The Peace Tower on Parliament Hill is seen among lights adoring the garden below, following the launch ceremony of Christmas Lights Across Canada in Ottawa on Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

Note to readers: Due to the now-officially-behind-us wrap of the fall parliamentary sitting — a few days early, but we’ll let it slide this time — and the rapidly approaching pre-and-post-holiday political lull, this week’s precap is a wee bit briefer than usual. Fear not: We’ll be keeping a close eye on the news ticker for any and all plot twists and unexpected developments over the next few days.

All aboard the end-of-year party leader interview express!

With the Commons now shuttered for the season, the Hill pre-holiday news cycle has officially entered the final phase before the Christmas-to-New-Year hiatus: the year-ender leaders’ interview circuit, which has actually been quietly but vigorously underway for the last week or so. In most cases, though, the resulting stories/segments haven’t yet gone to press/air, as media outlets tend to want to time the release for maximum eyeball reach.

CTV News, for instance, won’t be broadcasting chief anchor Lisa LaFlamme’s one-on-one chat with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau until December 29, 2017.

Even so, they couldn’t resist releasing a pre-Christmas teaser, which promises a wide-ranging discussion that touches on everything from the first year of dealing with US President Donald Trump — a “bit of a disruptive force”, according to Trudeau — as well as the controversial $10.5 million settlement paid out to Omar Khadr and the looming legalization of recreational marijuana.

City TV’s Breakfast Television, meanwhile, went live with Trudeau on Friday morning, although CTV News likely doesn’t have to fret about being scooped — not, that is, unless LaFlamme also quizzed the prime minister on whether Die Hard is, in fact, a Christmas movie.

For those hoping for a truly candid, script-free conversation with Trudeau, however, the best bet will be if he sits down for his annual breeze-shooting with Montreal radio host — and, it’s worth noting, longtime personal friend — Terry DiMonte. An annual tradition that began well before he became Liberal leader, it really does come across as more of a casual, collegial catch-up session that just happens to be taking place within range of the microphone.

As yet, there’s been no word on whether Trudeau will make it to the CHOM FM studios this year, but if he does, it will almost certainly be worth tuning in.

Trudeau isn’t the only one making the end-of-year interview rounds, of course — still reasonably newly anointed New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh recently sat down with CTV News for an interview with Question Period host Evan Solomon that aired earlier today, and Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is also very much in the mix, although it’s possible that his media handlers may be focusing as much, if not more energy on booking local and specialty media slots.

There’s (about to be) a new chief justice in town

With outgoing Supreme Court Justice Beverley Maclachlin having formally hung up her crimson robes last week, Governor General Julie Payette is set to swear in her successor, Justice Richard Wagner, who will take over the seat at the head of the highest court in the land on Monday, thus prompting a fresh flurry of speculation on what, if any, major impact will the changing of the guard have on the operations of the court.

it’s worth noting that Wagner, who was named to the bench by then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was the safest — and, as such, less interesting — choice to take over the top slot, as it followed the longstanding tradition of alternating between common-law judges from English-speaking Canada with civil jurists from Quebec.

During the weeks leading up to the reveal, there was some quiet speculation that Trudeau might give the post to relative newcomer Malcolm Rowe, who was, of course, his first appointment to the Supreme Court bench. That, however, would almost certainly have sparked controversy over the potential for leading to an American-style Supreme Court arrayed along rigid party lines.

On the pre-holiday ministerial good news circuit:

Team Trudeau — or, at least, whoever is in charge of writing up regional advisories — is promising a “major announcement” on the government’s ongoing ocean protection efforts, the details of which are set to be unveiled by Treasury Board President Scott Brison — appearing on behalf of his cabinet colleague, Dominic LeBlanc — during a Monday morning visit to the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth.

Back on the mainland, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains and Small Business Minister Bardish Chagger continue their we-love-you-small-business morale-boosting tour with a stop at downtown Toronto-based Hubba to unveil a fresh load of federal support for the “venture capital community,” which, in turn, is all part of an overall plan to “help innovative, high-potential Canadian start-up companies bring their products to market, scale up, create jobs and export to the world.”

Also in the Greater Toronto Area on Monday: Transport Minister Marc Garneau, who starts his day by dropping by a Brampton truck company to tout “two new safety technologies” that are soon to be required for trucks and buses on Canadian roadways before heading to the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute to investigate how a “state-of-the-art virtual reality research simulator” is providing “valuable data” for researchers analysing the effects of distracted driving.

Finally, despite having recently been making headlines in all the wrong ways, Sports Minister Kent Hehr has apparently not been pulled from the rotation — he’s slated to be front-and-centre for the announcement of new federal cash earmarked for “crime prevention” in his hometown of Calgary.

That’s it for this week’s precap. See you in January!