The workplace review should wrap up this fall Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. The Privy Council Office has tapped Quintet Consulting to conduct a Rideau Hall workplace review. The PCO yesterday published the review's terms of reference online. Quintet will speak with Governor General Julie Payette and her secretary, Assunta Di Lorenzo. The firm's report will judge whether or not any harassment allegations "meet the definition" on a prima facie basis. Dominic LeBlanc, the president of the Queen's Privy Council who just so happens to be the son of a former vice-regal rep (and elbow-bumped the GG at a recent cabinet shuffle), will "oversee the review" and receive its final report—sometime this fall. Canada has officially recognized two buildings that played key roles in a "tragedy born from colonial policies." Parks Canada, which proclaimed the Indian residential school system as a "defining event" in Canadian history, and named two former residential schools in Portage La Prairie, Man., and Shubenacadie , N.S., as national historic sites. The NDP applauded the move, but reminded Liberals the government is "still fighting residential school survivors in court" and "has an obligation to stop participating in the harm that's still ongoing." Trump may still be winning: Even when Donald Trump loses, the sitting president still wins—so goes Scott Gilmore's thinking in Maclean's. Gilmore writes that the president and his allies have already set in motion a series of stunts and strategies to thwart a free and fair election this fall. And, says Gilmore, more chaos is always better for the White House's current occupant. Trump’s constant and direct attacks on the election itself make a fair vote all but impossible. He has repeatedly accused the Democrats and the “deep state” of cheating and he has claimed the only way he can lose is if the vote is rigged. This not only reduces turnout (which hurts the Democrats more than him) it makes it less likely any disputed results can be resolved in an orderly fashion. And Trump is preparing for this chaos. The Republican National Committee has doubled its legal budget this year with the intention of filing lawsuits on election night to challenge close local results. Rona Ambrose, who passed on a run for the Tory leadership, has a new job to bank on. The Globe and Mail reports Ambrose has taken on a new role as deputy chair of TD Securities, where she'll work full-time from Calgary. The Globe's scoop follows Monday's news that Ambrose had left Manulife. (The day after Erin O'Toole won the leadership, Ambrose congratulated him on Facebook. Evidently, her commenters still wish she had thrown her hat into the ring.) Leave it to Bob Rae, Canada's newest United Nations ambassador, to pen a spirited cri de coeur in favour of multilateralism. In his capacity as the PM's special envoy on humanitarian and refugee issues, Rae published a final report that argued the global pandemic offers Canada an opportunity to prove to the world—including, ahem, a White House that wants to pull out of global vaccine collaboration—that a rules-based international order where everyone works together is not a "relic of history ." This is the moment, Rae argues, for Canada to "prove the doubters wrong" and "resuscitate the very notion of collective action over unilateralism." War games in a pandemic: Canadian sailors just wrapped up RIMPAC, a massive multinational maritime exercise off the coast of Hawaii. The Canadians posted a video that shows sailors jumping into action, complete with face masks and gloves to match the current moment. The Navy says its crews physically distance "to the greatest extent possible" aboard their warships—a true feat in some of those cramped quarters. The longtime darling of Ottawa's tech scene, Shopify, is reportedly leaving its flashy headquarters on Elgin Street's Performance Court six years after making a splash as the building's star tenant. The Ottawa Business Journal reports the company, whose employees will mostly work from home, is consolidating its physical offices at Export Development Canada's old HQ on Laurier Avenue. Shopify hopes to sublease the sprawling 170,000 sq.-ft. space on Elgin. He's running: Maxime Bernier, the leader of the People's Party who lost his Beauce seat in rural Quebec to the Conservatives last fall, says he'll run in a [record scratch] Toronto-area byelection. iPolitics reports the former Tory leadership contender who served briefly as Canada's foreign minister wants a seat in the Commons "as soon as possible." An alien conspiracy at Fort Pearson? Now that we have your attention, take note of these "crop circles" spied from above near Bells Corners by Alexandre Lévêque, the director general of strategic foreign policy at Global Affairs Canada. Nothing to see here. Or so they want us to think. —Nick Taylor-Vaisey | 
