Category: Other

Chuck Cadman, RCMP closure and the last Liberal stretch

RCMP:

[the] “investigation disclosed no evidence to support a charge under the Criminal Code or under the Parliament of Canada Act” (emphasis added)

The Liberal Party of Canada:

“The ethical standards of a Prime Minister must be above those of the evidentiary rules for prosecution under the Criminal Code” — Dominic Leblanc

Incongruent spin from the Liberals:

Mr. LeBlanc said while he fully accepts the RCMP’s determination that there is insufficient evidence to proceed with criminal prosecution, he believes Mr. Harper and the Conservatives have a duty to give Canadians all the details of the offer that was made to Mr. Cadman.

If Dominic Leblanc “fully accepts” the RCMP’s assessment, how can “no evidence” to support a charge become “insufficient evidence” for the same? Mathematically, “no evidence” equals zero, while “insufficient evidence” is less than one.

The only ongoing legal proceeding on this matter is a result of Stephane Dion’s inappropriate and allegedly libelous statements against the Prime Minister. The Liberals should stop stretching the truth to smear the Prime Minister and accept that this issue with provide no more mileage and that their gamble on this attack only weakens their credibility on the other scandal narratives that the party has constructed.

We get letters: In response to Jeffrey Simpson

The following comes from a good friend who read Jeffery Simpson’s Globe and Mail column today and found himself a bit perturbed at the lacking quality of Simpson’s arguments for the National Portrait Gallery to be located in Ottawa. My friend doesn’t get to do a lot of this sort of creative writing in his job, so I’m glad to post it here with his permission.

Mr. Simpson makes the quite excellent point that the private sector really shouldn’t house our portrait gallery and that the portrait gallery shouldn’t leave the capital because, after all, no other country does it that way.

No! Its not about the potential beauty of some new facility in some new city. After all, what could be more arrestingly beautiful than the status quo? It’s certainly not about the efficient use of tax dollars. How crass to worry about how we spend other peoples money when the issue is the arts. I mean….just look at the CBC. Who but a philistine would begrudge those tax dollars given the artistic sitcoms that the CBC produces. The new Portrait Gallery could even model itself after the CBC except the CBC has moved to Toronto which is impossible because it should be in Ottawa where all the other art stuff is, except for the other art stuff like Telefilm that moved to Montreal.

And of course it’s certainly not about putting the Portrait Gallery where whole new swaths of the country could appreciate it. What kind of ugly ideology would support that? I’ll tell you what kind, a very, very ugly one.

Anyway….if anyone has an ideology that is worth following it is Jeff Simpson who is easily Canada’s most articulate proponent of the ideology of sameness. We should do it the same way as we always have, because that’s the way we’ve always done it. We should do it the same as the Americans because its the only thing that they’ve ever done right.

I see now where Jeff is leading us. He’s saying that we can lead the world if we do everything the same way, but do it with even more vigour and enthusiasm than we have in the past, except we do it the same way, because that’s the way we’ve always done it. You know….I feel exactly the same way.

Former CBC News head Tony Burman to Al Jazeera

TORONTO – Tony Burman, the one-time head of CBC news, has been appointed managing director of Al Jazeera’s English operations.

Burman, 60, takes over from Nigel Parsons, who has held the position since the network’s launch two years ago. Parsons is now managing director of business acquisition and development.

“In the months ahead, I will … put an emphasis on the expansion of Al Jazeera’s vast audience reach into important new areas of the world, most notably North America,” Burman said in a news release.

He called Al Jazeera’s newsrooms the most diverse in the world with a presence in more than 50 countries.

“I look forward to capitalizing on this strength through increased investment in investigative journalism, more provocative and insightful current affairs and expansion of the network’s large worldwide network of more than 60 news bureaus.”

Burman, an award-winning news and documentary producer, left the CBC last year after 35 years at the public broadcaster, including seven as editor in chief.

In 2006, Burman oversaw CBC News’s introduction of a new look and attitude on all its platforms in response to demands that the public broadcaster try to be hipper and cooler. A survey of Canadians found that parts of the CBC News operation didn’t appeal to young people.

Al Jazeera’s English channel was launched in November 2006 and is now available to more than 100 million households worldwide.

Somehow, this makes sense for the former CBC News editor-in-chief.