For any of you who thought we here in the True North Sane and Free were too good for the “War on Christmas” and other nonsense, Jean Charest would like to set you straight.
UPDATE: CTV also wasted time on this non-story. It’s funny how pundits can argue at the same time that nobody cares what it’s called and that it must be called Christmas because that’s our tradition.
Radio-Canada has a giant slideshow of their election night special behind the scenes. Most of the pictures are, of course, of anchor Bernard Derome, who was on his last such broadcast.
Above is Michel “John King” Auger and his magic election map.
The first snowfall of the year hit the city this week, and the usual whining came quickly. So quickly that the National Post saw fit to make fun of us (even though nobody called in the army).
Because the storm was larger than expected, and because the worst of it hit during rush hour, traffic was backed up, and buses and plows couldn’t get through.
Patrick Lagacé asks: Is this normal?
Allow me to answer:
Yes this is normal!
Every year we get the same crap. People expect that ever block in the city has its own private snow-clearing team waiting for the first flakes to fall. Every year they forget that it takes a couple of days to clear snow off every street in the city.
The people who were unprepared for the first snowfall weren’t working for the city, they’re you. You without your winter tires. You without boots that have traction on ice. You who thought it would be a good idea to take your car downtown when the forecast called for snow. You who didn’t add extra time to your commuting schedule to account for delays caused by heavy snowfall.
I admit I’m a bit spoiled in all this. I take the metro exclusively to work (and during odd hours), so I rarely have to wait in line in the cold for a bus that’s half an hour late.
But even when I lived on the West Island and took an hour and a half to get downtown every day, I still understood that snowstorms cause delays. Why is it so hard for everyone else to understand the concept?
UPDATE (Dec. 14): Stéphane Laporte agrees with me: Winter happens. Get over it.
Google spoke, and naturally everyone listens. Roberto Rocha and the CBC write about its submission to the CRTC about new media regulation. As you might expect, the company prefers a hands-off approach to the Internet.
Google’s argument is that with no government regulation whatsoever concerning content, YouTube still manages to have plenty of Canadian-produced videos, and if measured quantitatively, it has more Canadian content than Canadian TV networks.
Rocha pokes some holes into that argument, mainly by pointing out most videos posted to YouTube are of little public interest. Test videos, family videos, copyright infringement, personal vlogs and just utter crap. There are no professionally-produced scripted dramas produced by Canadians online, and you could probably count on one hand the number of people making a living from posting videos online north of the border.
Quebecor, which has both a broadcasting interest in TVA and an online interest in ISP Videotron, also argues against regulation. To back up its point, it mentions its web portal Canoe:
Quebecor Media believes that the Canadian footprint in the new-media broadcasting environment is significant and continues to expand rapidly. One indication is that the Canoe.ca network is among the top 12 Canadian platforms in terms of unique visits.
OK, hands up those of you who can name 12 “Canadian platforms”. Yeah.
Non-regulation isn’t perfect. It encourages profit-seekers to go after the lowest common denominator. While there’s plenty of “user-generated content”, there’s very little professional production. Even with the almost non-existent barriers to production and distribution, the difference in value between what is produced for television (even cable channels) and what is produced online is still very large. It’s unclear at this point whether that gap will narrow.
But online is also the great equalizer. There are no public airwaves to portion out. There are no limits whatsoever, and so there should be no regulation, just as there is no regulation of newspapers.
Where conventional TV networks sign import deals and use simultaneous substitution law to effectively print money importing U.S. shows, there is no such rule online because there are no international barriers. Sure, some are trying to put up barriers to make our lives difficult, but the majority of content is available to Canadians as much as Americans, no matter which side of the border it comes from.
It hasn’t arrived yet, because many media owners still think that paying for cheap wire content and slapping your brand on it is a good idea, but eventually media outlets will learn that they’ll have to produce original content to get any audience (and advertising money). It’ll be creative ideas, not cross-border dealmaking, that will create wealth for Canadian media companies in the future.
At least, we hope.
In any case, it would be pointless for the CRTC to try to regulate the Internet, simply because it can’t.
The guys behind Montreal-based Maisonneuve Magazine announced yesterday that effective Dec. 19, they would be putting the daily newspaper briefing MediaScout on permanent hiatus, a victim of a lack of funding. This just a few weeks after putting out a survey asking people how much they’d be willing to pay for the service. Considering they only pay their writers about $125 a week, it’s kind of surprising they couldn’t come up with funding.
As you can imagine, I’m a big fan of media criticism (in an age of increasing media conglomeration, so few mainstream outlets can have true editorial freedom without pissing off someone in upper corporate management). But MediaScout never did much for me. Its choice of newspapers always seemed arbitrary and limited (Ottawa Citizen but no Montreal Gazette, La Presse but no Journal de Montréal, three papers in Toronto but none in Western Canada). And I never found it brought much new to the table. Summaries of top stories can be seen on everything from Google News to the radio newscast, and sarcastic comments about newspapers can be found on just about any blog.
MediaScout could have been a big independent force for Canadian media criticism and analysis if there had been more investment in it. But paying some university student a few bucks to summarize the morning’s news just always seemed a waste of money to me.
UPDATE (Jan. 12): Read the latest about the switch here.
Astral Media announced on Friday that Mix 96, the anglo FM station that tries so desperately to please everyone it ends up pleasing no one, will be rebranded as a Virgin Radio station, so it can start “challenging the norms of conventional stations and shaking up the radio landscape with a fresh sound and unique new programming formats; delivering a new voice with first class entertainment value to each market.”
In other words, The Mix sucks, and they’re hoping Virginization will help that. (Their ratings have remained relatively stable over the past few years: Third in the Montreal anglo market behind CJAD and Q92, reaching about 18% of the market, or 200,000 listeners).
Stations in Vancouver (95 The Crave) and Ottawa (106.9 The Bear) will also be rebranded.
The Mix’s format will still be “adult contemporary” music (and The Bear will keep its rock format (though it will be “re-energized”, whatever that means). I’m at a loss, in fact, to point out a single major programming difference that will result from this change.
Still, the rebranding alone (and the perceived de-localization of radio control) is enough to get a Facebook petition up already.
Three election nights in as many months. I’m starting to get the hang of this.
The biggest surprise of the night was Mario Dumont’s decision to leave his party leadership. The obvious question that comes up now is: Who the heck is going to lead the ADQ? Can you even name another ADQ MNA?
The biggest electoral surprise is clearly Amir Khadir winning the Plateau riding of Mercier for Québec solidaire. Not only did he unseat the PQ’s Daniel Turp, but he surprised a lot of news outlets who hadn’t planned for one of the “autres” to get a seat in this election. (Our front page needed a last-minute redesign to add a fourth box for QS’s seat total.)
In the early stages of returns, the seat seesawed between Khadir and Turp, but another riding way off near Quebec City was also showing a QS lead (with one poll reporting), reminding everyone that these results were still early. That other candidate ended up dead last with 1,000 votes.
But as the night wore on, the lead became more constant, and slowly started to grow. Cynicism that Khadir’s lead would vanish when more conservative mainstream votes came in slowly started to vanish. As the party’s co-leaders (they’re really going to have to get rid of that co-leadership system) gave their news conference, the networks called the seat for Khadir, and another political party officially entered relevance.
Now, does this mean QS will be invited to leaders’ debates?
CTV Montreal is very proud of the fact that they called a majority government first, just after 8:30pm. This means they’re cool and their penis is larger than everyone else’s, I think. The seats certainly looked to be going to a solid majority early on.
But around 9pm, the number of leading and elected Liberal seats started holding steady at 63-64. This was right on the razor’s edge. All it would take is a couple of Liberal-leading seats to shift to another party and Charest loses his majority. Part of me wanted exactly that to happen so that overeager news directors would have to explain why they got it wrong.
In the end, though, the Liberals got 66 seats, pending recounts, and their majority isn’t in doubt. Only a couple of ridings in the Montérégie area were close enough (the lead in votes is significantly less than the number of spoiled ballots) that a recount might change something.
I didn’t watch any of the live TV coverage (beyond glancing at the changing numbers on the screen), so I’ll leave commenting on that to you, or Richard Therrien, or Mike Boone, or Paul Cauchon.
There were liveblogs from Lagacé/Ouimet at Cyberpresse (you can cut the metrosexual tension with a knife) and Philippe Gohier at Maclean’s in case you want to re-live the night in real-time.
Here’s how the main news sources handled their online results:
Selling a senate seat? Blackmailing a newspaper into firing writers? Gotta be the governor of Illinois.
(Side note: “Before that, he served as a U.S. Congressman for Illinois’ 5th district from 1997 until 2003, according to his online biography.” – Could they not confirm membership in the U.S. House of Representatives with a more official source?)
It’s a fun week for politics. Though backroom undemocratic kingmaking in our government is far less sexy.
“It’s just politics,” Bob Rae said about 10 seconds ago. How true.
Spot the non-union flags at this protest
On Saturday, I went downtown to Protest Central (the Guy Favreau building) to check out the pro-coalition protest. I had wanted to stop by the “Rally for Canada” anti-coalition protest, but that never materialized in this city.
Coming out of the building, I noticed a lot of presence from labour unions. I did some quick number-counting. There were 150 flags with union logos on them. The number of signs, flags and banners without union logos were so few that I have pictures of them all below.
The numbers, and the speeches given during the rally, showed something worrisome: this protest wasn’t about the grass roots standing up for democracy. It was about unions and separatists wanting to push the government more toward the left.
Lisette Lapointe, the PQ candidate in Crémazie riding (and Jacques Parizeau's wife), campaigns in the Sauvé metro station last week.
The polls are now open in 75 125 ridings (my civics knowledge sucks) across Quebec, and the voters have 22.5 10.5 hours (my math sucks) to make their choice. Polls close at 8pm tonight.
If you need help, the DGEQ website has information available. If you’re not registered to vote, sorry, but you’re screwed. Unlike in federal elections, Quebec doesn’t allow registration on voting day. The deadline was last Friday. Better luck next time.
Now go vote. I’ll be busy editing election copy tonight, but I’ll see you in the aftermath. Be sure to let your local journalist know of voting-day irregularities.
For those watching the returns on TV tonight, here’s what the networks are planning:
Online, most news outlets will be running data from Canadian Press. I’d recommend CBC or the DGEQ website directly for results.
I’m hearing a lot about this 62% majority that’s being used as a talking point for the Liberal-NDP (Bloc) coalition government in Ottawa. But it’s not entirely clear where the calculation for that number comes from. Perhaps for that reason, I’ve seen numbers like 61% and 66% pop up on signs or in statements.
So I did a bit of number crunching based on the results of the 2008 election. Here’s that comes up:
The figure that really matters is seats in the House of Commons. By that measure, the coalition represents 163 of the total 308 seats, or 52.9%. If we include the two independent members (Bill Casey of Nova Scotia and Quebec’s André Arthur, both of whom are closer to the Tories than any other party) on the coalition side, that figure rises to 53.6%.
If we go by votes for coalition parties vs. total votes in the 2008 election, which would be the most obvious choice, they represent 7,528,737 out of a total 13,834,294 votes, or 54.4%.
If we go by votes for coalition parties vs. total votes for the four major parties in the 2008 election, discounting the parties with no seats (and independents), we get 7,528,737 of 12,737,533 votes, or 59.1%.
If we go by votes for coalition parties plus 937,613 Green Party votes vs. total votes in the 2008 election, we get 8,466,350 of 13,834,294 votes, or 61.1% (the “61% majority” figure comes from here). Green Party leader Elizabeth May has endorsed the coalition, so this one is plausible.
If we go by votes for coalition parties plus 937,613 Green Party votes vs. total votes for the five major parties in the 2008 election plus independents, discounting only the 64,304 whackjobs who voted for the Western Block Party and their ilk, we get 8,466,350 of 13,769,990, or 61.5%.
If we go by votes for coalition parties plus 937,613 Green Party votes vs. total votes for the five major parties in the 2008 election and exclude independents entirely, we get 8,466,350 of 13,675,146 votes, or 61.9%. This is where the “62% majority” comes from (well, either this or the next point), but it completely discounts people who voted for anyone who didn’t vote for candidates outside of the five parties, pretending like their votes didn’t exist.
If we go by votes for coalition parties plus Greens plus independents and unaffiliated candidates vs. total votes in the 2008 election, we get 8,561,194 of 13,834,294 votes, or 61.9%. But this makes the huge (and unsupported) assumption that independents support the coalition.
If we go by votes for all non-Conservative candidates vs. total votes in the 2008 election, we get 8,625,498 of 13,834,294 votes, or 62.3%. But this assumes that all third parties from the Christian Heritage Party to the Marxist-Leninists (respectively the 5th and 6th parties in total votes) support this coalition, which I think is a bit of a stretch. It also assumes that everyone who voted for independent candidates also supports the coalition.
So which of these figures is the correct one? The coalition backers want the highest number, 62%, but the more realistic numbers are 54% or 61%, depending on whether or not you include the Greens.
What do you think? Are there other ratios that make sense here? What calculation makes most sense to you?
The RTL announced its fare table on Friday (and Presse Canadienne recopied it).
The big thing here is a reduction in the single fare rate to encourage more occasional use. In exchange, transit users paying cash won’t be issued a transfer and would have to pay for each individual leg of their trip unless they get a smart card or their new “disposable” Solo card (is advertising something as disposable really such a great idea in this eco-conscious world?).
Considering how “very occasional users” usually pay cash and are unaware of where the ticket offices are, this is bound to inconvenience tourists, visitors from other transit zones and anyone else who isn’t a regular or semi-regular user of public transit in Longueuil.
| 2008 | 2009 | Difference | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single fare | $3.25 | $3 | -7.7% |
| Single fare (reduced) | $2 | N/A | Elimination of fare* |
| 6 tickets (regular) | $15.50 (6x$2.58) | $16.10 (6x$2.68) | +3.9% |
| 6 tickets (reduced) | $9.25 (6x$1.54) | $9.60 (6x$1.6) | +3.8%** |
| Monthly pass (regular) | $76 | $79 | +3.9% |
| Monthly pass (reduced) | $45 | $47 | +3.4% |
*Single tickets will no longer be available in reduced form. All passengers will be required to pay $3 cash, regardless of age. Solo passes are available in groups of no less than six tickets.
*Both the RTL press release and the Presse Canadienne cut-and-paste (and, of course, all the websites that republished it) have this backwards, which would result in a reduction.
The good news is that the RTL is confident it will meet the 8% increased ridership challenge set by the Quebec government by the end of 2009 (the deadline is 2011). Transit authorities who meet the 8% increase target get a gajillion dollars from the government, and a cookie.
Still waiting on AMT fares for 2009, but the RTL release hints that the TRAM 3 pass will go up by 3.5%, which means the $105 regular Zone 3 pass would go up to $108 or $109 a month.
The folks behind the various metro parties that have been organized over a year and a half now are putting together another one for Sunday, starting at 9 p.m. from the Montmorency metro station (where the last car boards).
For those unfamiliar with the concept, I point you to the article I wrote about the first one back in March of 2007.
The CBC’s Ombudsman released his report on Friday concerning Krista Erickson, a reporter who was accused of “planting” questions with the opposition to use during Question Period in the House of Commons. The Conservative Party found out about this and complained to the CBC, and CBC management disciplined her by deciding to transfer her from Ottawa to Toronto.
Erickson successfully fought the disciplinary measure and had it reversed in a mediated settlement in June. She has resumed reporting from Ottawa (she never was transferred), and has already filed some political pieces.
The report from Vince Carlin largely clears Erickson of intentional wrongdoing, and places blame on the CBC for having an inexperienced reporter assigned to Parliament Hill.
Among the specific points in the report (PDF):
In short, Erickson did not violate policy, but she did cross the line. But she didn’t know she crossed the line, and that’s the CBC’s fault for not training her enough.
Erickson, who alerted me to the judgment via email, wouldn’t comment on her reaction to the report, on whether she agreed that this kind of thing should be unethical and whether she agreed that she was unqualified for a job on Parliament Hill. She referred questions to the Canadian Media Guild (the CBC’s union), which said it was “satisfied with the report”.
The Ombudsman’s report is clear, honest and makes a lot of sense (in fact, it sounds a lot like what I wrote in January). Little of it is surprising (except perhaps the part where this exact issue was discussed and decided upon by both the CBC and Globe long ago), and it makes clear that while Erickson made a mistake, her intentions were honourable.
Political activists will, of course, view the report through the filter of their partisanship, which will tell them before they read the report whether they approve or disapprove of it. But it’s hard to argue with the points made in it. And other journalists should take note of those points, to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
UPDATE (Dec. 9): The National Post’s Jonathan Kay posts thoughts about this as well, calling it a “quasi-exoneration.”
For those of you wondering when the political situation in Ottawa would be turned into a Der Untergang Hitler subtitle spoof, wait no longer:
Hell, it’s getting so bad even Rachel Maddow is making fun of us.
*This post was originally mistitled “Liebensraum.” Maybe it should have been Liberalsraum?