Tim Knight2013-06-18T18:39:41-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=tim-knightCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Tim KnightGood old fashioned elbow grease.Watching the Watchdog: The Benefits of Legalizing Marijuanatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.34427312013-06-15T00:37:24-04:002013-06-15T12:02:34-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-knight/ Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada.
Still on the subject of people doing things the sometimes asinine majesty of the law says they shouldn't (see my last Monday Watchdog column "No Bad Whores, Only Bad Laws"), I move now to the subject of marijuana and the smoking thereof.
First, in the full disclosure department, allow me to lay out my credentials to comment on the hallucinogenic/psychedelic drug also known as cannabis, pot, dope, ganja, boo, dagga, bud, weed, grass, herb, joint, Juanita, Mari Jane and a hundred other fond nicknames.
Yes, I've smoked marijuana. And yes, I've inhaled it.
In fact, since I was 17, along with more than two million Canadians and 162 million people around the world I've lit up, inhaled and enjoyed marijuana. Under the influence I've said and done the customary silly, wise, foolish, intelligent, amusing, inane, sexy, delightful things that people do when stoned. On five continents and six sun-drenched islands.
And never, for one moment, have I regretted using the stuff.
Marijuana lessens pain (I have a bad back). It's an anti-depressant (the freelance writing, filmmaking and communications training business are in terminal decline). And it increases both sexual enjoyment and staying power (no need to explain).
It's possible that these undoubted benefits explain why our joyless Conservative government spends a fortune trying to catch marijuana smokers, growers and sellers -- making 78,000 arrests in 2011 alone. And why it's about to impose tough mandatory minimum sentences on other such incorrigible evildoers when it catches them in the future.
Most at risk, of course, will be Canada's kids. UNICEF reports that more Canadian teenagers smoke marijuana than anywhere else in the western world.
Enter Maclean's magazine which claims some 2.4 million readers and is generally regarded as securely in the Red Tory conservative camp. Certainly no hangout for stoners and others of that seedy ilk.
Even so, its June 17 issue devotes nearly seven pages (around 8,000 words) under the all-caps headline WE NEED TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA NOW.
Maclean's Vancouver bureau chief, Ken MacQueen pulls no punches, calling the government's anti-marijuana statute: "...a 90-year-old law built on myths, fears and hysteria; a law that crushed the ambitions of countless thousands of young people; a law that millions violate when it suits their purpose."
MacQueen starts his story with an estimate from a local pot activist: "Sometime this year, if it hasn't happened already, the millionth Canadian will be arrested for marijuana possession."
Think the former Skydome in Toronto. A million Canadians would fill the Skydome 20 times over. Get the picture?
MacQueen goes on: "Since the Tories came to power in 2006 ... arrests for pot possession have jumped 41 per cent. In those six years, police reported more than 405,000 marijuana-related arrests, roughly equivalent to the populations of Regina and Saskatoon combined."
Most of the civilized world (excluding your average mullah, priest, rabbi etc. who prefer you get high on their God alone) seems to be heading in the exact opposite direction.
The U.S. states of Colorado and Washington just legalized possession of an ounce of marijuana while Vermont became the 17th state to decriminalize possession.
Further south, The Economistreports the Organization of American States (which admittedly has a heavy stake in the drug trade) belatedly believes the war on drugs isn't working. It envisions "a future in which cannabis will be legal in much of Europe and the Americas by 2025."
Across the pond, powerful politicians in Denmark and Switzerland are working to persuade their governments to legalize marijuana. In the Netherlands it's already effectively legal.
And back home in Canada, pollster Forum Research reports that two out of three of Canadians -- even those of us not currently locked up for marijuana offences -- favour legalizing the drug. To their credit, both opposition parties, NDP and Liberal, support decriminalization.
As I mentioned, I've smoked and inhaled the stuff myself. And yes, I've grown it too.
It's easy.
And it keeps your money out of the pockets of the Angels and the Mafiosi.
All you need to keep you and a few friends happy for a couple of years are four professional-class seeds (I recommend Barney's Pineapple Chunk) which you can buy easily in most Canadian cities and through the Internet where dozens of sites also offer detailed growing instructions.
You can grow the seeds in a closet with a 400 watt bulb, in your garden, or on your balcony. For gardens and balconies, it's a good idea to adorn the growing plant with some of those bright red plastic apples sold for Christmas decoration. They make marijuana plants look exactly like ripe tomato plants.
For most of Canada, unfortunately, it's a little late in the spring to plant seeds outside. But almost any teenager can steer you toward a friend who has a friend who knows someone who sells.
Street price at the moment averages around $200 an ounce.
But be warned. In the spirit of "Smoker Discretion is Advised", I recommend that before smoking marijuana you watch the famous 1936 movie Reefer Madness.
On second thought, it's a lot more fun if you watch it after smoking.
]]>Watching the Watchdog: No Bad Whores, Only Bad Lawstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.34157192013-06-10T11:23:02-04:002013-06-10T12:57:49-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-knight/Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada.
Sex workers and their supporters, perhaps a hundred of them, marched along a Toronto street last Saturday, chanting "no bad whores ... only bad laws."
They want an end to the laws which are supposed to prevent whores from earning a living but, in fact, only make their lives a lot more difficult and dangerous.
It was a "day of action" organized by Maggie's Toronto Sex Workers Action Project, a registered charity run by and for local sex workers for the past 26 years to help each other "... live and work with safety and dignity." It's a workers' movement with the same purpose as any other workers' movement:
"We are founded on the belief that in order to improve our circumstances, sex workers must control our own lives and destinies."
Substitute the words "civil servants" or "auto workers" for "sex workers" and Saturday's demonstration was just one more routine labour rally.
Except for one problem. It's impossible for these demonstrators to earn a living in their chosen profession without breaking the law.
The act of prostitution itself -- the work that enables them to pay the rent and buy the groceries -- is absolutely legal. Nothing at all unlawful about renting your body out for consensual sexual acts as long as it's done reasonably privately.
But it's illegal for these demonstrators to "communicate for the purposes of prostitution," "operate a bawdy house," or something mysteriously called "live off the avails of prostitution."
It's like telling lawyers they can practice law just as long as they don't tell anyone they're doing it, keep an office or hire support staff.
Every so often we're reminded that, as Charles Dickens wrote, the law is an ass.
--------------------
A few years back I had an affair with a friend who'd been one of Toronto's most exclusive and expensive whores.
Call her Samantha.
Except for a couple of semesters as a journalism student, she'd been in the business all her adult life. First as prostitute, then as call girl, finally as madam.
Samantha had been writing short stories about her life and work for years -- mostly for the titillation and delight of clients. But she had a higher purpose too. She thought people were just plain ignorant about her chosen profession and should be enlightened.
To her, prostitution was a job pretty much like any other, and undoubtedly the best use of her particular talents. So now she wanted to put her stories together in a book and needed an editor.
The easiest way to persuade me to become her editor was to promote me from friend to lover.
So she did.
What I found most interesting in Samantha's writing wasn't her invented persona as a TV news anchor and her frequently exaggerated adventures.
It was her philosophy about the job she'd chosen.
For instance, she wrote this following a distinctly steamy description of a professional encounter:
Whoring isn't real life.
It isn't even real sex.
There's something out-of-body, distant, uninvolved, about it. Men pay me good money to make them feel great. It's a simple business transaction on each side.
Supply and demand.
Very capitalistic.
Keeps the economy moving.
Probably good for the skin too.
And it turns out that whoring is something I'm very good at. Up to now, I'm just a world-class amateur, now I'm becoming a world-class professional.
One of the best things about whoring is that there's no emotion involved, nothing that tangles my belly and cuts into my heart. Nothing that makes me yearn for that commitment, that kiss, that one phone call which soars me to seventh heaven and occasionally way beyond.
No emotion so, voilà, no meaning.
But it's not where I live.
Like any other whore I've ever known, I have two lives. One life earns all this money for being available for men and women who want -- and can afford to pay -- for the pleasure of my company.
It's the other life, my personal life, that's my real life. The life where I win and lose, behave well or badly, am happy or sad. The part of my life where there's real meaning.
The part where I have lovers and boyfriends and, once, a husband.
Like any good-looking woman (particularly big-boobed like me) I have my pick of men and can have sex, meaningful or otherwise, with as many men as I want, any time I want.
So when I feel like it, and I'm not involved with a lover or boyfriend or husband, of course I do.
Like any other woman.
Sometimes, when I'm just being generous after a great evening out, or there's nothing much else to do, the sex is emotionally empty but usually fun anyway.
Other times, when I'm in lust with some horny stud, the lust itself is emotional and therefore an entirely justifiable reason for the sex.
Then there's the occasional times when I think I might be in love, at least a little bit, when sex is not only entirely meaningful, it's absolutely inevitable.
The occasional thinking I might be in love part, of course, is where the commitment that isn't made, the kiss that isn't tried and the phone call that's never made reminds me that I'm a woman like any other.
I'm a laughing, crying, happy, sad, lonely, loving, fragile, needy, tough woman. Daughter, sister, aunt -- with or without lover, boyfriend, husband, depending on circumstances -- like any other woman.
My real life has got nothing to do with my profession.
In fact, when I'm working there's nothing womanly involved. Just business.
Men confuse money and power. They think because they can rent my body that they have power over me.
In fact, when I'm with a man professionally, I have all the power. And then when he finishes, by wonderful coincidence, I have both the power and the money.
Maybe there is a god, after all.
--------------------
This Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada hears an appeal against an Ontario Superior Court ruling that brothels are legal.
You know, just as well as I do, that whether the court rules for or against the appeal, brothels will always be with us.
So doesn't it make sense for the law to stop being such an ass and recognize that sex workers are citizens like the rest of us and therefore are entitled to the full protection of the law just like the rest of us.
No bad whores, only bad laws.
--------------------
We published Samantha's book, My Life In The Great Sexual Window, and waited for the world to buy it, learn from it, and, of course, be titillated.
That didn't happen. An agent told her that if she really wanted to sell the book she'd would have to drop her anonymity and do public interviews. She lost interest, gave me the rights as final payment on my editor's fee, married again, and disappeared into suburbia.
]]>Watching the Watchdog: Politicians Refusing to Communicatetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.33327512013-05-24T17:31:03-04:002013-05-25T16:25:20-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-knight/Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada.
What we have here is a refusal to communicate.
We have a prime minister who refuses to explain why three of his Conservative senators have been forced to resign from his party over apparent financial malfeasance.
We have those same Honourable Senators who won't talk either, but continue to collect all their lovely senatorial perks and privileges while sitting silently as independents.
We have a prime minister's chief of staff who quit after contributing some $90,000 to one of those senatorial imbroglios and, like his former boss, won't explain why.
There's nothing new in all this deafening silence, you know.
Only last year the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) won the much un-coveted Code of Silence Award from the Canadian Association of Journalists:
"...for muzzling civil servants and cabinet ministers, blackballing reporters who pose tough questions and building a huge apparatus designed to staunch the flow of information."
And this year, the Centre for Law and Democracy warns us Canada is a ridiculous number 55 among 93 nations (just ahead of Angola and Thailand) when it comes to us getting information from the Feds.
Information we taxpayers have paid for. Information that belongs to us.
Meantime, the federal government employs some 4,500 highly paid information officers whose duties, I assume, include giving us information about what our government is doing in our name. Instead, they're dishing out propaganda. Reams and reams of propaganda.
When the Harper government wants to talk about how wonderful it is, you can't shut it up.
Consider the enormous $78.5-million it spent on advertising and public relations in 2011-2012.
Nearly a third of those millions was spent trying to persuade Canadians that the government's much hyped Economic Action Plan is working. That it's good for us. That it will save us from becoming a basket case like Greece and all those other miserable European nations that obviously never have never had the advantage of an Economic Action Plan anywhere near as splendid as ours.
Now, I read lots of newspapers and magazines. I watch TV news, listen to radio news, check on a multitude of social media sites. I've read and seen the hugely expensive slick, silly, vapid, pointless advertising dished out by the government.
I have long, beery conversations with people, particularly of the journalistic ilk, who worry about this country and its economic future.
But I still can't answer the question -- what the hell is this Economic Action Plan all about?
According to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty it's "to connect Canadians with new high-quality jobs, to provide long-term predictable funding to build roads, bridges and commuter rail, and to make significant investments in our manufacturers and small businesses".
But surely, this is exactly what the government is supposed to be doing anyway! That's why we give it $555-million a year to pay for Member of Parliament and Senator's salaries, benefits and staff.
It's the government's job, for god's sake!
It would be news if it wasn't trying to do all these things.
And why any government would spend all those millions of dollar on propaganda in these perilous times when Canada and the world face more recessions -- and possibly worse -- is beyond the comprehension of a simple blogger like me.
To quote the Scottish king who was himself a lousy propagandist:
It is a tale told by an idiot,
Full of sound and fury.
Signifying nothing.
--------------------
But wait, there's more.
When it comes to codes of silence, His Worship the oafish mayor of Toronto, Canada's financial centre and biggest city, has learned a lot from the nation's chief magistrate.
Rob Ford too ignores demands that he explain himself and his actions. (He's accused of just about everything a mayor can be accused of including -- but not limited to -- racism, sexism, smoking crack with hoodlums and sheer, bloody incompetence.)
His late Friday statement after a week of silence that he doesn't use, nor is he addicted to crack, was far too little, far too late.
He even starred in all his glory on the late night satirical Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel shows in the U.S.
And now, just like the Big Man In Ottawa himself, instead of coming clean and explaining himself to the people who elected him, Mayor Ford has fired his own chief of staff.
The world used to ignore Canada as a polite, frozen wasteland where the national sport is making love while standing in a canoe and singing Rose Marie. Now we're seen as a country of corrupt politicians and incompetent clowns.
The upside to all this, of course, is that, just for a change, we're getting lots and lots of free publicity. The downside is that all this free publicity is really, really bad publicity.
We are to laugh at. To be pitied.
And if we're chiefs of staff, we should certainly be looking around for a safer line of work.]]>Watching the Watchdog: The Difference Between Public and State Broadcastertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32937642013-05-17T17:03:13-04:002013-05-17T17:18:44-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-knight/Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada.
So what's all this fuss the lefties are making about Prime Minister Harper trying to keep track of costs at the CBC by writing a few words into the back of his omnibus budget, Bill C-60?
All sorts of people are claiming the words will turn our much-troubled public broadcaster into something called a state broadcaster. Which, they say, would be very bad indeed for our already-fragile Canadian democracy.
But what's the difference between a public broadcaster and a state broadcaster?
I've worked for both. So I can tell you what's the difference.
The public broadcasters to whom I've plighted my troth at different times were PBS in America and CBC in Canada.
For both, I was a news producer and reporter. And for both I led training workshops that focused on improving their storytelling, particularly writing, interviewing, performing, etc.
But running like a powerful river under everything we did and taught at these public broadcasters was the ethics of our craft -- that journalists are in public service and we work for the people, and only the people.
I don't ever recall at either of my public broadcasters any fellow journalist ever suggesting we worked for -- or were in any way accountable to, or could be influenced by -- the ruling party or the government. It never occurred to us.
Life was simple. We worked for the people.
The state broadcaster I worked with was the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), back in 1994. The CBC sent me and fellow journalism trainer Dan David to try to prepare the SABC's TV journalists to cover the first-ever democratic election in their country.
Our job was to help turn the racist, apartheid-serving state broadcaster into a public broadcaster. To try to steer it from fascism to democracy.
Dan David and I (with help from other CBC trainers and some splendid local journalists) spent more than a month in Johannesburg running workshops on democratic journalism and how to do it.
--------------------
The SABC arranges training room desks and chairs in respectful rows facing our head table. It's like a classroom. Dan David suggests the Mohawk way -- a circle, with everyone equal -- is better.
The mostly white trainees look puzzled but obediently push the desks around until we have a circle.
We ask the group "what do you want out of these training workshops?" They look puzzled. The silence lasts forever. We wait. And slowly, slowly the closed, guarded faces change and people start to talk. First the whites, the senior people, members of the ruling class. Then, much more diffidently, the blacks, the servant class. Mostly, they have questions.
What's the role of the journalist in a democracy? Who decides what the story's about? Who decides how it's told? Are journalists in a democracy free to report what they actually see and hear? Can they write stories critical of the government and the rich and powerful? What happens to journalists in a democracy if their bosses don't like their stories? Where should journalists' loyalties lie?
The SABC journalists complain about foreign journalists who despise them as government lackeys, so won't talk to them, drink with them, or share lights on location shoots.
They explain that civil service-style job security is far more important to them than the journalism itself. As long as they do what they're told and don't argue, they've got lifetime jobs with great pensions.
It works this way -- the Nationalist ruling party politicians tell SABC managers who tell SABC producers who tell SABC editors who tell SABC reporters what to cover and how to cover it.
They report what they're told to report. They don't have to see and think for themselves. So they're not responsible for their stories.
The devil makes them do it.
By the time we get to Johannesburg, however, these SABC journalists know the racist apartheid regime is dying. The black-majority African National Congress under Nelson Mandela will almost certainly take power within months.
We tell the journalists they have to make a choice.
They can stay secure. They can try to keep their jobs by doing what they think the new ANC government will want. That way they'll remain servants of the state. Just serve different masters.
Or they can risk their jobs by behaving like real journalists, honestly reporting what they see, hear and believe to be the truth. And what it means. That way, they'll be servants of the people.
We tell them the whole world is watching. That as journalists they either guard the free marketplace of ideas, or they poison it. We tell them free and honest journalism is the shining jewel of democracy. Without it, there can be no democracy.
We tell them that they're either whores for the state or servants of the people. There's no middle ground. They have to make a choice.
We tell them the reward for making the honorable choice -- giving up job security to serve the people -- is something of great value. We tell them it's the only way they'll be able to respect themselves as journalists. It's the only way foreign journalists will respect them.
We tell them the price is worth paying.
It's easy for visiting Canadians to say.
--------------------
Some assessments written after the workshops by SABC journalists, white and black:
Journalists are (now) workers for the people, not the state.
It has awakened in me that part of a journalist which is perhaps the most important -- the right and ability to question.
I am now going to do all in my power to do my best, to try my hardest and in that way serve my corporation and most importantly my country.
I felt privileged to be treated as an honourable journalist.
It was really powerful stuff. It unleashed feeling and needs which had been tucked away. Perhaps because that was the only way to survive in the SABC.
It was a fantastic experience and I learned so very much.
I found the course tremendously exciting and challenging.
The course gave me my very first opportunity to practice democracy in the SABC. THANK YOU SO MUCH.
--------------------
A few days later, just before Dan David and I fly back to Canada, SABC news chief Christo Kritzinger -- a notoriously loyal lackey of the apartheid government -- hands me a note:
Journalism is indeed a cause.
And our loyalty is to the people.
The most honest of all professions.
Thank you for reminding us.
St. John was right.
The Truth Shall Make You Free.
--------------------
Now you know a little about what happens inside state broadcasters.
Now you know why there's all this fuss about Bill C-60.
I'm celebrating spring on the roof of Scallywag's, my local oasis, and drinking a toast to an old CBC friend and colleague.
His name is Hugh Doherty. He's a splendid journalist and a fine and decent man who's done lots of good stuff for Canada, particularly as producer of CBC's flagship news program, The National, and executive producer of TV News, CBC Edmonton.
Now, I'm told, Hugh is dying in an Ottawa hospital.
----------
As is the custom at such watering holes, when two old news hands who I know vaguely (call them "A" and "B" on account of they fear being blackballed if identified) climb up the stairs and look around for a table, I invite them to join me.
Once we order a round, the conversation concentrates, as it does so often these days, on politics. And specifically on one Stephen Joseph Harper, 22nd and current prime minister of Canada.
Why the hell is he so arrogant, ruthless, brutish, mean, petty and vindictive?
"A," a TV producer, blames Harper's religious affiliation, a Protestant evangelical group called the Christian and Missionary Alliance. It holds that the Bible is without error, and that the second coming of Christ is imminent.
"A" thinks Harper's evangelical beliefs are behind the long list of peculiar decisions he's made since he got that parliamentary majority.
"That explains why the man's pathologically opposed to Canadians knowing what his government is doing, why he never holds real news conferences, why he's slashed scientific research and why he's muzzled all those scientists," he says.
"Harper believes that only God and he know the truth and everyone who disagrees with him, or even questions him, is guilty of blasphemy and will end up burning in hell fire."
Maybe so, admits "B," a very experienced former CBC reporter who slithered to the dark side to commit public relations. But she thinks Harper's behavior is much more effected by the fact that he's a multi-millionaire, right-wing Conservative prime minister who quite naturally sets Canadian corporate tax rates at around the lowest in the world and loathes being questioned.
She's also curious about how, after a lifetime in politics, Harper is worth around $5 million today.
"He must have really saved those pennies", she says dryly. "Either that or Jim Flaherty gives him better advice than the rest of us."
I agree with them both. To me there's something deeply nervous-making about a multi-millionaire prime minister who believes the Bible is fact and that Christ is heading this way even as we speak (which, of course, explains Harper's slavish devotion to Israel).
But I think there's more. Much more. I believe Harper told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth when he promised a right-wing American think tank a few years back:
"You won't recognize Canada when I get through with it."
I believe that he's drunk the Kool-Aid. That he's on a crusade to turn Canada's messy liberal, participatory, parliamentary democracy into a rigid neo-feudal, semi-fascist triumph of state capitalism.
That for the advancement of savage capitalism and the greater glory of his god, he intends Canada to become his very own Garden of Eden, an unholy mixture of Singapore, Cuba and China.
This I believe because he's just made the one classic, vital move that potential tyrants always take. He's decided to turn Canada's public broadcaster -- the only national broadcaster we have that's into public service rather than profit -- into a state broadcaster.
Let's be clear about this. By definition, state broadcasters serve the state. Not the people. And in this country, the state has become just a polite word for the party in power. So for the foreseeable future, a state broadcaster would be pressured to serve the Conservative Party, not the people.
How do I know? Buried deep inside Harper's latest omnibus Budget legislation, Bill C-60, are a few bland words that would make him, in effect, boss of the CBC.
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Which means he would control working conditions for such eminent and independently-bloody-minded CBC journalists as Linden MacIntyre, Bob McKeown, Nahlah Ayed, Neil Macdonald, Susan Ormiston, Rex Murphy, Carol Off, Peter Mansbridge, Anna Maria Tremonti, Rick Macinnes-Rae, Alison Smith and Terry Milewski.
So what? you say. Everyone has a boss. Even Harper. His boss is the old Queen across the water.
But she doesn't interfere.
Harper, who is a notorious Type A, micromanaging control freak, would interfere. He'd likely promise that the only reason he wants to control the CBC would be to ensure that it's delivering public value for public money. But then he wouldn't be able to control himself.
He'd interfere. Which would undermine the CBC's cherished editorial independence and thus seriously harm Canada's already-fragile democracy.
That's because the CBC (like Britain's BBC on which it's based) is deliberately designed to be independent, to operate at arm's length from the government of the day.
To be in public -- not government -- service.
The CBC's independence is an absolutely essential part of our cherished democracy. Canada's Broadcasting Act is very clear about all this.
"The Corporation shall ... enjoy freedom of expression and journalistic, creative and programming independence."
But how will it do these things if it's an arm of the state?
It won't.
Instead, he who pays the piper will call the tune. The Canadian Media Guild which represents around six thousand media folk (CBC, Global TV, History, Showcase, The Canadian Press, Reuters, APTN etc. etc.) pulls no punches:
The Bill, it says, "undermines nearly 80 years of public broadcasting in Canada by meddling with the essential arms-length relationship between the CBC and the government of the day ... it has all the markings of an attempt to turn the CBC into a state broadcaster."
Friends of Canadian Broadcasting has just delivered a 130,000-signature petition to parliament deploring Harper's plan to undermine the CBC's editorial independence:
"CBC must operate at arms length from government. Even the perception that CBC journalists are pulling punches or program decisions are made in favour of political masters would be disastrous for the CBC and Canadian democracy."
----------
The next evening I get a message that Hugh Doherty has died.
I drink a toast to a man who believed passionately that journalism -- all journalism, but particularly journalism committed at a crown corporation like the CBC -- isn't just a job.
That instead, it's public service. And that it's an honour to be a journalist -- particularly a CBC journalist -- and serve the people.
RIP Hugh, old friend.]]>Watching the Watchdog: Trudeau, the Rightful Grand Chieftag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31174872013-04-19T17:57:38-04:002013-04-19T17:30:20-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-knight/Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada.
O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword, he weapons had none,
Aside from a slight geographic confusion, they pretty much sum up how nearly 105,000 Liberals felt about Justin Trudeau when he rode into town last Sunday evening.
Their knight in shining armour had arrived. Cue Cohen to sing Hallelujah.
This young Lochinvar had been a long time coming -- it was seven months since the call went out to the four corners of the land for fresh, clean blood to save the dying Liberals.
Wanted -- a new leader for new times. A leader to transform the sleazy, corrupt, amoral, scandal-plagued Clan Liberal. Someone faithful and dauntless who could make people forget the party's often-sordid past and turn Clan Liberal into something you could mention in polite circles.
Thus it came about, last weekend in Ottawa, that after brief skirmishes which left few casualties and little of the usual bitterness along the way, six chieftains from different sub-clans and parts and genders had come together with a thousand party members to answer that call for a new leader.
Vote for me, said each high-flown banner. For I am the best you've got and I alone will lead us to victory and to glory and save our clan and our nation.
And when the votes were counted, there was no doubt that the Liberals believed young Lochinvar was by far the best they'd got.
So they named him to be their rightful Grand Chief until the time comes when they will be called upon to save the nation (and the party) from the barbarians who had untimely seized their rightful crown.
The new Grand Chief of Clan Liberal made a speech which many said was both eloquent and touched the heart.
I love this country, my friends, and I believe in it deeply.
It deserves better leadership than it has now.
So let us be clear-eyed about what we have accomplished.
We have worked hard and we have had a great campaign.
We are united, hopeful and resolute in our purpose.
But know this: we have won nothing more and nothing less than the opportunity to work even harder. Work even harder to prove ourselves worthy of leading this great country.
We should be deeply, deeply grateful for that opportunity.
As your leader, I fully intend to make sure we make the most of it.
Change can happen. Canadians want leadership that will work with them to make it happen.
Be hopeful my fellow Liberals. Work hard. Stay focused on Canadians. We can lead the change so many people want.A better Canada is always possible.
Together, we will build it.
And the next day, for his first time as Grand Chief of Clan Liberal, Trudeau rose to his feet in the House of Commons. And as is the custom in that House, he poured scorn on the chief of the barbarians opposite him, questioning both his honesty and his judgment.
Meanwhile, his new followers cheered and hurled mild insults across the aisle as is the primitive custom in that place.
The Liberal Party of Canada had started its return.
Scott's poem ends with a question:
So daring in love and so dauntless in war,
Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?
Obviously the Liberals have. And they've liked what they've seen. A lot.
But when the time comes, will other Canadians vote for Trudeau and his followers?
My own answer -- perhaps unfairly influenced by these first, fine, fruitful days of spring -- is that if this young gallant can take some of the blood out of the blood sport of politics, clean up the traditionally sordid ways of doing it, tell the truth to Canadians and serve with integrity, absolutely anything is possible.
Including a return to power in two years.
After all, young Lochinvar won his true love, "so lovely her face," against all the odds.]]>Watching the Watchdog: Some Things I Don't Understandtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30717212013-04-12T15:38:30-04:002013-06-12T05:12:01-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-knight/Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada.
Some things I don't understand:
What happened to that absolutely essential element of political participatory democracy -- that losers accept their defeat as part of the political process and learn from it because defeat is a clear warning that ultimately the people are in charge and politicians are paid good money to work for the people?
Why our American neighbours are deliberately destroying their nation by turning their two parties into rival warring tribes which don't even talk to each other, much less debate the issues of the day?
And here in Canada, why the Prime Minister's Office -- which actually runs this country -- behaves in pretty much the same way as the Americans (albeit, since we're Canadian, in a slightly less murderous manner?)
Why we've let the House of Commons version of debate degenerate into a string of insults followed by an announcement that the government has (surprise!!!) just won more "ayes" than the other guys. Not quite as bad as North Korea or China yet, but heading in that general direction.
Since Parliament doesn't work any more, why Prime Minister Harper doesn't do the decent thing and hold regular news conferences to at least keep us informed of his, no doubt, splendid plans for our future?
Why the sainted Economist and New York Times, and Canada's national newspaper, the Globe & Mail, publish corrections in virtually every edition, yet it will be a cold day in hell before Mansbridge (CBC), LaFlamme (CTV) or Friesen (Global) admit on air that their journalists have ever got anything wrong? (I asked CBC's new ombud once if this was because CBC News never makes mistakes. But in the unlikely event that such should happen, why The National couldn't put five minutes aside for on-air corrections once a month or so. She mumbled something along the lines of "very difficult" and sidled away.) Funny thing, though, about corrections and real apologies -- they bring respect and respect brings bigger, better numbers.
Why Canada's newspapers and news broadcasters are so seriously sloppy about identifying the national origin of stories, particularly when said stories come from America. Too often, a story starts with, for instance, "President Barack Obama said today ..." or "The Republican party's fight against gun control ..." (My point is that as a journalist I automatically translate such stories as coming from across the border. But a whole lot of people -- particularly the young -- don't have that automatic Rosetta Stone to translate for them and over time get very confused about where the U.S. ends and Canada starts. Not at all healthy for either our identity or our parliamentary democracy!)
How the Pope could accept the keys to St. Peter's church knowing the old men in frocks who elected him knew all about the decades of priestly rape of children, yet most lied about it and even covered up the crimes of their fellow club members? Only a pathetic few ever tried to protect the defenseless children by reporting this unholy conspiracy to police. Did Francis? Whether he did or not, he knew.
Why Israel is sacred beyond any other nation on earth? Leaving aside its heartless treatment of its Palestinian citizens, how come it was recently able to get away with murdering a couple of journalists in Gaza with the bland statement that "the targets are people who have relevance to terror activity"?
Why anyone takes the sociopathic and idiotic ramblings of that silly, pudgy, child emperor in North Korea so seriously? Like all spoiled children, being taken seriously just encourages him. Surely, we should just laugh when he speaks and go about our business?
Why women spend big dollars and many hours painting their faces and adorning their bodies, then complain when a news story mentions their appearance, even though the mention is usually complimentary?
Why, since I've been writing this splendid column for a year now, isn't Arianna (means "chaste, very holy") paying me huge amounts of money so I can live in the manner to which I could easily become accustomed?
Why spring hasn't sprung yet.
]]>Watching the Watchdog: Who Dares Question Saint Paikin?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30230422013-04-05T17:37:33-04:002013-06-05T05:12:01-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-knight/Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada.
TVO -- which blandly calls itself "Ontario's public education media organization" -- is terminally worthy.
So worthy that, by rights, it should be a national TV network.
So worthy that it frequently puts our supposedly national public service TV network, CBC, to shame.
TVO (motto: Makes You Think) does great children's programming, runs some really intelligent shows, most with British accents, and for the past 21 years has been home to one of Canada's top journalistic interviewer/hosts.
The host's name is Steve Paikin. He's senior editor and anchor of TVO's live daily flagship, hour-long, current affairs program, The Agenda.
Paikin has written four books, produced a bunch of excellent documentaries, won awards for his work in Canada, the U.S. and China and is so good at interviewing and hosting that he's moderated five national and provincial election debates.
So who the hell is this Hamlin Grange to tell Paikin how to improve the sainted Agenda? Right up front on his own program!
Actually, I know who Hamlin Grange is. He's an old friend and sparring partner who's co-founder of the annual, non-profit, Innoversity Creative Summit (Motto: Innovation. Creativity. Diversity) dedicated to media diversity and inclusion. His day job is president of DiversiPro, a diversity training, coaching and consulting company. He was born in Jamaica and himself boasts a whole string of awards for public service.
Let me paint the picture.
A recent edition of The Agenda with Steve Paikin focused on how to better reflect the diversity of Ontario on TV. (Roughly 20 per cent of Ontarians and half of Torontonians are visible minorities.)
The idea for the show sprang out of a viewer voicemail to Agenda asking "why do you guys always trot out the same middle-aged white men?"
At the start of the show came the usual polite and probing questions from Paikin and polite and insightful answers from panelists Tina Edan, (DiverseCity Voices), Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), Sarita Srivastava (Queen's University), Susan Eng, (CARP) and Hamlin Grange (DiversiPro).
All, including Paikin, agreed that reflecting diversity on Ontario's TV stations is a good thing which could be done a lot better. No doubt about it.
Which is when Grange, looking every inch the tough, no-bullshit journalist and social reformer he is, turned the tables on Paikin and moved in for the kill.
Grange: When I was hosting my programs on CBC, when I did Work Week for TVO... I had a choice. All my producers were white and I would say to my producers 'Why is it I'm always talking to the same people... that all look the same?'
Paikin: Because they're in the Rolodex already?
Grange: They're in the Rolodex. So get out of your comfort zone. You talked about fishing in particular ponds, let's use a metaphor. Maybe keep fishing in those ponds, Steve, but if you want to get a different fish, you may have to go someplace else. OK? And you have to be very deliberate about it.
It becomes problematic when the only time you have people of colour sit around this table is when its an issue that entails or involves people of colour. The fact is that this is the second time I've been on this program to talk about this. No one's ever called me to talk about...
Paikin: But this is your business.
Grange: This is my business. But I also have other expertise. No one's ever called to ask me about policing for example. Although I was on the Toronto Police Services Board for six years. Not a call from TVOntario.
I sat on the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) as a trustee for six years. Not a call from TVOntario asking me about arts, about culture, about anything like that. I've got a lot of information about that stuff, Steve.
Producers and journalists in general, I believe... we've become lazy. We go for the hits. Those folks we've actually trained to be good guests. We train people how to give good clips. We train people how to behave on panels like this. We actually train people to be on television. And what I'm saying is... keep doing what you're doing but train a whole bunch of other people.
It's the way we do business as news information gatherers. We must change that approach. So for me its not just about diversity any more, its about inclusion. How do we include voices at the table to live the code and, quite frankly, the core values of journalism. Accuracy, balance, respect, fearlessness... all those things.
If you hear from a single voice all the time I think we are betraying the very core values of journalism.
You make the decision because at the end of the day its your show. You can have anybody on this program that you want.
Not often that you get a guest on a TV show telling the host what's wrong with the program and how to fix it! In detail! And at great length!
What if it's the start of a trend?
What if people interviewed by broadcast or print journalists start their answers by some version of that question to The Agenda: "Why do you guys always trot out the same middle-aged white men?"
For instance: "First, you should know that I believe your organization runs too many crime stories." Or celebrity/weather/political/human interest stories.
Or "For the record, I think you ignore gay people in your coverage." Or women. Or Muslims. Or disabled people. Or young people. Or Aboriginals. Or whatever.
First the statement, then the answer to the question asked.
It's unlikely that the media will actually publish such answers. But if the idea catches on, it will certainly be one way to send a message to media bosses that we're not at all satisfied with their journalism and we want improvement.
And we want it now.
(Full Disclosure Department: This interview has been edited and condensed. Also, Knight once trained TVO's Inside Education program and won its International Silver Focus award. Also, over the years he's worked with both Steve Paikin and Hamlin Grange. Also, he'll be interviewing for Innoversity at its summit in Toronto next month.)]]>Watching the Watchdog: Will This Man Bring Quality to Online Journalism?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29943522013-04-01T16:19:30-04:002013-06-01T05:12:01-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-knight/Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada.
He's young, lean, handsome, well over six feet tall, has dark, curly hair, a smile that makes women go weak at the knees, wants to build a better world and is the son of a famous Liberal Party leader.
No, he's not the one you're thinking of. Instead of trying to become the next prime minister of Canada, this one's trying something even tougher.
He wants to improve that uncontrollable wild west provider of instant information, the world's largest functioning anarchy, the Internet.
His name is Ben Peterson. He's 35 years old and the son of David Peterson, twentieth Premier of the Province of Ontario.
Peterson the Younger is already co-founder and former executive director of Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) which has grown to become Canada's largest international media development NGO.
At JHR, his mission was to train and encourage African journalists to report on human rights issues. Over its thirteen years, the organization sent Canadian journalism trainers to seventeen African countries, some of them the sort of place where human rights are welcomed with the gun.
Now Ben Peterson is co-founding again. This time it's Newsana. (Motto: Connects you to only the best news and ideas.)
Here's its official description: "Newsana is an online community of experts and thought leaders who share, discuss and work together to choose the five most essential news stories and ideas of the day on the topics of their expertise."
Peterson's latest project is backed by some heavy media hitters who seeded it with a very healthy half million bucks. Among them are Gary Slaight (President and CEO, Slaight Communications), Prem Watsa (Chairman and CEO Fairfax Financial Holdings) and Mohammad Al Zaibak (President and CEO, Canadian Development and Marketing Corp.).
These aren't the sort of men who back a startup just because it's a really, really progressive idea and will look great on their résumés.
I talked with Ben Peterson about Newsana over a couple of beers at Scallywag's, my local watering hole.
Knight: You started with Journalists for Human Rights. Now Newsana. It's like your second attempt to save the world. You gonna do this for ever?
Peterson (Laughs): This is not saving the world. This is entirely different. This is saving high quality journalism.
Knight: Why?
Peterson: There's a huge problem trying to sort through (the Internet) to try to find the best. It might not be on the Globe and Mail or New York Times. It might be on a random blog ...
Knight (Interrupting): Or it might be on Huffpost which I write for?
Peterson (Politely): Very likely ... if you're writing for Huffpost. (Returns to more serious matters). From a news consumption perspective, we're overwhelmed by the amount of content available for us and we need to figure out where are the best stories and ideas on the subject we are most interested in.
There's a number of aggregation platforms out there. You can go to Twitter where you get tons and tons of information fired at you all the time ... a shotgun blast of information. It doesn't solve the filtration problem. The quality of the content on Reddit is quite frankly embarrassing. They let anything go on their site.
Knight (Sceptically): And there are moral boundaries in Newsana?
Peterson (Firmly): Quality boundaries. We, as an organization need to have certain standards so we make sure the quality of our participants and the quality of our content is high.
We are an invite-only community. So in order to become part of our curation community, you have to either apply or be invited by one of our current members. It's expert sourcing. By people passionate and knowledgeable about the topics they curate. We're not going to be doing celebrity gossip. But we will have arts and entertainment or film on our site.
Knight: On that matter, Huffpost specializes on nipslips and baby bumps ... stuff like that. I looked at your site today and couldn't even see a single cleavage. How can you expect to be successful?
Peterson: (Ignoring the temptation to discuss nipslips and baby bumps): Newsana is a social network first and foremost so that as long as our community is happy posting stories and sharing those stories, we believe we'll generate the type of traffic we want.
Knight: You're not paying anybody for the stuff you use!
Peterson: We're not putting the story on our site. We're providing a link to the story. In fact, we're celebrating and driving traffic to those news organizations that are producing high quality content. As opposed to the way most sites drive traffic to not high quality content but to shitty content. Reddit is a primary example of that.
At the end of the day, we want to celebrate, reward and give higher profile to the best and smartest content out there and at the same time provide value to our users to find the best content as quickly as possible.
Newsana is not a website. It's not a news site. It's not the Globe and Mail dot com. It's more of an online community.
Knight: Are you eventually going to sell it to Google for a couple of billon dollars?
Peterson (Laughs): I don't think Google would be interested. But if the principles behind Newsana would at some point be better served by us merging or being bought or whatever, I could look into that. I'm interested in building Newsana as a viable profitable company, but as a company that adds real value and makes a mark on what we're trying to accomplish which is creating a better filter for high quality content.
For the last 20 years the internet has been dominated by one trend. The single biggest thing it's allowed us to do is throw information on line. Chuck it in. Throw it in.
I believe that a lot of winners and losers over the next 10, 15 years will be determined by how we take all this information and do something useful with it. Sort through it, filter it, create more knowledge based on a better synthesis of knowledge, based on all the stuff that's been thrown on line.
I think that respecting the wisdom of people, respecting people who know what they're talking about, and trying to figure what's the best of that content out there is a good place to start. If we can get the right group of people behind us and we can get a proper amount of momentum, we can actually create something that will be beneficial for news consumers and lovers of high quality news everywhere.
Knight: So you do want to change the world?
Peterson: I want to do things that have an impact.
Knight: And this is the best you could come up with?
Peterson: Yes. (Grins) For now.
Full disclosure department: This interview has been condensed and edited. Also, some years ago I spent six weeks training journalists in Ghana for JHR. The pay was so miserable that Her Canadian Majesty's tax collector accepted it under the heading of expenses. ]]>Watching the Watchdog: An Ode to Kevin Pagetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29789112013-03-29T17:37:05-04:002013-05-29T05:12:01-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-knight/ Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada.
The watchdog's job description is right there on the Government of Canada website:
The mandate of the Parliamentary Budget Officer is to provide independent analysis to Parliament on the state of the nation's finances, the government's estimates and trends in the Canadian economy; and upon request from a committee or parliamentarian, to estimate the financial cost of any proposal for matters over which Parliament has jurisdiction.
Sounds so necessary. And so simple. The Parliamentary Budget Officer's job is to make certain that the people's parliament is spending the people's money reasonably wisely, reasonably prudently.
Who could ever question that?
For starters, the Harper Government -- which founded the office five years ago, so approved every word of that description.
Last week saw the end of the tenure of Canada's first and, so far, only Parliamentary Budget Officer. He's Kevin Page, who's an economist by training, has been a civil servant for the last 27 years, and has so pissed off the governing Harperites by doing his job to the very best of his ability that there were likely high fives and champagne all round in the Conservative caucus at the end of Friday.
Kevin Page is a genuine Canadian hero. While so many other Canadian civil servants (and politicians) went along with the Harperite parliamentary thuggery, Page simply did his job.
He kept a hard and sceptical eye on the public purse and how the Harper government spent it.
For instance, the government announced that each of its pet F-35 fighter planes would cost Canadians $75-million. Page examined the contract, reported back that the actual cost would be $128-million.
The Department of Defence claimed that the war in Afghanistan -- Canada's longest ever -- cost Canadians $8-billion. Page said the actual cost was more than twice as much.
So it went. Time after time, Kevin Page stood his ground, spoke truth to power in the very best civil service tradition.
Steve Paikin, that other speaker of truth to power, interviewed Page for TVO's Agenda just before he vanished into the Ottawa sunset.
--------------------
At one stage, Paikin asks in wonder: "What does it say about Canada when a bald, kinda nerdy-looking guy with glasses is seen as a bit of a folk hero among Canadians because you had your eyes on the purse?"
The bald, kinda nerdy-looking guy with glasses sighs: "I'm certainly not a folk hero. I get paid money to do this job. Nobody in our office thinks any one of us are heroes. We just had a job to do."
Kevin Page looks like actor Patrick Stewart (Star Trek) and comes across as a sort of reverse Clark Kent -- crime fighter by day, bland, innocuous nobody the rest of the time. He seldom looks at Paikin, still mostly uses the present tense and the word "we" when talking about the Parliamentary Budget Office and its staff.
He's the ultimate, dedicated, honest bureaucrat -- laid back, cool, cautious, careful, reticent -- who tells it like he sees it.
Here are a few excerpts from the Steve Paikin interview with Kevin Page:
Perhaps his key statement: "I think if the Conservative Party were in opposition right now, they'd be quite supportive of our office. Our job is not to support the executive, our job is to support parliament ... and the role of parliament is to hold the government to account."
On costing the F-35 war planes, crime bills etc.: "We've given something to parliament that they weren't getting from the public service and certainly weren't getting from the government."
On the government's much-criticized omnibus bills: "We had massive omnibus bills. Hundreds and hundreds of pages. Dozens and dozens of acts ... limited time periods to pass (them). It was an effort to really, I think, undermine parliament."
On the adversarial relationship between the government and his PBO: "if the parliamentary budget officer doesn't stand up ... and that's deemed to be adversarial ... I'm not apologizing for that either.
On fixing parliament's problems: "It's in the interest of the country. It's in the interest of parliament. It's not necessarily in the interest of the government of the day.
"Is it hard to correct the system? No. We can look at the process, we can incent MPs to do their jobs better if we give them a role to actually change the (financial) estimates.
"Can we change the structure of the estimates ... and organize better information? Yes.
"Can we level the playing field? Yes. We can have proactive disclosure of financial information from departments. And I think that would fundamentally change the system.
"And it's all very doable. The reason why we don't do it? Because the executive thinks it's in their interest not to do it. The public service thinks its in their interest not to do it."
On his career at the PBO: "I don't want to be looking back five years from now with people saying well, where were you? So it was more important for us to stand up and be there."
There's no doubt that this Canadian watchdog, this good and faithful civil servant, stood up and was there when he was needed.
Stood up and was there for us.
And now he's left the building. Considering his valour in the face of the enemy, he should be wearing the Victoria Cross for service above and beyond the call of duty when he leaves.
But he's a good bureaucrat, so he'll certainly deny that he's done anything extraordinary.
Instead, he'll likely remind us what he told Paikin: "Nobody in our office thinks any one of us are heroes. We just had a job to do."
Good job, Mr. Page.
Well done, sir.
(The interview has been edited and condensed.)]]>Watching the Watchdog: Justin Trudeau Is the Man for the Jobtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29348542013-03-22T17:18:27-04:002013-05-22T05:12:01-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-knight/ Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada.
As I write, the brutish old pro licks his lips, girds his loins and polishes his plans to destroy the young contender.
There's less than a month to go before the kid climbs into the ring with him. When that happens, the brutish old pro will smile that shit-eating smile of his and slip a horseshoe inside his glove.
And when they touch gloves at the start of the fight, the brutish old pro will smash a right hook into the kid's belly, well below the belt. And follow up with a knee to the groin. And when the kid goes down to the canvas screaming in agony, kick him in the teeth.
The fight will be ruled no contest. The kid will slink back to his classrooms to resume his career as the maidens' midnight crush. And the brutish old pro will be crowned King of the Hill for even more sad and dreary years.
Which will mean that except for the problem of that other damned Quebecer -- pretty much a lefty version of the brutish old pro but with a beard -- life in Canada's parliament will go back to its routine, undemocratic dysfunctional ways.
And those who dreamed of change and reform will beat their breasts, gnash their teeth and weep bitter tears.
All this I confidently predict after studying the entrails of chickens, checking my horoscope in the Globe and Mail and reading the writings on the walls.
But it doesn't have to end this way.
Not if the kid takes the biggest risk any politician in this country has ever taken.
Not if the kid says screw you to the traditional rules about getting elected.
Not if the kid turns the Canadian political process upside down and starts it all over again.
How to do that?
He starts by doing nothing until April 15, the day after he wins his regional crown. No policy announcements of any import. No nasty words about his opponents. Not even nasty words about the brutish old pro he'll face for the championship 18 months further down the line.
Then, on April 15, he changes the rules of the game. He announces a new reformed party, dedicated to honest, participatory, representative, parliamentary democracy.
All those things.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Its motto: Nation Before Party.
On the same day the kid fires the cynical professional political party apparatchiks whose loyalty is to power and party before service to the people. And replaces them with reformers with hopeful hearts not yet poisoned by the party political process, not yet seduced by the lust for power.
New people, as young, brave, energetic, idealistic and altruistic as he is.
He announces that the reformed party welcomes Canadians of every possible political stripe. No left. No centre. No right. That he's ready to merge it with any other party. Or coalesce. Or unite. Or amalgamate. Or whatever's necessary to end the corrupt and undemocratic reign of the brutish old pro and his venal disciples.
Here I stand, he tells Canadians. Will you join me to build a new Canada? A Canada worthy of our ancestors? A Canada worthy of our children?
For the next eighteen months, the kid turned legitimate challenger works every corner of the nation, plays every possible card in his quest for a new, truly democratic Canada.
Some suggestions:
Replace the rotten first-past-the-post political system with the much fairer mixed member proportional (MMP) system which ensures that parties win seats in proportion to their votes.
Abolish the senate. Or make it an elected body. Or transform it into a longhouse for Canada's aboriginal peoples. Something. Anything.
Impose far stricter spending limits on politicians running for office.
End the corrupting influence of the rich, special interest groups and lobbyists on our political and governmental systems.
Raise taxes on the rich. Lower taxes on the poor.
Ensure that the media give equal time to all legitimate political candidates running for office.
Return Canada's military to its old peacekeeping role and cut its budget accordingly.
Cut the size and cost of the public service.
Resurrect the Kelowna Accord to improve living conditions for Aboriginal peoples.
Honour the treaties made between settlers and Aboriginal peoples.
There's so much more. So much more that can and must be done to save Canada from its sad slide into oligarchy and mediocrity.
And the kid is likely the only man who can do it.
At the moment he's Cassius Clay. Beautiful, graceful, easy winner of the preliminary bouts so far, certain to win the regional championship set for April 14.
But he'll have to morph into the magnificent Muhammad Ali if he's to win the national championship fight against the brutish old pro, scheduled to end on October, 2015.
When he started this quest he gave a clue to his thinking:
"It's not about me. It's not even about our party. It's about the fact that Canadians are ... not satisfied with the government they have. They want better. They know they deserve better."
More of the same dreary politics, even leavened with considerable charisma and a famous name, won't be nearly enough by themselves to ensure that better Canada.
The kid will have to risk everything if he wants to win.
Everything.
But it's worth remembering that -- against all odds -- the last time the kid fought a brutish pro, he won.]]>Watching the Watchdog: Did We Just Watch Vatican Idol?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28770872013-03-14T17:53:54-04:002013-05-14T05:12:01-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-knight/Tim Knightwrites the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada.
Let's try to put all this pomp, circumstance and ridiculous wall-to-wall media coverage into some sort of perspective.
Without all these years of child rapes, their cover-ups by high and mighty princes of the church, the stink of corruption at God's Bank, and party politics worthy of the most Machiavellian of papal politicians the Borgias, almost none of this Vatican Idol stuff would have mattered.
At least, not to the outside world. Only the most faithful of the faithful would have given a damn about the name of the next Bishop of Rome.
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Certainly more than 5,000 journalists wouldn't have camped out in the Vatican to fawn over a bunch of (presumably) celibate old bachelors in identical ladylike dresses parading like puppets in and out of buildings until one of them caused white smoke to waft from a chimney so he could take the top job and everyone else could go back to work.
This edition of Vatican Idol -- brought to you at a cost of many millions by nearly every media outlet in the world -- is, thank the lord, finally over.
Much sound (hymns, sermons and endless journalistic platitudes), no visible fury, and in the end, no significance except the name of the next chief executive officer of this exclusive and dysfunctional men's club.
After two days of secret politicking and voting by its board of directors, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit cardinal from Argentina has become Pope Francis, leader and supervisor of more than a billion people around the world.
He's got one hellish tough new job. All that stuff about child rape, cover-upping, corruption and politics would likely have been beyond the powers of even that much more worldly earlier Francis (the one from Assisi).
Certainly, he has lots of traditionally grandiose job titles to help define his new job.
Gergoglio is Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the State of Vatican City, and Servant of the Servants of God.
According to church doctrine, he's the 266th man to head the Roman Catholic Church since St. Peter, back at the start of it all. (There may have been a Pope Joan in the middle ages. The church is very cagey on this one.)
The latest edition of The Economist (which some see as a secular version of the Bible) takes a very practical view of the Roman Catholic Church, calls it the world's oldest multinational:
"It is also, by many measures, its most successful, with 1.2-billion customers, 1M employees, tens of millions of volunteers, a global distribution network, a universally recognised logo, unrivalled lobbying clout and, auguring well for the future, a successful emerging-markets operation."
But that's just the magazine's practical description of the outward and visible multinational mammoth -- whose boss claims to be infallible in his decisions on faith and morals (the two main exports of the company) and to speak directly with God in heaven.
The Economist, as is its wont, soon gets down to business. It writes that the company should stick to its core competence which is providing spiritual goods. And its new boss should learn from the private sector how to manage the workforce tasked with that job.
"First, you need to punish errant employees rather than protecting them or shuffling them about. The best companies are quick to 'proactively outplace' wrongdoers."
"Second, you need to treat your reputation as your most precious asset by drawing up clear rules on ethical behaviour, insisting staff adhere to them and conducting aggressive public-relations campaigns."
"Third, you have to keep looking ahead. Companies hold meetings of senior leaders to review their strategies every year, rather than every century or so."
All, no doubt, excellent advice. But is this asking to much of any mere mortal? Particularly a man like Bergoglio who's reported to have lived "a sober and humble life" up to now, cooked his own meals, travelled on buses and flown economy?
No worldly prelate he!
In opposition to any Bergoglio change from the principles and policies which have guided this corporation for some 2,000 years will be the Vatican's hugely influential Curia, essentially its civil service.
The Curia is notoriously elitist and resistant to external influence and moves at roughly the pace of tectonic plates. That's akin to the speed of fingernails growing.
So may Bergoglio's god be truly with him.
This humble man from Buenos Aires will need all the help he can get.]]>Watching the Watchdog: Chasing the Revolutiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28294592013-03-07T17:38:47-05:002013-05-07T05:12:01-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-knight/Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada.
My first time is back in the '60s.
I'm a very young newspaper reporter at the liberal (for apartheid-poisoned South Africa) Sunday Express in Johannesburg when I fall in with a wild and racy theatre crowd.
They drink a lot, sleep around a lot (I remember the beautiful and much older Maureen with lingering lust), smoke dagga a lot, and delight in disobeying the racist laws of the fascist authorities.
Those laws decree that it's illegal for white people like us to party with, drink with or -- in particular -- have sex with black, brown or Asian people. You go to jail if you're caught.
So of course we, the rather self-consciously avant garde, do all these things. And it's great fun. Particularly because it's so dangerous.
Actor Bill Brewer throws some of the best mixed-race parties. He fills his penthouse with black people, brown people, Asian people and white people for delightfully educating evenings of law-breaking getting-to-know-you fun and games.
In effect, every time we party we say screw you to the apartheid government and learn more about each other and each other's humanity. And, we believe, move South Africa a little closer to the inevitable revolution that will end with multi-racial democracy.
There are spies everywhere. So each of us arrives separately, hurries up the steps and into the elevator, careful not to acknowledge the other, particularly if we're of different races.
Only when I'm in the penthouse and Bill Brewer has recognized me and the door's locked can my personal revolution begin.
--------------------
My next time is in New York in the '70s.
I'm a bit older and a lot more experienced. I've worked in Zimbabwe and Zambia and covered two Congo wars for United Press International. Now I'm a reporter/producer for ABC-TV.
Nine-thousand miles away, the obscene colonial Vietnam war grinds on into its tenth year. Down south, police, Klansmen and whoever feels strongly about "nigras and outside agitators" attack freedom marchers and murder civil rights workers.
It's all a bloody mess. So I join the banned very-left-wing Trotskyists who believe in ending the war and racism, supporting the dictatorship of the proletariat, and starting permanent revolution.
One of my tasks is to duplicate Trot leaflets calling for the downfall of the government and the running dogs of imperialism who own the military-industrial complex. I do this late at night on ABC's hand-cranked Gestetner printing machine. Then I stroll outside and around the corner and pass them to a mysterious man named Ivor who disappears into the darkness to start our revolution by pasting the leaflets on lampposts and construction sites.
We Trots meet every Thursday evening at an apartment in a Lower East Side semi-abandoned building right next to the elevated subway.
Every time a train approaches the whole building shakes and everyone stops talking revolution. That's because an anarchist who lives in the apartment beneath makes bombs for various revolutionary groups and isn't considered entirely stable.
Once again, we revolutionaries arrive separately, casually drifting in off the street. Nobody acknowledges anyone else until a guard at the apartment door checks us out, lets us in and the door's locked so the revolution can begin again.
--------------------
Which brings me to my last time, just a week ago.
I'm in the Duke of York pub in Toronto. Only a few miles from the spot where, during the Upper Canada Rebellions, the battle of Montgomery's Tavern is fought over responsible government and political reform.
One-hundred-and-seventy-five years later, a group called Why Should I Care? has called a meeting in the Duke to discuss these very same topics -- responsible government and political reform.
People arrive mostly one by one, and instead of turning left and heading for the pub, revelry and fun, walk up the stairs for some serious political discussion and to have their names checked by the man at the door.
But inside the Duke this evening, there's none of the fiery revolutionary rhetoric of William Lyon Mackenzie. Instead, three polite and reasonable speakers who unite to tell the audience that Canada's parliamentary system simply isn't working and must be reformed.
Peter Russell who's described as "a venerable constitutional scholar and advisor to Governor Generals" says the main problem is our first-past-the-post system.
It's turned single-party majority government, he says, into a corporation.
"We don't have policy any more, we have a brand. Like a corporation. Which is spun by the Prime Minister's Office" "There's no room in a corporation selling a product, a brand, to discuss very much." "The main way they communicate to the public is to sell (the brand) like soap or cars or some product. That's what you're faced with if we continue with first past the post."
The closest Russell comes to a call to arms is:
"All over this country, there are groups like your own who are very, very concerned about the state of our democracy today." "Thank God you're showing this concern about parliamentary democracy."
Wayne Smith who's Executive Director of Fair Vote Canada also questions the "antique" voting system. He claims that most of us are represented in parliament and in our provincial legislatures by people we voted against. "How screwy is that?" he asks rhetorically.
"I want my politicians to be accountable to voters. I want political parties to be accountable to voters. And I want the government to be accountable to the legislature. And when one party's got a phony majority government, there is no accountability."
Borys Wrzesnewkyi, who's a former Liberal MP, says it's appropriate that the meeting is being held in a pub. Everyone applauds when he suggests there's some of "the spirit of Montgomery's Tavern" present in the Duke.
He sums up parliament: "The House of Commons has become no better than the senate. It's a symbolic institution. Louder, perhaps, but it really doesn't decide anything."
Maybe all this very Canadian reasonableness is a sign of the times.
Maybe we're all exhausted by Stephen Harper's Sun King, Prime-Minister-For-Life arrogance based on less than 40 per cent of the vote. And his everything-but-the-kitchen-sink C-45 budget bill. And his ability to blissfully ignore the system of participatory parliamentary democracy upon which Canada's democracy and politics are based.
Maybe.
Even so, I'm a little wistful for the heady days when I could go to jail (or have a subway train explode a bomb underneath me) just for going to a gathering of people who think the political system is rotten and really, really want to change it.]]>Watching the Watchdog: The Holier Than Thou Networktag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27761872013-02-28T15:28:12-05:002013-04-30T05:12:01-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-knight/Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada.
Readers of this column -- of whom there are distressingly few compared to the many millions who apparently need to know everything there is about nipslips and baby bumps and all matters royal -- will know that I'm a more serious blogger than most.
I'm much given to rather lengthy diatribes deploring the state of journalism today, the deliberate attacks by our government on the Canadian participatory democracy I cherish (having lived under some alternatives), and all manner of racism, sexism, ageism and other isms which all decent people deplore along with me.
But today, I'm waxing wrathful about TV networks and stations that mutilate innocent and often brilliant programs and, quite simply, by doing so steal our money.
Specifically VisionTV -- which calls itself "the World's only national multi-faith and multi-cultural television service." According to its website, it offers "... entertainment programming that deals with spiritual, moral, ethical and social issues and values."
All very highfalutin and suspiciously worthy.
Now, personally being neither superstitious nor a believer in magic, I'm not religious. I have an excuse. I went to Anglican church schools most of my formative years and as a result developed a healthy doubt that anybody called God actually exists in spite of all that praying and hymning and stuff.
Even so, I'm particularly fond of programs that cover "spiritual, moral, ethical and social issues and values" which are some of my favourite things. I frequently get into beery arguments about them with friends, which is a splendid way to spend an evening, particularly when it's snowing like now. (If you happen to be in the neighbourhood, incidentally, TVO, Ontario's educational channel, does those things extremely well.)
Added to which, I have absolutely no problem with a channel that wants to save people's souls. Just so long as they leave mine alone.
What does bother me about Vision's "multi-faith and multi-cultural television service" is the obscenity it does to some of the world's finest TV sitcoms. Programs that tell truth through hyperbole, satire and irony. Programs that find everything questionable and nothing sacred.
Britain's Iron Lady, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, once described Yes, Minister admiringly, if reluctantly, as not fiction, but documentary. Which means she thought it told the real, sad, sordid truth about the cynical exercise of power by politicians and civil service bureaucrats in Britain's Mother of Parliaments. And made us laugh at these all-powerful folk. Which is a splendidly healthy thing to do.
With a slight change of accents, it could have been set in own beloved Ottawa and nobody would have been able to tell the difference.
But I digress. All this is a long way around to telling you that evening after evening, I settle down after a long day's slaving over a tepid keyboard to enjoy the manifold and manifest delights of my erstwhile countrypeoples' best iconoclastic storytelling. Which, in its natural state, oozes with magnificently eccentric storytelling, satirical wit and razor insight.
And evening after evening, I'm offered emasculated versions of the original program, so crudely and brutally cut that the stories are rendered meaningless. This desecration is committed so more and more commercials can be shoved in and more and more profit made.
This from the holier-than-thou network that claims it's into all that spiritual, moral and ethical stuff.
It's like desecrating a fine painting. Or cutting the king out of Hamlet to make room for more commercials. It's inexcusable. It must end.
I don't know and I don't care if Vision massacres its religious programming in the same way, although I doubt it. If I'm wrong and there actually is a God, he (it's always he) can handle that problem perfectly well by himself. Thunderbolts and plagues of locusts come to mind. Killing first-born would be a bit much.
Anyway, we viewers have to take a stand. We're paying for programs that we're not getting. We're being cheated. So if you know who commits or authorizes this blasphemy at Vision please let me know. I shall publicly demand an explanation and it better be good.
Other networks mutilate programs too, of course. For the same sordid commercial reasons. And I'd love to know who does the dirty work there too.
But sanctimonious Vision is where Yes, Minister lives these days.
So Vision is where my wrath is aimed.
So much for all those "spiritual, moral, ethical and social issues and values."
Hah!]]>Watching the Watchdog: The Scary Truth About Senior Abusetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27615952013-02-26T12:57:40-05:002013-04-28T05:12:01-04:00Tim Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-knight/Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada.
There's this old guy I met occasionally in the elevator on my way to work whose inevitable response to my polite "good morning" was always a brusque "any day you wake up -- and you're not in some old folks' home -- is a good morning."
Haven't seen him all this winter. So assume maybe he didn't wake up one morning or they've carted him away to the old folks' home he was trying to avoid.
According to a recent documentary from CTV's W5, the old man's instinct was right on.
At 46 years old, W5 is the longest running newsmagazine documentary program in Canada and claims to be the most watched. It's executive producer is Anton Koschany who's got a long and impressive record of investigative reporting behind him, has been nominated for six Gemini Awards for Best News and Information Series, and won two of them.
Like The Fifth Estate over at CBC, when W5 rakes muck, people pay attention. If it's focused on some particularly egregious wrongdoing by the authorities, many urgent meetings are held, much time is spent passing blame, and whole legions of public relations flacks start working on something called "plausible denial."
It will be difficult to plausibly deny last Sunday's edition of W5, titled "Crisis in Care" and anchored by the hugely experienced Sandie Rinaldo. It's very, very scary.
Rinaldo starts off talking to the viewer on-camera, setting the traditional golden years scene.
"When you picture a long-term care facility or a nursing home in your mind, what do you see? If you're like most people, probably a serene place where seniors are busy with activities or taking it easy. Well, increasingly it seems that ideal image is nothing but a mirage."
Violent confrontations between seniors in day care, she says, "are now commonplace."
"In fact, our investigation has discovered that in one year alone more than 10,000 seniors suffered abuse in nursing homes at the hands of their fellow residents. It is a crisis in care. And it appears the homes and government are unable or unwilling to deal with it."
According to an article written for its investigation, W5 filed access to information requests with 38 provincial and regional health authorities asking about resident-on-resident attacks. It got back hundreds of pages of documents "detailing everything from incidents of verbal threats, pushing and slapping, to punching, choking, sexual assaults and even homicide."
"Crisis in Care" concentrates on two examples.
There's Frank Piccolo who's 68, confined to a wheelchair, suffers from Parkinson's and dementia. He's living in Toronto's Extendicare Lakeside Long Term Care Facility, one of Extendicare's 243 for-profit seniors' care centres in North America. It's where he's brutally beaten by another resident who also suffers from dementia.
Police are called, decide not to lay charges.
The local police commander explains: "That is the exclusive jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health. They oversee long term care homes, not the police."
Piccolo's wife Theresa calls Lakeside negligent, questions if nursing homes are above the law.
"I don't understand why nursing homes can't be charged with a criminal act when something like this happens. I mean, someone was assaulted."
Rinaldo tries to interview the Ontario minister responsible for long-term care, Health Minister Deb Matthews. But Matthews is too busy. So, being a good reporter, Rinaldo finds out that the minister's scheduled to attend a Liberal Party event in Toronto and ambushes her outside.
Rinaldo (Showing pictures of Piccolo covered in blood): "I have a few questions for you about violence in nursing homes and why there are no serious consequences when a long-term care facility is found to failed in its duty to protect residents."
Matthews (Showing every sign that she's been well prepared for the question): "You know, it's absolutely heartbreaking. And absolutely unacceptable. This is, you know, one of those very, very rare cases and a reminder that we must always continue to do better ... What I can tell you is that I take my responsibility as Minster for care in long-term care homes extremely seriously. Extremely seriously."
Then, on the other side of the continent, there's Elsie Rogers who's 73, suffering from dementia who lives in the Normanna long-term care facility.
Another patient, a man, hits her, punches her in the stomach and knocks her to the ground, shattering her hip. She ends up in a wheelchair.
Karleen Harkness (Rogers' daughter): "They broke her. And they broke more than just her ability to walk. They broke her spirit. She was a phenomenal woman and she didn't deserve that violence ... Someone has to take accountability. I mean we put someone that we love more than anything -- into an area that we thought she would be safe in. I blame the nursing home."
Rinaldo takes a hidden camera into nursing homes, asks about the ratio between staff and patients. Answer: one in eight.
Miranda Ferrier (President of the Ontario Personal Support Workers' Association [PSW] which staffs many of these institutions): "Every time we hear one in eight, it makes us want to laugh. Because I have yet, in all my years working as a PSW, to come across one to eight. That would be a dream. An absolute dream ... they're lying. They're really lying!"
A PSW colleague: "Out there, through our association, we've heard of one to ninety-nine."
I have no doubt that most long-term care homes do good work. That they perform a valuable service looking after our old, our sick, our weakest and most vulnerable, during our last months and years.
But I also have no doubt that some don't. That W5's research is dead accurate. That there are many old folk's homes in this country where greed overtakes common humanity. Where far too few staff have to look after far too many residents -- some of whom suffer from dementia and are dangerous to both themselves and the people around them.
One day, of course, we will all be old. One day, all our bodies and minds will deteriorate and fail.
I don't think we're asking too much -- if they do have to cart us off to one of those homes -- to want to live our last years there safely and with dignity.
My guess is that if the old guy in the elevator had watched "Crisis in Care" and had a choice, he'd have chosen not waking up one morning.