David Akin’s On The Hill

One of the basic must-have tools for any reporter is a machine you can use to record interviews and press conferences. I’ve been using a digital voice recorder from Sony for the last several years but it recently disappeared so I went on the hunt for a new one.

My ideal product would let me record in .wav or .mp3 format; time-stamp recordings in time-of-day format rather than run-time format; let me transcribe from my recording from within a word processing program like Microsoft Word; and have some sort of automatic voice-to-text capability. Oh — and it’s got to be cheap.

Let’s take a look at that wish list.

As for the voice-to-text, the dream system would let me download my recording to my PC, hit play, and some software would generate a perfect transcript of what was said. The New York Times most excellent columnist David Pogue got my hopes up recently that such a product — Dragon’s Naturally Speaking — might exist. Here’s what he said in a recent review:

“I can remember, in the early days, having to read 45 minutes' worth of [material] for the software's benefit. But each successive version of NaturallySpeaking has required less training time; in Version 8, five minutes was all it took.

And now they've topped that: NatSpeak 9 requires no training at all.”

but then, deeper in the review, Pogue goes on to say:

“NatSpeak is also available in a range of versions for the American market, including medical and legal incarnations. Mere mortals will probably want to consider either the Standard version ($100) or the Preferred version ($200), each of which comes with a headset. Both offer the same accuracy.

The Preferred edition, however, offers several shiny bells and whistles. One of them is transcription from a digital pocket voice recorder. This approach doesn't provide the same accuracy as a headset, and it requires what today is considered an excruciating amount of training reading: at least 15 minutes. But it does free you from dictating at the computer. “

Pogue doesn't say anything about transcribing several voices from a recording but I would assume, if the software needs 15 minutes to recognize your voice on a recording, it would be pretty tough to recognize other voices on a recording.

As for the timecode format, I’m still looking. When I go to a press conference, I want to hook up my digital voice-recorder to a mixing console or place it near a speaker. I want to turn it on and have it start recording using time-of-day code. That way, I can just look at my watch when I hear something interesting at 5:45 pm during a press conference, I can scribble

@17:45:44 – Harper – wants Red Deer to get an NHL franchise

As it is now, most cheap recorders only offer “runtime” timecode which means if Harper says something interesting 10 minutes into a press conference, I would have to move to “0:10:44” on the file when I review it. Recording time-of-day timecode is so much easier when you’re running around Parliament Hill making several recordings during the day.

I have not yet found one that offers a time-of-day timecode.

So, in the end, I picked up a cheap — under $100 – unit made by Olympus.  It does the basics. You can quickly and
easily move files — the default recording format is .wav – to the PC and it has a function that lets you store files on your recorder in “Date” folders. I find that handy for archiving and finding recordings.

You can also set it to start recording at a particular time of day. It does have some indexing features.

After years of computing mostly on a Mac at work, I'm now computing on Windows XP Pro. The software that comes with the Olympus is pretty bare bones and is for Windows only.

After I bought it, though, I found a great little Windows freeware utility that lets you play just about any audio file from within
Microsoft Word or other word processor. It's called Express Scribe and it's great for transcribing because I can use hot keys from within Word to start, stop, pause, slow down, speed up or rewind the recording from within Word.

Love to read your thoughts in the comments section here …

The Conservative Party of Canada is handily beating its political rivals when it comes to fundraising, according to the latest data released by Elections Canada.

Conservatives raised just over $4–million in the second quarter of the year, nearly double the amount of money raised by the Liberals, NDP, Green Party and Bloc Quebecois combined during the same period.

Fervour among Conservatives supporters seems to have hardly abated with their electoral victory on January 23. For the months of April, May and June, 37,871 contributors gave the Conservative party a total of $4,018,952. The Liberals managed to raise just $1.19–million from 8,041 donors. The NDP collected $734,642 from 11,379.

The Green Party, which has no seats in the House of Commons, easily outpaced the Bloc Quebecois, which has 51 MPs, when it comes to fundraising. The Greens raised $193,808 from 4,429 contributors compared to the BQ which netted just $27,556 from 229 contributors.

I’ve got more about this, with comments from Conservative and Liberal officials, back at CTV.ca.

 

Statistics Canada reports today on a survey of “heavy Internet users”, those that spend more than an hour a day online. That would be me and I’m betting that would be you. The survey says our online time comes at the expense of time with our spouses and friends and we’re more likely to stay indoors and avoid going out.

“They also devoted significantly less time than non-users to paid work and chores around the home, as well as less time sleeping, relaxing, resting or thinking,” said StatsCan. Less time thinking? How do you survey people on the amount of time they think?

Statscan continues: “What is striking is the amount of time they spent alone. Moderate Internet users (those using the Internet for five minutes to one hour during the diary day) spent about 26 more minutes by themselves than non-users during the diary day. But heavy Internet users were alone nearly two hours (119 minutes) longer than non-users, even when comparing people from similar-sized households.”

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)

 

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.

 

 

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.

The words are from Liberal leadership candidate Gerard Kennedy.  The hyperlinks are mine.

Dear Prime Minister:
 
Yesterday, Canadians learned that the Conservative Party of Canada is selling your
position on the Middle East as a source of election funds even as people there are
suffering and dying.
 
I would hope you find these Conservative fundraising tactics as tasteless and
indefensible as I do.
 
Out of respect for the high office you hold, I would ask that you immediately repudiate
your party’s attempts to profit from the misery of the men, women and children caught in
a war half-way around the world.
 
Prime Minister, if you are the man of principle your fundraisers claim you are, you will do
the right thing and ask them to stop.
 
Canadians await your response.
 
Sincerely, 
 
Gerard Kennedy
Liberal Leadership Candidate, 2006

I was on holiday when Conservative Party executive director Michael Donison sent this out but, for the record, here is what generated a little heat last week:

Dear Mr. XXX,

Our Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper was amongst the first of the world's leaders to take a principled stand on the new turmoil in the Mid-East. Since then, leaders the world over have risen to stand with Stephen Harper. Our nation has every reason to be proud.

Admit it: Moral clarity feels a lot better than the endless equivocation we found with our previous government.

But not everyone is grateful for the strong, clear direction of Canada's new government and this includes in particular the opposition parties who are only interested in maneuvering for party advantage.

And so, I must turn to you to ask you for your support. The fact is: the opposition is not thrilled with the growing strength of the Harper government and the resurgence of national pride Canadians are showing in their country. You need only look at their ceaseless machinations to see that they are doing everything in their power to bring this government
down..

We must be ready for an election now because the opposition is blindly determined to drag the country to the polls, on any pretext they can contrive.

As a matter of public record, everyone knows the Conservative Party of Canada managed the last election without adding a dime to the Party's debt. You made that possible, it's just that simple. And if we intend to win the next election and win a majority – we need to continue moving heaven and Earth to be ready.

When an election comes, we will have just days to mount a campaign and ensure the continuance of the most dynamic and forward-looking Canadian government in recent memory. The time to lay the foundation is right now and we continue to need your help if this effort is to succeed.

It is a wonderful thing to be reminded of the power of ideals, principles in which we believe and on which we will act. We have had far too many years of vacillation on ideals and fundamental values about which the majority of Canadians are clear and certain.

Unsurprisingly, Don Martin got it just right in his July 20th National Post column, speaking of Prime Minister Harper, he wrote: ” He's proven himself bold, imaginative and unpredictable. This is something refreshing on the Canadian political landscape – a leader willing to take risks to do what's right in the face of certain criticism. It stands him in stark and favourable contrast to the hesitant poll-driven Martin reign.”

What did surprise me, though, were the private comments of a Liberal acquaintance, among them the following: ” I have never been so proud to be Canadian. I'm thrilled that we're investing in our military. I'm thrilled that we're staying to finish a job in Afghanistan, and I'm ecstatic that we are finally taking a position on issues of global importance like what is happening in the Middle East. Please let Stephen Harper know that I've never been more proud of being a Canadian.”

Ultimately, not everything is about party politics. Canadians know what's right and wrong and it is a great satisfaction even if one may not politically admit it — to have a government that has the courage to tell the plain truth.

This government is worth the fight; help us make sure we win the next election whenever it comes. We can expect an avalanche of Liberal fury to get back into power and a flood of media support for their effort. Help us keep the focus on principle and character and Canada's return to its place in the world.

I ask you to make a special contribution now of $150 or $75 to the Party today and help us be prepared to defend the decisive leadership of Stephen Harper and our New Conservative government.

With my sincere thanks,

Michael D. Donison
Executive Director, Conservative Party of Canada

P.S. – Your contribution is tax deductible. …

Authorized by Conservative Fund Canada, Chief Agent of the Conservative
Party of Canada.

Elections Canada will be sending out some big cheques this week to the country’s major political parties. These cheques, totalling about $27.2–million, represent the amount of money that taxpayers (via the federal government) reimburse to politicians to cover the cost of competing for seats in a federal election.

A quick and completely unscientific analysis shows that the Bloc Quebecois got the best “value” for their dollars spent, in the sense that the cost of winning a seat for the Bloc was cheapest. NDP seats cost the most and, of course, the Green Party lost everything.

From today’s Elections Canada press release:

The Chief Electoral Officer authorizes reimbursement of 50 percent of the eligible registered party's election expenses, paid by its registered agents, upon receipt of the party's election expenses return, the auditor's report and a declaration by the party's chief agent concerning the election expenses.

The following amounts have been reimbursed:

Political party	Amount reimbursed
Bloc Québécois	$2,261,702.49
Conservative Party of Canada	$9,009,589.64
Green Party of Canada	$455,489.54
Liberal Party of Canada	$8,719,845.00
New Democratic Party	$6,735,433.46

So, since the taxpayer picks up half the cost of fighting an election, you could double all those amounts to come to the grand total each of those parties spent to win seats in January’s election. Doing that you would get this table:

Political party	Total Spent
Conservative Party of Canada	$18,019,179.28
Liberal Party of Canada	$17,439,690.00
New Democratic Party	$13,470,866.92
Bloc Québécois	$4,523,404.98
Green Party of Canada	$910,979.08

And what about the “value” of each dollar spent politicking? Well, based on what they spent and what they earned in terms of seats, here’s how much each seat “cost”:

Political party	Seats won	Per seat cost
Green Party of Canada	0	Lost it all
New Democratic Party	29	$464,512.65
Liberal Party of Canada	102	$170,977.35
Conservative Party of Canada	125	$144,153.43
Bloc Québécois	51	$88,694.22

Before I moved here last year to join CTV’s Parliamentary Bureau, I lived in north Oakville, Ontario, precisely 60 kilometres from my office in the Globe and Mail building at Front and Spadina in Toronto. We lived in what was then Liberal Gary Carr’s riding but is now the riding of Conservative Garth Turner. On his blog, Garth writes a lot about his riding, which includes part of the town of Oakville and all of Milton and, as I have fond memories of the time I spent living in that part of Canada, I find myself more than just professionally drawn to the stuff he posts.

Recently, Garth (left) took a bike ride up along Guelph Line — with the hills of Halton, that would be some kind of ride! — and while he marvels at the beauty of north Halton, he also has what I’d call a “Green Moment”:

… the defining feature of Halton is houses. They grow like weeds. People pay a lot to move here on the edge of the Toronto metropolis. … Roads cannot be widened fast enough. The 401 is a mess. Toronto smog days now extend all the way out to Milton, Oakville and Burlington.

I write about this because there will, of course, be consequences. Already are. Not just with real estate values, traffic patterns and unmet demand for community services. … Instead, this field stripped to its subsoil nakedness in the blistering late July sun is a symbol of something far more serious than those human problems which more taxes can solve. This is a rape of the land. …

This summer it has been 30 degrees or close to it almost every day where I live. Tomorrow the humidex is forecast to be 45. I read that Canada has never been warmer. The States, too. Yesterday came word of a study that showed the amount of sunshine hitting the earth is decreasing measurably, and yet we still get hotter – thanks to all the crap we have thrown into the atmosphere.

There are now restrictions on the amount of water people can put on their lawns. There are heat emergencies declared just about every week in the city. People with breathing problems are told to stay inside. Police are breaking into parked cars to free pets dying of heat exhaustion. The polar ice cap is melting and the sea is rising.

And I’m standing in front of 40 pieces of heavy equipment too hot to touch with an ungloved finger in a field denuded of vegetation where every molecule of moisture is being fried.

I hear that in October the Conservative government will be unveiling as new green plan – air protection, water protection, a made-in-Canada Kyoto strategy – and I can hardly wait. I’m not alone, watching a skinny coyote run across the gouged, empty dirt, looking for shade.

Our present patterns of behaviour cannot reasonably continue. Here in sprawl country the causes and the effects are obvious. It will take more than federal statues to change them. I would welcome a discussion on this issue as vigorous and passionate as the one we have been having over a strip of middle East land that is already a desert.