…I’m watching the wall-to-wall coverage of the Liberal leadership debate on CBC Newsworld (Ken Dryden is speaking some french!) and I’m reminded how Newsworld treated the Conservative Party leadership debate back in 2004 (Antiques Roadshow anyone?)
Month: June 2006
CBC celebrates over-taxation
I caught this clip around lunch-time yesterday as Nancy Wilson of CBC Today was celebrating the second largest surplus in Canadian history.
Wilson was setting up the story for business reporter Jeannie Lee and advised Canadians to pat themselves on the back for a job well done.
Translation: Hey Canada! Last year, your taxes were $26 Billion higher than necessary. You each gave away over $1000 (assuming 20 million Canadian taxpayers) that the government didn’t even use.
Why do Canadians celebrate huge surpluses as if it were some indication of profit? Even those on the left would complain that a surplus is an indication of a government under-spending while those of us on the right would complain that it represents over-taxation.
When we talk about a balanced budget, shouldn’t the balance point find itself between deficit and surplus?
I suppose that a relatively small surplus might be ideal to insure against national emergencies, but should we really be celebrating the second largest surplus in Canadian history?
Question for Google
A couple of quick questions for the good folks at Google…
Why is the Liberal Party of Canada a news source in Google News while the Conservative Party is not?
Google News lists LPoC press releases
Google News does not list CPC press releases
It should be noted that while Google News does list news releases concerning the daily functions of the government of Canada under “Government of Canada (news releases)”, it does not list partisan press releases from the CPC as it does for analogous releases from the Liberal Party of Canada.
So while Google News lists the partisan Liberal story from the liberal.ca website “First Leadership Forum Sparks Lively Debate“, the CPC press release titled “The Prime Minister pays tribute to the Canadian Forces” is not included.
Granted, some press releases do overlap between conservative.ca and gc.ca, however, Google News lists sydicated stories from multiple sources as individual entries. Partisan news releases do not appear upon the Government of Canada website and while the extra-curricular backslapping activities of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition are linked by Google News, the Conservative Party comes up short.
So, where does Google put press releases from Conservative.ca?
and does the Liberal party receive the same second-class treatment?