Debbye has a post worth your time. Here’s a taste;
The failure of the electorate to administer a sharp rebuke to the Liberal Party for corruption and mendacity is depressing. Some back home say the American press was too voracious in pursuing the Watergate story and the leads arising from the hearings, but up here I’m seeing the other side of the picture: too many in the media seem almost disinterested in learning the truth and complacently let the government investigate its own wrongdoing with the occasional plaintive bleat that the commission has uncovered little of substance.
It’s one of the reasons that blogging on politics is so much more an uphill battle in this country – the media is so uniformly supportive of the Liberal establishment that scandals that should generate front page headlines and news magazine specials, are likely to be quickly buried behind NHL contract talks and the latest Michael Jackson court footage. Canadian media outlets are not in the business of exposing the Liberal underbelly.
Even when the corruption is as staggering as that of Adscam, there is a line they will not cross – the line that might just get a conservative opposition party elected. Witness the performance of the CBC and CTV during the past election campaign. With the LIberal party badly damaged by the continuing revelations coming out about the sponsorship scandal, they quickly pulled the gloves back on to stroke the “social issues” pony, aggressively pushing their campaign coverage towards the burning question of whether Canadians found Stephen Harper “scary”.
This afternoon, “broadcaster and investigative journalist” and talk radio host Peter Warren featured journalist Charles Smith of Newsmax and his articles concerning the “blockbuster” revelation that there are Canadian ties – through Power Corporation – to the UN Oil-For-Food scandal.
GASP … who knew?
Of course, the knowledge of the intricate links between Power Corp. and officials at the highest levels of the UN and the Canadian government has been widely distributed on the blogosphere for months and available to any number of enterprising journalists. (The Newsmax piece cited on Warren’s program appeared here at lowly little SDA two weeks ago.) We know that members of the media read a variety of Canadian and US bloggers, so ignorance doesn’t explain the silence – the failure to cover the story can only be attributed to malpractice and corruption of basic journalistic principles at the highest editorial levels.
The surprise expressed by callers to Warren’s show was genuine and their reponse predictable – they were appalled. We all should be, but not at Power Corp., Chretien, Strong and their peons in the Liberal government – who like any member of the genus Mustela are guilty only of doing what comes naturally – but at a Canadian media establishment that has pledged a higher allegiance to the Liberal Party of Canada than they have to the truth.
Do you really think the MSM has any desire to be ethical and honest, and most of all tell the truth…. you as Canadian pee-ons can’t handle the truth.
What’s even a bigger joke is that it only seems to be the west that’s aware of the problem, the east has there blinders on and are like lemmings running to the cliff. Everytime there’s even a hintg of disention, everything east of Manitoba gets stroked and is down for the count.
All I gots to say is keep bending over MSM, one day that ain’t gonna be sunshine going up your butt.
Cast your mind back to the early 80’s, and the louche bunch of grifters that surrounded Trudeau.His final term had a stench of failure and corruption,but it has to coalecse in the public consciousness.It has to reach a critical mass before the electorate will take the plunge on a Tory gov’t.Conservatives are not given any benefit of the doubt…look what happened in Ontario after Mike Harris turned it around.They throw them out, with glee.
Harper has something to build upon,but he will need patience and good cheer.Happy conservatives do win in Canada.Mulroney was able to cut through the noise, and it can be done.Sooner or later, the Liberals run out of gas.
I remember Trudeau well….NEP… forced to work in the high north due to a lack of employment…. remind me to piss on his grave if I ever get to Ottawa.
He was the grandfather of all this garbage going on today… he fueled the fires of the left wing, and there was no water out east to put it out.
Really tells you something when we elect a PM who got the boot from the states…The mind set of the east is to follow the MSM, and as long as there’s a buy off controlled by the left we won’t win.
Quite frankly, all this is really hurting business, and the company I work for is looking into moving ALL operations state side due to the political climate. We also know of 4 others in the process, so I guess will be able to say the last one out of AB turn the lights out.
What’s disturbing is there is so much dependency on the transfer payments, but if the economic situation in AB changes and there is no money transfered out east, I guess you all are going to have to listen. Can you say thank you Suzuki… NEP all over again..
The Fifth Estate has run slanted,incompetent, clueless and intellectually dishonest “exposes” on Bush and Cheney, but if they’ve bothered to investigate Liberal corruption in their own backyard I’ve missed it.
This is a sound use of taxpayer’s money. Ignore problems in your own country while covering ground that’s been tilled ’til it’s a dustbowl.
Kate, Mark Steyn’s column in the latest Western Standard covers this, and is blistering.
You know what might help get Desmarais some of the critical press he deserves? If Stephen Harper would find his hoo-hoos, and bring it up. The problem is, the CPC would have to have a foreign policy of their own against which to contrast it.
Meanwhile, the OLO is busy successfully catching the PMO in “hypocrisy” and further waste, mismanagement, etc… Great! cause their problem last time was that not enough voters knew that the Liberals waste money.
Maybe one reason they’re so anti-BMD is because they think their Cone of Silence can cover them for missiles, too.
A major factor in Canada is, of course, the CBC.
It’s not that the CBC is particularly bad, per se, but the fact that it’s (subsidized, legalized) omni-presence sucks up all the oxygen in the Canadian media world.
Monopoly is always bad. And should a conservatiove goverment ever get in, the breaking of the CBC should be “job one”. NO other single thing they could do could help them more inthe long run. (Actually discouraging other press/ radio/ TV concentration would help too.)
It must be two years ago that Diane Francis made public the connection between Chretien and Power Corp. He is the father-in-law to one of the two CEOs at Power. Maurice strong is a major Canadian player and Paul Martin our PM used to be legal counsel to Power back in the sixties. Patronage in Canada has become the dominant way of getting rich, in this country. Either handing it out or recieving it. Read Jeffery Simpson’s “The Spoils of Power”, Its about 10 or 15 years old but it is right on the ‘money’.