Main Page – Page 31 – David Akin’s On The Hill

Conservatives and the Nordiques; EI premium hikes; ovarian cancer breakthrough: Thursday's A1 headlines and political daybook

Tories and Nordiques Conservatives and the Nordiques; EI premium hikes; ovarian cancer breakthrough: Get a five-minute audio summary – straight to your iPod if you'd like — of what's on Thursday's front pages of papers across the country by clicking on the link below.

Listen!

You can also get these audio summaries automatically every day via podcast from iTunes or via an RSS feed by subscribing to my AudioBoo stream. Both the iTunes link and the RSS link are at my profile at AudioBoo.fm. Look in the top right corner of the “Boos” box.

Euthanasia debate; mayoral races; and a Canadian makes Booker Prize shortlist: Wednesday's A1 Headlines and Political Daybook

Euthanasia debate; mayoral races; and a Canadian makes Booker Prize shortlist:: Get a four-minute audio summary of what's on Wednesday's front pages of papers across the country by clicking on the link below.

Back-to-school; counting stimulus signs; and jail guards threatened: Tuesday's A1 headlines and political daybook

Back-to-school; counting stimulus signs; and jail guards threatened: Get a four-minute audio summary of what's on Tuesday's front pages of papers across the country by clicking on the link below.

SunTV: We're looking for six bucks a year — a year! — but only if you want to pay

Over at my Facebook page, a friend asks me: “David, what are your thoughts re the so-called “Fox News North” broadcast application to the CRTC?”

As I'm the National Bureau Chief for the applicant and will likely have a prominent role in the television programming for the station once it gets up and running, I was pleased to provide the following reply:

First: It's called SunTV News. It's 100 per cent Canadian owned and operated. There's no deal with FOX; no licensing; no money from FOX. We're as Canadian as the CBC. SunTV News. Not Fox News North.

Second: Take a look at the CRTC's “Notice of Hearing” for our licence. It's a short read and it's right here at:

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2010/2010-649.htm

Let me cut to the chase and sum up what's in that doc: We are not asking taxpayers to subsidize us. We're not asking the CRTC to force Canadians to pay for our programming or to be forced to watch us. What we are doing is asking the CRTC to order Rogers, Shaw, Videotron, Telus, Bell and all other cable and satellite companies to put us on the digital dial so that, to quote from the CRTC notice, “the public [can] have access to Sun TV News without any obligation to choose it.”

So to sum up: You don't want it? No problem. We're not asking the CRTC to force you to pay for it. You want it? Terrific. We are asking the CRTC to make sure your local television provider puts it on the dial so that you can order it.

Our owners, Quebecor Inc., plan on losing about $25 million over the first four years of Sun TV's operation. That's $25 million that a Canadian company is willing to bet on Canadian journalists and Canadian audiences. When was the last time that happened? (Why it was Conrad Black's National Post where I just happened to be a proud day oner!)

How will SunTV make money? Partly through the sale of advertising. But we're also betting that a lot of Canadians will pay 50 cents a month for us. That's right. $6 a year. A year.

Of that 50 cents, half will go to us and half to the TV distributor. So we're going through these hoops so we can ask you — not force you — to give us $3 a year. For that, we intend to offer you some television news programming that you can't get on CTV or CBC (or American-owned CNN, for that matter, the channel that is easily the most-watched all-news channel in this country.)

You can read all about what we're up to by downloading this collection of documents (including revenue and expense estimates) which Quebecor has filed with the CRTC:
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/public/broad/applications/2010/2010-1188-2.zip

Al Qaeda in Ottawa, torture victim cheers arrest and Alberta sales tax: Thursday's A1 headlines and political daybook

Al Qaeda in Ottawa; Torture victim cheers arrest – sales taxes in Alberta: Get a four-minute audio summary of what's on Thursday's front pages of papers across the country by clicking on the link below.

Harper dances with the Inuvialuit

After spending most of Wednesday in Resolute, Nunavut, Harper flew late in the day to Inuvik, NWT where, at about 7 pm Mountain Time, he attended a community feast and said a few words. But before his speech, the Inuvik Drummers and Dancers gave a performance of several Inuvialuit dances. At the end of their performance, they invited Harper (and the ministers accompanying him on this trip, John Duncan, Leona Aglukkaq and Gail Shea) to join them in a dance. Here's the raw video (click on the image below to view):

Death in Manila; bombs at Bastarache; and Hollywood north: Wedneday's A1 headlines and political daybook

Death in Manila; bombs at Bastarache; and Hollywood north: Get a four-minute audio summary of what's on Tuesday's front pages of papers across the country by clicking on the link below.

Police chiefs love the gun registry; Ontario's jailbreak; and Smitherman's kiss of death?: Tuesday's A1 headlines and political daybook

Police chiefs love the gun registry; Ontario's jailbreak; and Smitherman's kiss of death?: Get a four-minute audio summary of what's on Tuesday's front pages of papers across the country by clicking on the link below.

Pakistan relief; duped on refugees; and an e.coli scare: Monday's front page headlines and political daybook

More relief for Pakistan; duped on refugees; and an e.coli scare: Get a four-minute audio summary of what's on Monday's front pages of papers across the country by clicking on the link below.

Some tweaks to the directory of Canadian Political Twits

I'm making some tweaks to my Directory of Canadian Political Twits. (Twits, by the way, is used here as a term of affection mostly because using the word Twitterers or Tweeters sounds odd.) Some notes and explanations about this directory:

This directory does not exist in a vacuum. There are lots of great resources for those interested in Twitter and politics and media. One great example of another directory is Politwitter.ca. It aims to be a comprehensive directory and wonderful stats compiler for the whole intersection of media, politicians, political bloggers. It also includes provincial and municipal politics. My directory is more of a niche directory with a focus almost exclusively on the Parliamentary Precinct. And, to focus it even more tightly, it is not intended to be a directory for people who tweet, blog or write about Parliament Hill but rather a directory of people who tweet, blog or write from Parliament Hill. It's a directory of federal political staffers; federal government departments; foreign embassies and a guide to hashtags used by those who generated twitter feeds from Parliament Hill. This focus will be useful to some (mostly me, as the creator of it) and, I hope, to others. Other directories will be useful in different ways to others.
Anyone's free to “declare” a hashtag and it's up to the Twitterverse to accept it or not. So please keep that in mind when I start talking here about committee hashtags. If you think I'm for the birds here, fine: Tweet your own tags. When I first declared hashtags for House of Commons committees, I simply put the # in front of the four character short form given to each committee by the House of Commons itself. But then I searched to see if, for example, the hashtag #INDU, for example, was in wide use and, as it was in wide use for some other subject, I thought I'd just stick a C in front of the four-character shortform to make it unique and so I dubbed INDU #CINDU. I now think the concern about the hashtag being unique to the committee is overblow, so I'm dropping the C and I'm going back to #INDU. If you're using an RSS feed, a Twitter list, or other method to keep track of these committee hashtags, I don't think there'll be a lot of confusion.
Adding a few hashtags (a bit late, but better late than never) including #jaffer, #guergis and #LPCX. Suggestions for others?
Reorganized and made lots of edits to the Hashtags and Organizations page
Added a Twitter list I've created for “hopeful” MPs, i.e. a list of twits who are official candidates for the next general election. I'm open to putting more Twitter lists up here. Do you have some lists to share? Let me know.