Rosemary Barton on CBC, The West Block with Mercedes Stephenson on Global and best of all, Question Period hosted by Vassy Kapelos are the three main "Sunday morning political shows" in Canada, but they've all been MIA  over the past two or three months. 

Now they return this weekend, as the political rodeo gets ready to begin again in Ottawa, with the return of Parliament next week. (There certainly would have been enough to cover over the summer, but they all took it off anyway.)

My favourite of them is still the long running QP, which not only gets the best guests, but has the best host. I like to record the thing and then listen back while I'm doing some household chore. None of the shows require you to actually watch them. 

The great irony, for me, is that I used to despise Question Period. Way back in the late 70s at my first job over at CKEY's "Newsradio" service, we used to have to tape and then select clips from the show to send out to our subscribers. That meant listening to the entire thing and trying to find something short worth using. Given how busy that shift was, it wasn't always easy to find the time. 

But now that I'm no longer "on shift" on the weekends, it's actually pretty interesting.

It will be nice to have all three shows back.