Best of July 2006

Here’s the monthly review of what was going on in here at “On the Hill”. The Blogware server counters tell me that just over 51,000 different people (or software robots) visited this site at least once during the month of July and took a look at 136,734 page views. The following 20 posts (among the 1,066 posts I’ve authored to date) were the most clicked-upon items here, descending order from most popular.

How to read the list. Popularity rank this month | (Top 20 position last month) | Post title | (Date of original post):

  1. (1) A Porsche moment (Mon 10 Jan 2005)
  2. (2) Hard at Work (Sat 05 Mar 2005)
  3. (-) Chrysler's Dieter Zetsche (Mon 10 Jan 2005)
  4. (-) [What they said] Apple calculator a bad joke  (Tue 10 Aug 2004)
  5. (-) Welcome aboard Air Harper  (Wed 19 Jul 2006)
  6. (-) Delegate fees and a political skirmish  (Fri 30 Jun 2006)
  7. (11) Jane Austen  (Sat 18 Jun 2005)
  8. (-) It's a small point — but an important one …  (Thu 06 Jul 2006)
  9. (-) Mrs. Harper's great-uncle  (Tue 18 Jul 2006)
  10. (-) Those shiny coat guys (Sat 20 Mar 2004)
  11. (-) Harper's enemy?  (Tue 18 Jul 2006)
  12. (4) Air Canada and a new Celine Dion video — right here!  (Mon 01 Nov 2004)
  13. (-) 240 cars ran the border in the last six months  (Mon 19 Jun 2006)
  14. (-) The new Dodge Charger (Mon 17 Jan 2005)
  15. (-) HUMOUR: Investment tips for 2004  (Fri 16 Jan 2004)
  16. (-) Mitigating media concentration  (Fri 16 Jan 2004)
  17. (-) Canadian attitudes on the election  (Thu 29 Jun 2006)
  18. (-) Harper on Israel  (Thu 13 Jul 2006)
  19. (-) British think-tank labels Canada's Afghanistan foray “a suicide mission”  (Wed 28 Jun 2006)
  20. (-) Media crushes Conservatives  (Thu 22 Jun 2006)

 

For the record: Media pays its own way for travel with PM

Recently, I got a message from a CTV viewer in Calgary who asked:

Media reports of the Prime Minister's recent diversion of his aircraft to Cyprus mentioned that all journalists were offloaded.   When members of the media travel with the Prime Minister do they receive this service gratis or are they required to pay the government?

This viewer sent this question to me and to the Prime Minister’s Office. Here’s the response from the PMO, which the viewer passed along to me:

July 28, 2006

Mr. [xxx]

Dear Mr. [xxx]:

On behalf of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, thank you for your e-mail of July 20 regarding travel expenses and the media.  Members of the media who travel with the Prime Minister on commercial flights are expected to pay their own way.  When travelling with the Prime Minister on non-commercial flights aboard his aircraft, their expenses are covered.

Once again, thank you for your e-mail.

Sincerely,

Salpie Stepanian
Assistant to the Prime Minister

/kc

For the record: CTV’s expenses are covered mostly by CTV when we travel with the PM. When I stay at a hotel while travelling with PM, I have to present my own personal credit card to which the hotel charges are billed. I’m responsible for paying that bill and submitting an expense claim to my employer, not the PMO. As for travel on the PM’s plane, it works this way:

When the PM’s itinerary for a trip is finalized, the PMO organizes media logistics — making sure there are enough seats on the PM’s plane, booking hotel rooms, arranging for catering services when we will not have time to seek out our own restaurant, and providing for a media filing room with appropriate telecom services wherever we travel. The PMO then provides members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery with a per-reporter estimate of what it will cost to provide all those services.  Media organizations that agree to travel with the PM, then, agree to pay invoices we receive from the PMO based on that estimate. Knowing ahead of time what it will cost is an important consideration for newsroom managers who have to weigh the cost of newsgathering with the potential news value of a certain trip. So, for example, last year the CBC did not send anyone on Prime Minister Martin’s plane when he travelled to a NATO meeting in Brussels. CTV and Global paid to be on that plane. CBC still covered it, but decided to use reporters already in Europe to cover the NATO meeting. It’s quite possible — though I don’t know this for a fact — that budget considerations were part of CBC’s assignment decisions for that trip.  (We like to be on the plane because sometimes, the PM will come to the back of the plane during the flight to make some newsworthy comments. Prime Minister Harper, for example, made his very newsworthy comment about Israel’s “measured” response in mid-flight en route to Europe.)

It’s not cheap to travel with the PM and that’s why only larger media organizations tend to do it. We’re the only ones who can afford it. I don’t know how much a seat on his last trip cost — the invoices are not sent to individual reporters but to a bureau manager — but, to give you a sense of the cost of travelling with a politician, media organizations paid about $10,000 a week for a seat on the election planes and that did not include hotel charges.  If a media organization wanted to cover all three major campaigns, that’s about $30,000 a week. For broadcasters, it’s a lot more because we have to put camera crews and editors on these plans — each one costing another $10,000 a week.

And, of course, the response from the PM’s assistant on this question doesn’t pass the common sense test: If, as the PM’s assistant claims above, “expenses are covered” on the PM’s plane, you could be sure that every single seat on his Airbus would be filled and that the roughly 300 members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery would have to have some sort of lottery to get an “expenses covered” trip to London, St. Petersburg, and Paris.

Those were our destinations, of course, for the last trip and only about 21 media representatives were on board an aircraft that could certainly carry about five times that many. The TV journalists alone — CTV, CBC, SRC, and Global — took up nine of those spots.

Now, as I said, media organizations pay their share for travel with the PM. But on this last trip, of course, the PM made a last minute decision to ditch the media in Paris and take his plane down to Cyprus to load it up with Canadian evacuees in Lebanon. The PMO announced that it would then assume responsibility for the additional cost of an additional night’s accomodation for journalists in Paris and the additional cost of putting us all on the next available commercial flight back from Paris to Ottawa. I’m certain those costs were substantial but they were the only costs the PMO assumed. For those journalists — Les Whittington of The Toronto Star was one — that did not wish to return to Ottawa, the journalist would have to pick up their own tab for airfare. Les’ desk dispatched him from Paris to Turkey and so The Star paid the freight to move Les out of Paris.

I should note that most media organizations operate under the “we will pay our own way” concept. So whether it’s sports reporters travelling with a pro hockey team; drama critics heading to the Stratford Festival; or business reporters covering corporate conference in a faraway city — most major media organizations will accept logistical help from outside organizations but will insist on paying fair market value for the travel services provided.

 

 

Committee Notes: International Trade – The Death of the Softwood Deal?

The House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade met yesterday — a rare summer sitting — to hear evidence on the softwood lumber deal agreed to between Canada and the U.S. on July 1. While the two countries have agreed on the final wording of the deal, it is not yet ready to be ratified. The deal requires Canadian industry to get behind the deal in the following ways:

  1. Any and all Canadian companies that are suing U.S. entities over illegally collected softwood lumber duties must drop their lawsuits. There are about 30 such lawsuits and the plaintiffs include companies like Tembec, West Fraser, Abitibi, Buchanan Lumber Sales Inc., Terminal Forest Products Ltd., Teal-Jones Group, Tolko Industries Ltd., Galloway Lumber Ltd., Leggett & Platt Canada, Domtar Inc., A.J. Forest Products Ltd., Aspen Planers Ltd., and Gorman Bros Lumber Ltd. If any one of those companies does not withdraw the suit, the deal is dead. (See the whole list in Annex 10b of the deal)
  2. Companies who collectively have a claim to 95 per cent of the refund of illegally collected duties must agree that Ottawa will be in charge of the refund redistribution program. Various news organizations have reported that so far, companies who collectively claim less than 50 per cent of this refund have agreed to let Ottawa run the program.

And so, with deal in some peril because the Canadian industry is not yet ready to satisfy those two conditions, Industry Minister David Emerson spoke to the committee yesterday to warn that while the deal his government signed wasn’t perfect, it was a lot better than the alternative. “I'm here to tell you another litigation cycle would be coming our way [if the deal  falls through] and it would be ugly. There would be job losses. There would be company failures. Communities would be in very, very difficult situations,” Emerson said.

After he spoke, several industry groups said bollocks to that, arguing that signing the deal would actually lead to plant closures and layoffs.

“Not a single company, not one foresty interest in Canada shares this government's enthusiasm for the deal or believes that it is good,” said Jamie Lim of the Ontario Forest Industries Association. (The Ontario Forest Industries Association, by the way, is one of those organizations that must agree to drop a lawsuit against the U.S.)

Bill Reedy, the CEO of Gorman Brothers, a family-owned firm with a mill in Westbank,  British Columbia, says the softwood deal would throw away years of Canadian court victories on the issue. “To be blunt, we feel like Alice in Wonderland — all logic and reason appears to have been abandoned. This agreement is an abomination.” Gorman Borthers is also one of those companies that must agree to drop the lawsuit. Reedy — like all CEOs whose companies have filed suits — have what effectively amounts to a veto on the deal.

This was meeting No. 16 of the committee and I expect to see the Blues (the early rough transcripts of the proceedings) tomorrow or the next day. In the meantime, here’s some excerpts from Meeting No. 15 of this committee, held on July 13. The committee spent most of this committee arguing about how to deal  with softwood lumber agreement. At this meeting, the committee talked about who, in addition to Emerson, should testify at yesterday’s meeting and they also talked about who should testify at another meeting this group will have in a couple of weeks.

The Conservatives on the Committee want to make sure that witnesses who support the deal speak to the committee.

 Mr. Ted Menzies (Conservative): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    We have some suggested witnesses, and we think this will certainly bring a balance, as I've maintained throughout this whole process. We've heard from those who are supportive and those who are critical of it.

    So in the spirit of cooperation that this party is so renowned for, I would like to start our wish list with Frank McKenna, because he was involved in the first negotiation. He may be busy doing other things–maybe he's running a leadership race or something, I don't know. I'm just not sure where he is–

In fact, as we heard from committee member Helena Guergis yesterday, Mr. McKenna declined the invitation. The Conservatives had some others they wanted to hear from in support of the deal.

Mr. Menzies:  Gordon Ritchie is another one who has been deeply involved in the softwood industry throughout the years. We'd like to suggest him.

….    Some individual from Canfor–and the same with all of these companies. Certainly we'd like the kingpin, if that's possible, but we realize it's summertime and some of us like to take holidays. We'd like to have Weyerhaeuser, the Canadian Lumber Remanufacturers Alliance, the Maritime Lumber Bureau, J.D. Irving, Ltd., Abitibi, the Québec Forest Industry Council-– …     Then there is Buchanan, Norman Spector, Rich Coleman, and Pierre-Marc Johnson.

To which NDP MP and committee member Peter Julian says:

Mr. Peter Julian (NDP):  Well, with that list we've pretty well run out of folks who support this agreement in this country. So let's hear from the associations across the country that are opposing this. They include the Québec Forest Industry Council, as Mr. Menzies mentioned; the B.C. Lumber Trade Council; the Ontario Lumber Manufacturers Association; the Independent Lumber Remanufacturers Association; Baker Hostetler's Eliot Feldman, who's one of the legal experts on this whole issue; the Free Trade Lumber Council; the Ontario Forest Industry Association; the Alberta Softwood Lumber Trade Council, which opposed this agreement; the National Association of Home Builders; United Steelworkers of Canada; International Forest Products; and I would also suggest Stephen Atkinson, who did the
report yesterday that showed that 20% of the industry would be decimated as a result of this document. That's a start.

    But I must say, Mr. Chair, I think you'll find in the next few weeks that you'll be getting letters from communities as well, because certainly this is an issue that has concerned many people in British Columbia. I would not be surprised if you find that you're getting letters from individuals and municipalities stating they're concerned and they want their opportunity to express their concerns about this 80-page document, which is radically different from the two-page document that was presented to us on April 27.

Yesterday, the committee heard from many of those groups.