Our politicians don’t care

2022

Justin Trudeau claims that Canada is in great shape and he and his team are doing a great job running the country. Justin doesn't mention the many homeless people living in tents, shacks, or in their cars, they’re everywhere; or that young educated Canadians are the first generation who will never be able to own a house and can barely afford to pay inflated rents common in cities and towns; or that over 20% of Canadians are dependent on food banks because groceries are so expensive; or that many people live in fear of getting sick because they have no family doctor and will never have a family doctor. It wasn't this way just ten years ago, before Justin Trudeau became prime minister; he has made the country unrecognizable to all of us who were once proud of being Canadians. He is a man who has no interest or belief in civil liberties in this country.

We know that Justin Trudeau doesn't care about civil liberties; just remember his use of the Emergency Act regarding the freedom convoy. As well, he and his cohort have allowed, condoned, and promoted the CAQ government in Quebec to get away with the abnegation of civil liberties, all of it legislated in Bill 96, against the English-speaking community in Quebec; the federal Liberals have even included Bill 96 in the federal Official Languages Act (2022). See no evil and hear no evil is their approach to this situation. Justin Trudeau, and the other federal party leaders, should have had the integrity to oppose Bill 96, but none of them said a word, they supported Bill 96.                                   

Premier Legault and his CAQ party have attacked McGill University, one of Canada's greatest universities, and they've attacked Concordia University, and they would like to see both universities closed down; that is their intention even though they might deny it. Their intention and objective is to destroy the English-speaking community.

The latest aggression against the English-speaking community is an assault on health care for English-speaking Quebecers; they have directed health care workers not to speak English with patients who do not have an eligibility certificate to receive health care in English; however, these eligibility certificates don't exist. Just imagine, this is happening in Canada. I would advise anyone thinking of investing in Quebec or relocating here to think twice, your civil liberties will be annulled, you will face a provincial bureaucracy that will invade every aspect of your business, and you will be taxed to death. 

The following is especially egregious and Orwellian: under Bill 96 the government can enter the premises of a business, with no warrant, at any time of day or night, to see if their computers contain any language other than French. This is bad enough but it is also possible that these government agents, the Language Police, will read and copy private documents on these computers and what will they do with this private information? Is this why Walmart bailed from investing in the province, after building but never opening a $100M warehouse? There are other explanations but I tend towards Walmart wanting to avoid the inevitable invasion of their privacy in terms of operating their business.

Justin and his cohort want the French vote in Quebec and he has condoned and promoted the loss of civil liberties in order to get the French vote. Now read this:

Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects against all forms of unreasonable search and seizure. But for the notwithstanding clause, if a person believed that the Office had violated this fundamental democratic right against State intrusion, there would be legal protections. Under Bill 96, however, there would be no such right. Worse, the Bill does not create a requirement of reasonable grounds, or even reasonable suspicion. There is no requirement for prior judicial authorization of any kind, such as a warrant. And so, there would be no grounds whatsoever to contest what would otherwise be an unlawful search and seizure if the Bill as tabled in First Reading is passed.

                                                        --Pearl Eliadis, Associate Professor, 

                                                       Faculty of Law, McGill University

                                                       "Pearl Eliadis on the Overreach of Bill 96"

There is a cost to whatever Justin Trudeau does, a significant part of the cost is a denial of our individual and collective freedom. What I have said here is what the majority of English-speaking Quebecers think and feel about being abandoned and betrayed by our provincial and federal political parties. They have all sold us out; none of them care about civil liberties. How did we end up in such a situation? How did civil liberties end up meaning so little in Canada? 

Note: this information was correct at the time of writing; it is possible that some details may have since changed. The main thing here is the abnegation of civil liberties in Canada.

The Influence of Art and Literature

Bernard Keble Sandwell 

By Bernard K, Sandwell, B.A.

Bernard Keble Sandwell was born in 1876; he was educated at the University of Toronto and earned a B.A. (first-class honours in classics) in 1897. He is the author of The Musical Red Book of Montreal (1907) and The Molson Family (1933), and other books. This essay was first published in Canada’s Future, what she offers after the war (1916).

 

    The economic and social life of the English-speaking people of Canada has much in common with that of the Americans. Their political institutions, up to the point where autonomy begins to be limited by the sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament, have almost everything in common with those of Great Britain. Their ethnic character is much more purely English, Scottish, and Irish than that of the Americans, because they were subjected much later than the latter to the influences of the vast stream of continental European immigration, and the Canadian national mind is scarcely beginning to feel the various non-British impulses which have been a strong factor in American art and literature for a generation. Yet in their tastes, their ideas, their manner of living, they are governed much more largely by American tastes, manners, and ideas than by those of Great Britain ; much more largely than one would expect from their lack of racial and political community with the Americans. A nation of six millions (omitting for a moment the French-speaking portion of the population), has dwelt elbow to elbow, along a frontier of thousands of miles, with a nation of ninety millions, and speaking the same language, from the beginning of its history. In the industrial world it has achieved independence by a policy of carefully adjusted customs duties. In the intellectual world no customs duties have much effect. The proximity of the United States has influenced the art and literature of Canada, not so much by colouring the methods, as by limiting the output. Canadians have not been as conscious as they might have been of the need for self-expression, because they have been abundantly supplied with art and literature expressive of the neighbouring Republic. At the same time Canadians who had the gift of expression, were far too frequently attracted to the United States, where greater wealth and larger population ensured the artist a better reward. Even among the men of high ability who did not actually remove to the United States (or to England, which also exercised its attractive power upon some), the necessity of writing with a view to American or British publication, if they were to secure *a large public and a decent financial reward, prevented them from seeking to express purely Canadian concepts for a purely Canadian public, and required them to adapt their work largely to non-Canadian standards of taste. Meanwhile, the Canadian public, long habituated to seeing non 'Canadian' standards observed even by its own Canadian writers, to having them deal with American subjects or adopt an American point of view, has largely come to the conclusion that there is no national Canadian art and no need for one ; that Canadian literature is sufficiently upheld by a body of Canadian-born writers living in New York, or writing in Canada for New York periodicals ; and that the country is too young, or too poor, or too busy, to be able to maintain a body of writers and artists devoted to the business expressing Canada for Canadians.

Much of the most successful work of Canadian writers of the last fifty years is as little expressive of Canada of the true mind of the Canadian people as the work of the Irish dramatists of the Victorian era was expressive of the mind of Ireland. Some of the external aspects of Canadian life have been portrayed with skill ; the deeper issues have scarcely been touched. Matters upon which the heart of the English-speaking Canadian can be touched to a fire of impassioned feeling, a fire capable of attaining the white heat of tragedy, are not numerous, and do not change much from generation to generation. Even so, our writers pay small attention to them. From the earliest days, the intense conviction of the typical English-speaking Canadian (and here he was at one with his French-speaking brethren) was that his heritage of Canadian soil must be preserved from becoming a part of the great experiment in new governmental methods and new ideals to the south of him. This is the first of the great 'Canadian passions.

Up to 1812, time and again, he maintained that conviction by force of arms. Later, the conflict was transferred to other and more peaceful fields, and became a calm and finally a very friendly struggle ; but the conviction still stands, and the Canadian still maintains with dogged pertinacity and not infrequently with much self-sacrifice, his determination that his country shall develop upon its own lines and within its own limits. It can is curious, by the way, and significant of the concentration of attention upon political and economic matters, that the vast importance of a characteristic native art and literature to full national development has never been taken to heart, when so much energy has been spent upon safe-guarding the Canadianism of political institutions, transportation routes, industries, educational systems, and financial; powers.

When the danger of forcible Americanization had been finally disposed of by the War of 1812, there came for a time another struggle. Canadians began to perceive that too much Downing Street might be as fatal to the ideals which they were unconsciously forming for the new nation, as too much Washington; and there ensued that struggle for responsible government, and for a proper distribution of the powers of government among local and central bodies, which was finally ended by the British North America Act. The constitution provided by that Act has worked very satisfactorily indeed, until the present world-convulsion; but if the need for further readjustment should now be felt, there may be a renewal of (the clash of contending ideals which (however painful at the time) is so invaluable for the development of a rounded national consciousness.

To these two matters of passionate feeling among Canadians may be added a third, perhaps the deepest and most abiding of all. In the political life of the United 'States religious controversy has scarcely any part; in the political and social life of Canada it is all-pervasive. The United States was founded, and its constitution drawn up, by men who wereall of very similar religious attitude ; Canada consists of different races, with widely differing conceptions of the relationship of church and state, church and family, church and individual. The efforts of these different races and different conceptions to advance themselves, the attrition of such different nation-materials, their conflicts and compromises for the development of a united Canada, form the most promising material that any deep-probing novelist could demand for the exercise of his art ; but efforts to treat them seriously have been almost nil. As for drama, there exists no machinery for the presentation of Canadian plays to a Canadian public.

In the fine arts, national development has gone a good deal further in painting than in fiction and poetry, although the emigration to the United States and to Europe of good artists in both metiers has been deplorably large. Poetry is less of a business than novel- writing, requires less of a public for its support, and can be carried on by persons engaged for a livelihood in other more productive occupations, such as the Civil Service and various professions. In the case of Robert "W. Service, we seem to have evidence that in this decade a Canadian poet, writing primarily for a Canadian public, can even make a profitable living out of verse, providing he possesses a certain knack of capturing the popular ear. In painting, which is supported directly by the munificence of the wealthy classes, there has of late been an evident disposition on the part of patrons to encourage Canadian subjects and methods of treatment, and a corresponding development of self-reliance and self-respect among Canadian artists. The external influences at work upon Canadian painting are much more European than American. This may be accounted for by the fact that, in order to experience the influence of American art, a student must go to the United States, and those Canadians who have done so have, as a rule, remained there and enlisted in the American artistic army.         

We thus find that the artistic impulse in Canada has been overshadowed in varying degrees, according to the nature of the field, by the greater, more developed, and more self-conscious nation to the south. That Canadian art is, by degrees, emerging from the shadow, is equally evident. Forces are now commencing to work which must immensely hasten the task of emancipation. The war is affecting Canadian art and literature, for their great and abiding good, in at least two ways. It has diverted the attention of serious Canadians from the purely economic tasks and problems on which the nation has been concentrated for the last twenty-five years, and has stimulated interest in very much higher things matters of 'the mind and soul. On the other hand, it has given Canadians a vastly enhanced consciousness of the value and meaning of their nationhood, not in the realm of dollars and cents, and tons of steel, and bushels of wheat, but as a factor in the eternal world-wide struggle between right and wrong. Alone among the peoples of this hemisphere, Canada has borne her share, in sacrifice of blood and treasure, in the conflict which has racked the world. Alone among the peoples of this hemisphere, Canada has joined hands with the -great nations of the East and West in the fight for national liberties and the dethronement of autocracy and tyranny. A nation with this experience behind it will never again consent to accept its artistic ideals, wholesale and unmodified, from another nation however great and prosperous which has lifted no hand in the fight. Canada has new national experiences, understandings and aspirations, which will more than ever call for expression in a purely Canadian <art and literature. Canada has a place among the nations, a right to a seat in council, which all her wealth and prosperity of the last quarter century could never have given her, but which became hers on the day when her sons stemmed the German rush at Ypres and at St. Julien. If a finer culture and a prouder national consciousness are the first results of Canadian participation in the war, there need be no doubt that a stronger and purer national art and literature will follow closely after.

"The Lonely Land" by A.J.M. Smith

 

Cedar and jagged fir

uplift sharp barbs

against the gray

and cloud-piled sky;

and in the bay

blown spume and windrift

and thin, bitter spray

snap

at the whirling sky;

and the pine trees

lean one way.

 

A wild duck calls

to her mate,

and the ragged

and passionate tones

stagger and fall,

and recover,

and stagger and fall,

on these stones —

are lost

in the lapping of water

on smooth, flat stones.

This is a beauty

of dissonance,

this resonance

of stony strand,

this smoky cry

curled over a black pine

like a broken

and wind-battered branch

when the wind

bends the tops of the pines

and curdles the sky

from the north.

 

This is the beauty

of strength

broken by strength

and still strong.

"The Bull Moose" by Alden Nowlan

 

Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,
lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,
stumbling through tamarack swamps,
came the bull moose
to be stopped at last by a pole-fenced pasture.

Too tired to turn or, perhaps, aware
there was no place left to go, he stood with the cattle.
They, scenting the musk of death, seeing his great head
like the ritual mask of a blood god, moved to the other end
of the field, and waited.

The neighbours heard of it, and by afternoon
cars lined the road. The children teased him
with alder switches and he gazed at them
like an old, tolerant collie. The woman asked
if he could have escaped from a Fair.

The oldest man in the parish remembered seeing
a gelded moose yoked with an ox for plowing.
The young men snickered and tried to pour beer
down his throat, while their girl friends took their pictures.

And the bull moose let them stroke his tick-ravaged flanks,
let them pry open his jaws with bottles, let a giggling girl
plant a little purple cap
of thistles on his head.

When the wardens came, everyone agreed it was a shame
to shoot anything so shaggy and cuddlesome.
He looked like the kind of pet
women put to bed with their sons.

So they held their fire. But just as the sun dropped in the river
the bull moose gathered his strength
like a scaffolded king, straightened and lifted his horns
so that even the wardens backed away as they raised their rifles.

When he roared, people ran to their cars. All the young men
leaned on their automobile horns as he toppled.

On defunding the CBC

 

On the CBC:

The jaded public wants to be amused; journalists have to eat well. Reducing issues to personalities is useful to the ruling class. The "news" now functions to legitimize power, not to convey information. The politics of personalities helps the legitimizers to divert attention from issues that might upset the status quo. (7)

The Conservatives also justifiably felt that the CBC, then as today, gave too great prominence to the Liberal view of Canada. (19)

                                                        --George Grant, Lament for a Nation (1965) 

1.  That was then

For many years I listened to CBC radio; I was proud to be Canadian and the CBC was a part of what made me a proud Canadian. In the early-1970s I listened to Anthology on CBC radio on Saturday evenings; I listened to Morley Callaghan, Kildare Dobbs, Hugh Garner, Al Purdy, bill bissett, and other poets, novelists, and playwrights. I listened to Ideas, founded by Phyllis Webb, and heard talks given by Northrop Frye and Louis Dudek, among others; I first heard of John Glassco's Memoirs of Montparnasse on CBC radio. After hearing interviews with Ivan Illich I read his books and was introduced to a fascinating thinker and writer. I listened to Music and Metaphor weeknights at midnight, they combined poems with music and some years later I listened to a French language version of this same show on Radio Canada.  For many years when I drove to work and when I returned home from work I listened to CBC radio, they were great companions during this daily drive, the programme hosts felt like friends. This was excellent broadcasting.

2.  this is now

I rarely listen to CBC radio and, as for CBC television, I was never a fan and now even less so; this is because their dramas and news shows are often based on an assumption of the correctness of woke values. Whether it is television drama or the news, the CBC filters what they broadcast through climate change, diversity, and gender fluidity. Of course, this does not apply to all of the news items, but their bias is always ready to be included in some news item. As a part of this, they are contemptuous of anyone not woke or who disagrees with them. They don't seem to care that most Canadians don't follow their preconceptions about contemporary society. They do not support Canadian values, they do not represent Canada's history or traditions, it is usually propaganda for Justin Trudeau. 

3.  AIH

Lately, while eating supper, I've begun to listen to As it Happens, on CBC radio; in the past it was always entertaining, it aimed for some humour with interviews of different people. But AIH today is nothing like the old AIH, it's become annoying and woke and it isn't interesting or entertaining; even the new host sounds bored; maybe it's now intended to be educational . . . Gone are the days of Barbara Frum and the announcers who followed her; Frum was always entertaining, intelligent, and humourous; recently Frum's interview with HowardBallard, who owned the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team, was replayed decades after it was first broadcast, this was in response to Jason Priestly's documentary on Ballard; Ballard wouldn't even be interviewed today, he would have been cancelled long before his passing. 

4.  Morningside

I used to listen to Morningside, broadcast every day from 9 to 12 noon; that programme ended years ago but it was a great format and it was always great radio; gone are the days of Peter Gzowski and other hosts (like Don Harron or Judy LaMarsh); there is no place in the present CBC for intelligent people like Barbara Frum or Peter Gzowski. Or Wendy Mesley who was driven out of the CBC by the zealously politically correct at the CBC. These announcers and programmes were a part of my life and I remember them with fondness and affection. Just think, they got rid of Morningside with its various intelligent hosts who interviewed equally intelligent guests and they gave us "Q" and something called "Commotion". The level of intelligence and ability to entertain has plummeted. No, it's beyond "plummeted", it is no longer the CBC we used to listen to and love, no longer the CBC that built a relationship with listeners; this new manifestation of the CBC is some new manifestation of mostly white, woke, people living in the GTA who know nothing about Canada and don't like Canadians. 

5.  bloated 

My values, not the CBC's, include frugality and being careful with money, including with somebody else's money; the CBC's values include profligacy and actual contempt for the tax payers who pay their way. Just recently the CBC was given $40M dollars in Covid relief; they get $1.2B dollars in subsidy a year and when necessary it is topped up to keep them going. They cannot pay their own way, they were never self-supporting in the past and Canadians never expected them to be self-supporting, they had a mission, to inform, educate, and entertain Canadians; they are now indecently bloated and obese, they have a woke bias, and there is no effort to economize when the national debt is out of control; how can we feel we're all in this together when both the Federal government and their representative, the CBC, continue to spend our tax money when the country is deeper and deeper in debt? While Canadians struggle, the CBC spends.

6.   and obese

Think about the following for bloated: there are two radio networks, Radio One and CBC Music, in every region and city in Canada, which means several dozen radio stations across the country and each broadcasting some original content; CBC television produces most of its own content and has television stations, fully staffed, across the country; CBC News Network, on 24 hours a day, on cable television, with its cohort of announcers and reporters; CBC Gem which streams CBC content and some new programmes that are too woke to be on mainstream CBC and would not be acceptable to most Canadians; CBC News Explore, a new manifestation of waste, is a part of Gem, it's the latest extravagance and its difficult to see why it exists but we are encouraged to watch it because it's "free" (this is especially galling to taxpayers who know it's not "free", we're paying for this); there are CBC podcasts, made at our expense and advertised on CBC television; and there is CBC on the internet which includes CBC News, CBC Listen, and CBC on YouTube. There is also Radio Canada, the French language radio, television, and internet broadcasting network paid for by taxpayers. Radio Canada International was popular on short wave radio and later on the internet but it was jettisoned; and, increasingly, there are broadcasts in indigenous languages. Each of these manifestations of CBC has numerous employees; in fact, you can see these employees in the background when we see a broadcast from one of their numerous regional news offices. Radio Canada has a limited presence across the country. 

7.   Biased

CBC's biased reporting can slip over into being reporting of even greater dubious value; that is, news has become interpretation, bias, and even falsehood. An example: the second day of the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, in January 2022, CBC announcers would mention that two monuments in Ottawa had been "desecrated" by the demonstrators and they've kept repeating this story; among other things, it effectively cowed people they were interviewing into opposing the Freedom Convoy. It was ammo they could use against the Freedom Convoy. But the CBC has a double standard, it has never referred to beheading, toppling, or throwing paint on statues of our first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, or Queen Victoria, or Egerton Ryerson as "desecrating" these statues because the CBC sympathizes and agrees with the demonstrators who defaced, destroyed, and desecrated statues of these historical figures. The use of the word "desecrate" is also interesting, it is loaded with innuendo and exaggerates the demonstrators' action which was to drape a Canadian flag on the shoulders of the statue of Terry Fox. The CBC assumes an agreement in values between itself and its audience but I suggest that most Canadians are good and fair-minded people who don't identify as much with the values CBC promotes as the CBC thinks. The CBC wasn't always this way; the CBC used to help unify the country and be known for excellence in broadcasting. Now it's come to the point that the sooner they are defunded the better for the country.

In yesterday's Montreal Gazette (30 March 2023) it was reported that a synagogue in the Plateau neighbourhood of Montreal had been "defaced", note the word "defaced" which is used to describe that swastikas were painted on the front of the synagogue, Congregation Temple Solomon. This is more than defacement, this is desecration. The CBC used the word "desecrate" to describe draping a Canadian flag on the statue of a secular figure and have misused the word "desecration" in order to convince the public that the alleged crime was more serious than it actually was and to demonize the Freedom Convoy demonstrators. But by appropriating and misusing the word "desecrate" they have lowered its value, all in the name of their own bias. The synagogue was both desecrated and it was defaced, it is a hate crime. What was done to the statue was minor; but I heard, on day two of the demonstration, on CBC television, one elderly man who was being interviewed by the CBC regarding this incident, he wavered in condemning the Freedom Convoy and then, after hearing that the statue was "desecrated", he opposed the Freedom Convoy. Who could possibly be in favour of "desecrating" a statue of Terry Fox? 

Yet another reason this alleged "desecration" is bogus is that there was no public outcry against the Freedom Convoy for having draped a Canadian flag on the Terry Fox statue. No one cared. Draping a flag on a statue is not to desecrate that statue; there was no outpouring of anger against the Freedom Convoy after this act was reported by the CBC, it was minor. Swastikas painted on a synagogue is to desecrate that religious building. 

 

8.

These people at CBC are so biased and entitled they can't comprehend any criticism, they can't understand that the public no longer supports their biased reporting. They have taken a public broadcaster and turned it into their little fiefdom, given themselves raises, enjoyed their special status and assumed it is the norm and what they deserve; they assume they can do no wrong, but they have lost all connection to the basic tenets of news broadcasting. Had anything been wrong they would have reported it and since criticism of the CBC doesn't appear on their website or in what they broadcast, then it doesn't exist. There are exceptions, excellent exceptions, and their presence makes the CBC News Network worth watching. 

"A 2017 survey of Canadians suggested that CBC TV was the most biased national news media outlet (perceived biased by 50% of Canadians overall, tied with The Globe and Mail) followed closely by CBC Radio (perceived biased by 49% of Canadians overall)." From "CBC News" on Wikipedia.

9.

Google these newspaper articles: "CBC Paid its Employees $16M in Bonuses in 2022: Documents". (10 March 2023)

"Plenty of sunshine for CBC employees". (23 February 2023)

There is something repulsive about people getting bonuses when the rest of the population gets impoverished. As I said, "bloated and obese".

10. Twitter 

Thomas Mulcair, former leader of the Federal NDP, states that the CBC is biased in its reporting, biased in favour of the Liberal Party of Canada. It is not a secret, it is common knowledge.

Refer to George Grant's statement above, that Conservatives felt the CBC "gave too great prominence to the Liberal view of Canada." Even in 1965 this was obvious. It is preposterous to think that the CBC ever gave too much prominence to the Conservative view of Canada. They never did and they never will. Entitled people tend to be smug and not consider that anyone might not agree with how great they are . . . 

Considering that the present NDP has a third party status and buoys up the Liberals, it is curious how many interviews and press conferences feature Jagmeet Singh (talk about over exposure!), the leader of the NDP, and how seldom we see or even hear from Pierre Poilievre; maybe Poilievre doesn't give press conferences (his mistake), but that Singh is interviewed as often as he is, when he has so little to say, and he supports the Liberals, it seems obvious that the CBC's Liberal bias extends to those who support the Liberal Party. This should be embarrassing for Singh because it denies his independence as a politician. (18.04.2023)

11.

Compare CTV's news website to that of the CBC; one (CTV) is straight reporting of the news; the other, that of the CBC, is a combination of opinion and news, some of it biased news, news promoting the causes of the CBC -- climate change, diversity, inclusion -- as well as other news. Seeing the CBC's reporting of Twitter's labeling of the CBC as "government funded news" is to see a bloated and obese corporation defending itself for being bloated and obese, and denying the obvious, that it is government funded. 

12.

My God, even the CBC news panels are usually comprised of people associated with the Liberals, hold liberal biases, are related to people who are prominent Liberals, or have worked for the Trudeau Foundation. The assumption of the panels is that their liberal position is commonly held and self-evident. These are panels of informed journalists and experts commenting on the Liberal Party; they are well-informed, intelligent, and inclined to agreeing with a liberal bias. 

13.

When defunding the CBC is mentioned by the CBC it is with a gasp, as in how could anyone think of such a thing? The CBC is perfect as it is and Poilievre began this crazed mania to defund the state sponsored corporation, but he didn't. The CBC's bias, if not in everything they say, is present in the way they say it. 

13.

Watch the CBC News Network from, let's say, 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., and it's an almost all woman network; the host is a woman and she refers to women reporters; an example: a murder occurs in Montreal and this is mentioned by the host who then goes to another reporter, a woman somewhere in darkest Toronto, and this second woman reporter reads what happened in Montreal, but she obviously knows nothing about Montreal and all she knows about the murder is what she is reading. Why not have the announcer read this news and save the cost of a second reporter? It is also cringe worthy to have what is basically an all woman news network like this. Their bias isn't necessarily only in what they say but is present in the way they say it and in who says it. Is the mostly woman network payback on the men from when there were mainly men running the news rooms? It is no longer this way but these CBC announcers act as though this is still the case. 

14.

Does anyone watch the new CBC News Explore channel? There must be stats on how many people watch this new station since it's only online. Basically, the main problem with CBC News Explore is that it is boring and irrelevant. CBC News Explore was never needed or wanted except by the CBC. I want to know the ratings for CBC News Explore and I suggest that it is very low, daily in the hundreds. CBC News Explore is like CBC's podcasts, the talent pool is running dry but they continue to expand, and it shows in the quality of production. 

15.

The CBC is doing so much that is wrong, beginning by going woke. They have ditched popular shows, like Randy Bachman's, and replaced it with popular music that anyone can hear on privately-run FM stations. BTW, the BBC has the same type of show as Randy Bachman had, it is hosted by Iggy Pop on Radio Three and, like Bachman's, it is very popular. But the CBC is smug, too smug for their own good and Randy Bachman is an old white man, which means he had to go. The CBC should also listen to Walter Parker's daily five hours of classical music on Vermont Public radio, an excellent programme; they should learn something about their audience and radio. 

16.

But they're too entitled and full of themselves. They seem to think the world revolves around a few blocks in downtown Toronto. The problem is that the psyche of an organization or an individual comes across very clearly to other people and the psyche of the CBC is no longer attractive, no longer interesting, no longer of creative people with a desire to communicate something important to their audience. It is of people who think they know better than everyone else. Yes, there is some excellent journalism at the CBC but the psyche is present in other ways, it is a bloated and obese psyche. It is the psyche of people who think they know better than everyone else and no one is permitted to question what they say or their self-belief. Did you see the At Issue panel last night (20 April 2023) when the question of Twitter and the CBC came up? When one panelist suggested that all was not well with the CBC the face of the host was displeased, stony, and because the psyche is always exposed, she was not happy, she appeared angry. Sometimes organizations need to be shaken up and renewed. It's that time for the CBC. Get rid of Catherine Tait who complained about Pierre Poilievre, she has no business commenting on political parties. (21 April 2023)

17.

I could go on and on. The CBC is just not worth $1.2B. 

Note: this has been edited and added, and updated, since it was first posted. (26.04.2023)

Yesterday's snow storm

The weather forecast kept changing before the first real snow storm of 2023 occurred. I was outside shoveling snow--it's all exercise, it's all a way to be outside in the fresh air--. A neighbour called over, "Be careful", she was referring to having a heart attack while shoveling snow; I know of two people who died of heart attacks while shoveling snow; it's heavy wet snow, so don't overdo it, be careful. In fact, be doubly careful because the hospitals are full of people and several people have died in ER rooms waiting to see a doctor, and others were sent home where they died a few hours later. They say our hospitals are collapsing, what they mean is that our hospitals can't deal with all of the unwell people needing care. The message is just don't get sick. That's Canada in 2023. It will get worse but I am not optimistic; the present government has done so much damage that I doubt we will recover for decades.