CBC Lockout Watch, Day 12

This is getting as boring as the NHL lockout.

Nothing much new to report, except that CBC management claims that the Canadian Media Guild is telling less than the whole truth about the number of outstanding issues at stake.

Just as NHL lockout coverage ended up focussed on the salary cap to the virtual exclusion of all other issues, so has the CBC lockout coverage focussed on contract workers, when there are these other outstanding issues to be resolved:

Workforce Adjustment and Demonstrated Occupational Qualifications
Programming Commitment
Contracting Out/Sale of Business
Technological Change
Work Week / Hours of Work / Overtime
Turnaround
On-Call
Hiring & Promotion
Assignment
Salary Provisions
Job Evaluation
Temporary Employees
Freelancers
Corporation Seniority
Training and Professional Development
Producers' Authority

On second reading, it looks like the CBC is taking one issue (contract workers) and categorizing all its related sub-issues as separate issues to make the CMG look even more intransigent than it already is.

If this sort of inside baseball fascinates you, click on the links above.

Otherwise, I don't think the fate of the Dominion turns on such recondite issues.

UPDATE: I was wondering about the people who, instead of raising the red flag, baked cupcakes to show solidarity with the lumpen proletariat of the CBC.

The cupcake ladies seem like nice, sincere folk, even if the object of their sincerity is misplaced.

I am afraid to imagine what Canada would be like without the CBC. I think, like many of your listeners, I count on CBC radio to connect me with parts of Country I am separated from. Gzowski was practically off the air when I started tuning in but the lady he interviewed walking around the chicken farm will always seem like my friend. And I have only ever been on a real farm once. Sometimes I listen to the news online in the Yukon because I have never been to Northern Canada and love to hear about that world.

Fear not, mesdames. If the CBC were to disappear tomorrow, there would still be a myriad of ways to keep connected with the rest of our great and glorious Dominion.

But their attitude is one that does not bode well for the continued survival of Canada. If our national identity is so weak that changes to a couple of government services such as the CBC and medicare imperil it, then perhaps it does not deserve to survive.

Is Canada a people with a government, or a government with a people?