Fagstein » In the news

Jack Layton front pages

Fagstein — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 08:12:40 +0000

It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what would make the front pages of the papers on Tuesday. Not only was Jack Layton a larger-than-life figure, and the first leader of the opposition to die in office since Wilfrid Laurier in 1919 (at least, that's what Wikipedia says), but he conveniently died early on a weekday morning, giving newspaper editors a full working day to decide how they would honour him on their front pages.

The Globe and Mail (above) got a lot of buzz on Twitter, but it wasn't the only one to use a sketch of Layton, and certainly not the only one to quote from the end of his letter to Canadians, as you'll see below. Different papers chose different file photos, but the headlines of his obituary were written by Layton himself. (Maybe with some help from a talented speechwriter.)

Rolling the dice on Quebec’s infrastructure

Fagstein — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 02:08:51 +0000

Have you seen so many Transport Quebec trucks in one place in your life?

Infrastructure is one of those things - nobody pays it any attention to it until it fails. People have better things to worry about, so they don't think about their water pipes, their electricity lines, their building foundations or their roads or bridges, so long as they're working properly. But when something goes wrong, any of these can suddenly become a top priority.

For this same reason, those who are in charge of infrastructure tend not to prioritize it. If the people don't care, why should the government? Making a working thing still work is not going to win you as many votes as making a brand new thing. And that's a logic that's not reserved for inept governments. Given the choice between paying a professional engineer to do an inspection on that seemingly innocuous crack in a home's foundation and spending that money on a new big-screen TV, which do you think is going to be the more common choice?

Lessons from NASA

(Feel free to skip this section if you know what STS-51-L and the Rogers Commission are)

When I hear about major infrastructure failures, like the de la Concorde overpass collapse in 2006, I think about the Space Shuttle.

The Space Shuttle was an extremely complex system, requiring thousands of highly educated experts to work together to make it a success. But of all those engineers, scientists, programmers, administrators and other staff, it's just those handful of people who actually board the shuttle for a trip into space that really attract the public's attention. And for every mission, it's only those few days spent actually executing it that people notice (if even that).

On a cold day in January 1986, all those experts worked hard to send one of those space shuttles into orbit. Like a scene from a movie, the flight director asks department heads if they're prepared for launch, and if everyone agrees, gives the "go for launch", which can be revoked right up until liftoff. The launch can even be aborted while in progress. There's a procedure for all that, because those really smart people have pondered every contingency.

Launch delays for the shuttle program were so common as to be routine. Mechanical issues and bad weather were the most common reasons (there are uncommon reasons too). But they're also very expensive, not to mention how bad they look for the public, even if they understand that safety is paramount.

The launch of STS-51-L was delayed multiple times, because of bad weather at the launch site, bad weather at emergency landing sites, and mechanical failure. It was six days after its originally scheduled launch that it finally took off from the pad at Kennedy Space Center. And even then it was over the objection of engineers who were worried about the effect the cold might have on a critical component of the external solid rocket booster.

Actually, it wasn't quite like that. There wasn't some veteran gray-haired engineer sitting at mission control explaining exactly what would happen, screaming that no one was listening to him and guaranteeing that the shuttle would explode if it lifted off. The conversation actually took place internally within the contractor responsible for the rocket booster. The engineers in charge signed off on the launch despite the concerns. And it's not too hard to understand the logic. The concern was theoretical. It wasn't guaranteed that the part would fail, and even if it did, there was a backup.

On Jan. 28, with the weather having warmed up and no remaining reasons for delay, STS-51-L took off. Everything looked fine for 73 seconds, even though the part in question - an O-ring seal around the right solid rocket booster - had indeed failed, along with its backup. By the time anyone noticed something was wrong, the failure led to the solid rocket booster partially detaching, the centre fuel tank disintegrated and the orbiter was torn apart.

What millions on the ground and on television saw was an explosion and clouds of vapor heading in directions they're not supposed to go. The Space Shuttle Challenger had been destroyed, and its seven astronauts wouldn't survive. (Their exact cause of death isn't clear, but they survived the explosion and may have even been conscious as they plummeted to their deaths.)

An inquiry was ordered, and it was thorough. Blame was spread around, particularly among those who dismissed safety concerns because they wanted the launch to proceed. But there was also blame placed on a culture where risks were be minimized because of overconfidence in the safety of the system as a whole. So much redundancy was built in, and minor failures in such a complex vehicle were so common, that concerns about even serious problems were easily dismissed.

The shuttle program was grounded and the next one wouldn't take off until 32 months later. NASA made sweeping changes as a result of the report, and the disaster is even taught to engineering students as a lesson in what happens when one becomes overconfident in safety. The hope was that, for the shuttle program specifically and for major engineering projects in general, such a mistake would never be allowed to happen again.

And then it did.

The circumstances and cause were radically different for the Columbia disaster on Feb. 1, 2003. It happened on re-entry, not takeoff, and while there were concerns about damage before it began its doomed descent into the atmosphere, nobody really had a clear idea what kind of damage could be caused by a simple piece of foam flying off the external fuel tank.

Still, the conclusion reached after the second fatal accident in the shuttle program was that NASA had not learned its lesson from Challenger. The culture had not sufficiently changed, and safety concerns were being dismissed wen the likelihood of them causing significant trouble was low.

A hole beneath the elevated Metropolitan Expressway currently being repaired

Risk management

Whenever I hear a politician, a company CEO or anyone else say that safety is their "number one priority" or that they don't take any chances with safety, I cringe. Because really, safety is not paramount. It's a risk, one they try to minimize but only so far as their budget can reasonably take them. If it costs too much money to reduce the risk of injury from almost impossible to impossible, they'll stick with almost impossible, so long as they can do so legally.

And the rest of us are the same. Yes, speed kills, but the vast majority of speeding doesn't result in death. A driver who goes 120 km/h in a 100 zone is increasing the risks to himself and others around him, but the chances are still pretty low that anything bad is going to happen. You buy your car with airbags and crumple zones because you know that the chances are pretty good that someday something might happen, but on a given day the likelihood is too small to even think about.

It's called risk management. Nothing can be made 100% safe, so a balance is reached where there's an acceptable (very low) level of risk that can be achieved economically.

The question, then, becomes where this balance is to be placed. For something where failure is a mere inconvenience (like, say, cable TV), something like 99% or 99.9% is sufficient. People will complain when they get to that 0.1% of the time, but there won't be any commissions convened to investigate it. For infrastructure where failure can mean fatalities (like in a bridge or tunnel), 99.9% is nowhere near adequate. Even a 99.999% success rate would mean failure for one out of every 100,000, or a couple of cars a day on the Turcot Interchange. It has to be 100%, and it has to be everywhere.

Workers do repairs on the St. Pierre Interchange at night to minimize traffic disruption

Quebec, you've lost me

Before Sunday, I had confidence in Quebec's infrastructure. You might think that's ridiculous, with all the news I've been exposed to about collapsing overpasses, crumbling bridges and surprise sinkholes under our roads. But things I had seen gave me more hope than fear. When the government shut down one span of the Mercier Bridge, it acted before there was structural failure and before anyone died. When Transport Quebec imposed lane reductions on the Turcot Interchange, it did so as a proactive measure. While Montreal motorists whined that this was all evidence of the government being irresponsible about infrastructure, I took it the opposite way.

But the collapse of a "paralume" at the entrance to the Viger Tunnel on Sunday changed my feeling on the subject. It was entirely subjective, and maybe not entirely rational (it looks increasingly like this was the result of a mistake in repairs to the tunnel's walls rather than a case of not noticing a badly decayed structure). But as of that moment I couldn't trust Transport Quebec to keep roads safe.

Transport Minister Sam Hamad isn't exactly helping matters. When asked point blank by CTV's Todd van der Heyden whether he's ultimately responsible for what goes on in his department, Hamad avoided answering the question. To Daybreak's Mike Finnerty earlier in the day, he compared what happened to a plumber doing a bad job on your house, saying it was the plumber, not the home owner, who would be responsible. Hamad clearly wants to blame anyone but himself for this.

And yet the man who's responsible for nothing was in charge enough to reassure us that any road that's open to traffic in Quebec is safe - while standing in front of the proof that his statement was clearly not true.

But I'm not calling for Hamad's resignation as transport minister. Yes, he's incredibly bad at media relations, and he can't take responsibility for his own department. But do we seriously think that the next person Jean Charest appoints to this cabinet post is going to do anything substantially different, other than being a better bullshitter?

Odd sight of an empty Ville-Marie Expressway during the morning rush hour

And this isn't just Hamad's fault. Quebec's infrastructure problem predates his tenure as transport minister. It predates the Charest Liberal government. In fact, funding for inspections has gone up significantly since the de la Concorde collapse. There's just far too much infrastructure out there to keep tabs on, even without counting what can happen when someone makes a construction mistake.

Hamad should take responsibility, if not blame, and Quebec needs to seriously look at how it manages its highway infrastructure, through an inquiry if necessary. And inspection reports should be made public. They'll probably show that there are overpasses, bridges and tunnels all over Quebec that are in a critical state. They'll probably lead the media and motorists to panic, in some cases unnecessarily. But they'll also show the full extent of the problem, and what a monumental task it will be to bring it all up to an acceptable level again.

And it's a monumental task that Quebec will undertake half-assed, if at all. Because Quebecers want huge increases in spending on infrastructure maintenance. We just don't want to pay for it.

CTV Montreal viewers overwhelmingly reject paying more for highway repairs

Well, we don't care THAT much

It's an unscientific poll, but I don't think the 1,393 who responded to CTV Montreal's TalkBack question are too far out of the mainstream. Quebecers want roads and bridges to be safe, but they don't want to pay tolls or higher taxes to ensure this. They want the money to come out of nowhere. Maybe from education, or health care. Many probably think there's a few billion in the budgets of the Office québécois de la langue française and Jean Charest's salary as premier to fix it all up, or that once we eliminate corruption in construction contracts everything will balance out.

But really, just like the government, the transport department, and those engineers at NASA, Quebecers are willing to play the odds. If half a dozen people die once every five years or so because of a major infrastructure failure, that's an acceptable loss, or at least not so outrageous that they'd consider paying a few cents more for gas or paying a few bucks to cross a bridge every day.

We'll never admit it, of course. The Ville Marie tunnel collapse didn't kill anyone, but we're still all up in arms about it just because it could have. (The fact that this happened in the middle of summer when there isn't much other news certainly contributes a bit.) Ask any regular Quebecer, and they'll say there should be no risk, no gambling of anyone's safety. They'll say no injury is acceptable.

They'll say infrastructure safety should be the government's top priority, no question.

Well, except taxes. And health care, and education, and the economy. Those other "No. 1 priorities" will take up a larger part of everyone's attention as the months and years go by without a major infrastructure failure. Those millions of extra dollars being shovelled into keeping our roads and bridges even more safe won't be noticed by motorists, except when they see the traffic cones (which they will no doubt whine about). When the next round of across-the-board budget cuts comes around, the transport department and its team of inspectors won't be immune, any more than health care and emergency services workers are.

And then, in a few years, when we see the next bridge collapse, the next tunnel cave in or the next sinkhole develop that either kills someone or looks like it could easily have done so, we'll have this same debate all over again. We'll all shift the blame around, demanding someone else be held accountable.

We certainly won't look in the mirror, and realize that we've reached a subconscious pact with our government that allows them to roll the dice with our safety. Because despite what we say, our No. 1 priority isn't infrastructure safety when we enter the voting booth. It's sovereignty, or the personalities of the party leaders, or health care, or education, or immigration, or whatever big thing has most recently caught our attention.

Like our government, we'll do a lot of talking about how unacceptable this all is. But when it comes time to put our money where our mouth is, we'll suddenly become very silent.

P.S. I wonder who inspects the structures that hold up TV reporters so they can get a better backdrop while reporting on the tunnel collapse.

Bru-winning front pages

Fagstein — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 19:26:13 +0000

It's always fun to peruse the Newseum gallery of front pages of winning and losing cities after a major sports championship. Unfortunately for Vancouver, trouble-makers ruined what should be awesome defeat fronts. Oh well.

Victory:

Defeat:

Local flavour:

All-traffic radio: A $9-million waste

Fagstein — Tue, 24 May 2011 23:40:22 +0000

Coverage map for CINW 940AM at 50,000 watts, as submitted to CRTC

Last week, news came out that Cogeco and the Quebec government have reached a deal that will see the creation of two new all-traffic AM radio stations in Montreal set to open in the fall. The project will cost taxpayers $9 million over three years.

It's the most ridiculous use of $9 million I've seen in a while.

The history of 690 and 940 AM

Montreal has had two giant holes in its radio spectrum since January 2010. Both frequencies - 690 and 940 kHz - started out as CBC stations. CBM (CBC Montreal) moved to 940 and CBF (Radio-Canada Montreal) moved to 690 in 1941. They were among Canada's oldest AM radio stations and each had clear-channel status, meaning that they could operate at 50,000 watts and did not have to reduce power overnight to avoid interference.

Clear-channel status is highly sought - or at least it was. There are only about a dozen such stations in Canada (CKAC is the only active one in Montreal), and the clear-channel status means they can be heard from very far away with a good enough antenna.

Despite this seemingly huge advantage, CBC decided in the late 90s to move its AM stations in Montreal to FM - 88.5 and 95.1 MHz - where they remain today as CBC Radio One and Première Chaîne). The argument was that FM provided better quality audio and the signal would be easier to capture in the city. The tradeoff - that the signal would no longer be carried by skywave to neighbouring provinces and territories - didn't seem to be such a big deal. It was a controversial move at the time, particularly for CBC Radio listeners who had better reception with AM than FM.

In 1999, the decades-old CBC transmitters were shut down and the frequencies vacated. Métromédia (later Corus Quebec), which owned CIQC 600 AM and CKVL 850 AM, wasted no time in snapping the clear channels up, and moved those two stations to the vacated frequencies. They were reborn as all-news stations CINW (940 News) and CINF (Info 690).

We all know how that turned out. The anglo all-news station didn't work out financially, so they changed it up into a news-talk format in 2005. When that didn't work either, they fired everyone and started played music in 2008. (Info 690, meanwhile, kept going with their news format). Then, in January 2010, Corus pulled the plug on both stations and gave up. They returned their licenses to the CRTC.

Since then, the frequencies have remained vacant. Clear AM channels that it seems anyone could have had just by asking. But no takers.

In 2010, Corus agreed to sell its Quebec assets to Cogeco. This included the transmitters for CINW and CINF, even though they were inoperative and had no broadcast license. The deal was approved in December, giving Cogeco the equipment (and a lease on the transmitter site in Kahnawake until 2021) but no idea how to use it in a way that could make it profitable.

And here's where the Quebec government comes in.

Congrats, Cogeco lobbyists

According to documents they submitted to the CRTC (you can download them yourself from here), Cogeco found out about the Quebec transport ministry wanting to improve the way it communicates information about traffic disruptions to the public. With all the construction work expected to come (the Turcot Interchange, for example), they wanted to minimize the pain to drivers by keeping them as well informed as possible.

Cogeco went to them and proposed a ... let's call it a partnership. Cogeco would provide the transmitter, the programming, the staff. The government would provide access to traffic information and lots and lots of money.

The government thought it was a great idea, and on April 14 they published their intention to award a contract to Cogeco. The deal was finally announced last week by the government and Cogeco (PDF) and the CRTC announced it would hold a hearing on the proposal to give the licenses back to CINW and CINF. News coverage was brief, most just regurgitating the press release:

The station, which according to the deal must be operational by Oct. 31 (though the target date is Sept. 1 pending CRTC approval), would broadcast live from 4:30am to 1am weekdays and 6am to 1am weekends and holidays. This information includes:

Traffic status on highways and bridges
Road conditions
Information on road work sites (it's unclear if this is just those run by the transport ministry or all municipal sites as well)
Highway safety tips
Weather conditions

In other words, the kind of stuff you'd expect from any traffic information radio station. Missing from this list is an item about providing information on public transit service. It's unclear why both sides left this out of their press releases, but it's contained in their CRTC submission and in the contract between the government and Cogeco, and I would imagine the intention is to include such information in their broadcasts.

The deal also includes promotion of the station by Cogeco and 25 minutes a day of airtime for the ministry.

Cogeco says it plans to use CHMJ in Vancouver (owned by Corus) as a template. That's also an all-traffic radio station, but with one major difference: It's not funded by the government.

You could also compare it to The Weather Network and MétéoMédia, which provide all-weather programming, funded mainly by subscriber fees that all cable subscribers must pay for the channels.

Why this is a bad idea

I appreciate that the ministry wants to improve communication about traffic and road work. But they're doing this by getting into the broadcast business. The figure of $3 million a year might not be much, but it represents about three-quarters of the stations' proposed budgets. Cogeco also predicts that figure will rise if the contract is renewed beyond three years (the CRTC asks for seven-year projections for a station's finances) to $3.3 million a year for the next three years.

Put simply, this is a solution to a problem that does not exist. I mean, seriously, is the biggest complaint about commercial radio that there aren't enough traffic reports? Just about every station does traffic reports every 10 minutes during rush hours. CJAD does it all day. All this without any specific funding by the government to do so. Even CBC Radio One does traffic reports, including public transit updates. (The CBC is funded by the federal government, but that funding doesn't come with a requirement to do traffic updates. CBC Radio does traffic reports because it knows that's what rush-hour listeners want to hear.)

This isn't to say an all-traffic radio station wouldn't make sense. CHMJ is trying that format. And it's a good idea for AM radio, because most portable music devices these days can't receive AM radio, but most cars can. But if there's a demand for it, then it can be done without government funding. And if there isn't a demand for it, why bother?

Cogeco's own submission to the CRTC says there are about 1.3 million vehicles travelling in the Montreal area during the afternoon rush hour (less in the morning), which means more than $2 per vehicle per year spent on these stations. They expect their market share will be 1.5% for the anglo station and 1.6% for the francophone station. Based on their estimated total weekly hours of listening, the English station would expect about 1,000 listeners on average (more, obviously, during rush hour) and the French station about 3,000 listeners.

And CRTC submissions are usually pretty optimistic.

Why this is overkill

The other thing that bugs me about this is the choice of channel. Cogeco wants to put both these stations on clear channels, and have both running 50,000 watts day and night. The reach of these stations, as you can see from the map at the top of this post, is not just the greater Montreal area, but as far as Gaspé, Moncton, southern Maine, Kingston, northern Ontario and even Labrador. The vast majority of its listening area couldn't care less what happens on the Champlain Bridge.

Then again, if nobody else wants the frequency, I guess it's better to do that than nothing at all. But surely we can find a better use for such a powerful signal than traffic reports for one city.

There are also some strange proposals, like having a roving reporter patrol the city to report from the scenes of major traffic events. Compare this to the private sector that has helicopters flying overhead to report on traffic and other issues. It's a government employee doing a job that the private sector is already doing better.

What the government should spend its money on

In the grand scheme of things, $9 million isn't a lot of money. But rather than spend it on duplicating a service the private sector already does for free, how about the transport ministry use it more wisely. Spend it on adding more traffic cameras, providing better real-time information to traffic reporters, better ways of getting information to smartphones and other portable devices, improving the Quebec 511 service. Create a database of road work (both provincial and municipal) that can be integrated into Google Maps and used to suggest better routes to drivers.

Or, you know, they could use it to improve the province's highways. At least repave the kilometre or two closest to the Ontario border, which will give the most psychological bang for the buck and end those silly anecdotal cross-border comparisons.

The CRTC will be hearing the two applications for all-traffic radio stations on July 18 in Gatineau. Comments and interventions are being accepted until June 20. The contract is contingent on CRTC approval and would be cancelled if CRTC approval doesn't materialize before Oct. 31.

UPDATE (May 31): A Gazette piece says that there was a call for bids in this deal. That's not entirely accurate. On April 14, the transport ministry published its intent to give a contract to Cogeco (a document that starts off by saying "this is not a call for bids"), and gave competitors 10 days to indicate that they could provide a competing offer for the deal - something that if accepted would have led to a formal call for bids. After the deadline passed, the ministry gave the deal to Cogeco.

Sacré orange!

Fagstein — Wed, 04 May 2011 09:29:38 +0000

Quebec consumed by an orange wave. Graphic from CBC's vote results map

"It's all orange."

I looked at the map of Quebec ridings about 10:30 p.m., and I couldn't believe it. It wasn't just pockets of orange, or lots of orange. It was all orange. With the exception of a few ridings on the island of Montreal, ridings in the Beauce region, and the giant Haute-Gaspésie and Roberval ridings you can see above, it was all orange.

Montérégie is all orange. Outaouais is all orange. Quebec City is all orange north of the St. Lawrence. Laval's four ridings all orange. Gilles Duceppe's riding orange. West Island Liberal stronghold Pierrefonds-Dollard orange.

In all, 58 of Quebec's 75 ridings elected New Democratic Party MPs on Monday, with the Liberals, Conservatives and Bloc Québécois left to share the handful that remained.

I followed the campaign. I even commented about it for CBC's All in a Weekend show (you can listen to my discussions with host Dave Bronstetter and community activist Sujata Dey here: March 28, April 3, April 10, April 17, May 1). I watched the news about the NDP "surge" in Quebec and saw the poll numbers at threehundredeight.com. But even as it was projecting 30 seats in Quebec for the NDP, I was convinced those numbers were too high, the result of lots of soft support from people who, when it came to the ballot box, would change their minds and vote for one of the more established parties or more recognizable candidates.

As we all know now, those numbers actually far underestimated how the NDP would do here.

My night

My regular job kept me busy on election night. I'm not complaining, in fact I love working election nights. There's excitement, unpredictability, lots of people, free food, and free beer after the last edition is put to bed.

Unfortunately it meant I couldn't spend much time looking at the various networks' coverage of the results so as to make snarky judgments about them. I had the Sun News Network live streaming feed on my computer, and I could see a TV tuned to RDI at the office, but otherwise my attention was focused on the results and my page.

Election night at any journalistic outlet is crazy, and The Gazette is no exception. Almost everyone is working that day, including most of the managers, and the work doesn't stop until the final final edition, which had people in the office past 1:30am. So many are in at once that seating is arranged in advance so they can make sure there's room for everyone.

I was assigned Page B5, a page in the special section devoted to results from Quebec. Reporters were taken off their regular beats and assigned to key ridings in Montreal and elsewhere in Quebec. With another editor sharing duties on the page, I got files from four reporters who would write three stories (one for each edition): Jason Magder covering the two West Island ridings, Alycia Ambroziak in off-island Vaudreuil-Soulanges, Monique Muise in Laval–Les Îles, and Jeff Heinrich in Denis Coderre's Montreal-North Bourassa riding.

With the exception of Heinrich, the reporters were surprised having to write about unexpected NDP upsets. Vaudreuil-Soulanges was one of dozens of Bloc ridings that went to the NDP despite the "star killer" power of Meili Faille. Laval–Les Îles was a Liberal stronghold, and even after the surprise retirement of Raymonde Folco it was expected to stay that way. A draft story even said it was expected to hold while the adjacent riding would see the Bloc candidate cruising to victory. In fact, all four Laval ridings would turn orange quickly, forcing reporters to scramble to find the winning candidate. He invited them to his campaign headquarters - at his house.

Lac-Saint-Louis was expected to be a tough fight. The Conservatives had put star candidate (and a one-time Gazette publisher) Larry Smith there against Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia. But Smith, who briefly led early voting results a couple of times, fell to third as the riding bounced back between Liberal red and NDP orange for most of the night. Scarpaleggia eked out a win in the end. Bernard Patry, who represented my parents' riding of Pierrefonds-Dollard since 1993 and won with huge majorities in every election since, was stunned when he lost to a New Democrat most of the people there had probably never heard of.

All fantastic stories, but then these were only a few of the crazy results in Quebec that night.

TV coverage commentary

Without the ability to surf the networks from the comfort of my living room, I can't really evaluate how the networks did on debate night. My PVR is limited to two simultaneous recordings, and I picked CTV (for its popularity) and Sun News (because it's the newest).

Fortunately others were watching, and I direct you to a Gazette liveblog by Mike Boone and a blog post from TV Feeds My Family's Bill Brioux. In The Suburban, Mike Cohen also praises the work of radio stations CBC and CJAD during the campaign.

Mario Dumont's election night show (described by some as good considering its very poor resources) is all online. It also has the best line of the night I've heard so far, courtesy of Caroline Proulx: Quebecers electing a wave of NDP candidates is like having a one-night stand and finding out the next day that she's pregnant.

I will add this, which I spotted today as I reviewed the CTV coverage. Their election desk did house projection ranges early in the night, as results were coming in and after they had projected a Conservative government.

CTV election seat projection as results come in

In the end, not one of the four parties' seat totals would fall within these projected ranges.

Pylons

You'll be hearing a lot over the coming days and weeks about the dozens of new NDPers elected to the House of Commons:

There is, of course, Ruth Ellen Brosseau, the ~~unilingual~~ anglophone who works at an Ottawa bar and vacationed in Vegas during the campaign but still managed to win in the riding of Berthier-Maskinongé. (UPDATE: Turns out her abilities in French have been underestimated - she struggles, but she can speak the language)
There's Isabelle Morin, the ~~unilingual~~ francophone elected in mostly-anglo NDG riding ~~(prompting some to ask: why didn't they switch those two?~~) (UPDATE: Like Brosseau, it seems Morin's bilingualism has been underestimated).
There's 19-year-old Pierre-Luc Dusseault in Sherbrooke, the youngest man ever elected as an MP.
There's 20-year-old Charmaine Borg in Terrebonne-Blainville (who a local paper tried unsuccessfully to locate during the campaign but found on election night) and the other McGill students.
There's Eve Peclet, the Un souper presque parfait contestant, and Alexandrine Latendresse, who the Star's investigative team found out doesn't like George Bush.

And these are the ones whose background we know about.

What you won't hear are the stories of all the similar candidates for the other parties in no-hope ridings. The Liberal in Jonquière who works for a moving company. The Conservative in Papineau who's a hairstylist, a mom and helps her husband work as a real estate agent. The Bloc candidate in Pierrefonds-Dollard who just started a degree at UQAM and whose previous work experience includes a job at the library at Collège Gérald-Godin and as a cashier at IGA.

And these are based on their official biographies posted to the party websites. One can only imagine if even the slightest digging was done into their backgrounds.

The ADQ had the same problem in 2007, when they unexpectedly rode a wave of popular support into official opposition in Quebec City. We all know how that turned out: The ADQ is all but wiped out and its former leader is now a TV host.

Everyone runs whoever they can find in no-hope ridings because they're no-hope ridings. The parties want to be able to say they're running someone in all 308 ridings across Canada (of 75 across Quebec, in the case of the Bloc) and don't want to give up on any vote. But this is the natural consequence of that strategy.

This isn't to excuse the NDP putting in phantom pylon candidates in ridings they didn't think they'd be competitive in. Surely they could have put in the effort to find locals who were interested enough to try for a seat.

But nor should this small number of candidates with questionable issues be confused with the dozens of others whose only crimes are that they are young and/or not politically experienced. Many of those elected in 1993 for the Liberals, Bloc and Reform shared those qualities. And now many of those Liberals and Blocquistes are shocked at falling to political neophytes who were barely present in their ridings, resisting the urge to appear a sore loser by saying the people in their constituencies are absolute morons for electing someone who is horribly unqualified for the job.

I feel for the losing candidates. I even feel bad for the Bloc. Maybe, if Canada had a form of proportional representation, this problem wouldn't occur. Voting for a leader wouldn't be so easily confused with voting for a local MP.

Anyway, the votes are cast, and we're not turning back time. These kids have been elected. Thomas Mulcair will be busy getting his caucus educated. And as the pundits are saying, the NDP is fortunate that a majority government gives them four years to get their affairs in order.

As someone who likes good stories, I have to admit that watching these brand-new MPs figure out how to be politicians will be fun. And we'll finally figure out if the Conservatives have that "hidden agenda", putting that issue to rest once and for all either way.

On the other hand, the journalist in me is saddened that the minority-parliament drama we've had since 2004 has finally come to an end. It made for great political stories, and sold a lot of papers.

Bixi in Toronto

Fagstein — Sun, 01 May 2011 03:24:50 +0000

Bixi station in Toronto (photo: Kenny D)

Fagstein reader Kenny D sent in this photo from Toronto, which is the latest city to be assimilated into the Bixi empire.

The official launch is Tuesday, May 3, with an official "first ride".

The rate is higher than in Montreal, at $95 a season or $40 a month, but that didn't stop 1,000 people from already signing up. More details are at Bixi's Toronto website, or the usual Toronto blogs.

I've just recently gotten a chance to regain my regular Bixi habits, lugging my helmet around with me wherever I go. It's still a bit cold, but it's nice to be able to spend some energy on a regular basis.

Not much has changed on the Montreal side this season, except that subscribers now get 45 minutes free per trip instead of 30, and there's a new three-day rate of $12.

No word on whether either city will get a tandem Bixi similar to what was given to William and Kate.

Some reading on Quebec’s anti-scab law

Fagstein — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 21:28:32 +0000

Hearings began today (finally a reason to watch the National Assembly channel!) into Quebec's labour laws, specifically the provisions against strikebreakers (scabs). They are prompted by the enduring two-year-old lockout at the Journal de Montréal, and the union's argument that laws forbidding the use of replacement workers during a labour conflict need to be updated because they only apply to workers who physically enter the employer's workspace.

An example to illustrate this is a company called Côté Tonic in Quebec City, which has been doing copy editing and page layout work for the Journal de Montréal during its lockout. Stories in Rue Frontenac and La Presse show that the small company did production work during the Journal de Québec lockout and had to fire people after that was resolved, but learned about an impending lockout at the Journal de Montréal before it was launched and even before the end of the labour contract for Journal de Montréal workers.

This information comes out now for a somewhat ironic reason: an employee who was laid off when she took maternity leave complained she was fired illegally. Her complaint was rejected because it was determined that the layoff happened after the Journal asked the company to reduce its workforce. But because labour relations board decisions are public, the dirty laundry comes out into the open.

The union representing locked-out workers claims there are all sorts of fly-by-night operations doing their work in secret, from customer service to page layout to accounting. But they've had difficulty gaining evidence about how they work, and under the current law there's nothing they can do about it anyway.

Also worth reading:

La Presse's Martin Croteau looks at both sides of the argument about whether the anti-scab law needs to be updated
Paul Journet has a recap of Tuesday's hearings, including Pierre Karl Péladeau's testimony
Rue Frontenac's Yves Chartrand and La Presse's Journet on the Journal de Québec union's testimony, including their worry that Quebecor could be planning a second lockout there
Rue Frontenac's Mathieu Boivin on union boss Raynald Leblanc's testimony
Rue Frontenac's Charles Poulin on the demonstration the union made by producing this week's paper by remote.
The FPJQ's presentation to the commission, which focuses on its desire for a separate inquiry into the concentration of media in Quebec (Radio-Canada has a summary)
Chartrand on the second day of testimony, and statements that the commission will recommend changes to the law
Steve Proulx on the need to update the law to make all strikebreakers illegal regardless of location
Union president Raynald Leblanc interviewed by TV5 in France (where the concept of "lockout" doesn't exist because it's illegal)

There's also the Twitter feed of Rue Frontenac's David Patry, or the hashtag #commissionJdeM. The hearings can also be viewed online, in case you have a few hours to waste.

Concordia reaches for a new Lowy

Fagstein — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 06:11:46 +0000

Frederick Lowy in 2003

It's official: Concordia University's executive committee has recommended that Frederick Lowy, who served as rector/president from 1995 to 2005, be reinstalled as interim president. Barring some unprecedented and unexpected revolt, the Board of Governors will approve that recommendation and Lowy will run the university again during the months it takes for a committee to seek out a president to take a full five-year term.

I was a student from 2000 to 2005, and I wrote about student and university politics for The Link, so I know Lowy pretty well and have interviewed him a few times during some of the most heated moments of Concordia's recent history.

Other leaders have been in office during Concordia's darker moments. John W. O'Brien came to office in the immediate aftermath of the Sir George Williams computer riots of 1969, and stayed on through Concordia's creation until 1984. Patrick Kenniff took over and acted as rector during the Fabrikant shootings, until political infighting got him fired.

Nobody killed anyone (that I know of) during Lowy's tenure, but that didn't mean it was easy for him. During three successive years he got hit with a major scandal involving students. In the fall of 2000, it was a $200,000 embezzlement scandal involving a member of the Concordia Student Union's executive. In the fall of 2001, it was a radical student union executive whose highly radical student agenda was a victim of unfortunate timing, coming out in the days surrounding Sept. 11. This was followed by a revolt from mainly engineering and commerce students who forced the CSU president to resign, only to see the subsequent by-election (which the "right wing" candidate won) annulled as a result of an apparent bribery scandal. Then in the fall of 2002, a protest against a speech by Benjamin Netanyahu got out of hand and made headlines around the world.

During these turbulent years, Lowy was caught between a radical student union and increasingly angry donors and alumni.

Lowy (whether individually or with his executive committee or vice-rectors) made some tough decisions during those times. The university temporarily cut off funding for the student union as the legitimacy of its leadership came into question. It expelled (or "excluded") two of the more radical student activists, which was controversial at the time because it bypassed the university's own student disciplinary process (the university argued that the two were not technically students at the time, which sparked a surreal debate over the fact that Concordia did not technically have a clear definition of what "student" meant). And it famously banned all activity on campus related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the immediate aftermath of that Netanyahu riot - a move that was an obvious violation of a fundamental right to free speech, but accomplished its goal of cooling down both sides.

Through it all, Lowy was soft-spoken, kind of halfway between a kind, wise grandfather and a man without a clue. Perhaps it was his background in psychiatry, but Lowy was a pressure release valve at a time when it was most needed.

That's not to say he was perfect. The things that made him a good peacemaker also made him incapable of standing up to his board or of making any serious changes in the way the university was structured.

Whether he was a good leader or not is up for debate, though he certainly seems more so in hindsight than he did at the time.

What's not up for debate is the simple fact that Lowy is the only leader in the past 20 years to leave office amicably, at the end of his mandate. For a university desperate for a temporary, quick-fix return to stability, they could have done far worse than look to Lowy.

Working on the Gazette's online desk today, I took the liberty of pulling some articles from the archives about Lowy. It's funny looking back to see that Lowy's challenge in 1995 was to improve morale and improve the mood and add more civility to internal politics. When he left, he got good marks, suggesting he succeeded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZYtvdcbIbw

Whining for nothing (and the hits for free)

Fagstein — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 01:54:20 +0000

Columnists desperate for something to whine about this week were given a big gift by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, which ruled that the Dire Straits song Money for Nothing was unfit for air because it contained the word "faggot".

I won't begin to try to put together an exhaustive list of everything that's been said. But to give you an idea, there's a column by Mark Lepage in The Gazette. Matt Gurney in the National Post tries to prove a point suggesting other songs that must be banned. Kelly McParland adds it to a couple of other unrelated stories to advance the hypothesis that Canada is an easily offended country. CTV and CBC in Calgary interviewed former CHOM personality Terry DiMonte, who said the CBSC took the song out of context. Current CHOM personality Rob Kemp wrote about it in a Facebook post, questioning how such a decision could be made based on a single complaint, and saying that "CHOM’s position is, rather than have a butchered version of the song on the air...we’re just not going to play it." Sharon Hyland also wrote about it on her CHOM blog.

The news reached across the border, with a piece in the Washington Times, which notes the decision is unappealable.

Even (part of) the band itself reacted. Guitarist Guy Fletcher called the decision "unbelievable," but said the word would be substituted.

The news has spread so much that the album the song is on has climbed the iTunes charts in Canada.

I understand, but...

I'm not here to defend the CBSC's decision. I don't particularly agree with their reasoning, and the decision itself is a bit unclear, as you can tell from the following excerpt:

... the Panel acknowledges that the word “faggot”, although lightly sarcastic in its application in the song, was not used in a “sneering, derisive, nasty tone”, as the Comedy Now decision anticipated in its evaluation of “fag”.

Still, the Panel concludes that, like other racially driven words in the English language, “faggot” is one that, even if entirely or marginally acceptable in earlier days, is no longer so.

In other words, the panel doesn't think the word was used in a bad way, but it thinks the word shouldn't be used at all.

My issue is with the response to this, which has been one-sided and very repetitive. People complaining on one hand that the decision came out of a single complaint for a song that was released decades ago and has been popular for a long time, as if either of those things should automatically disquality something from being judged as obscene or discriminatory.

And then there are the outraged classic rock radio DJs who stand up on principle and declare that the artistic integrity of classic songs cannot be violated. Two stations even decided to protest the decision by airing the song over and over for an hour.

Forgive me for raising an eyebrow, but it's hard for me to feel moved by outrage from radio stations that air the radio edit of Brown Eyed Girl, and cut Layla in two to save time. It's hard for me to feel moved by the need for keeping songs untouched after seeing Cee-Lo Green appear on Saturday Night Live and have to change the lyrics (and title) of his first song.

And then there's Money for Nothing itself. As the decision notes, the song is regularly played in an abridged version, mainly for length~~, that doesn't include the offending lyrics~~ (actually, the more popular abridged versions do include those lyrics). And the "F" word is often changed when the song is performed live, as you can see in the above video.

I understand the need for debate about censorship of music (and censorship for broadcast in general), and I think it should continue (particularly at the political level, because it's the federal government that ultimately sets the rules). But let's not pretend that this form of government censorship is new, or that radio stations playing popular music really care that much about artistic integrity.

UPDATE (Jan. 19): CHOM has decided to defy the council's ruling and play the song with the offending lyrics included (I'd say they're playing the original song, but they don't care about artistic integrity that much - half the time they're playing a shorter version). Astral Radio, which owns CHOM, tells the Journal de Montréal it doesn't agree with the decision.

Meanwhile, Marc Weisblott looks at how this controversy has affected iTunes sales of the song and album.

UPDATE (Jan. 21): The CRTC has asked the CSBC to review the decision in light of the controversy.

Dear Véro and Louis

Fagstein — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 06:19:18 +0000

Hi, how are you doing? You look a bit stressed. Here, have some tea and sit down.

OK... so, you probably know why I asked you here. That whole Bye-Bye thing. You know, you boycotting Quebecor and all. I don't know if it was your intention to create such a firestorm, but you should have expected it.

Two full pages in the Journal de Montréal on Tuesday devoted to your decision to settle the scores, as they say. Two articles from the Journal's Michelle Coudé-Lord condemning your decision and Radio-Canada for supporting you. That, of course, in turn has generated all sorts of press over at Gesca (a piece by Richard Therrien, a column by Hugo Dumas, a blog post by Patrick Lagacé) which has turned your Bye-Bye sequel into a media controversy 10 days before anyone actually sees it.

I know, I know, you're mad. You're both on Quebecor's enemies list and you're probably never going to come off. They used that giant media empire thing against you after the 2008 Bye-Bye and you felt like crap for months trying to deal with the fallout.

Here's the thing: The backlash wasn't some Quebecor empire fabrication. A lot of people took offence to some of the jokes in that television special. Even the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council had issues with it. Sure, Quebecor went crazy with it, mostly because it was funded with taxpayer money through Radio-Canada. But if you were going to boycott everyone who said mean things about the show, you'd be boycotting a lot of media.

Wait, hold on, can I finish? Please. Let me finish.

OK, so Quebecor doesn't like you. It's not like this is news. It's been the case for so long even I don't know why it started. I'd think you'd be used to it by now.

But this isn't the way to handle it. You're just playing their game, coming down to their level. It's childish, and I expect better from you. As Lagacé points out, you've just created a controversy when your goal, ostensibly, is to avoid exactly that.

It would be one thing if you were taking a stand because of the Journal de Montréal lockout, or because Quebecor had done something particularly evil, or to protest Quebecor pulling out of the Quebec Press Council. But your main reason for refusing to accommodate Quebecor news outlets at your press conference is the coverage that was given to the last Bye-Bye ... two years ago, before the Journal was even locked out.

Yeah, I know you haven't talked to them since, and this boycott isn't new, but nobody noticed before because the Journal doesn't talk about you unless you do something bad.

And surely you understand the bad precedent that's set when people refuse to speak to journalists whose coverage they don't like.

Plus, now you're bringing the people you're working with into the fray. Joël Legendre's relationship with the Journal is starting to look bipolar. He likes them, he hates them, he loves them, he won't speak to them... A bit silly, don't you think?

And come on, you're not new at this media thing. You've been in show business for years now. Véro, you're on Montreal's most listened to radio station every day, and you host one of Quebec's hottest new television shows. Louis ... I understand you also have a career. I think I saw your face on a DVD of something at Future Shop.

Louis, don't leave, I was just kidding. I know you work hard too. Come back.

OK, I realize Quebecor is this giant media behemoth, but you've shown that you don't need their cooperation to succeed. Heck, you should consider it a compliment that they focus so much attention toward you.

Like it or not, you signed up for this. Nobody forced you into becoming stars. You can't have your faces put up on billboards all over the place and then complain when a photographer takes a picture of you at the airport. You have the right to privacy, and you have the right to keep your children outside the spotlight, but you can't just disappear when the news about you is unflattering and not expect people to go looking for you.

I'm gonna talk to Michelle Coudé-Lord, try to talk some sense into her. But ... you're letting them play the victim here (letting the peanut gallery take their side). And if your goal is peace in this media war, this isn't the way you're going to get it.

Please bury the hatchet. Swallow your pride, or you're going to have a bad taste in your mouth for a long time.

Oh, and Véro, please, stop undressing me with your eyes. I mean, Louis is sitting right there. And he's ... wait, is he also undressing me with his eyes?

Dear Michelle Coudé-Lord,

Here, have a seat. I promise there aren't any Cloutier cooties on it.

How are you doing? Boy, you must be ready for a vacation. Almost two years now you've been without a reporting staff, having to fill the Arts & Spectacles section with wire pieces, stuff from other Quebecor publications and whatever original content you and your fellow managers can come up with. I'm not exactly shedding tears for your paper, but I understand if this period has caused some stress among its middle managers.

Anyway, so those articles you had in the paper. Two of them. Was it really necessary to devote a full page (plus a full section cover page) to the fact that the Bye-Bye crew wouldn't talk to you? And is it really surprising after what you did to them two years ago? You say that coverage after the 2008 Bye-Bye was fair and balanced, but you can't possibly say with a straight face that it wasn't excessive.

And really, "vengeance"? You make them sound like a dictator who destroyed an entire village because some woman in a bar wouldn't accept his propositions. They had a hissy fit, and now you're having a hissy fit over their hissy fit, forcing everyone else to have a hissy fit over your hissy fit over their hissy fit.

I explained to Véro and Louis that what they did wasn't a good idea. They were letting themselves be guided by emotion rather than wisdom.

But surely you understand that it's hypocritical for you to play the victim on behalf of Quebecor here. Your paper is no longer a member of the Quebec Press Council, arguing against regulation (even though it's not government-run and has no power to impose penalties) and in favour of the free market. You have to accept that freedom also means the freedom not to talk to you, even if this is the government-funded Radio-Canada.

You appeal to the size of your audience as if somehow without talking to you they could never hope to reach those people. As if that alone meant that anyone on the government payroll (or even who receives money from the government) must give you an interview. I see how you think answering your questions about a show during a press conference is like a government agency answering an access-to-information request about its expenses, but it's not. You want to interview a celebrity, and you're whining because you're being turned down.

And, come on Michelle. Certainly you realize the irony of complaining about how people aren't giving you interviews, and then refusing to speak to reporters from La Presse and Le Soleil about this very same issue.

I also found it funny that the page next to the one complaining about Véro and Louis is a full page puff piece devoted to how Quebecor creation Marie-Élaine Thibert has an album that went gold.

Looking at these pages, can you really blame people for getting the impression that Quebecor rewards its celebrities and attacks those who don't play by its rules?

Aren't you tired of being seen as a pawn of the Quebecor media narrative machine, whether or not you think it's true?

Think about it. Get some sleep. Maybe when you're rested you can see this with a clear head and realize all the damage this media war has done, and maybe you'll be the bigger person and decide to do something about it.

Please.

Let’s give Tierney’s comments some thought

Fagstein — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 18:25:40 +0000

In case you haven't been keeping up with Quebec movie news (or haven't been around Brendan Kelly for the past two weeks), there's been a bit of a media dust-up over comments made by director Jacob Tierney to La Presse's Nicolas Bérubé, complaining that Quebec cinema is too francophone and too white:

«La société québécoise est extrêmement tournée sur elle-même, dit Tierney. Notre art et notre culture ne présentent que des Blancs francophones. Les anglophones et les immigrants sont ignorés. Ils n’ont aucune place dans le rêve québécois. C’est honteux.»

Since Tierney, who's behind that new movie The Trotsky, decided to touch on that Two Solitudes button, you can imagine there was a lot of reaction (they're even talking about it on those social media things). And most of the reaction takes one of three predictable sides:

Agreeing with Tierney: Quebec cinema is too white, too francophone, and needs to better reflect its multicultural reality - and those who battle Tierney's arguments are intolerant
Lashing out at Tierney, putting together a list of black Quebec actors (Normand Brathwaite, Gregory Charles, Boucar Diouf and Dany Laferrière will feature prominently in such lists) and Quebec films that have languages other than French (those lists tend to include Bon Cop Bad Cop, their makers apparently unaware that the box-office smash was made by Tierney's father), and saying that because there are black people or anglos in Quebec cinema Tierney must be wrong and hate Quebec
Defend the whiteness and Frenchness of Quebec cinema, because Quebec is a small island in a sea of English, because Canadian films don't feature francophones and because Quebec culture needs to assert itself

The problem with each of these responses is that it takes a black or white view on an issue that is hardly so clear-cut, and only serves to further divide the two solitudes.

Reality isn't quite so simple.

Argue now, think later

I'm not a film buff, nor am I an expert in Quebec culture. In fact, I'm probably the most uncultured person I know. The last anglo film I saw in an actual movie theatre was, I think, Star Trek. The last franco film? Dans une galaxie près de chez vous 2. This means I haven't seen J'ai tué ma mère or Avatar or De père en flic or The Hurt Locker or Polytechnique or any of the Twilight movies or ... well, you get the picture. I want to see them eventually (well, not the Twilight movies), but I don't have much free time and it's rare I'll find something so interesting I'll want to pay $12 to watch it in a theatre rather than wait a couple of years and see it on cable.

Anyway, so I'm no expert, and I have no figures to point to in my analysis. If you want an expert's opinion, I'd read this piece by Marc Cassivi, who takes a detached view of the matter.

But reading the comments, particularly at Cyberpresse but also elsewhere, it's as if we're still battling for the Plains of Abraham, only this time the army on both sides is comprised of Internet trolls.

Some people have suggested that Tierney doesn't know what he's talking about because, like all anglophones, he's never actually seen a Quebec-made movie and hates French - both suggestions are preposterous. Some have said he's a hypocrite for taking advantage of tax credits and other government financial incentives for creating home-grown movies, as if taking money from the government (which every filmmaker does here) somehow removes him of his right to criticize Quebec cinema. Many have accused him of outright Quebec-bashing.

And there are those who argue that Quebec films shouldn't be more multicultural or include more anglophones, because those people are not true Quebecers.

He's right...

Speaking strictly from the perspective of an uncultured consumer, I think Tierney has a point. There are a lot of white faces out there, even when you include Brathwaite, Charles, Diouf and others. And while there are examples of bits of English in Quebec cinema, it's not at the kind of level one would find during a normal day in Montreal.

The other day, I watched Bon Cop Bad Cop on TV. It was on an English-language Canadian movie channel, so the French bits were subtitled (when Patrick Huard says "En tout cas, y'a un bon coup de patin!" - a pun that doesn't translate into English - you see the value in knowing the language instead of relying on those subtitles). Seeing people interact in two languages at the same time - even switching between the two in mid-sentence - just seems so rare these days on screen, even though it happens so often in real life.

I'll let one of the Cyberpresse commenters explain:

Le problème, c'est qu'il n'y a jamais de mélange. Les deux solitudes comme on dit. La télé francophone d'un côté, la télé anglophone de l'autre. Et jamais on invite un anglophone dans une émission sur la télé francophone, et inversement. C'est pareil dans le cinéma. En plus de ça, les gens sont allergiques aux sous-titres dans les films, il faut dire qu'on ne leur donne pas trop le choix, vu la programmation 100% doublé de la plupart des cinémas, quel que soit le film.

Even with the huge numbers of bilingual people in Montreal, Quebec and places near Quebec borders, there's a resistance to bilingualism in our culture. Television, radio, newspapers, even most websites have to choose one or the other. Anything said or written in the other language has to be subtitled, dubbed or translated so that the audience can understand. There are no bilingual television stations or cable channels (besides CPAC), no bilingual radio stations (at least no commercial ones), and only a single bilingual newspaper.

Some angry online commenters will say that the problem isn't Quebec, it's the Rest of Canada that doesn't feature francophones. In fact, it's both. Which is odd because Bon Cop Bad Cop was one of the highest-grossing films in both Canadian and Quebec history (even though it was much more popular in Quebec than in the rest of Canada). You'd think both sides would catch on to that and start taking advantage of the power of language unity.

One movie in production seems to be. Funkytown also stars Patrick Huard, and is slated for release in December:

... but he's also wrong

Where Tierney is off the mark is in making it seem (whether intentionally or not) that this is all Quebec's fault. The tone of the criticism has forced people to become defensive about the Quebec film industry instead of giving his two cents some thought.

It's funny because this industry needs so little defence. It's incredible how successful home-grown cinema is here, particularly when compared to English Canada. A modest showing in Quebec would be considered a mega hit if it made the same amount at the box office in English Canada.

Some of the other points Tierney brings up also don't convince me. I don't think Quebec is too concerned with the past or with its own majority culture (these themes are strong here, but shouldn't they be?). I don't think cinema here is racist. I don't think the Jutras are unrepresentative of Quebec society, which outside of Montreal is very francophone and very white. And while I think there's room for more multiculturalism and more languages in Quebec cinema, I don't say so with nearly the same accusatory style as Tierney's comments.

And there are a lot of things he's missing, too. For one thing, Tierney seems to be arguing that Quebec cinema isn't Montreal-centric enough, which might cause those living in small towns to laugh out loud. Quebec culture is far too Montreal-centric, even if about half of Quebecers live within 50km of the city's centre. The clique du Plateau should be replaced with more of a focus on Gaspé, Trois-Rivières, Baie-Comeau, Alma, Nunavik, Kahnawake and, yes, the West Island.

If that happens, Canadian cinema would be embarrassed, not having nearly the same kind of regional diversity as Quebec cinema would have.

But unlike some online commenters, I don't believe that the failures of others should give us justification to drag our feet. It's time for more Tierneys to enter the scene and create a cultural landscape that everyone in Quebec can feel they're a part of.

UPDATE (Aug. 9): Though a few weeks late to the table, the Gazette's Don Macpherson shares some thoughts about Tierney's comments and how anglo Quebecers are still not considered true Quebecers.

Why I don’t believe anything I’m told about G20 protests

Fagstein — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 23:34:33 +0000

(Updated with more myths)

I've been following the fallout from this G20 summit through Twitter, YouTube and other media over the past few days. I wasn't there myself, but I have some experience as an observer during protests, so a lot of what I saw and heard was familiar.

The first thing you have to know about large protests - and the police action that comes with it - is that it's all more of a public relations war than anything else. Neither side is interested in harming the other (permanently), nor do they seriously expect that the other side will listen to reason and compromise. Instead, their shared goal is to convince the court of public opinion that the opposing side is an evil, heartless monster menace and they are the innocent victims (it's a battle the police tend to win, by the way - as a post-G20 poll shows).

And that wouldn't be so difficult. All either side has to do to get on the public's good side is behave. Don't antagonize, don't attack, don't resist, don't break the law.

The problem with large protests (just about anything large enough to bring out the riot squad) is that while the majority - even the vast majority - do behave during these events, a minority of both sides doesn't. And those are the ones people focus on. The ones who let their frustrations get the better of them, the ones who think the ends justify the means, or the ones who are just straight-up assholes.

And so, in the days after the G20, both sides have been screaming out half-truths to anyone who will listen, trying their best to exaggerate the extreme actions of the other side while dismissing or rationalizing their own excesses.

Here are a few of those outrageous claims. Some might be true, others not. I don't know, because it seems everyone who does know the truth is too clouded by their political agendas to speak it properly. But I'm willing to guess the truth lies somewhere between the two sides.

Corporate media ignored the protesters' demands

I haven't found much media coverage of what the protesters were actually there to say (though the Globe and Mail did a good job of interviewing various interest groups before the summits). Then again, I haven't found much independent media coverage of that either - though there is some. The big message I'm getting from the protester side is about the police, as it unfortunately tends to be.

There's a post at the Toronto Media Co-op about how people should actually look at the G8-G20 magazine and discuss it. The post's first comment said: "I would discuss the magazine with you but every time I try to read a page I want to vomit." (Open-minded, no?) Other comments that followed brought the discussion back to police and protesters.

If anything, there's far too much media coverage of the G20 protests, considering what happened. And that, of course, has to do with the fact that it happened in Toronto. Because so-called national media are based there, anything that happens there suddenly gains more national significance than it would if it had happened in Halifax or Saskatoon.

We have articles from the Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, National Post, Globe and Mail, CTV and CBC chronicling the sometimes disturbing claims of peaceful protesters. Can't get more corporate/mainstream than that.

UPDATE: Craig Silverman has some analysis of this at the Columbia Journalism Review.

Protesters were abused by police

Temporary police holding cell used during G20 summit in Toronto (photo: Toronto Police)

I've heard all sorts of exaggerations when it comes to so-called "police brutality" - a shove with a baton to get someone to move will be described as a violent, unprovoked attack on an unarmed person (extra points if they're frail or pregnant). This protest was no different. The most minor of police jostles becomes a brutal attack in the eyes of the protesters.

A disturbing report from student journalists recounts stories about ... well, let's be honest, it's more discomfort and inconvenience than it is abuse. But police say everything was on tape, and they're willing to face any complaint.

In fact, the police later gave a tour to the media of this supposed hell hole that people were taken to after they were arrested. These metal cages doesn't look particularly appetizing, but they're jail cells. And when detainees are complaining about the taste of the cheese sandwiches they were given, you have to wonder what kind of treatment they expected.

I'm not defending what the police do. I too have been shoved with a baton and grabbed with a forceful arm. It's really uncomfortable, and in many cases it hurts. But I would never use the term "brutality" to describe something done to me, and it's rare to find cases that go beyond scrapes or bruises, even more so when the victim was following police orders and acting peacefully.

This makes me question some of the things said about police action after the arrests. Amy Miller, who calls herself an independent journalist but is clearly on one side of this conflict, said "I was told I was going to be raped". Maybe she's right. Maybe a police officer said something that went way too far. Maybe this girl was strangled as she said.

Maybe. But with the clear agenda they have in reporting these events, it's hard to distinguish between truth and exaggeration.

But before you dismiss it all, consider this opinion piece by TVO's Steve Paikin, who witnessed the protests first-hand and is hardly a radical anarchist. He didn't say what the police did was abusive. He didn't say it was illegal. He didn't do any amateur legal analysis or use ridiculous hyperbole. But he painted a picture and said the police overstepped their bounds, said they "overreacted" and said the scene was "frightening".

I'm much more likely to believe a story like that than one that says "OMG police pig storm troopers were illegally assaulting and abusing innocent peaceful protesters and must answer for their war crimes against humanity!!!!" - no matter how many MDs they drag out.

Besides, the real abuse of human rights was the denial of shopping.

Protesters were heavily armed

Toronto police put on an impressive display (a chainsaw? really?) of weapons seized during the protests. Police chief Bill Blair gave this telling quote during the press conference: "No one should be so naïve as to think these people were there for the purpose of lawful protest."

The message is clear: the protesters were armed, here to cause violence, and we police officers were entirely justified in what we did because of it. It's only because of us, they say, that Toronto wasn't destroyed by an angry mob.

But while the press conference was impressive, there's a few problems with the logic used. The first is that there aren't enough weapons there to account for all the protesters present at the G20 summit, nor even those 1,000 or so arrested. So clearly some were arrested who were unarmed.

Second, the police definition of "weapon" is very liberal. One person was arrested and faces weapons charges for carrying a Swiss army knife. Other weapons put on display included goggles, bicycle helmets, tennis balls and walkie-talkies, the Globe says.

Finally, many of the weapons put on display were not taken from G20 protesters. That chainsaw? The crossbow? Unrelated, the police admitted. The chain mail? It's from a guy who was on his way to a live-action role-playing game.

Even what's left after you dismiss all of these are questionable: "gas masks, cans of spray paint, a replica gun, saws, pocket knives, a staple gun, a drill, a slingshot, chains and handcuffs." How much damage can you see any of the above doing to a police officer in riot gear? Or to an unarmed dignitary if they do get through?

There were clearly some weapons brought in with the purpose of doing damage at the G20 protests. But it was a small number, and the police were clearly trying to exaggerate it to gain public sympathy.

Undercover cops acted as agents provocateurs

I've always found this myth a bit far-fetched. It's one thing to suggest that undercover police officers have infiltrated activist ranks before and during protests. I expect that to happen. But to take it to the next level and say that those officers are the ones that are causing the violence? That they are the ones setting fire to police cars and breaking windows - all with the support of uniformed officers - just so the police can win a PR war? That the Black Bloc itself is nothing but a creation of police forces, whose broader goal is to give fellow officers an excuse to abuse innocent people and "criminalize dissent"?

It smacks of a conspiracy theory along the lines of the U.S. planning 9/11. And it just doesn't make any sense. (We'll set aside for a moment the unlikelihood of a giant conspiracy involving hundreds of people being carried out over and over and no official evidence of it ever leaking to the media).

And if the Black Bloc are nothing but undercover police provocateurs, if the "real protesters never wear masks", then why do I see banners saying "We are all Black Bloc!" in a sympathy protest in Vancouver? Were those also police agents? And if so, why didn't they smash anything? Why are people defending the actions of the Black Bloc, even psychoanalyzing them in a sympathetic way?

Video after video on YouTube describes "agents provocateurs", but at best they show cops in civilian clothing - with no evidence that they damaged anything or provoked anything - or people dressed in black vandalizing property - with no evidence that these people are police officers or being protected by them.

I'd have dismissed such crazy talk entirely had I not known about a protest in Montebello in August 2007.

Shortly afterward, a video went up on YouTube of a union leader convinced that three guys in army boots and bandanas were in fact cops sent to bring an unstable element to the protest. One of the three had a rock in his hand. They stood there quietly, trying not to react. Eventually they moved closer to the line of SQ cops. Despite one of them carrying a rock for no apparent purpose, less than three feet away from riot cops, the SQ did nothing. Not a shove, not a yell.

As the other activists (including some wearing masks) turned on the three guys, they inched closer to the riot cops, and appeared to start a conversation with them. Eventually they pushed - walked, even - behing the SQ line and were taken into custody with no resistance whatsoever.

It was just incredibly suspicious. It became even moreso when a picture surfaced showing the three mysterious men were wearing the same type of boots as the uniformed SQ cops.

Individually, none of these things is proof of anything. Even together, the evidence is circumstantial. I remained unconvinced.

Then the SQ admitted it: They were undercover cops. That guy had no intention of using that rock, the SQ said. Holding it in his hand was just a way of getting behind enemy lines.

Whether they were agents provocateurs is up for debate. But this episode did show that police do go undercover, and do pose as violent protesters. More importantly, it showed me that sometimes the crazy activist conspiracy theorists are right.

The police allowed the Black Bloc to run amok to bolster their PR case

Just like there are those who don't believe the U.S. organized 9/11 but believe they allowed it to happen, there are those who think the police willingly turned a blind eye to Black Bloc tactics so that they could run to the media and say "look at what our enemies are doing!" - and so they could take out their primal aggressions on peaceful protesters.

A billion dollars was spent on security, with thousands of police officers brought in from all over the country. They had plenty to rough up peaceful protests, but they couldn't stop a handful of Black Bloc troublemakers from breaking windows of businesses? Why was it up to random citizens to stop the looting?

There are all sorts of reasons why police won't stop a vandal. Usually it's because they don't think they can do so safely, keeping their officers protected. (Their first priority is their own safety, not that of their cars.) But the decision to retreat is usually a result of a lack of manpower, which I can't imagine could have been the case here. At least not longer than it would take for dozens of riot cops to march a few blocks.

A police review will probably shed some light on how the vandalism and police car fires were allowed to happen (and it's one of those things that the non-activist public actually wants to know from the police).

But as with the previous conspiracy theory, I just don't see the motivation. Are we to believe that the police are thugs who take a sick pleasure out of beating up innocent people? That they would orchestrate some massive conspiracy so they could give some kids a few bruises? Or maybe it's some complicated ruse to increase their budget? If that were the case, you'd think the union would have denounced it by now. Unless, of course, we have to believe that they're in on it too.

Then again, maybe it is true. A CityNews reporter recounts a police officer saying that the more arrests they made, the more funding they would get. Probably a joke, perhaps an exaggeration, a guess or a misunderstanding of policy, but it makes you wonder.

The police say they'll find and prosecute the vandals, but it's hard to see them being very effective after the fact, even if they think they have a case against people like Jaggi Singh.

Protesters protected and supported the Black Bloc

It's true that part of the way the Black Bloc works is to use the massive crowd of protesters as cover. But even in the videos showing their destructive tactics, you can see people denouncing them. One bystander even took matters into his own hands to stop looting from a broken store window.

While a sympathy protest was held in Vancouver, another one is being organized where they're not welcome.

There are protesters who support the Black Bloc, who think that the battle against capitalism will someday result in all-out armed revolution and create a new world order. But they're in the minority.

At the G20, nobody stopped police officers from arresting Black Bloc members. The cops just weren't there.

That said, protesters, journalists and all those bystanders taking cellphone videos have to understand that they're part of the problem. Each one forms part of a mob that will dissuade police from rushing in to stop the destruction. Like in any riot, people gawking and taking pictures and video - as well-intentioned as they may be - only encourage more of the same.

Toronto was a police state

Sure, that fence was high, and some officers probably went too far (in many cases bringing out some really strange logic), but comparing Toronto to some middle eastern dictatorship is going a bit far. Real police states don't protect people even as they're arresting them.

There are legitimate criticisms of the encroachment on civil liberties that took place during the G20 summit, including unprovoked searches and the confiscation of non-dangerous belongings. But exaggerating this will only serve to push away any public sympathy and have the victims be branded as radicals with no sense of reality.

Putting up a video that shows a police officer saying "this ain't Canada right now" - now that speaks volumes.

Police targeted Quebecers

It's a strange claim, but some people are saying that people with Quebec license plates or who spoke French were being harassed by police officers. The first of these claims came from CLAC, the anti-capitalist radicals who support vandalism as a legitimate form of protest, and I think it's far more likely police were profiling CLAC members because of their political views than because of their province of origin or spoken language. But still, it's not far-fetched to believe that some police officers let their prejudices get the better of them.

Police targeted journalists

Looking at the videos from the G20 protests, it seems every second person had a camera and was calling themselves an "independent journalists." In reality, a lot of those people were just activists with blogs.

One of the most high-profile cases is Jesse Rosenfeld, who was described as a journalist with The Guardian. But he's not. He writes for a section of the Guardian's website called "Comment is free" - and the Guardian itself describes him as a Canadian "freelance journalist."

I don't know what Rosenfeld's motivations were. Maybe his interest was strictly journalism. Maybe he was out to present an agenda. But he is either misrepresenting himself or being misrepresented as being a class of journalist he's clearly not.

Don't get me wrong, independent media is very important, and websites like the Toronto Media Co-op have been very useful in my research here, but to suggest that they present straight news without a political agenda is ridiculous.

The fact that so much footage made it to the Internet - even from some people who had been arrested - suggests the police weren't exactly trying to shut down journalism (independent or otherwise) on a massive scale.

Male officers performed strip searches on female detainees

The allegations are all over the Internet (along with allegations that police raped and tortured people), but the police deny it. And since the stories all seem to come from the same single report, it's hard to give it too much credibility.

Police fired on protesters

Saying police "opened fire" gives the incorrect impression that live bullets were used, but otherwise this one appears to be true. I'm sure some context is missing from the above video, but clearly the police made use of nonlethal projectile weapons as a form of crowd control.

They probably think they were justified somehow.

Police did a good job

More than a week after the summit, Toronto City Council voted unanimously to praise the police for their work. This, after an inquiry had been called, but before it had collected any evidence. One councillor - a mayoral candidate - even argued the police were "too nice".

These motions have no real power. They're entirely symbolic. But they send the wrong message - that the city is on the side of the police, and the complaints of the protesters are without merit. As much as I'm skeptical about some of the reports made by some protesters, there are too many of them which are too consistent, backed by too much video and photographic evidence to be dismissed outright.

Police are only human, it's expected some of them should lose their temper like some protesters did

Yes, police are human. It's understandable that some would let their emotions get the better of them and they go too far. That doesn't make it right.

Police, especially in situations like this, have to bend over backwards to the point of absurdity to protect the safety and rights of everyone - including the protesters. That's their job. If anyone steps out of line, they should be punished. If they don't like it, they shouldn't be police officers.

Eye for an eye is not acceptable as a police tactic. Protesters will be rude, insulting and uncooperative. It's mean, and in many cases uncalled for, but unless a law is broken, it's perfectly legal, and they should be allowed to do it.

It's not fair. But neither is the fact that police have weapons and protesters don't. Police must accept more responsibility for their actions.

The amount of arrests is evidence of the nefarious intentions of the protest mob

There were more than 900 arrests made during the G20 summit. It's the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. Twice as much as were made during the October Crisis - you'll recall people actually died during that, and even then it was controversial.

But what's more important than the large number of arrests is the comparatively small number of prosecutions. Most people were released - after hours of detainment in disgusting wire cages - without charges.

There are two reasons this might happen: 1) The charges are so minor that police deem it a waste of time and resources to prosecute them; 2) The charges are so difficult to prove that police don't believe they'd get a conviction.

In both of these cases, one really should call into question the arrest itself, no?

I've seen protest arrests, followed by hours of detainment, where people are released after signing a document waiving their rights (say, by agreeing not to protest under certain conditions). Even though they know they did nothing wrong, and the police have no case, they sign over their rights in exchange for their freedom. It's wrong, but it keeps repeating itself.

A week after the protest, the number of people still detained - the number facing serious charges - is in the low double digits. Is 900 arrests really justified when only 10-20 did anything the police are seriously prepared to prosecute?

This whole summit could have been done over teleconference

It borders on the absurd, but some are suggesting that in-person conferences among world leaders should be done away with and that everyone should just meet using teleconference systems like Skype.

Aside from missing the point - should major policy be set by the whims of violent protesters? - many experts argue - and I tend to agree - that face-to-face contact between world leaders does make a difference. But, by all means, cut down some of that staff of 500 President Obama brings with him to these things.

Police were given sweeping new powers after laws were secretly passed

Speaking of absurd, there was news just before the G20 began that Ontario lawmakers had secretly passed a law that gave the police the power to detain or even arrest people just for approaching the giant fence separating the G20 from the rest of Toronto.

The media made a big deal of these new police powers. People were arrested using them. But it turns out the laws people were complaining about never existed, despite the police making everyone think they did. Isn't it wrong for a police officer to pretend there's a law that doesn't exist, and particularly to act on it?

Even the police chief was in on it:

Asked Tuesday if there actually was a five-metre rule given the ministry’s clarification, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair smiled and said, “No, but I was trying to keep the criminals out.”

In other words, he helped to fool everyone. About, you know, the law. Are there also secret parts of the constitution the government is just choosing not to publicize? This is the law, for crying out loud!

The review

Amnesty International is calling for an independent inquiry. The Toronto police have said they would review their procedures, but it sounds more like reviewing their tactics than actually investigating to see if any of them might have crossed the line. There will be an independent investigation, but not a full inquiry. Who knows how detailed it will be.

I think a full inquiry makes sense here, for a number of reasons. First, because of the amount of money involved. A few million dollars on an inquiry seems like a drop in the bucket compared to hundreds of millions spent on security. Saving just a few percent next time would more than compensate for the cost of the inquiry.

Second, this isn't a one-off, isolated event. This entire production will repeat itself the next time world leaders meet in Canada. The larger issue needs to be explored, with clearer guidelines given to police about how to deal with protesters, and better procedures in place so that peaceful protesters are allowed to demonstrate freely while those who commit criminal acts are found and arrested before they can do any damage to property.

But I have a feeling that even such an inquiry would change little about how police and protesters confront each other. The idea that they could come to a peaceful understanding and just let each other be ... well, that's just another myth.

UPDATE (Sept. 4): The Toronto Star has a look back at the G20, which helps explain a bit about the police and the Black Bloc.

Cogeco to buy Corus Quebec radio stations

Fagstein — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:58:13 +0000

Pierre Trudel thought it was Quebecor, but Quebecor had it right: Cogeco, a cable provider in Ontario and parts of Quebec, which also owns the Rythme FM radio network and used to own TQS before that went into bankruptcy, has announced that it will acquire Corus Quebec's radio network, pending CRTC approval.

The transaction, valued at about $80 million, includes:

In Montreal:

Elsewhere:

CJRC-FM Souvenirs Garantis 104.7 in Gatineau
CIME-FM 103.9 in St-Jerome
CHLT-FM Souvenirs Garantis 107.7 in Sherbrooke
CKOY-FM 104.5 in Sherbrooke
CHLN-FM Souvenirs Garantis 106.9 in Trois-Rivieres
CFOM-FM Souvenirs Garantis 102.9 in Quebec City
CFEL-FM ("CKOI") 102.1 in Quebec City

It's hard to tell from a simple press release what this all means. Cogeco has experience in radio, so I wouldn't expect any major overhauls immediately (except, I guess, having to rename "Corus Nouvelles"). But CFQR would be Cogeco's first anglophone radio station, for what that's worth.

On the francophone side, this would mean a loss of competition. Instead of three major players (Astral Media is the other, owning the NRJ and Rock Détente networks), there would be two. CKOI and CFGL would come under the same owner, working together instead of competing with each other for music listeners.

In Sherbrooke, it's worse: Three of the four five commercial music stations, CKOY, CHLT and CFGE, would all be owned by Cogeco, leaving CITE-FM-1 Rock Détente 102.7 and CIMO-FM 106.1 NRJ in nearby Magog as the only competition.

In Trois Rivières, it would be two for Cogeco, two for Astral. Same for Quebec City, though there's more competition there from independents.

It's also worth noting that this sale comes mere months after Corus cut local programming at Souvenirs Garantis stations CJRC, CHLT and CHLN.

What about CKRS?

CKRS 98.3FM in Saguenay, the fourth Souvenirs Garantis station that got its morning show cut to be replaced with Paul Arcand, is not part of the transaction. Corus has been looking to get rid of that station, and the deadline for bids was yesterday, and the new owner (if there is one) should be known soon.

UPDATE: Nathalie Collard also has some thoughts on the matter.

French at the Olympics: Unsatisfied below 50%+1

Fagstein — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:33:48 +0000

You might think there are more important things to discuss, but to Quebec media, there's nothing more important than condemning the Vancouver Olympic Committee for having banned the French language from the opening ceremonies.

Sure, they had Garou (unless you were watching on NBC - they cut to commercial when the francophone singer came on stage), and every announcement was in both languages (French first)*, and referee Michel Verrault read the officials' oath in French, and IOC president Jacques Rogge read part of his statement in French, and Nikki Yanofsky performed the national anthem in both languages. But only one of the half-dozen songs of the ceremony were sung in French, narration by Donald Sutherland and slam poetry by Shane Koyczan weren't translated into the langue de Molière, and VANOC chair John Furlong spoke with a thick anglo accent in the few words he spoke in French.

Réjean Tremblay, Jean-Guy Fugère, Caroline Touzin, Rino Morin Rossignol, even Jean Charest and the Conservative government complained that there wasn't enough French (though Michel David suggests the government didn't complain enough). Jean-François Bégin wonders why Wayne Gretzky was picked over Gaetan Boucher to be the one to light the flame. Patrick Lagacé sighs that we should have expected this insult to Quebec's position in Canada's heritage. Touzin says most of the volunteers there don't speak French (many of the ones who do come from Quebec). Radio-Canada has a whole dossier on the topic.

The Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste expressed condemnation, according to a story that Associated Press decided was worth writing.

The Globe and Mail also editorialized in favour of more French, The Gazette devoted an editorial and two columns to the subject, and Paul Wells also chimed in, proving it's not just francophones that noticed. (Though the National Post was lukewarm in its endorsement of the outrage, and the Vancouver Sun calls it "tedious regional whining" that is "best ignored for now".) André Pratte and Guillaume Bourgault-Côté took notice of this.

Hell, even Richard Therrien complained about how commentators in France were pronouncing the city's name in the anglo way. And Chantal Hébert complains about ignorant comments posted to news stories online (while asking for comment from her own ignorant online commentators).

And Ted Bird makes a funny. So did Andy Riga.

You know it's gotten bad when even the Angry French Guy comes to the anglos' defence.

Insufficient, but not insultingly so

My first reaction was to think, as Francis Vachon did, that we should give them a bit of a break because this was in Vancouver, not Quebec City. But I'm not going to defend the organizers - these are Canada's games, not those of British Columbia, and French should have been more prominent. Hopefully they'll improve things a bit for the closing ceremonies, if only by including an extra song in Canada's other official language.

But the reaction from Quebec media - particularly Tremblay's bitter sarcasm (he suggests it was insulting to Quebecers that First Nations were given such a large role) - is over the top. There was plenty of French at the ceremony (especially when you consider that most of it didn't involve anyone talking at all), and the fact there wasn't enough to satisfy some people doesn't negate the effort made.

To me, the biggest language failure came not from VANOC or the IOC, but from the television media covering the ceremony. None of the Canadian networks provided any translation for those few parts that were only in one language. RDS and V (which basically just took the RDS feed and slapped its logo on it) didn't translate speeches and narration into French. CTV, TSN and Rogers Sportsnet didn't return the favour for speeches in French (and when those speeches came up, the closed captioning read the very helpful "[SPEAKING FRENCH]"). This despite the fact that speech text and translation were provided on giant screens at BC Place.

The closest thing to translation was NBC, which summarized the officials' oath with a "basically what he's saying here is..."

Meanwhile, during competitions, official on-screen graphics (provided by VANOC) are English-only, which astonishes me not only for the sake of Canadian bilingualism, but for every other country in the world that doesn't speak English. Having English graphics on RDS and V is insulting, moreso to me than Garou singing off-key of Furlong's pronunciation of "bienvenue".

Suddenly, we care

What got to me most about this media overhyping was that suddenly Quebec seems to care about French outside of Quebec. Tremblay lamented the plight of the Acadian people, without mentioning that Quebec and its nationalist zealots are as responsible as the rest of the country for throwing them under the bus.

I've been of the view for a long time that the battle for the survival of the French language shouldn't be fought in Quebec - where it is already dominant - but in the rest of Canada, where it is truly endangered. But Quebec sovereignists don't care about the rest of Canada because they know Quebec will eventually separate and there will be no reason to protect the language outside its borders.

At least we can hope that this so-called controversy will help people understand that this country has a serious problem with language, and that nobody seems serious about fixing it.

UPDATE: Patrick Lagacé responds to this post, saying that the battle for French outside Quebec has already been lost. Even though he says I'm "dans le champ", I actually agree with most of what he writes.

*It's been pointed out that French is an official language of the Olympics and that official announcements are always in French. I know this. I'd like to think the announcements would be in both English and French regardless. But the fact remains that French was there. It's not like they're going to give the announcement in French twice (or once in French and once in Québécois joual).

‘Dem front pages

Fagstein — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:14:20 +0000

Victory:

Defeat:

Some Sunday reading on Haiti

Fagstein — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:58:59 +0000

It's been almost three weeks since a powerful earthquake struck Haiti, leading to the deaths of over 150,000 people, leaving hundreds of thousands more injured, homeless or without access to the necessities of life.

Despite the various crises affecting the news media, the response has been immense, especially in Montreal, which has a large Haitian community. The major newspaper chains have sent reporters and photographers (and have now sent relief crews to replace those they originally sent), the TV networks have sent correspondents, almost every TV network in Quebec, Canada and the United States has aired a fundraiser for relief efforts, and Haiti coverage continues to dominate the news here. The question of whether it's being covered too much was raised over a week ago.

I admit I was a bit surprised by all this attention. I expected major news organizations to send reporters, but not papers like The Gazette, the Journal de Québec or the Toronto Star. After all, it's not cheap.

But as grateful as I am for all the attention, I've started to zone out with the Haiti coverage. Yes, there are lots of orphans, people are desperate, lots of people died. The anecdotes being told by the reporters are touching, but they kind of blend in after the 100th story or so.

Still, even more than two weeks later, there are still some stories worth reading. Here's a few that have been recommended to me through social media:

Sue Montgomery, who left for Haiti shortly after the earthquake for The Gazette, writes about the experience of rushing to a disaster area on short notice. A lot of it is inside journalistic baseball (which makes it perfect for this blog's readers), but it's interesting to read just for the little anecdotes, like running outside half-naked during an aftershock, or paying $6,900 for a helicopter ride from the Dominican Republic.
Phil Carpenter, the photographer who was sent with Montgomery, also writes about the experience for J-Source.
Montgomery, in turn, recommends this piece by Peggy Curran, about the political history of Haiti and how much of a mess the country was in long before the earthquake hit. It's a good picture of what happened to this country from the time it was discovered by Christopher Columbus to the reign of the Duvaliers.
Patrick Lagacé is tired of the bullshit going on in Haiti, from all parties involved. About how Haitians still believe in their country, despite the absolute mess it's in. About how passive they are. About how the international community still clings to the idea that Haiti has some sort of government.
In the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof isn't anywhere near Haiti. Instead, he's in Congo, where millions have died and gangs of thugs go around killing and raping people, and no one seems to care. He just wishes we paid as much attention to the non-natural disaster there as we did to the earthquake. (He has more on his blog.)

Journal de Montréal: One year later

Fagstein — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:16:31 +0000

I was going to have a whole deal about the first anniversary of the Journal de Montréal lockout, but it seems everyone else had the same idea, and most of them are more interesting and better produced than whatever I could come up with.

Rue Frontenac, of course, goes all out. Besides Bertrand Raymond's retirement, there's a really well-produced video from Alain Décarie and Olivier Jean about the first year of Rue Frontenac. Gabrielle Duchaine has a timeline of events, and Duchaine and Valérie Dufour keep it fresh with news stories about pressure from the Fédération professionelle des journalistes du Québec and politicians for the government to step in and put an end to this conflict.

La Presse's Louise Leduc also has a dossier on the topic, with articles about the negotiations, concerns about the quality of journalism being produced by the Journal, and about the emotional impact of the lockout on staff.

In other media, a bit of acknowledgement: an article at Radio-Canada.ca about the FPJQ's demands, a story in The Gazette, a 15-minute discussion with two locked-out journalists at Corus radio, and Quebecor-owned TVA throws up a Presse Canadienne piece. Philippe Gohier of Macleans's Deux Maudits Anglais translates Pierre-Karl Péladeau's recent rant about the threat of unions (which has caused a lot of reaction) and points out how disingenuous it is.

A bus driver reads the Journal de Montréal at a red light a year after the paper's journalists were locked out

But the most interesting piece to me is this one by Patrick Bellerose (the only person I've seen to bring anything original to Quebec89.com) that asks the simple question: Why are people still reading the Journal de Montréal?

It seems so simple, but this is the first I've seen any journalist covering this conflict actually talking to people on the street about it. And their answers are mostly the same: They read it because it's there. They know about the lockout, but they don't really care.

If Rue Frontenac is really going to succeed as a pressure tactic, that's the sentiment that they're going to have to change.

UPDATE: Projet J has an audio interview with Raynald Leblanc.

I, for one, welcome our new consortium overlords

Fagstein — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:35:24 +0000

Over the past few months, rumours had been circulating around the newsroom that some local rich guys were interested in buying a part of the Canwest newspaper chain, including The Gazette.

Today, those rumours prove true. A consortium led by Jerry Grafstein, Raymond Heard and Beryl Wajsman announced it will be submitting a bid to buy The Gazette, the Ottawa Citizen and the National Post, pending due dilligence.

The coverage - Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, CBC, Reuters, Editor & Publisher, Financial Post - all say the same thing, quoting liberally from the news release and saying the three consortium leaders believe in local control of local newspapers.

No price has been mentioned, nor are the other financial backers named.

All three have media cred: Grafstein, a recently retired senator, founded Citytv in Toronto. Heard was managing editor of the Montreal Star and then worked as news director at Global TV in the 80s. Wajsman is the editor of The Suburban and publisher of The Métropolitain. The Globe's Jane Taber has analysis of their political leanings, in case anyone really cares.

Unions (and unionized employees) look favourably at the central idea of this bid (Lise Lareau of the Canadian Media Guild calls it good news) because it seems to reject a lot of Canwest's anti-union moves, like centralization and outsourcing, and it's making all the right noises about local control of local newspapers.

There's also the unsaid implication that these three care more about respect than profit. (Like sports teams, media outlets tend to be more about ego than the bottom line.)

Looking at Wajsman's newspapers, there's at least some reason for optimism. The Suburban is big for a community paper, and while it's not pure as the white snow, it's not filled with press releases and it does actually employ journalists. The Métropolitain, meanwhile, is more of a think-tank than anything else, and is clearly not motivated by profit.

But looking at those newspapers also leaves some worried. Wajsman's editorials are a bit much for even some staunch federalists, and the papers have some clear editorial biases when it comes to things like the Israeli-Palestinian issue (something the Suburban doesn't have to deal with much but which The Gazette would have to deal with on a daily basis).

Many will also focus on Wajsman's political past. One person reminded me of his alleged connection to the adscam scandal, others have already created a Facebook group to protest his bid because of his pro-Israel, pro-business, anti-union stances.

Though I disagree with most of what he writes in Suburban editorials (and most of the opinions written in The Métropolitain), I'm tempted to ask how a right-wing, pro-Israel owner will somehow be different than Canwest. And if "progressive anglos" don't want their paper to fall in his hands, they're more than welcome to submit a bid of their own.

There are other obstacles to Grafstein and Co.'s plan, even if they have the money. The biggest is that Canwest (and the banks arranging for the chain's sale) want Canwest Publications sold as a unit. That centralized services include websites, customer service, advertising, page layout and Canwest News Service. Undoing that might be difficult and expensive (but it might also mean hiring more journalists, programmers and copy editors, which would clearly work in my favour).

And there might be other bids. The Globe is convinced Paul Godfrey is putting one together with his own financial backers. Other names being bandied about include Torstar, Quebecor, Transcontinenal, FP Newspapers and that guy Joe at the end of the bar.

It’s all about the Bordens: Cough ‘em up for Haiti

Fagstein — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 07:33:34 +0000

So Haiti's in trouble. Like, a crapload of trouble. And the world is coming together to do whatever they can. Food and supplies aren't particularly useful because of the high cost of transporting and distributing them. Instead, the thing charities and relief organizations need is money.

In a perfect world, a massive international relief organization would simply respond, making use of a hefty budget to set up some emergency shelters while everyone's homes are rebuilt using insurance money. Of course, that's not the case (partially because international aid tends not to win many elections), so regular people are being asked to open their wallets and help out.

While the most obvious thing to do would be to give to the Red Cross, various groups are organizing fundraisers or other schemes to try to squeeze even more money out of us.

After a few minutes of searching, here's what I've found is happening in Montreal over the next week and a half:

Jan. 17: The Imani Family and Full Gospel Church is hosting a benefit at 4pm.
Jan. 17: A benefit concert at Club Lambi featuring Plants & Animals and Amy Millan
Jan. 17: The Consulat on Bleury is hosting a fundraiser
Jan. 18: Astral Media radio stations (which include CJAD, CHOM, CJFM, CITE and CKMF in Montreal) are using today to send out messages encouraging everyone to donate. (Hopefully the campaign will get slightly more creative than just sending out "please donate" messages on all their radio stations.)
Jan. 18: Chick Pickin' for Haiti at Grumpy's Bar (1242 Bishop, 9pm).
Jan. 19: A Tweetup is being held at Casa del Popolo, with lots of interesting prizes being drawn
Jan. 19: Some Lester B. Pearson School Board schools have a "Hats for Haiti Day" where students can wear a hat of their choosing if they donate a dollar or more. How rebellious. Any suggestions on a hat to really push the envelope on this?
Jan. 20: A benefit concert at the Gesù called l'Union fait la force to benefit Medecins sans frontières. Features Ariane Moffatt, Bïa, Kodiak, Echo Kalypso, Doriane Fabrig, Claude Lamothe, Ian Kelly, Pépé et sa guitare and Papa Groove. Tickets $30.
Jan. 21: Simon Lacroix is organizing a special screening of Total Crap at Club Soda.
Jan. 21: A benefit concert at the Telus Theatre. Tickets $20.
Jan. 21: Another benefit at Le Consulat, this one involving salsa.
Jan. 22: CFQR draws from among donations to UNICEF to give away a luxury vacation to the Bahamas, a prize that was originally just a listening contest.
Jan. 22: TVA is airing a Quebecor-sponsored benefit concert, which will also air on Radio-Canada, V, Télé-Québec, Musique Plus and MusiMax, the same day George Clooney hosts a telethon on MTV (U.S. and Canada), CTV, MuchMusic, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, BET, the CW, HBO, VH1 and CMT.
Jan. 22: Cinema Politica is hosting a special screening of Aristide and the Endless Revolution (a documentary about Haiti) at Concordia.
Jan. 23: The Société Bolivarienne du Québec and Action Haïti Montréal have a benefit at Ayllu for the Haitian Red Cross.
Jan. 26: Malajube and others at the Studio Juste pour rire (via Hour), $25
Jan. 29: Voices for Haiti, a hip hop and poetry fundraiser by the McGill Muslim Students' Association.
Jan. 29: Masala Sono at Club Lambi
Jan. 30: A fundraiser at Club Soda.
Feb. 1: Artists for Haiti at Sala Rossa

Feel free to suggest others in the comments below. Agenda Public has a list of similar events across Quebec.

Text it and forget it

For those of you who are too fucking lazy to punch your credit card number securely into a website and prefer to have your cellphone company bill you based on a fee for a text message you've sent to some unverified five-digit number you heard about through your friend's Twitter, there are plenty of options for that, though few work in Canada (that "90999" thing you heard about on the Colbert report doesn't work here - something CTV didn't relay to its viewers when it rebroadcasted the show on two of its networks). The cellphone companies accept $5 to 45678, and Plan Canada at 30333 (in both cases text "HAITI"). But maybe I just made that up, or copied the number down wrong.

Really, just give it to the Red Cross. Don't trust your friends, don't trust people on the street, don't trust celebrities, don't trust businesses and don't trust anyone saying your money goes toward Haiti relief.

Journalists: Donate your overtime

The earthquake in Haiti, ironically, had a positive impact on my bottom line. The paper was expanded in size to fit all the extra news coverage, and I was called in for an unscheduled shift on Thursday night. Rather than profit off the misery, I'm donating my salary for that shift to the Red Cross.

I know there are plenty of journalists and other media types who read this blog, and plenty of them are working more than they usually do because of this craziness. I'd encourage you to do the same - you're not losing money, you're working harder doing what you love, and it's for a good cause.

Newspapers for sale!

Fagstein — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:51:58 +0000

CFCF's Paul Karwatsky reports outside the Gazette building (after signing autographs for some teenage girls who happened to pass by)

It wasn't so much a question of whether, but when.

The hammer came down this morning, as Canwest Limited Partnership, the print and online side of the Canwest empire, joined the television arm in filing for creditor protection.

I can't really tell you more than has been published by the Globe and Mail (UPDATE: The Globe has more in its Saturday issue), the Toronto Star, BBC, ABC (Associated Press), Bloomberg, Canadian Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters, QMI, UPI, CBC, CTV, CTV Montreal, Le Devoir, Rue Frontenac, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Post or the Canwest press release.

The Star also has a copy of CEO Leonard Asper's memo to employees.

The gist of it is that the newspaper division (including the National Post, though it is not under this creditor protection filing) is up for sale, with the banks getting the ball rolling setting a floor bid. Unlike recent small-market TV station sales that were for a nominal amount, the newspaper chain is expected to fetch decent cash because most of the newspapers are still profitable.

The only question is who has a billion dollars to spare to scoop up an entire newspaper chain (because of how dependent they are on each other for content and services, Canwest is hoping to sell them off as a unit).

In the meantime, while about 50 former employees under salary continuance are getting screwed (none of these people are former Gazette employees), pensions, salaries and expenses continue as normal through a $25-million debtor-in-protection financing. This means employees (including me) still get paid as normal, freelancers still get their invoices processed, and suppliers still get paid for continuing operations. (UPDATE: Some freelancers are being affected by this filing, I'm now told, for bills between mid-December and the filing of Jan. 8.)

In Saturday's paper, Gazette published Alan Allnutt makes that clear: Operations continue as normal.

Wish I had more juicy details, but they don't trust me with that kind of information (would you?).

So instead, I offer photos of journalists who reported on the move, hours after the fact, from in front of the Gazette's editorial offices on Ste. Catherine St. (Photos link to the video reports online)

CBMT's Kai Nagata uses a Gazette as a prop while reporting live during the 6pm newscast

Radio-Canada's Louis-Philippe Ouimet does a taped report from across the street, to provide a better background

Fagstein » In the news

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