Month: September 2011

Now, I like CTV's Craig Oliver, but what the heck!?!

Back in 2004, when I started bugging the CTV national news brass in Toronto to move me off of Bay Street, where I was the network's national business and technology correspondent, to let me try my hand at covering federal politics in the network's Ottawa bureau, I knew that I wasn't going anywhere unless CTV's Ottawa bureau chief at the time, Craig Oliver, was ok with the move.

I assume he was ok with my request, because I switched beats just in time to get a down-front seat for the final few months of the last Liberal government we may see for a very, very long time. I was grateful to Craig and the CTV head office folks for letting me make the move.

Shortly after I arrived, Oliver would pass the bureau chief baton — one he'd held for ages — to a newcomer to TV, my old National Post colleague, Robert Fife. With Fife assuming the day-to-day leadership of the bureau, Oliver focused on his weekly show, Question Period and was a great help to those, like me, who were learning how to report on federal politics for national TV.

I say all that to let you know that I probably wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if Oliver thought I was for the birds and I think he's one heck of an icon in journalism circles here. Plus he's one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet.

But he ain't always right. (And he'd be the first to say so, I'm sure.)

And he was, oh, so terribly un-right — in other words: wrong — when he peed all over Sun News Network at a time when I was one of three actual employees of the outfit. “Who needs it?” Oliver said at the time. “We’re already struggling for audience, all of us. We don’t need another news channel.”

In that segment, we should note, Oliver talks about the last job my boss, Kory Teneycke, had, as the director of communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and uses that as evidence I and my colleagues will be a propaganda machine for the Tories.

Well, if an entire news organization is going to branded as a bunch of partisan advocates because of their boss, let's look at CTV: Former CTV CEO Ivan Fecan hosted multi-million dollar fundraising dinners for Jean Chretien in the late 1990s. Fecan's hand-picked top communications guy was Paul Sparkes who — wait for it — was in Chretien's inner circle.  When I was in the CTV Ottawa bureau, our in-house lobbyist – a vice-president — had an office around the corner. His name was Charles Bird. Bird's political connections? Former policy advisor to Liberal MP Ralph Goodale. And here's the kicker: Remember those outrageous Liberal ads in the 2006 campaign that warned Canadians that the Conservatives would put “soldiers in our streets” if they won? Well that series of ads was conceived by Jack Fleischmann who had taken a leave of absence from CTV-owned Business News Network to work on Paul Martin's campaign. When Martin lost, Fleischmann came back to BNN. Guess what Fleischman does now? He runs CTV News Channel! So Oliver jumps on Sun News Network because the top executive running my network, Kory Teneycke, was a Conservative operative. And yet he fails to mention that the top executive running CTV's news network — which will be the  competitor to Teneycke's channel — was a Liberal operative. But on Oliver's network, like most of my mainstream media colleagues sadly, you only hear about Teneycke political pedigree. You never hear about the Liberal skeletons in CTV's closet that went all the way to the former CEO.

I suppose Oliver and CTV figured back then that they would have something to fear from us cuz, as it turns out, even though Bell (which owns CTV) refuses to carry Sun News Network on its satellite systems, we're already kicking CTV News Channel's butt thanks to viewers who get their TV from Shaw and Rogers:

Sun News Network scorched CBC and CTV in ratings last Friday.
During the afternoon and in prime time, Sun News programming bested the state broadcaster's News Network by more than 30,000 viewers. CTV News Channel was a distant third.
While Canada Live – guest-hosted by Anita Sharma – reached 72,900 viewers, according to BBM ratings data, the CBC's afternoon programming only had an audience of 37,900. CTV logged 34,000 viewers during the same coveted 3-5 p.m. timeslot.
Even more remarkable is that while Charles Adler was reaching 82,300 viewers at 8 p.m. ET, the CBC could only muster an audience of 58,200. CTV was third place that night with 39,600 tuning in.
Later Friday, Byline with Brian Lilley tied the network record with an audience of 89,000. Sun News' 9 p.m. ET show throttled the meager 18,000-viewer audience for CTV, and nearly knocking the decades-old CBC newscast hosted by Peter Mansbridge off its taxpayer-funded pedestal. Joining the ratings successes, Ezra Levant's show The Source registered 57,000 viewers at 5 p.m. ET.
That crushed CTV's audience of 28,000 viewers and was within striking distance of CBC's audience of 59,200 over the same period.
These early ratings wins come at a time when Sun News is only available in about 5.5 million households, compared with CBC News Network in 10.6 million homes and CTV in 8.5 million.

So why bring all this up? Here's why: Oliver gives Sun News Network the bum's rush — but when our old pal Tom Clark gets a new gig at Global  with a Sunday politics show that is Oliver's first-ever competition for the Question Period franchise, well, that's all fine and dandy:

“What I say to Tom is welcome to the club, we’re glad to have you. I’m a longtime colleague and friend of Tom’s. I have great regard for him. I think the more the merrier,” Oliver told the Toronto Star.

I agree, Craig. But how come I didn't hear “the more the merrier” when we launched?

Incidentally, when Clark's gig with Global was announced earlier this week, the first thing we did at Sun News Network was to invite Clark on my program The Daily Brief to talk a bit about his new program — it's called West Block — and a little more about politics. It was a lot of fun and I'm glad he was able to join us.

I'm looking forward to watching Question Period tomorrow to see if CTV and Oliver are serious about “the more the merrier” and will also invite Clark on their program. The more the merrier!

 

The Harpers hook up with their fave Bollywood star, Akshay Kumar

 

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and is wife Laureen attended a private dinner in Toronto Friday to celebrate the birthday of Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar. Later, after the Harpers had left, Kumar’s birthday party continued on, with a performance by rapper Ludacris and comedian Russell Peters. (Some reports say Harper may have met Ludacris and seen his show but PMO sources say the Harpers were gone from the party before the entertainment got going.)

Kumar was in town for the launch of his new film Breakaway at the Toronto International Film Festival, funded partly with money from the Ontario government. Kumar, whose star power in the subcontinent is about equivalent to Brad Pitt’s on this continent, helped Harper out during the last general election, joining him for a campaign event in Brampton, Ont. (The Conservatives took both seats in Brampton, vanquishing the Liberals who held them). Harper first met Kumar in Mumbai, India in the fall of 2009 and named him as one of the 2010 Winter Olympics torch bearers.

Copps for President: Liberal Party essential to prevent country from tearing itself apart

Members of the federal Liberal party will gather in Ottawa in January and one of their tasks will be to elect a new party president. Former cabinet minister (and one-time deputy prime minister) Sheila Copps said today, she wants that job. Here's her release:

The Hon. Sheila Copps today officially announced that she is seeking the presidency of the Liberal Party of Canada.  She made the announcement during a guest appearance on the popular Radio Canada television program, “Les Lionnes”.

“I am pleased to announce that I am running for President of the Liberal Party of Canada. There is much work to be done, but I am excited to join my fellow Liberals as we listen, learn and build for the future”, she said. Sheila, the first female Deputy Prime Minister and a former Minister of Environment and of Heritage, represented the riding of Hamilton East for twenty years.

Before her career in federal politics, Sheila served in the Ontario legislature.  After active politics, she worked as a journalist, political commentator and author, while helping to support Liberal candidates and causes across the country.  She speaks four languages, English, French, Italian and Spanish.

Sheila made the decision to return to active politics after speaking to all former Liberal leaders and consulting Canadians from coast to coast to coast. “I care deeply about the shape and nature of Canada, a country that embraces compromise and respects differences. Throughout our country's history, the Liberal Party has been at the centre of our collective identity, pragmatically finding a common path to ensure that we didn’t tear ourselves apart on ideological grounds,” says Sheila. “That bridge-building is now at risk. From a prime minister who openly boasts about his wish to destroy the Liberal Party and a newly-invigorated social democratic party that seeks to occupy the left of the political spectrum, the Liberal party must thrive again to ensure the centrist policies that have kept our country balanced and strong.”

Galbraith and the skewering of economists and conventional wisdom

John Kenneth Galbraith and I share the same alma mater: The University of Guelph. Mind you, Galbraith apparently hated the place while I loved it. Galbraith, according to this article, called it “probably the worst college in the English-speaking world.” (When Galbraith was there it was simply the Ontario Agricultural College, branch plant of the University of Toronto, 80 km to the east). When Galbraith died in 2006, the University of Guelph was willing to overlook Galbraith's harsh assessment and instead claimed that its (arguably) most famous alumnus was “a dedicated friend and supporter of the University.”

Whatever …

Certainly Galbraith was one of the greatest liberal thinkers of his age and quite possibly of the last few hundred years.

I quite like Galbraith for his wit, candour and plain languge, something that comes up in this review essay in The Nation by Kim Phillips-Fein:

Galbraith delighted in puncturing the self-importance of his profession. He was a satirist of economics almost as much as a practitioner of it. He took generally accepted ideas about the economy and turned them upside down. Instead of atomistic individuals and firms, he saw behemoth corporations; instead of the free market, a quasi-planned economy. Other economists believed that consumers were rational, calculating actors, whose demands and tastes were deserving of the utmost deference. Galbraith saw people who were easily manipulated by savvy corporations and slick advertising campaigns, who had no real idea of what they wanted, or why. In many ways, our economic world is quite different from the one Galbraith described at mid-century. But at a time when free-market orthodoxy seems more baroque, smug and dominant than ever, despite the recession caused by the collapse of the real estate bubble, his gleeful skewering of the “conventional wisdom” (a phrase he famously coined) remains a welcome corrective.

Phillips-Fein is reviewing a “Library of America” collection of Galbraith's writings between 1952 and 1967:

The four books collected in the Library of America volume take as their central target the idea that the economy is composed of rational, calculating individuals, whose personal preferences shape the market and guide it to an optimal outcome for everyone. It is hard to imagine four such books being written today: they were bestselling, lucid, fiercely confident works that argued in various ways against the idea that the American economy operates as a frictionless, benevolent free market.

For example:

Private consumption rose to heights of bizarre extravagance—while schools and parks had to beg for money from the state. “Vacuum cleaners to ensure clean houses are praiseworthy and essential in our standard of living,” Galbraith wrote. “Street cleaners to ensure clean streets are an unfortunate expense. Partly as a result, our houses are generally clean and our streets are generally filthy.” He also observed the odd discrepancy in attitudes toward public and private debt—the one, sharply condemned, the other eagerly encouraged.

Phillips-Fein reminds us that Galbraith's attack on unfettered capitalism are possibly even more relevant today than they were 50 years ago though..

“..some of the particulars of his vision may seem out of place today, his argument that there is something absurd about a society that can afford tremendous mansions, private jets and elite colleges while cities close firehouses, shut down bus lines and debate whether their crumbling public schools can even stay open five days a week seems as relevant as ever. So does his willingness to poke fun at those who recite platitudes about the market.
Today, the gulf between the richest and the poorest has grown wider, with the policies that support such inequalities buttressed, in part, by the intellectual project of modern conservatism, which Galbraith once called “one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” With the headlines dominated by news of recession and austerity, how clear is it that we live in an “affluent society” any longer?

But back to that "error" Libby Davies made with her pensions motion…

Colleague Daniel Proussalidis reported earlier this week on a motion that NDP Deputy Leader (and possible leadership candidate) Libby Davies had brought forward for the House of Commons to debate. That motion called on the government to eliminate the 10-year-residency requirement for access to federal Old Age Security and Canada Pension Plan payments.

The day after Proussalidis' story appeared, NDP MP Wayne Marston — his party's pensions critic — announced that the motion had been withdrawn. The line from Marston was that it was one of dozens of motions Davies had put before the House and that this particular motion was put there “in error”.

Well, if that's true, it's an error Davies — now the deputy leader of party that is the “government-in-waiting” — has made over and over and over and over again for more than 10 years:

  • M-141 — June 6, 2011 — Ms. Davies (Vancouver East) — That, in the opinion of the House, the government should eliminate the 10-year residency requirement, based on an applicant’s country of origin, for Canadian citizens to qualify for Old Age Security benefits.
  • M-233 — March 3, 2010 — Ms. Davies (Vancouver East) — That, in the opinion of the House, the government should eliminate the 10-year residency requirement, based on an applicant’s country of origin, for Canadian citizens to qualify for Old Age Security benefits.
  • M-233 — January 26, 2009 — Ms. Davies (Vancouver East) — That, in the opinion of the House, the government should eliminate the 10-year residency requirement, based on an applicant’s country of origin, for Canadian citizens to qualify for Old Age Security benefits.
  • M-233 — November 20, 2008 — Ms. Davies (Vancouver East) — That, in the opinion of the House, the government should eliminate the 10-year residency requirement, based on an applicant’s country of origin, for Canadian citizens to qualify for Old Age Security benefits.
  • M-96 — October 16, 2007 — Ms. Davies (Vancouver East) — That, in the opinion of the House, the government should eliminate the 10-year residency requirement, based on an applicant’s country of origin, for Canadian citizens to qualify for Old Age Security benefits.
  • -seconded Ms. Savoie, Mr. Martin, Ms. Bell
  • M-96 — April 4, 2006 — Ms. Davies (Vancouver East) — That, in the opinion of the House, the government should eliminate the 10-year residency requirement, based on an applicant’s country of origin, for Canadian citizens to qualify for Old Age Security benefits.
  • M-100 — October 5, 2004 — Ms. Davies (Vancouver East) — That, in the opinion of this House, the government should ensure that eligibility for the Old Age Security is based on a fair and just application by removing the ten-year waiting period required for some seniors who are sponsored immigrants.
  • M-168 — February 2, 2004 — Ms. Davies (Vancouver East) — That, in the opinion of this House, the government should ensure that eligibility for the Old Age Security is based on a fair and just application, by removing the ten-year waiting period required for some seniors who are sponsored immigrants.
  • M-168 — October 4, 2002 — Ms. Davies (Vancouver East) — On or after Friday, October 18, 2002 — That, in the opinion of this House, the government should ensure that eligibility for the Old Age Security is based on a fair and just application, by removing the ten-year waiting period required for some seniors who are sponsored immigrants.
  • M-77 — January 30, 2001 — Ms. Davies (Vancouver East) — On or after Tuesday, February 13, 2001 — That, in the opinion of this House, the government should ensure that eligibility for the Old Age Security is based on a fair and just application, by removing the ten-year waiting period required for some seniors who are sponsored immigrants.

 

 

PMO's new communications strategist: Too many francophones in Ottawa!

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has his majority government and he has it without Quebec's help, thank you very much. You don't see that everyday!

So why not hire a new director of communications who, a year-and-a-half ago wrote in his column in Canada's biggest-circulation newspaper that “Many are tired of the annoying lament from a province (Quebec) that keeps yelling at those who pay part of its bills and are concerned by the over-representation of francophones in our bureaucracy, our Parliament and our institutions.”

That was Angelo Persichilli, a journalist for 30 years who, on Tuesday, becomes a political operative as the new director of communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

He does not speak French, a fact noted by several French-speaking members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery today who had been grumbling for the last few years that, too often, briefings and other communications from the PMO were in one official language only.

And now, we have a column where Harper's new director of communications complains that there's too many of those complaining francophones in Ottawa anyway.

This should work out just fine.