Be a bigot … in this place

Today, in this place, we can stand back and see ourselves for what we truly are: a knee-jerk horde of bigots.
Apparently, anyway.
See, I’ve been racking my mind trying to figure out why people were so hostile toward the NB Power deal. I’ll admit, I was pretty skeptical at first. But my main beef was Graham’s approach – the way he slapped the agreement on the table and demanded we sign by March – not the actual details of the sale.
Because, honestly, I don’t, didn’t and likely never would have grasped every intricate working of the deal. And neither would you. Neither would the majority of us. We didn’t act out because we felt the deal was sour, we rebelled because the way it was thrust on us and because, of course, the prospect of selling your major assets is pretty spooky, even to a layman.
But we should have gotten over that. We should have cast aside our pride in what is clearly a botched utility, and accepted the horrible spectre of challenges that lies ahead for NB Power. We should have traced the lines of how we got here – $4.75-million in debt, a burdensome nuclear plant, crumbling dam and inefficient coal-fired facilities – and been big enough to accept we need help, a way out.
Instead, we let a few outspoken mouthpieces propagate fear and outrage for months, we fed them, they fed us, and now we’re back at square one, with an even less valuable asset – thanks to all the publicity now about how screwed NB Power and its assets are. If Quebec didn’t want it, why should we? And who will now?
Sure, critics of the deal said NB Power’s assets were worth keeping, especially the transmission lines, and that we should find a home-grown solution to better manage the utility and steer our way of out debt.
Fair enough. But it’s been five months. Five months where the deal was front-page news everyday, five months where the deal was constantly in the spotlight, coffee shop talk, street exchanges, and five months later  no better ideas have come forward. Let alone better ideas – simply no other options, alternatives or solutions have been proposed.
And even though not one single person, not one frothing-at-the-mouth critic nor even the great lame duck David Alward came forward with a better idea, we still fought Graham’s plan tooth and nail.
And for what, New Brunswick? Higher rates? Growing debt at NB Power? A less competitive climate for attracting  jobs?
How many more mills do we have to lose before we wake up and realize what we’ve done? How many families will have to move away before the light comes on and we realize we flicked the wrong switch off?
No, we’re not very bright, in this place.
As Charles Cirtwill of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies wrote in the Telegraph-Journal: “So we have a dead deal. Dead because New Brunswick originally managed to get Quebec to offer far more than they should have. Dead because Quebec caught on before the final agreement was signed, and dead because the New Brunswick government for all its hinting couldn’t convince their fellow New Brunswickers that they really had outmanoeuvred, at least for  few days, Quebec.”
This isn’t Graham’s fault. Yes, he botched the pitch. But the NB Power deal was big enough that we should’ve been able to look past the premier’s flawed PR skills and weigh the benefits with the cost.
Do I think the agreement with Hydro-Quebec was ideal? No, it probably wasn’t. But it was better than the status quo, and better than any deal we can cook up now. It was, frankly, as good as it was going to get.
And I wouldn’t hang my hat on Bethany Thorne-Dykstra’s analysis of ‘now the people of New Brunswick will take part in the process of fixing NB Power.’ What do we know about fixing a public energy utility? Please.
And as for Alward, shame. Nothing would make me sicker than to see that man win the election this September, after having done nothing for five months but cast aside the interests of New Brunswickers so he could play politics and further his own ambitions. For shame.
But, alas, I’m still left wondering: why?
Why the outrage, why the opposition, the seemingly uneducated, uninformed, knee-jerk opposition? Because surely any reasonable person, when presented with the sad state of affairs that is NB Power, would see that something must be done. Surely logic would win over emotion if it were just the facts involved.
But it wasn’t just about the facts, was it? I find myself wondering if the outrage wasn’t at all about the deal, so much as it was the buyer. Maybe we didn’t even realize it; maybe our bigotry assumed such a subtle form that we weren’t even aware. It certainly seemed that way listening to talk radio, when countless individuals would call in to speak out against the deal but offer no reasonable explanation why, only fruitless rhetoric.
And Wednesday, as I read of the collapsed deal, one image played over and over in my mind, and I couldn’t figure out why at first. It was a photo of the rally held in Fredericton this weekend, where people (a thousand or two, depending who you ask) gathered to protest the sale of NB Power. In this photo, a man with a scowl face held a sign that read: Shawn Graham resign now, why wait? The ‘Now’ was all capitalized, and in the centre of the ‘O’ was a blue fleur-de-lis.
No sir. We’re not too bright at all, in this place.

 

The new arcade

Online gaming is hangout central

A typical gamer den.

This documentary explores the fast-growing online gaming social scene from the perspective of an avid gamer who says being able to interact with players from across the world has changed the gaming experience for the better.

Listen here

 

Cutting with tradition

The face of modern forestry looks nothing like it did one hundred years ago, but there are still pockets of lumberjack romantics who opt for the axe and two-man saw over the heavy-duty harvester. In this radio soundscape, meet the University of New Brunswick Woodsmen as they prepare for their first lumberjack competition of the 2008-09 season.

Have a listen

 

“We gave up on them”

In this chilling interview, hear first hand from a social worker how New Brunswick’s social care system is failing the province’s youth.

Have a listen –> \”We gave up on them\” by Jon MacNeill

 

Why Lamrock was right

Education Minister Kelly Lamrock made a lot of enemies when he decided to remove early French immersion programs from New Brunswick’s elementary curriculum. But he also made a few friends in people who felt the changes were needed so the province’s education system could better serve all students.

Elizabeth Sloat, PhD., is one of those people.  In this radio interview, she explains why Lamrock’s contested reforms are a step in the right direction.

Click here to have a listen –> FI Interview by Jon MacNeill

 

Clearing the fog

This radio documentary looks at the controversial methadone treatment from the perspective of a recovering drug addict who, with a little help, is finally getting her life back together.

Click here to listen or download –>Clearing the fog by Jon MacNeill

 

Is walking still honest?

In this radio soundscape four friends take a ten-hour journey to see if their favourite anarcho band can still speak to them after the mainstream music videos and major-label record deal.

Click here to listen or download –> AM! Soundscape

 

No room for thought

This commentary expresses disappointment in both the  government of New Brunswick and the university student body over the lost potential of a polytechnic type school for New Brunswick.

Click here –> No room for thought by Jon MacNeill

Note: The link will take you to a hosting site where you can listen to or download the commentary.

 

2(b) or not 2(b)?

The fallacy of a free press

By Jon MacNeill

A free press guarantees that our government can’t silence an outspoken radio DJ, or stop the presses rolling on some juicy corruption expose.

And at one point in history that was really crucial. A clampdown on government censorship did volumes for the quality and scope of journalism. At one point, that was enough.

But today, what is there to protect our free press from a more sinister force: the Almighty Buck?

What ensures a writer can get their hard-sought, investigative stories to print? How can we guarantee newspapers and news feeds won’t be flooded with yellow journalism and fluff pieces?

Where in the charter does it say that freedom of the press also means freedom from the fetters of profit-seeking corporations?

It doesn’t. Well, for the sake of journalism and the public’s opinion of the craft, it’s time we revert the mantra back from “the shareholders right to ever increasing profits,” to, “the public’s right to know.”

Now, I don’t want to be called naïve. I understand a newspaper is a business. And I understand that a business needs to make money to survive.

In theory, a newspaper that makes money has more to pump back into the editorial department. It could hire more writers and afford to do some costly in-depth features.

But that’s not what’s happened in Canada’s daily newsrooms.

Money is being made, but not because the quality of the journalism within the pages is getting better.

Rather, profits are climbing because staff numbers are dropping and advertising space is growing.

When Conrad Black started gobbling up major newspaper chains across Canada in the 90s the state of newspapers in this country soured.

Editorial staffs were gutted. Hard-working journalists clinging to the romantic ideals of integrity and truth were let go, or left in disgust.

“After Black’s take-over of Southam, no attention was being paid to the development of staff, or training, or how do we get better at what we do,” Sharon Burnside, a former managing editor of the Ottawa Citizen told professor John Miller while researching for his book Yesterday’s News.

“All the emphasis was in the other direction - how do we do more with less.” (Miller, p.97)

And that’s the direction many newspapers have taken all across the country in the last decade.

The Standard-Freeholder, a weekly paper in Ontario with a rich 160-year history in its community, lost one-third of its editorial staff within a year-and-a-half of being purchased by Black. (Miller, p.96)

In 1996, Black bought two major daily newspapers from the Sifton family in Saskatchewan. The family had owned the papers for three generations. That same year, 173 people lost their jobs between those two papers, or 27 per cent of their staff was fired in one single morning.  Those affected call it Black Saturday. (Miller, p. 90)

The newsroom downsizing spree Black and his company, Hollinger, embarked on in the mid-90s was truly pan-Canadian in scope. Because Black owned such a large slice of the client companies within the Canadian Press he came to control that body as well. CP, the organization that gathers and distributes most of the news Canadians read or hear in broadcasts, buckled under pressure from Black and Hollinger and cut 40 per cent of its staff between 1990 and 1998. (Miller, p.99)

This isn’t the government stepping in and telling publishers what they can and cannot write, but rather, the publishers themselves handicapping their own ability to report all the news accurately by spreading their newsrooms so thin the prospect of quality journalism is practically unattainable.

And why? Because this is a business, remember. Downsizing means money.

Maybe we just need more Citizen Kains in this country (with enough sense to stay out of politics). People with the audacity to publish hard-line manifestos and the integrity to uphold them.

It doesn’t have to be that perfect, though.  All we really need are publishers who print newspapers for love of the concept.  With a relentless appreciation for quality journalism. Writing that serves a community, informs, educates, and moves our society forward.

Tunis Wortman believed there should be no limits to expression because if any concepts or ideas were barred from public knowledge it would be a disservice to the growth and evolution of society. The public must be exposed to all there is to see and know, so that it might exercise judgement. He saw judgement as more or less a muscle: the more you work it, the better you get at forming opinions.  So the more ideas the people judge, the better their conclusions become. (Wortman, p. 60-61)

I like that concept.

But it’s not enough to write laws that only stop the government from limiting ideas and the press. At least, not anymore.

When newspapers, and other information mediums, are run in the interest of raising profits and not raising society’s collective consciousness then something must be done.

When ideas are kept from the public simply because the push for a greater bottom-line doesn’t leave enough resources for good journalism, then some form of authority must step in.

Journalism must be free. And today censorship isn’t limited to just the government. Newspapers censor themselves by caring less about the noble cause of reporting the news, all the news, and more about making money.

That’s not a free press. It’s a free-market enterprise.

Sources:

Miller, John.  Yesterday’s News. Fernwood Publishing, 1998.

Tunis Wortman, A Treatise Concerning Political Inquiry and the Liberty of the Press (1801), p. 58-65, from, The Journalist’s Moral Compass.

 

death of a nation

Canadian Action Party warns of writing on the wall

By Jon MacNeill

Ben Kelly (left), candidate for the Canadian Action Party, talks politics with Brandon Kelly (no relation) outside the Student Union Building on the UNB Fredericton campus.

An Amero flag flies at half-mast outside the Canadian consulate of the North American Union on Rideau Street.  The latest fallen soldiers from the Union’s protracted war in the Middle East are being honoured at a ceremony just across the way from where the last public hospital closed only two months earlier.

A new dollar, military mandate and healthcare system weren’t the only conditions the territory once called Canada agreed to upon entering the new Union.

The lost nation in effect surrendered its identity that fateful day in August of 2012. An identity, however, that had been in steady decline.

To most Canadians, the preceding is no more than a bleak and frightening work of fiction. For Ben Kelly, and his colleagues with the Canadian Action Party, a North American Union is a looming possibility if Canadians don’t heed the writing on the wall.

“I honestly don’t believe there will be a Canada in 10 years, at least not as we’ve known it,”  says Ben Kelly, sipping on a lager in the campus bar at UNB.

The 21-year-old history student from Riverview is one of five candidates vying for the Fredericton riding in the upcoming federal election.

Kelly’s party, the Canadian Action Party (CAP), is less than 10 years-old and has never had a candidate run in the province before.

“There may still be a Canada,”  he continues, setting his bottle on the glossy oak table, “but not a sovereign one.”

That’s exactly what Kelly’s party is fighting for: a strong and economically independent Canada. But it’s not the country his party sees in the future should Canada stay the course with deeper integration between its Southern neighbours.

The main threat to Canada’s independence, says Kelly, is the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP).

The SPP, started in 2005 by the governments of Canada, the United States and Mexico, seeks to improve trade and security relations across the continent.

Kelly says the pact isn’t that innocent and would seriously threaten this country’s sovereignty. His party goes as far to say the SPP could strip Canada of fundamental services like Medicare and Canada-Post, and force the adoption of a new continental currency.

Most cast off these speculations as pure conspiracy theory, but Kelly points out that the secrecy surrounding the SPP summits only fans the flames of suspicion.

“If we’ve got nothing to worry about with the SPP, then why are our government officials meeting behind closed doors where the minutes are never released?” he says.

“Why was no one allowed within a mile of the summit in Montebello?”

He says even those who flat-out refuse to entertain the idea of a North American Union can’t ignore what’s been happening in the last 15 or so years.

“You can’t disagree that our country has become more integrated with and our economy more dependent on the United States.”

To ensure the survival of services Canadians pride themselves on, Kelly says the SPP must be stopped and Canada must get out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

“NAFTA is the United States’ main foothold for influencing our economy,” he says, his hand cracking down on the table’s smooth wooden surface.

“We need out of it because it’s eroding Canada’s sovereignty.”

Kelly says certain clauses in the agreement forced Canada’s economy wide open to U.S. investment, ultimately resulting in the loss of more than 10,000 home-grown businesses since the treaty’s signing in 1992.

His party would have Canada leave NAFTA and diversify its trading partners, so the country isn’t so dependent on one economy.

Kelly says the agreement would be replaced with stronger East to West trading between provinces, something not possible under NAFTA.

“It makes no sense that some tariffs between provinces are higher than those running North to South,” he says, shaking his head briskly.

Not everyone takes Kelly and the Canadian Action Party’s warnings seriously. Courtney Mills, a St. Thomas political science student, thinks the chances of a North American Union forming are shrinking every day.

“Bush is gone, he’s on his way out” says Mills.

“And I don’t think the other candidates (in the U.S. election) are likely to go through with the SPP.”

However, a recent article in the Globe and Mail by award-winning author Margaret Atwood may offer some credibility to the black-sheep party’s platform.

Atwood wrote about her distrust of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his intentions for the country’s future.

“During the debates, Mr. Harper kept saying, “Canada is not the United States.” He forgot to add the word “yet”: If he has his way, it soon will be,” she wrote on October 8.

Atwood continued, “These SPP changes will be made without you ever voting on them, and they’ll be extremely hard to change back.”

Even with a reputable figure like Atwood echoing CAP’s concerns, Kelly admits that an anti-NAFTA and anti-integration platform is a hard package to sell to the average voter.

“We’ve got some work to do as far as re-structuring the party,” he says.

“We’re holding a leadership convention soon, so hopefully a new leader will help CAP present itself as a serious and legitimate national party.”

The party’s website contains links and images that he thinks are a little too radical and forthcoming for a national political party.

He says the party’s website and platform need to be refined in order to be taken seriously by the average Canadian.

For his campaign, Kelly is focusing on showing voters there is a reasonable concern that Canada could lose its sovereignty if things like the SPP and Deep Integration continue unchecked.

“I’m not a politician,” he says, polishing off the last swig of brew.

“I only got involved with CAP because I’m a concerned citizen, and I wanted to show people there are other options out there, and there are topics that aren’t getting talked about – but we should be.”

He hopes with a new leader and a less aggressive platform the Canadian Action Party will appeal to more Canadians, although he admits the changes will take time.

Within the next eight years, he figures, CAP will be a viable national party for Canada - if there’s still such a nation to speak of.