Freeland can't be Minister of Absolutely Everything Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Because even the Minister of Everything can't do it all, Chrystia Freeland is offloading the bulk of her Canada-U.S. duties to cabinet colleagues. CBC News reports that Trade Minister Mary Ng and Foreign Minister François-Philippe Champagne will take two of Donald Trump's thorniest insiders off the new finance minister's hands. Ng will work with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Champagne will be the primary Canadian contact for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. As Ottawa busies itself with political chaos that risks boiling over into a fall election, Ng and Champagne will work on resolving a simmering trade war with the Americans that's all about aluminum. You can imagine the bulky briefing materials furiously assembled by Ng's department to prepare for rhetorical battle with the battle-tested Lighthizer, a man not famous for backing down. Solving WE's 'which came first' problem: Andrew MacDougall endured hours of parliamentary testimony and read dozens of lobbying records to answer key questions about the rise and fall of the Canada Student Service Grant, the federal program that launched the scandal of the year: When it comes down to it, the WE Charity scandal is essentially a ‘which came first’ problem. Only, instead of a chicken and an egg, we have a program and a delivery partner. Was the Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG) a proper thing in search of a delivery partner or was it a notion rounded into shape by one delivery partner to the exclusion of all others, a delivery partner with some serious financial ties to the finance minister and the family of the Prime Minister? The Canadian Press also stitched together a tick-tock retelling of the CSSG saga. Joan Bryden and Jim Bronskill sifted through thousands of pages worth of government documents, including emails and memos to cabinet, that were released to the Commons finance committee. They found that, strictly speaking, there was some truth to the Liberal story that public servants pitched WE Charity as the only way to go. But it wasn't total vindication: the docs reveal that political players appeared to nudge the non-partisan bureaucrats in WE's direction. Now that Parliament is shuttered until September, the Liberals will do what governments do and oppositions detest: govern by regulation. That's how the feds will shift to a new income-support program to replace the CERB. Bill Morneau's sheer stamina: A scan of the federal lobbyist registry reveals 460 different meetings in which somebody lobbied the former finance minister. The earliest entry comes on Nov. 5, 2015, just a day after Morneau was sworn into cabinet, when he met with the Investment Funds Institute of Canada. No surprise there. The second-last company to lobby Morneau before he left office this month was Air Canada—again, not a surprising entry. Can you guess who was, unless new data is submitted, on the other side of Morneau's very last meeting ? Hint: It was about agriculture. With only days remaining for Conservative voters to mail in their leadership ballots, a Mainstreet poll for iPolitics says Peter MacKay would beat rival Erin O'Toole by a slim margin that narrows after the first ballot. Candidates will split 100 points in every riding according to their share of the vote in each district. The first to hit more than 50 per cent takes the prize. Mainstreet says MacKay would take 41 per cent of overall points after the first round, but would only tally 51 per cent by the final vote—compared to 49 per cent for O'Toole. Not quite as close as the party's 13-round marathon in 2017, but a slim victory nonetheless. Should Mark Carney run? Over at The Line, longtime conservative strategist Ken Boessenkool and former NDP economist Rob Gillezeau insist that the former Bank of Canada governor, said to be courted by the Liberals, should certainly run—but away from, not toward, elected office. The pair argues that Carney's partisan pursuits would diminish the central bank's independence. Stephen Carter, an Alberta politico, countered that Carney's past need not dictate his future. And Mike Moffatt , an economist who knows the Ottawa circuit, retorted that central bankers who avoid politics still take corporate gigs that seem not to ruffle feathers—and maybe should. It took 15 years, but Veterans Affairs Canada inspected military grave markers across Canada and came up with a five-year, $24-million plan to refurbish an estimated 57,000 sites. Veterans Minister Lawrence MacAulay announced yesterday that his home province, P.E.I., would see $100,000 spent cleaning up 996 sites across more than 20 cemeteries. —Nick Taylor-Vaisey | 