Rod's barn door, and CBC1 2007

This past week, the leaders of the Provincial NDP and Liberals were expressing their disdain for the recent conduct of our Premier Rodney MacDonald on the Atlantic Accord front, and it is difficult to disagree with them. The only thing that will now stop our loss of the Atlantic Accord Advantage, if indeed this would, is a change of government in Ottawa. And according to Thursday’s Daily News, this isn’t an outcome for which our premier is prepared to call.

Instead he appears to be even more out of touch with the realities of Canadian politics and government. He is lobbying the Senate, making us look not only desperate but as having failed, as a province, our intro government class. The Senate cannot now do what he and others in his party failed to do over the period of the past 18th months. Perhaps realizing this -- again far too late -- he is now calling on other premiers to join him, seemingly blind to the fact that all but Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador would not profit from such support. The simple fact is that Rodney had in his hand, when he took office, one of the best futures Nova Scotia might ever see, and he and his party have lost it.

What makes the recent foray into the Senate and provincial debate especially disturbing is that it appears to be either inept or ingenuine, or likely both. It appears that our premier has finally realized what has happened to him, and he thinks that closing the barn door with a flourish will somehow get the ponies back in.

Moreover, it appears that by putting it to the Senate and sister provinces he might be wishing to argue later that it was those nasty Liberal senators and premiers who did us in. It appears, that is, like he and Peter Mackay are working a Plan B, to save both of their political hides, when perhaps the noble thing would simply be to hand in their resignations to a party that has shown such contempt for Nova Scotians.

Plan B ain’t gonna work, guys.

If resigning from the party that is the true author of our loss is the noble thing for Rod and Peter, then the noble action for the leader of the provincial Liberal Party would be to serve notice of a non-confidence motion in the fall.

CBC Report Card 2007

Last year, I wrote a column on the pathetic state of CBC One. It seems to have struck a cord with readers and so I thought a yearly check-up might be in order. As you may recall, my general concern is that CBC One is in a slow, sad spiral downward.

My research included Internet access to CBC affiliates across the country and a week listening to Vermont Public Radio. Alas, the news is not good.

Our morning fare is marginally better, partly made so by cutting back on “Sounds like Canada” -- though the addition of “This I Believe,” hosted by Preston Manning, sounds like a Social Credit plot. “Sounds” has great potential to be a serious discussion of our multicultural lives in Canada, but it insults our intelligence more often that it sheds any light, and it is too patronizing and emotive, at least in my experience. “The Current” has shed some of insulting, self aggrandizing edginess, but it still has a way to go to match the quality of analysis of its American counterparts. I know there will never be another Peter Gzowski, but we could do much better than we are.

Meanwhile, the new Z and Q programmes better be drawing all sorts of “30-somethings” because they are more than grating to the rest of us. And some of the newscasts at the top of the hour are intolerable.

In one such newscast recently, the journalist claimed that fighting had broken out in the Gaza, and then paused for 10 seconds so that we could hear the gunfire. Good grief, Charley Brown! And far too many newscasts are employing the sobbing of loved ones for our military losses instead of analysis. When young men and women die in warfare, we know their loved ones cry. Hearing them do so isn’t news, its journalistic laziness or worse.

One the positive side of the ledger, however, showing that much better can be achieved in Canada, are the noon hour show from Montreal and the drive home show from Vancouver.