’s first lockdown.

Bro. Conrad Black: Celebrating the end of the Bro. Mike Duffy ‘farce’ – National Post

My absence in England last week prevented me from celebrating the acquittal of Mike Duffy in this column, but there are a few points still to be made about it. There was never anything wrong with Mike Duffy padding around promoting the Conservative party while a paid-up senator. MPs do that and there is nothing wrong with senators doing it. There was nothing wrong with Nigel Wright paying Duffy’s alleged excesses on his travel expenses.

Kelly McParland: Good news, the Americans hate the F-35 too (The Jet that Ate the Pentagon)

Good news: Foreign Policy magazine may solve the dilemma for you. The Washington-based magazine demonstrates that Canadian opponents aren’t alone in thinking the “fifth generation fighter” (which sounds significant but really only means there were four earlier ones, kind of like owning a “fifth generation Oldsmobile”) is a disaster waiting to happen. In “The Jet that Ate the Pentagon” it pretty much dismembers the argument for the plane, largely on the basis that it will be insanely expensive (even more insanely than the costs known at present, and which the federal government sought valiantly to disguise by letting Defence Minister Peter MacKay be in charge). And besides the expense, it says, the planes don’t work very well, and aren’t likely to.

John Ivison: Canadians need the straight goods on F-35. First and foremost: Does it really handle like a ‘flying piano’?

Potentially as damaging as the cost over-runs are the claims made by critics like military analyst Winslow Wheeler that the F-35 is a “virtual flying piano” that lacks agility and is grounded far too often for maintenance.

The day the Auditor-General’s damning report on the F-35 fighter jets landed, the Harper government attempted to contain the damage by announcing the creation of a new “F-35 Secretariat” to oversee the process to replace Canada’s aging CF-18 fleet.