Introduction to Canadian media and politics

If there is one constant in Canadian federal politics, it is the mainstream media process stories about how warring political factions are offending to key groups of voters. See here how stories are floated to underpaid reporters and columnists in order to tick off key Trudeaupian voter blocks as politicos tick off key constituencies off their lists.

Women:

“Meanwhile, there are rumblings among some grass-root Liberal women that Mr. Ignatieff doesn’t quite share that view. Mr. Ignatieff has few female caucus members in key critics’ roles and has one senior woman in his entourage: communications director Jill Fairbrother . (Stephen Harper doesn’t have a single senior woman.) The rumblings are that if more women were in high places, seeking consensus, we might not have come to the brink of another federal election this month.

Ukrainian-Canadians:

Ignatieff’s sin, the protesters feel, was to pen “derogatory remarks” about Ukrainians in his 1995 book Blood & Belonging.

The UCC’s press release cites two offending passages. “From my childhood in Canada,” Ignatieff wrote, “I remember expatriate Ukrainian nationalists demonstrating in the snow outside ballet performances by the Bolshoi in Toronto. ‘Free the captive nations!’ they chanted. In 1960, they seemed strange and pathetic, chanting in the snow, haranguing people who just wanted to see ballet and to hell with politics. They seemed fanatical, too, unreasonable. Hadn’t they looked at the map? How did they think Ukraine could ever be free?”

Gays:

Toronto’s Pride Week may have seen its last cheque from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government after this year’s $400,000 contribution provoked a backlash from within the ranks of MPs and Conservative supporters.

Chinese-Canadians:

Another controversy relates to comments made by a senior Ignatieff advisor, Warren Kinsella. In a Youtube video posted earlier this year, Mr. Kinsella claimed he was planning to enjoy some “barbecued cat” (Ottawa Citizen. January 31, 2009). After extensive coverage of his statements in the Chinese-Canadian media and pressure from Chinese Canadians, Mr. Kinsella apologized. (Globe and Mail. January 31, 2009)

Lebanese-Canadians:

During the Israel-Lebanon conflict in 2006 Mr. Ignatieff’s observations angered Lebanese-Canadians when he first said of civilian deaths in Lebanon: “This is the kind of dirty war you’re in when you have to do this and I’m not losing sleep about that.” This statement angered many Lebanese-Canadians. (Toronto Star. August 2, 2006)

Catholics:

A senior New Brunswick Roman Catholic priest is demanding the Prime Minister’s Office explain what happened to the sacramental communion wafer Stephen Harper was given at Roméo LeBlanc’s funeral mass.

During communion at the solemn and dignified service held last Friday in Memramcook for the former governor general, the prime minister slipped the thin wafer that Catholics call “the host” into his jacket pocket.

Korean-Canadians:

Past comments by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff are coming back to haunt him as members of the Korean community accuse him of suggesting he would starve North Koreans.

While at Harvard in 2005, Ignatieff said, “I strongly support reductions in food aid” to strengthen the international community’s negotiations with North Korea on nuclear weapons.

“Is that a difficult human rights problem? You bet. But that’s where I would go,” he said at the time. “I would look at the food aid, and all the bilateral stuff we are doing that keeps this odious regime going.”

Why are these stories written? Because they’re easy, because they sell papers and each side believes that on sum, they’ll emerge from the fray less thrashed and bruised than the other guy. Before you think that the end result of this is more people voting Green, consider my own entry into this theatre of the chronically offended.

Guilty of this myself, I suggest that there is wisdom in the following rap lyric (as I say in my most terrible impersonation of an ironic James Lipton): “don’t hate the player, hate the game”

And therefore, if the players remain constant, how do we change the game?

Click here to read my proposed solution. I’ve argued that it’s the way that our politics is funded.

An excerpt:

Under the current Canadian system, we give welfare to parties for being best able to convince Canadians of the other parties, “No They Can’t”. If we made politics about the positive (Yes), responsibility of self (We) and enablement (Can) rather than the negative (No), what one’s opponent would do (They) and a need to stop them (Can’t), perhaps we could reduce voter apathy both at the ballot box and when parties pass the hat. If we gave voters more power to finance those they support rather than sustain those they least detest we could shift Canadian politics for the better.

Canada Day evokes colourful reactions from press gallery reporter

Two years ago, The Toronto Star’s Susan Delacourt had the Canada Day blues…

They’re painting the town blue for Canada Day in the nation’s capital this year.

Though the red and white of Canada’s flag is usually the dominant colour scheme for the big party in Ottawa on July 1, blue seems to be all the rage this year – a good, solid Conservative blue, to match the government in power.

Workers have been erecting the main stage for festivities this week on Parliament Hill. By yesterday, it was evident the favoured hue seems to have definitely shifted from red – which also happens to be the colour of the Liberal party, the Conservatives’ arch-rivals.

This wouldn’t be the first time, however, that this symbol-conscious government has eschewed red for blue.

The government’s official website, www.gc.ca, has increasingly leaned toward blue tints ever since the Conservatives came to power almost a year and a half ago.

For this year’s Canada Day, Delacourt was seeing red,

Early into his first term as Prime Minister, Stephen Harper mused aloud about how he wished Canadian reporters would stand when he entered the room. I believe the collective reply to this musing had something to do with weather forecasts and the temperature in hell.

But yesterday, on Canada Day, Global TV news showed us how Harper managed to get the military to give him a salute that’s normally reserved for the Governor-General. As Heritage Minister James Moore explains in the video, this was something that the Prime Minister apparently wanted.

So if you do run across our Tim Horton’s, hockey-dad, regular-guy PM this summer on the barbecue circuit, give him a little salute. Or stand up, or something. He really seems to appreciate deference.

We hear rumours…

some good, some bad…

This rumour came in via Twitter:

InfluenceComm (Jean-François Dumas): RUMOUR IN THE MEDIA: resignation of PM (Harper) next week.

Is the source credible? Who is Jean-François Dumas? What is InfluenceComm?

From Marketing Magazine, February 23rd, 1998:

The CBC has preliminary audience numbers for its Olympics coverage. On Monday, Feb. 9, an average 1.48 million Canadians watched prime time coverage. That peaked at 1.77 million between 9:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. On Tuesday, Feb. 10, 1.66 million watched from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.; that number jumped to 2.33 million from 9:30 p.m. to midnight, peaking at 3.05 million between 10:30 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. That night the International Olympic Committee stripped snowboarder Ross Rebagliati of his gold medal.

The Royal Bank and AT&T have formed the first Canadian alliance between a bank and a long-distance company. Connect@work combines Internet access with on-line banking. It debuted Feb. 9, and it’s only available to businesses banking with Royal. Jo-Anne Wade, manager for E-Commerce marketing at the Royal Bank, says that demand for this type of service is increasing: “There is a growing number of small businesses getting onto the Web,” she says. “This is designed to make it easier for them.”

Montreal’s Groupaction/JWT has created an agency-within-an-agency with GroupaXion New Media, headed by Jean-Francois Dumas. It offers planning and creative services for clients such as the Treasury Board of Canada, showing them how to use technologies including the Internet, intranets, Web sites, debit cards and CD-ROMs for promotional purposes.

Shell Canada Products Ltd., a subsidiary of Shell Canada, is the official sponsor of Ted and Tony’s Inside Track,”the most watched automotive information program” in Canada, Shell says. A survey of 1997

Groupaction… where have we heard that name before?

From the Gomery inquiry documentation:

Mr. J. Brault and his wife, Ms Joane Archambault, started Groupaction Marketing Inc. (“Groupaction”) in 1982.

The main operating companies were:

a) Groupaction Marketing – the primary advertising and marketing
company; and

b) Alléluia Design (“Alléluia”) – a company operating in the field of
artistic and graphic design.

In November 1997 Groupaxion Nouveaux Médias (“Groupaxion”) was
incorporated to operate in the fields of interactive media and web sites.

GroupaXion New Media was owned by Jean Brault and headed up by Jean-Francois Dumas. Now, a man named Jean-Francois Dumas runs a Montreal new media firm called Influence Communication and he’s starting the spread of a rumour on Twitter about the Prime Minister resigning.

C’est intéressant, non?