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Weekly insights from The Globe newsroom and highlights of our best work. I welcome your comments.

Stephen Harper may have gotten a whiff of political trouble this week, and it comes from the places he used to be quite critical of – Quebec and continental Europe.

Let's start with Europe, specifically France. This week's visit by French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault was supposed to bring Canada closer to a European Union free trade deal, which may be the most important policy to Harper right now.

For the Europeans, a deal with Canada isn't the prize; we're a back door to the gigantic U.S. market, and Barack Obama is game to play. As always, the deal breaker – the last 5 per cent, so to speak – will be supply management.

And so, Mr. Ayrault got stuck in Ottawa on Thursday haggling with our Prime Minister and ending up 90 minutes late for a luncheon speech to the Empire Club in Toronto. (His aides blamed the weather.)

When they finally arrived at the Bay Street reception, the French entourage sounded less than enthusiastic about a deal, which would be a darkened eye for the Harper crowd. (As if to keep Mr. Ayrault on message, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver was assigned to fly with him to Toronto.)

From France to Quebec. Consider Thomas Mulcair, who managed to wreak his own bit of political havoc on another Harper mega-issue – pipelines – during a visit to in Washington. If the Keystone XL pipeline bid fails (and the odds have dropped to 50-50), Mr. Mulcair can claim an assist for convincing the Beltway crowd that there's significant Canadian opposition.

Mr. Mulcair has been also taking swipes at the EU trade deal, more so in French to the protectionist hinterlands of Quebec.

All of which should leave the Prime Minister's Office wondering whether a post-budget political offensive is in order. They should be worried. As our polling savant Éric Grenier noted this week, the Conservatives are not in great standing. That's alarming for them, if only because the social and economic context is reasonably good.

As a Conservative MP told me at the Ayrault lunch, his constituents are voicing few complaints. Just wait until things go south. If the Harper majority government were to lose both the EU trade deal and Keystone, it would look severely weakened – and it would have Quebec and France to thank.

Mr. Mulcair also made a special point of having dinner with former fugitive Gary Freeman this week in Washington, and Globe Unlimited subscribers can get this sneak peek of their meeting before it's published Saturday.

Mr. Freeman lived quietly in Canada for 34 years until he was arrested and returned to the United States to face charges he shot and injured a Chicago police officer in a racially charged encounter in 1969. He pleaded guilty to aggravated battery in 2008 and was sentenced to 30 days in jail and two years of probation. Now that's he completed his sentence, he wants to return to Canada where he has a wife and four grown children, but Canada's Immigration Ministry is barring his return.

Mr. Mulcair thinks Mr. Freeman is a victim of vilification and falsehood, and he invited The Globe and Mail to witness their meeting, fully aware of the political furore breaking bread with a convicted felon and long-time fugitive might cause back in Canada.

Watch as Brian Gable's editorial cartoon goes from brainstorm to publication.

Ten years ago this month, The Globe newsroom was running around the clock with Iraq war preparations. We had three of our best correspondents – Mark MacKinnon, Geoffrey York and Stephanie Nolen – on various borders, waiting to move into Iraq once the war started.

All three were nominated this week for National Newspaper Awards for work in China, the Congo and India, respectively.

Another remarkable foreign correspondent, Patrick Graham, was in the Middle East at the time for one of our competitors, positioned a little more awkwardly in that his father, Bill Graham, was Canada's Foreign Minister. This weekend, Patrick returns with a remarkably frank interview with his father on Iraq and Canada, then and now.

We also reached out to Jean Chrétien, who spoke to our Ottawa reporter Kim Mackrael this week about being prime minister during the lead up and launch of the Iraq war. The interview was one of the best read pieces of the week. Mr. Chrétien also opened up about his trip to Caracas for the state funeral of Hugo Chavez.

While Mr. Chrétien likes to celebrate the United Nations and global democracy, he's long had a soft spot for authoritarians. I travelled twice with him in the 1990s, in Southeast Asia and West Africa, and was surprised on both trips to see how comfortable he was with the iron-fisted leaders. Whether it was Suharto of Indonesia or Omar Bongo of Gabon, Mr. Chrétien seemed willing to adjust Canadian standards. That's not what we mean by multilateralism, is it?

Who's the most connected person in Toronto, if not all of Canada?

My money would be on Paul Godfrey, the ageless pitchman behind Ontario's casino campaign. Our Toronto team has created a fascinating image of Mr. Godfrey's web of influence.

This week, he was back at our editorial board, pitching the "modernization" of Ontario gaming. The most contentious issue remains a casino in downtown Toronto, and at present it looks like city council is not in favour.

For those who want a city-centre casino, a more effective mayor would help. Rob Ford is pro-casino and has a block of council with him. The trouble is that he has no sway with the undecided middle, which may be his greatest weakness as mayor: an inability to win over skeptics.

There's also the die-hard opponents, largely from the left (curious given union support for casinos).

I mentioned this to Mr. Godfrey, and noted a scene in the CBC film Jack in which Jack Layton, as a city councillor in the 1980s, considered opposing the SkyDome sports stadium – which Mr. Godfrey was championing at the time.

In hindsight, Mr. Godfrey said Mr. Layton wasn't his biggest challenge. The now-deceased councillor Colin Vaughan was. A quarter century later, Mr. Godfrey's nemesis is Mr. Vaughan's son Adam. "Opposition runs in the family," Mr. Godfrey told me on his way out.

If you missed our editorial about the film you can read it here.

Enjoy the weekend,