As the lockout of Journal de Montréal employees celebrated its six-month anniversary, those employees took advantage of an open door on Wednesday and stormed the Journal’s offices (CP, Le Devoir, Radio-Canada, Metro), a place they’ve been forbidden by court order to enter since the lockout began in January. Though there was no outright violence (despite the somewhat staged photo as evidenced by the video above), and they left a few minutes later, it was a very tense, very dramatic few minutes.
And if you’re religiously tuned to the LCN 24-hour cable news network, you wouldn’t have seen a moment of it. While Radio-Canada’s RDI was all over the event, It seems the Quebecor-owned network gave only a brief mention of the incident on TVA’s evening news. There wasn’t even a video to attach to the story.
UPDATE (July 24): Richard Therrien has more in Le Soleil.
Meanwhile, Quebecor has responded by complaining to the court, arguing that the employees who stormed the building were in contempt of court by rather obviously violating a court order that said they couldn’t enter the building. Thankfully, Quebecor-owned enterprises are all over that part of the story (ot at least, copying the Canadian Press version online).
The anniversary has also prompted some big-picture discussion from the blogosphere, with one capitalist saying unions aren’t all bad, and another asking why the union doesn’t forgo Quebecor entirely and start their own newspaper.
UPDATE (July 27): A video originally attached to this post, which criticized Rue Frontenac for a misleading photo, has been taken down by YouTube after a copyright complaint from the photographer. The photos have also been removed from the Rue Frontenac article on the protest, without any correction.
In other news
- Bloc MP Réal Ménard says he will complain to the Quebec Press Council about an article that appeared in the Journal that alleges ethical issues with a letter he sent out to constituents. Honestly, the case doesn’t sound like much, and I agree with the assertion that MPs frequently abuse their ability to send out free newsletters about their business in Ottawa that read conspicuously like campaign material. Oh, and he quickly decided he wasn’t going to file a complaint after all once a correction was made.
- The Journal has claimed a victory in a decision by an arbitrator that the union can’t file grievances during a labour disruption.
- J.F. Codère suggests that Canoe might be stealing news from its own locked-out workers without attribution.
“I agree with the assertion that MPs frequently abuse their ability to send out free newsletters about their business in Ottawa that read conspicuously like campaign material”
This is not a shocking revelation, whether you live in Quebec or New York or Japan or anywhere else in the world. The overarching priority of any elected official, to the exclusion of all others, is to get re-elected.
99% of them would shove their own mother in front of a bus if they thought it would help. And the remaining 1% of them are too principled to ever actually achieve anything in politics.
The worst part is, politicians wouldn’t do it if they didn’t think that their constituents wouldn’t swallow it, hook, line and sinker. So it’s our own bloody fault, ’cause we keep re-electing them (at least most of the time).
My cynicism, incidentally, was honed by 7 years (combined) of working for an MP in Ottawa and then for a member of the state legislature in New York State.