Orders of the Day: Don't worry, banking sector -- Canada's back, and we've got yours!

In an effort to stave off the creeping menace that is the global bank tax, Canada is, we're told, dispatching a tiger team of ministers to Mumbai (Finance Minister Jim Flaherty), Shanghai (Treasury Board President Stockwell Day), Washington (International Trade Minister Peter Van Loan) and the National Press Theatre right here in Ottawa (Industry Minister Tony Clement) as part of a "worldwide campaign" against the insidious initiative, in hopes of killing it deader than a dodo-shaped doorknob before next month's G8/20 summits. After all, it's our International Year -- shouldn't we get to set the agenda?

(Honestly, though, does anyone else ever wonder whether the rest of the world may have heard just about enough about the shining superiority of our banking system, not to mention our enviably low deficits and debt?)

Also on the ministerial speaking tour today: Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Peter Kent talks Haiti at the Council of the Americas in New York City; Transport Minister John Baird breaks bread at a breakfast meeting with the Canadian Urban Transit Association; and Environment Minister Jim Prentice, who will make a "significant conservation announcement" related to Nova Scotia's Sable Island, although he's doing so in Ottawa, and not on location, which could be seen as boding ill for the ponies. That, or it's just a scheduling issue -- let's cross our fingers that it's the latter. 

Meanwhile, pointed questions persist over those pointedly non-pointed questions that the PM fielded during another G8/20-related event: the Global Vision National Youth Caucus that took place yesterday afternoon. Alas, I cannot claim to have any unique insight or inside information into what really went down, but I've lodged a query of my own with the organizers. If I find out anything new, you'll be the first to know.