Relieved

The IMF will forgive $40 billion of debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries to the G8.

This write-off will not feed, clothe or shelter one single starving person in the Third World, but it will ensure that kleptocrats need not fear for their mansions, jets and private security forces.

Most importantly, it means that Bono and Paul Martin can still be friends.

Source: Ottawa Citizen

The Foundations Of Citizenship

The federal government has created a $10 million endowment in honour of Adrienne Clarkson's service as governor general to help educate new Canadians about the importance of proper Canadian citizenship.

Its creation comes too late for one new Canadian, who only now realizes that the responsibilities of Canadian citizenship may be incompatible with that of another country.

If it's like the other government foundations, we'll have no way of knowing how the money gets spent or why.

But why should old Canadians ask why new Canadians need more of our money to teach them how to be citizens, if citizenship in the new Canada has been reduced to a residence permit?

CBC Lockout Watch, Day 42

Nothing new to report from the negotiations, as both sides await tomorrow's meeting with Labour Minister Joe Fontana.

This woman has been a casual employee with the CBC for eight years. She could be called into work on a moment's notice. At the end of the day, she doesn't know if she'll be called back in again.

Though she bewails her fate as an eternal casual employee at CBC, living from day to day without security or benefits, I can't help but ask why she hasn't left for another broadcaster, or another line of work.

Such tenacity can only be attributed to the almost cultlike devotion that CBCers have to their particular concept of public broadcasting. CBC can string these people along for years of broken promises and mistreatment, and they come back like masochists for more.

The more abuse they take, the more they'll get.

Fuelling Panic

Last week's gas panic buying spree, sparked by vague rumours of gas prices doubling or tripling because of Hurricane Rita's expected destruction of Texas oil refineries, seems foolish in retrospect.

Gas prices didn't rise, but everybody's fears did.

Even if Rita had been as devastating as predicted, gas prices would not likely have risen any higher than they had during the short-lived shortage scare following Hurricane Katrina, as refineries shut down by Katrina have already started coming back in production.

Moreover, reports of gas stations raising prices to $2 and even $2.50 a litre turned out to have been generated by one Canadian Press report about one unnamed gas station in one city raising prices, accrording to Blue Maple Leaf.

Blue Maple Leaf suggests that CP had an ideological interest in promoting the panic:

Maybe the answer lies in the ideology of the left and the liberal/socialist agenda they are hell bent on advancing. Global warming is an invention of the left used to create hysteria and advance the liberal/socialist agenda of raising taxes in the name of saving the planet.

The roadmap of the global warming lie is easily traceable, starting with the notion that factories and people with cars cause pollution and are evil, because they cause global warming. Gas companies are evil, because they get rich polluting the Earth and causing global warming. Gas stations are evil, because they are like the drug dealers of the oil companies. Conservatives are evil, because they want to make it easier for oil companies to get rich while oil companies destroy the planet. Alberta is the most evil, because they are the headquarters for rich oil companies and worse, they are a province run by Conservatives that are all unfairly getting rich from drilling oil, destroying the planet, causing global warming and they won’t share their wealth with the rest of Canada.

While this may be an accurate reflection of the mindset at CP, and the Canadian media in general, CP probably didn't set out deliberately to create this panic.

Yet had its editorial staff not been blinkered by its own prejudices, it would have tried to verify the report before sending it to the wires. Phone calls to the gas stations in Chatham, or to the regional distributors, could have gotten them that day's prices.

CP's irresponsibility fortunately only led to long lineups and empty tanks at gas stations. I shudder to think what CP might have done with a rumour where lives where at stake.

Green Grit

Although the deputy leader of Canada's fastest-rising political party is not as influential a political player as, say, a disgruntled EDA director in Toronto, his defection to the Liberal Party should be catching more attention that it likely will:

In a surprise announcement Sept. 23, Stormont County organic processor Tom Manley revealed he has severed ties with the Green Party of Canada and is turning to the Liberal Party.

Manley's ties to the Green Party ran deep. Not only was he the party's deputy leader and agricultural critic, he has run under the Green banner in both federal and provincial elections.

In 2004, Manley took on Jim Harris, who remains Green leader, for the party's top job.

Flanked by stalwarts of the Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry Liberal Party, Manley said he'll seek the Liberal nomination in the next federal election.

....

Over the past few years, Manley said several attempts were made to bring him back to the Liberal fold.

Lately, however, he started to listen, determined to forge ahead with his agenda for agricultural and environmental sustainability.

"There's a sense of urgency here and, within the Green Party, it'll take too long to achieve results. Besides, people make political parties, parties don't make people."

The lust for power will make a man sell his principles to the highest bidder. The Liberals never let themselves be outbid for a defector, whether it's with promises of a seat in cabinet or an unopposed parliamentary nomination.

Whether the Liberals actually come through with their promises is irrelevant to the party. Manley's desire for a platform plank about a sustainable agriculture policy will likely be met, but nothing will actually be done about it. Who actually reads the Red Book after the election?

Nonetheless, the Green Party will be shaken up with the loss of its number two man heading into an election. It might have been poised to overtake the NDP as the new party of the left in Canada, once enough NDPers upset with the radicals and Jack Layton's sellout to the Liberals crossed over. It also had an attraction for some Red Tories who couldn't bring themselves to support either of the three parties, as well as many independent-minded protest voters. It could have split off more left votes to allow Tories to come up the middle in close ridings.

Now the Greens face the prospect of being bled dry by the Liberals, all to satisfy one man's ambitions.

Source: Ottawa Sun

CBC Lockout Watch, Day 41

Everything seems to be stuck in a holding pattern while the management and union bigwigs make the trek to Ottawa for the big meeting with Labour Minister Joe Fontana. The meeting at which they'll be told when to settle the lockout, if not how.

A fast settlement may have been the price the CBC board of directors will extract from Robert Rabinovitch in exchange for this week's vote of confidence, says Tod Maffin.

Toronto Star Ottawa bureau chief Susan Delacourt reports that the feds will be asking where the $110 million CBC saved during the lockout went, and if they don't like the answer, they may ask for a refund:

The CBC was to receive about $982 million from the government this year, which works out to about $2.7 million a day.

The money is sent in regular deposits to the Crown corporation.

Assuming they are spread out roughly evenly during the year, the CBC has received about $110.7 million during this lockout even though it has not had to pay the salaries of 5,500 people or put much original programming on the air.

Bulte asked Treasury Board officials yesterday whether dollars directed to the CBC during the lockout could be put into a trust or something similar, to ensure the corporation wasn't using the dispute merely to save money. But she was told the
CBC's financing was part of the June budget and no one can simply revoke measures in it.

What she can do, she was told, is ask for a Heritage Department audit of how the CBC used government money during this lockout. Bulte says she intends to ask for that.

"They may have to give some of it back," Bulte said, especially if an audit reveals the CBC is using these savings from the lockout to cover other losses. She said she would also be annoyed if the corporation used those savings to beef up its resources after the lockout, as a way of regaining stature and goodwill.

"You can't buy back the public," Bulte said.

If only we could get that refund money back. It might only work out to about $3.25 for every Canadian, but that's enough to buy a sausage from a streetside vendor and have a quarter left to call someone who cares about the CBC.

Even so, it's not the public the CBC needs to worry about buying back; it's everybody else.

Olympics, Genies, Geminis, Junos: all gone to other networks. Even the Grey Cup and Brier might leave. If the rest of CBC Sports disappears, will the NHL decide that Hockey Night in Canada should take a hike to a real sports broadcaster?

CBC could rise to the occasion by reorganizing its TV network along the lines of CBC Radio or PBS, with no advertising and all-Canadian arts and entertainment and documentary programming. Or it could whine about hard done by it's been, refuse to change its business model to meet the times and fill the niche that needs filling, and die a slow, lingering death.

Today's idiot box comment of the day comes from Carleton University journalism student Niall McKenna for his praise of the BBC licence fee system:

I was born in the United Kingdom, a place where the merciless grip of the billion-channel universe has had barely a squeeze. Allegiance to the BBC, the UK’s public broadcaster, is the norm. Britons happily slip $20 a month into the Beeb’s coffers for its commercial-free goodness, like my family once did. (Special government vans prowl the streets for illegal TV hook-ups.)

If the CBC even raised the suggestion of a licence fee for TV owners to pay for the CBC, the Toronto Broadcast Centre would be a smoking pile of rubble the next day. Hundreds of thousands of gun owners thwarted the gun registry law by refusing to register; imagine how ineffective a TV registry and inspection regime would be.

Hans Island: Who's On First?

Is Pierre Pettigrew backing down on Hans Island?

Just days after it began negotiations with Denmark over the ownership of Hans Island, the Canadian government appears to be backing away from a key argument in its claim for the remote island -- that it was discovered by Britain and therefore ceded to Canada in the 19th century.

Throughout the controversy over which nation now has sovereignty over Hans Island, located in a narrow channel between Ellesmere Island and Danish-controlled Greenland, Canada has argued its claim is rooted in the island's discovery by British explorers.

But Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew conceded government experts are still gathering historical evidence to build Canada's case. He is open to the suggestion that the island was first sighted by an American explorer, acknowledging there are competing claims about the discovery.

....

Denmark's ambassador to Canada, Poul Kristensen, has argued Hans Hendrik first spotted the island that would bear his name during a June 1854 sledge journey along the northwest coast of Greenland. Records from that expedition, led by American captain Elisha Kent Kane, make no specific mention of the island, although it is generally accepted that Hendrik and his American companion on the overland trek, William Morton, probably came within sight of it.

First discovery, in itself, doesn't confer sovereignty in international law. But if Pettigrew is switching positions in the middle of negotiations because Foreign Affairs didn't have its research done properly, he's going to look awfully foolish in negotiations with the Danes.

Of course, he could just depute his chauffeur to carry out the negotiations, since he seems to have a wealth of talents and Pettigrew's unqualified confidence in them.

Source:
Ottawa Citizen

Turn Your Head And Cough

The Ontario government is trying many different approaches to relieving the shortage of physicians in the province.

Opening a new medical school in northern Ontario to train and keep local doctors up north is just one approach.

Luring gay and lesbian doctors from the U.S. with promises of marriage is quite another.

I could make jokes about a sudden increase in OHIP billings for prostate exams, but such tastelessness is beneath this blogger.

The Pettigrew Files

If Pierre Pettigrew is shuffled out of cabinet, he almost certainly will announce that he's not running again in order to spend more time with his chauffeur in Paris his family.

But in case he isn't, he'll be facing his own token Haitian problem:

The riding of Papineau, in the ethnic heart of Montreal, will be the scene of one of the most interesting battles in the next election as Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew faces off against a leader of the women's rights movement in Quebec.

The twist is that Mr. Pettigrew made headlines by attacking the Bloc Québécois as distrustful of immigrants, and the Bloc has responded by nominating Haitian-born activist and teacher Vivian Barbot as his opponent.

The battle will go beyond the individual riding as both parties try to win the support of the province's ethnic communities in the struggle between federalism and separatism.

The Bloc hopes Ms. Barbot will become the first MP from Quebec's Haitian community, matching the Liberals, who this summer appointed the first Haitian-born governor-general, Michaëlle Jean.

....

In 2000, Mr. Pettigrew won his seat by 12,176 votes. After the sponsorship scandal and an effort by the Bloc to win support among immigrants, his margin of victory melted to 468 votes in 2004.

Ironically, Pettigrew might be saved by the very xenophobia that he's denounced the Bloc for. For every Haitian vote he loses, the Bloc might lose more from pure laine nationalists who still don't see blacks as real Quebecois, the election of Maka Kotto notwithstanding.

But if anger about Adscam remains stronger than Quebecois' natural distrust of ethnics, they'll overlook Mme. Barbot's origins and give Pettigrew more free time to look after his hairdo.

Source: Globe and Mail

23:5 Meme

Rebecca at Doxology has passed along the following new meme emerging in the blogosphere:

Rules:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to it).
3. Find the 5th sentence (or closest to it).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

Result: A/P laughs it off, at best.

A/P never laughs it off, not when it's the company dime.

Hey, I didn't say it had to make sense.

10,000 Visitors

Congratulations to the anonymous Australian visitor who stopped by at 10:03:38 PM on Friday, September 23, 2005.

As my 10,000th recorded visitor, you win absolutely nothing at all. Not even a free oven mitt.

But you do have me wondering how the hell you came here from there. (Cute kids, by the way.)

CBC Lockout Watch, Day 40 Oz.

Recent scenes from CBC picket lines across the land:



A dissident CBC employee heeds management's call for greater flexibility.



CBC Sports presents men's rhythmic gymnastics.



A rejected Let's Make a Deal contestant wanders aimlessly in Whitehorse.



Boobs helping boobs: Burlesque on the Toronto Broadcast Centre picket line.

CBC Lockout Watch, Day 40

CBC management has rejected the CMG's public settlement offer:

The document tabled by the CMG fails to propose any compromise on the two
key issues remaining. On Employment Status, the terms of the Guild's proposals
regarding contract employees are actually more restrictive than those in the
current collective agreement and more restrictive than their last proposal.
CBC has indicated that there is room to negotiate on this issue but not to
reduce its current flexibility.

Similarly, the CMG has not made any effort to compromise on the issue of
the qualifications a laid-off employee must have in order to replace a
colleague with less seniority. The Guild continues to seek a lower threshold
of qualifications while the CBC seeks the same qualifications threshold and
same bumping rights that have existed in the Guild's collective agreement for
12 years. CBC believes that employees must be able to demonstrate they have
the skills required to perform their new job and would like to make this the
standard for all employees under the new collective agreement.

No one expected the union to budge on the issue of contract employees. Both sides have sworn to die on that hill, and whoever moves back first, loses the battle and the war.

The union's hard line on bumping will not score any points with the public, and especially not with the juniors who might find themselves bumped to the curb after years of hustling for a permanent position whose sole qualification is having been at CBC since the Riel Rebellion.

Until CMG's latest bit of grandstanding, it had been winning the public relations war by presenting themselves as the defenders of Canadian public broadcasting. Now they look less like martyrs than money grubbers.

The Liberals must be expecting a fall election because only now have they bestirred themselves to call both sides together to make a deal:

Labour Minister Joe Fontana has invited CBC management and the Canadian Media Guild to Ottawa next week for a meeting aimed at ending the current lockout at the broadcaster, a union spokeswoman said Friday.

"There's a sense of urgency to it, and that's good," says CMG spokeswoman Lise Lareau. "I believe that's the result of Liberal caucus pressure that's been building."

Fontana could not immediately be reached for comment, nor could a spokesman from the CBC.

The proposed meeting would take place on Monday, the day Parliament is set to resume.

And wouldn't you know, suddenly Robert Rabinovitch and Arnold Amber have found the time to come to Ottawa.

In case they needed any more encouragement, Sarmite Bulte has publicly washed her hands of management and also spared a few kind words for Patrick Watson's proposal to contract out the whole damn CBC:

Frustration with the 40-day lockout by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. is on the rise within Prime Minister Paul Martin's government, with the parliamentary secretary for Canadian heritage, Sam Bulte, now warning she can no longer defend management's position in the dispute.

"I'm sick about this," Bulte said in an interview yesterday. "I've said to the CBC management ... I can't defend you any more."

....

Patrick Watson, former chairman of the CBC, provocatively suggested yesterday that his former corporation simply be shut down and rebuilt from the ground up. In The Globe and Mail, Watson wrote: "So yes, let's put public broadcasting out to tender ... remove this totally inappropriate competition with the private broadcasters for ratings and commercial revenue, and declare that the licence will be given to the lowest bidder whose proposal convincingly meets the requirements."

Bulte called Watson's argument "a good opening" for a serious debate on the CBC's future. At least for starters, she says she would like to see the CBC have no advertising on TV, as is the case now with radio, and believes that no one has been making the case strongly enough within the CBC for more government support.

As a member of the government, Bulte said she'd be open to that appeal.

"Let's give them the money to be a real public broadcaster," she said.

Bell Globemedia has been doing its job downplaying the emerging Technology Partnership Canada scandal and Paul Martin's slipshod handling of Canada-U.S. relations, and playing up Carol Jamieson's screed against Stephen Harper, but there's only so much Bob Fife and Gloria Galloway can do. The Grits need the CBC going balls to the wall during the next election. And CBC needs a Liberal government in office to hold off the axe. CBC and CMG may despise each other, but they both hate CPC even more.

Michaelle Jean And The Multi-Cult

Our next governor general never fails to surprise. First it was keeping company with ex-FLQ terrorists, now it's attacking multiculturalism and Quebec nationalism's xenophobic tendencies:

The government's policy of multiculturalism encourages people to stay in ethnic ghettos and leads to "all sorts of absurdities," governor general-designate Michaelle Jean has said

Ms. Jean made the comments in French at a colloquium in Montreal last April, before she was named the country's next governor general. They were reported in the Canadian Jewish News.

"Citizenship means living together. ... But does 'multiculturalism' really propose us living together?

"We are even given money so that we will each stay in our own separate enclosure. There's a kind of proposition of ghettoization that is there, and that is financed. Yet 'multiculturalism' is proposed as a founding model of Canada," she said at the colloquium held by the Institut de Judaisme Quebecois.

Ms. Jean went on to criticize the leaders of organizations who make their living from multiculturalism.

"It's terrible, when you think about it. My dream is that we reflect much more deeply on citizenship, on belonging, which is not a negation of where we come from or our heritage, whether we are from Abitibi or Haiti or somewhere else.

....

She said it is damaging to children to be pushed into separate ethnic identities.

"Lots of kids in north Montreal don't recognize themselves anywhere. In school, they're still called 'our little Haitians,' 'our little this,' 'our little that.' They have no opportunity to be Quebecois... These kids say: I'm Haitian, I'm Latin-American. They're born here, they grow up here, they speak Quebecois ... and yet, they're incapable of calling themselves Quebecois. Why? Because they don't feel it. We still call them 'the others.' These young people don't have the sense of being full-fledged citizens."

It's interesting to find Mme. Jean criticizing the multiculturalist obsession with identity politics that probably led to her appointment as governor general. Paul Martin saw the Haitian vote in key Montreal ridings drifting to the Bloc in the next election and needed to shore it up, so he picked Mme. Jean in the hopes of keeping that ethnic bloc in line.

If the Indian or Italian vote in Toronto had been threatening to break to the Conservatives, he'd have named an Indian or Italian.

The Liberals have prospered by the policy of divide and rule, and by keeping immigrant communities as unassimilated as possible, they keep them dependent on the benificence of the federal government and voting Liberal.

For her second point:

When Quebec nationalists say "Maitres chez nous!" or "Le Quebec aux Quebecois!", they don't mean anybody whose ancestors came from Haiti, Poland, Vietnam or Lebanon.

Jacques Parizeau's drunken outburst against "money and the ethnic vote" and his claim that "three-fifths of us voted yes" made it clear that Quebec nationalism does not extend its embrace to those who are not pure laine .

Mme. Jean's great-grandchildren will be Canadian, but they will never be Quebecois.

Source: Ottawa Citizen

David Dingwall Makes A Mint

The Technology Partnership Canada scandal has been flying under the public radar because of all the media emphasis on Carol Jamieson, the Cindy Sheehan of the Conservative Party.

Industry Minister David Emerson thought he could sweep the whole mess under the rug by cancelling the program quietly before anyone figured out the extent of the corruption.

But now that David Dingwall has been singled out as one of the lobbyists accepting improper commissions for getting businesses funding from TPC, the mess is seeping back through:

Industry Canada has frozen federal financing for research projects by an Ontario biotechnology firm pending the outcome of an investigation into the company's agreement to pay $350,000 in lobbying fees to former Liberal cabinet minister David Dingwall, government sources say.

The move is part of a much broader probe of about 22 high-tech companies that may have hired unregistered lobbyists, or allegedly paid improper contingency fees to lobbyists to help secure federal financing under Ottawa's controversial Technology Partnership Canada program.

Bioniche, based in Belleville, Ont., recently admitted to Industry Canada that it agreed in May of 2000 to pay Mr. Dingwall a “success fee” of $350,000, the government sources said.

The agreement said the fee was to be paid to Mr. Dingwall's lobbying firm, Wallding International, if Bioniche was successful in obtaining federal financing worth at least $15-million under the TPC program.

Bioniche in fact secured TPC financing totalling $17.2-million in 2001.

The investigation centres on whether Mr. Dingwall actually received any or all of the “success fee.”

It violates the terms of TPC contracts if companies pay contingency fees to lobbyists to help them obtain TPC financing.

....

The problem of high-tech firms using unregistered lobbyists and paying contingency fees for TPC contracts is not new. Industry Canada froze payments to four British Columbia companies last year after The Globe and Mail reported they had paid more than $2-million in contingency fees to one particular unregistered lobbyist. The department eventually worked out agreements with the companies to reduce their TPC financing by sums equal to the contingency fees.

Industry Canada used two outside audit teams — Kroll Lindquist Avey and Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton — to take a broad look at TPC projects and the lobbying issue.

However, a government source says the outside audit teams found it difficult to determine from the TPC files how decisions were made as to which companies and projects would receive federal financing and which would be rejected.

One document was found, however, that candidly said: “little or no documentation is kept regarding the decision process.”

TPC has an annual budget of about $300-million. Critics have called it little more than a subsidy program because the rate of repayment has been so low.

In summary: lobbyists were getting illegal commissions to get money from TPC, while TPC hid the paper trail and never got paid back.

Unlike Adscam, there were no great issues of patriotism and national unity at stake, nothing for the scoundrels to wrap themselves in the flag with as a defence against their critics. Nought but greed lain bare.

David Dingwall made a mint off TPC, and now he's running it.

Business as usual in Liberal Ottawa.

Source: The Globe and Mail

L'Affaire Pettigrew-Labonte

Pierre Pettigrew's chauffeur is absolutely outraged at the suggestion that he and the minister might have a relationship closer than the norm between ministers of the Crown and their drivers.

So he's suing the Western Standard for making it:

The chauffeur who accompanied Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew on government-funded trips abroad is considering legal action after an item on a conservative magazine's website questioned whether they had a romantic relationship.

Kevin Libin, editor-in-chief of the Calgary-based Western Standard, wrote in a web log entry this week that the media should have asked about the nature of Mr. Pettigrew's relationship with driver Bruno Labonte following a report that they had travelled together to Europe and South America.

"Mr. Labonte is discussing these attempts on his personal reputation with his lawyers," Mr. Pettigrew's press secretary, Sebastien Theberge, said in an e-mail.

Mr. Theberge emphatically denied there was anything improper between the two men.

"Mr. Pettigrew's relationship with his driver is and has always been strictly professional," he wrote.

He added, "Private life is private. Mr. Pettigrew attaches a great deal of importance to his absolute right to privacy."

Mr. Labonte was not available to comment, Mr. Theberge said.

Messrs. Pettigrew and Labonte could dispel the rumours and innuendo about their relationship by explaining exactly what official duties Mr. Labonte performed on his trips abroad with Mr. Pettigrew, and why he was chosen to do them even though they weren't in his official job description.

Retreating behind denials of improper relationships and threatening lawsuits for defamation only lends credence to the rumours.

Besides, people aren't naive enough to take Mr. Pettigrew at his word. Think back to George Radwanski and his penchant for long lunches at gourmet restaurants and overseas trips with his PR flack, Dona Vallieres, on the taxpayer's dime. Did anyone seriously believe that her communications advice was so valuable that the privacy commissioner had to seek it out virtually every day at lunch and several dozen times overseas?

How valuable were Mr. Labonte's services, then?

Source: Ottawa Citizen

Harper Vs. The Ankle-Biters

The media's attempt to create a dump-Harper movement from the petty complaints of a few self-important obscure persons has finally gotten a public response from its target:

"Any Conservative, anywhere, at any time, can, by criticizing other Conservatives, become an instant and enormous media star. That's just the way it is, we'll have to get used to it,'' he said in a speech to party staffers Thursday.

....

The Conservative leader was assailed this week by Carol Jamieson, a top Conservative official in Toronto, who said average Canadians would never vote for him and urged him to quit.

It was the latest in a string of complaints -- some on the record, some anonymously -- which Harper said he would not take seriously.

The party has raised big amounts of cash, signed up thousands of members and his summer tour attracted big crowds this summer, he said, but virtually all of that has been ignored by the media.

"Now of course you would not know any of this reading some of the press recently, (instead) there have been stories of various dissidents.''

The Conservative leader was assailed this week by Carol Jamieson, a top Conservative official in Toronto, who said average Canadians would never vote for him and urged him to quit.

It was the latest in a string of complaints -- some on the record, some anonymously -- which Harper said he would not take seriously.

The party has raised big amounts of cash, signed up thousands of members and his summer tour attracted big crowds this summer, he said, but virtually all of that has been ignored by the media.

"Now of course you would not know any of this reading some of the press recently, (instead) there have been stories of various dissidents.''

Harper said he would not respond to the dissidents.

Nor should he. No one has heard of them before; no one will hear from them again. They're letting themselves be used as pawns in the media's game, while the media in turn are also being used as pawns in the Liberal game. To address them by name or even by inference is to give them credence that they don't deserve.

Stephen Taylor has exposed the strange career of the media's latest instant star, Carol Jamieson. By all accounts, she's become a pariah within the Conservative Party, an unbalanced crackpot with a history of making trouble, and far from the top official CTV claims her to be.

If there were a serious movement within the party to dump Stephen Harper, serious players would be leading it, such as MPs and senior party officials. People like Hugh Segal, Peter White, Hal Jackman and Stanley Hartt would be calling for his head publicly.

Their silence speaks volumes about the nature of this movement; it's so pathetic that they won't dignify it with comment.

Source: CTV

CBC Lockout Watch, Day 39

The CBC Board of Directors has given management a vote of confidence in its conduct of the lockout to date.

One of the issues that has attracted most attention, the employment of contract staff, in our view, has been seriously misunderstood and misrepresented. The new contract employees will remain a small fraction of the Corporation’s work force, and they will be well paid union members with a superior benefit program.

We want to pay tribute to the President of the CBC/Radio-Canada, Robert Rabinovitch, for his commitment to public broadcasting. We fully support the strategic vision of his management team.

This tribute to Rabinovitch would be more meaningful if he actually answered to the board of directors. Nonetheless, this should dash all union hopes of pressuring the board to lean on management to reach a quick settlement.

The Canadian Media Guild has proposed a settlement offer including 3.5% pay raises every year, retroactive to 2004, and a $1,000 signing bonus for every CMG member who's worked at least 60 days prior to the lockout. That's 17.5% pay raises for the best-paid people in broadcasting over five years, over and above the cost of living index increases, or about 20% to 25% when it's all said and done.

The union won a lot of goodwill from the public by not mentioning money. Now they've not only made a cash grab, but they've also antagonized the CBC negotiators unnecessarily by going public and not to the table with the offer. Everybody wants a pay raise, but no one wants to hear well-paid strikers crying out for bigger bucks.

Management can turn the tables on the CMG for the first time in weeks by switching the focus from "saving Canadian broadcasting" to "shaking down the taxpayers."

I saw the first half of the End the Lockout rally at Massey Hall last night. The audience was even more interesting than the performers. CBC boasts about reflecting the face of Canada in all its diverse and multicultural splendour, but the audience was the whitest crowd I've ever seen in Toronto, as was the entertainment except for the token self-styled African blues band. Pretty heavily middle-aged and elderly too; few people there under 40, fewer still under 25.

The theme of the speeches from Alice Munro, June Callwood and Joe Clark was all about how great CBC was, less about how great it is now (hah!) or how great it can be. The audience wasn't there to support today's CBC; it was there to support an ideal CBC that they think they remember from decades ago, when Trudeaumania swept the land and big government was the solution to all life's problems.

Now I understand how these people can claim that without CBC, Canadian broadcasting would cease to exist. They're stuck in the time when it really was CBC or nothing.

CBC Lockout Watch, Day 38

Both sides have signed off on contracting out work normally performed by CMG members. This is not to be confused with hiring employees on contract, the ground on which both management and union have sworn to die defending their positions.

CMG has refused CBC's request to join them in a media blackout for the duration of the negotiations. The blackout wouldn't have lasted a day. Who expects a bunch of journalists not to leak, or if they do, name the leakers?

Antonia Zerbisias warns the locked-out CBCers not to get too friendly with the NDP and labour union supporters who have been visiting them on the picket lines:

On the picket lines, the union has been accepting support from, and rallying around, sympathetic politicians such as the NDP's Jack Layton and Marilyn Churley, as well as union bigwigs such as Buzz Hargrove and representatives from other interest groups.

Excuse me, but shouldn't CBC workers be a mite more careful about these associations? The network already is constantly accused of being left-wing and biased. Why add fuel to the fire?

True, the harm being done to CBC is not as great as the lockout itself, but this is not helping.

If this dispute continues, and all indications are that it will drag on and on, the locked out workers — and I'm thinking the journalists in particular — better put some thought into what harm their side is doing to CBC.

At some point, there will be a return to the newsrooms. And an election. And hell to pay.

The CBC's left-leaning editorial bias is no secret. Its effects on people who don't watch CBC shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. CBC reporting often sets the agenda for the rest of the media, and its opinions filter their way through the newsrooms, classrooms and boardrooms of the nation down to the shop floors, shopping malls and subway platforms.

CBC reporting is good for a few percentage points for the Liberals in public opinion polls, and maybe a couple for the NDP. Though not on its own; it has the rest of the Canadian mainstream media to prop the Liberals up, if not with quite the same zeal as the CBC.

If the CBC ties its editorial bias to a particular party, its fortunes will rise and fall with it. There are plenty of Conservative MPs and candidates who would love to wreak venegance on the CBC once they get in office. If the CBC thought the Mulroney government was rough on it, a Harper government filled with people who resent years of its savaging of the Reform and Alliance parties, the West, social conservatives and free market policies will make the Mulroney era seem like a cakewalk.

Colby Cosh doesn't see much difference between either side in the lockout, but he gets right to the heart of the battle between the CBC and CMG in the media wars:

The real point of the battle on both sides seems to be finding out which side has been left with more power and goodwill in the radically changing media environment. Or, to put it another way: is content truly king? Your answer will depend partly on whether you prefer news gathered by amateurs using professional resources or news gathered by professionals using amateur resources. Frankly, I kind of feel like the parts are greater than the original sum.

Clearly, the status quo ante cannot be recreated. People have seen the pros put out quality product without the CBC's vast resources backing them up.

Even amongst die-hard CBC fans, the question will inevitably arise: if CBC news people can do as good a job or better with much less, do we really need the CBC's current infrastructure and organization at $1 billion a year?

The corollary question: if management can't deliver the goods with $1 billion a year from the taxpayers, is throwing more money at it going to buy it the necessary competence?

Dominion From City To City

Paul Martin has finally outlined something resembling his vision of Canada. Unfortunately, it doesn't extend outside the Liberal voting bloc:

Prime Minister Paul Martin called for Canada to bring in more immigrants as he delivered a wide-ranging speech that sought to outline a broad rationale for his government's actions and its future direction.

The 70-minute speech was intended to counter criticisms that the government drifts from crisis to crisis. He asserted that Ottawa's past policies and future plans are part of a coherent strategy to cope with major "new forces" such as the aging population and the rise of new powers in China and India.

Although it included no specific policy announcements, the speech hinted at plans for the fall, the crucial period before an expected spring vote, including efforts to improve aboriginal education, a promise to achieve early progress on the environment -- and more immigration.

Martin's claims that cities now compete with cities, and not countries with countries, should be given closer attention.

When he says that Montreal and Toronto have to compete with Shanghai and Bangalore, he's signalling to the rest of the country that his vision is firmly fixed on the cities, and the cities alone.

Paul Martin's so-called global vision of massive immigration and competitive cities is actually quite parochial. The Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor and immigrants keep him in office; their concerns will be paramount, and the rest of the country can go hang.

But he's also made the usual nod to the aboriginals, who will hopefully vote the Liberal party line as long as their leadership keeps them cynically trapped in the failed Indian Act and reserve systems with promises of money from treaty rights and land claims that never actually makes it past the band chiefs' offices. ( Dust My Broom could tell you more about this.)

So now we have a vision, of sorts, from Paul Martin. Too bad most Canadians aren't in it.

Source: Globe and Mail