Daniel Costello is Canada’s ambassador to Poland. He is not the “Polish ambassador”.

Letter to Polish Ambassador Daniel Costello

Published on July 9, 2010
July 8, 2010

Ambassador Daniel Costello
ul . Jana Matejki
1/5 00-481 Warsaw
Poland
Dear Ambassador,

I am writing to you regarding an issue that has reverberated across Canada and about which I have received many complaints. The refusal of the Canadian Embassy in Poland to fly the rainbow flag during the Euro Pride Festivities in Warsaw is an affront to Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, rule of law and stated values.

Canada, under the Liberal governments of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, implemented changes in the Human Rights Act and over 86 pieces of federal legislation that advanced full equality, de jure and de facto, to Gays and Lesbians.

We are proud to be one of the first countries in the world to legalise same-sex marriage. As a Minister for six years, I took this issue to all international and multilateral fora for inclusion in official action plans.

I urge you to respect Canada’s leadership in the arena of human rights and minority rights and to fly the flag, proudly, in support of a minority group whose rights have been denied and who still face violence and death in many parts of the world.

If Canada cannot lead by example, as has been our tradition, we have lost our way as a global citizen and a nation respected for fairness and principle.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Hon. Hedy Fry, P.C, M.P.
Vancouver Centre
Cc. Hon. Laurence Cannon, P.C. M.P., Minister of Foreign Affairs

AFTERTHOUGHT: Even though she forgot what country Costello worked for, Fry being consistent with her party’s foreign affairs critic Bob Rae who in May said,

“I think it has to become a stronger priority for Canadian foreign policy generally and I think we have to understand that as Canadians, that having taken such an advanced position ourselves with respect to recognizing gay relationships in the Americas, that it would be – it would be a wonderful thing if we could champion this as a priority for our foreign policy.” — Bob Rae

UPDATE: Results! The Liberal Party has changed the text of the letter.

BONUS: Read Steve Janke’s more policy-oriented take on Hedy’s silliness.

Prior to the Olympics I heard an interesting rumour from a source close to the business that CTV’s Lloyd Robertson would be pulling up anchor and moving on after the company’s high profile gig of playing host network to Canada’s 2010 Vancouver Olympics. It was the kind of information that you’d want to triple-check and the kind of tidbit of info that you’d want to ensure isn’t confirmed from sources who had only heard the same from the original rumour monger. While it was never enunciated broadly, it graced the front of one media watcher’s blog and threatened to make its way onto talk radio. Robertson himself acted to quash the rumour declaring that he had no announcement to make and that he’d be staying on for the nightly newscast.

That is, until last evening.

The man that anchored CTV’s flagship newscast and who had done so since 1984 told friends, colleagues and the industry that it was time to wrap it up. Anchor politics have been relevant to the mainstream news business in the past and indeed, with recent shakeups including the entry of Sun News on the scene, anchor politics are in play again.

In the United States, the retirement of Dan Rather and introduction of Katie Couric set off a lot of chatter. The passing of the torch between an outgoing Tom Brokaw to an incoming Brian Williams represented a similar “seismic” shift over at NBC.

But are such events as relevant as they once were?

In an evolving media landscape, the news consumer has more options than David Brinkley vs. Walter Cronkite. As they unfold, national and international news events are disseminated in a less fixed (or indeed less anchored) manner, but rather more in a diverse, disparate, and distributed fashion. One time, sitting on a political panel for one of the Canadian networks, I found it telling and perhaps unsurprising that the host was keeping on top of emerging stories not via the news wire, but rather via National Newswatch — an amateur independent news aggregator that is well-read among political types in Ottawa. Former CTV political host Mike Duffy famously kept us up to the minute via tips sent to his Blackberry. And even since, I’ve learned that while even the Prime Minister’s Office keeps on top of news via National Newswatch and similar news aggregators, much of their breaking media monitoring operations has shifted to tracking emerging chatter on Twitter. Whole government departments are now contracting social media monitoring to keep on top of issues and to conduct their media management. The department of Heritage sought a social media guru to keep track of anti-seal-hunt chatter to provide intel of possible disruptions during the Olympics and even in the aftermath of the G20 violence, police are using social media networks to identify perpetrators.

Regarding packaged content that can be monetized, companies are scrambling to understand the landscape as it shifts. Google is set to make a serious entry later this year with its Google TV offering which will allow the further convergence of search/web/television and make it accessible to the average end-user. Google’s YouTube announced YouTube Leanback this week which previews the socially-aware web-television interface where whole channels of content will be dedicated to videos produced and shared by one’s Facebook friends, Twitter followers and Google contacts. The format promises to be open to developers and therefore we may yet see new imagined methods of information consumption emerge.

The significance of this? The media space and the distribution of content is becoming less top-down. Today, in contrast to ten years ago, it matters less to the Prime Minister’s Office to get their story on The National. Much has been written about the Conservative’s strategy of narrow-casting to local and ethnic media. Even more has been written about the waning influence of broadcast news to cable. Former PMO Director of Communications Kory Teneycke is banking $100 million of Quebecor’s money on this newer front. What may yet be the newest frontier is tapping into the emerging importance of building online networks of influencers bottom-up from a populist rather than top-down elite information distribution model.

What happens when the 500-channel universe and 15-minute news cycle gives way to an unbound media universe and “cycle” (soon to be a misnomer) consistently in flux? Will we need an anchor? Or will we be happy to float along the tide?

In old media, we see another changing of the guard and Lisa LaFlamme should be congratulated for her career accomplishments that brought her to anchor CTV’s newscast. However, it will be how she and her company adapt to a broader, more fluid and bottom-up media culture that will determine their success in the next phase. Because that’s the kind of era it’s been. Now to the future.

Big news today in Ottawa is the new Governor General appointee and the EKOS poll showing Liberals flirting within 0.3% of their worst polling result in recent history. At 23.9% the Liberal Party of Canada has no fared so poorly since December 4th, 2008 when the country put the Conservatives into the Canadian polling stratosphere as Stephane Dion, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe tried their bid for a coalition government.

The coalition attempt was a dark time for the Liberal Party, a once mighty Canadian political institution now reduced to banding together with socialists and separatists in an attempt to remove their unpopular leader while gaining power at the same time.

Stephane Dion never led a non-coalesced Liberal Party so unpopular as the current Liberal Party under Michael Ignatieff if these latest numbers are to be believed. Dion was never believable as a Prime Minister but he was a likable fellow. Unfortunately for Michael Ignatieff, one can see him as Prime Ministerial, however he’s not very likable. In a conversation with a senior Liberal last year, it was explained to me that Ignatieff suffers a sincerity gap. Is he believable? Does he fight for things he believes in? What is it that he believes in?

Here’s the breakdown of the EKOS poll:
CPC 34.4%
LPC 23.9%
NDP 17.9%

This is the lowest level of support that I can remember for the Liberals during a non-event. Indeed, these numbers come in after the G20 where Michael Ignatieff was MIA as a political leader in reaction to events.

If we take a closer look at the numbers too, we learn that they might actually be skewed against the Conservatives.

The EKOS poll’s polling sample included
404 French speaking (31% of weighted sample)
1312 English speaking (69% of weighted sample)

Out of Canada’s, only about 21% are francophone (of population).

EKOS’ poll finds support for Conservatives to be lacking among francophones:

CPC support
English speaking 36.3%
French speaking 13.5%

LPC support
English speaking 30.6%
French speaking 18.5%

If francophones were over-represented in EKOS’ sample, is the news worse for the Liberals?

and is the media being slow to catch up?

I actually had to go look for this article this year. Usually it finds me. Here’s the story from CTV:

Extreme heat wave example of climate change: expert

Canadians should expect more extreme weather like the current heat wave baking southern Ontario and Quebec in the future because of climate change, a leading climatology professor says.

“My strong opinion is that these kinds of extremes are something you would expect in a warming world, and expect to happen more frequently,” Harry McCaughey, a professor of climatology at Queen’s University, told CTV.ca.

McCaughey says climate models show that overloading the climate with carbon and water vapor (a byproduct of a warming globe) makes the system much more unstable.

Ok, typical short-news-cycle-driven story about something observed (it’s hot!!) that’s happening now but exists in geological time (tens of thousands of years).

Even more telling is the “climate change fatigue” expressed in the comments section of the post which seems to be in a condemning consensus about this news story:

“That global warming sure is horrible, look at all those pictures of people having fun at the beach ! We should really try and stop this thing immediately, call your local politicians, I know I am ! On second thought ……….. last winter was horrible, bring on global warming !” — NM

“There was a three to four day spread in December in Edmonton last winter where it was record setting cold, -49 w/ windchill of ~ -55 to -60. Where was Mr. McCaughey then ? In fact last winter was the coldest in some areas in over 30 years, remember ice in Florida where they lost over $100 million in orange crops. I really don’t care if global warming is happening or not, but seriously the more the marrier if that means I have to go through another winter like last year !” — Sure …….

“As a child I remember summers always being hot in July. Southern Saskatchewan was always 90 to 105 degrees. IMO we are just too used to our comforts-central heating in winter and airconditioning in summer.” — jjaycee

“I was wondering how long it would take until the media blamed this latest of many heatwaves dating back hundreds of years on climate change.*sigh*” — Mike

“Yes, it is called summer, Dr. Doom. Normally, summer is preceded by gradual warming following winter, which can be extremely cold.” — Lou

From Mediaite:

In the latest case of new media (or oversharing) gone wrong, CNN’s Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs Octavia Nasr is leaving the company following the controversy caused by her tweet in praise of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah

Mediaite has the internal memo, which says “we believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised.”

Nasr tweeted this weekend: “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”

Maybe Nasr will go to Al Jazeera?

It’s nearly midnight in Doha, and we are in a cafe on a pier jutting out over the shoreline of the Persian Gulf. The cafe is empty and the night air quiet—except for the insistent ring of mobile telephones. Al-Jazeera Managing Director Mohammed Jasim Al-Ali takes a call from an American TV network executive. The airstrikes are well underway, and the Qatar-based satellite news channel, by now well known to TV audiences and Washington decision-makers alike, is the only TV presence in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Washington, in early October, asked Qatar to rein in the satellite channel, claiming it fans anti-American sentiment. American broadcasters, though, want Al-Jazeera to make them a deal.

Across the table from Mr. Al-Ali is Octavia Nasr, CNN senior international editor. She’s on a mobile too, with an Arabic-language satellite channel which is wooing her in the same way that Western networks have been courting Al-Jazeera over the last several weeks. But a deal has been made between the giants of English-language and Arabic-language TV news, and both sides say they would be hard-pressed to find another partner that could serve them better.

Glen Pearson is the Liberal MP for London-North-Centre and is an avid blogger. He has some criticisms of the modern Liberal Party of Canada. I think he’s onto something. Here are some of his quotes:

“Like it or not, today’s Liberal Party is often viewed as elitist, out of touch with daily pressures of average people and groups.”

Michael Ignatieff is currently in China, getting in touch with the lives of everyday Canadians.

“Gone are the days when the Liberal Party could attract candidates from unions, social agencies, environmental groups, anti-poverty advocates, and even small business associations. This hurts, but it’s true.”

Three Liberal candidates have quit in the past month.

“[T]oday’s Liberal Party spends an inordinate amount of time talking about institutional politics and policy as opposed to the key role of the citizen as an agent of progress.”

Indeed, it’s more difficult to attract candidates when the reality of forming government seems too distant, but you need to attract candidates that are in it to make the individual lives of citizens better, not for a retirement plum or for a chauffeured car.

“One of our key weaknesses as a national party at present is our distance – physical, emotional, empathetic – from the average lives of citizens.”

Is it a problem of leadership? Of abandoning rural Canada and their concerns?

Is Pearson right? What do you believe plagues the Liberal Party of Canada?