The CBC….are you getting your $1billion dollars worth?

Posted on by Pete Cross

The unique tactile feel of a newspaper, especially in the early morning,  fresh from the presses, still damp with ink was one of the subconscious experiences which is now missed, and much forgotten. By admitting this, it is also admitting to being the older generation, possibly caught up in a romantic remembrance of journalism, nostalgic for the simpler times. However, it may be more significant, it may be that we are watching the tick tock death of responsible and professional journalism.

In our working lives we followed stories such  as the Watergate break-in, or Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, muted headlines and bylines over days and months, eagerly read each morning or in the evening during our daily commute. Hundreds of heads lined the subway cars, heads often immersed and hidden in the broad sheeted papers. Experienced readers were envied in their skilled ability to fold the paper in thirds making it more manageable and less intrusive for their seat mate.

None of the stories were “timely” in the current sense, but all were detailed, 800 or 1200 word stories, all attempting to abide by the accepted journalistic standards of the day.  It did not matter that the events that were written about were 24 or 48 hours “old” in terms of when they happened, what mattered was getting the full facts of that story. We believed that was written was the truth, had gone through a process of checks and balances and reliable sourcing.

None of us believed that the world would tip over if we were reading that news 12 or 24 hours after the actual event. The term “Breaking News” did not exist, we were able to quickly judge the seriousness of the story by the size of the caption lettering. The declaration of war was only a couple of inches in font size, the journalistic shout of the times.

Of course, this has all changed. We are constantly told now that we are on the edge, teetering, just seconds behind the latest “breaking news”. We need to hear about an accident before the blood has coagulated, to hear a political turn of events as the words are uttered so it can be analyzed and spit out replete with editorial content before it has echoed down the corridors of power. The death of a notable personality or celebrity, is shouted at us before the shroud covered gurney has reached the street.

All thrust upon us at lightning speed,  all possible because of technology, possible because of the inter-connectedness of the world. To be heard above everyone else, everything now is a shouted headline. Not enough time for more than 140 characters.

Of course to be first, to be the quickest, there is a cost.

Competitive speeds, literally leaves no time for thought, no time for reflection, and most importantly no time to question or verify. Conclusions are reached with little or no depth to the debate, no “other side” to be heard.  It is quicker for sure, but it belies the question of whether inaccurate or timely information is better than slower and more informed.

There has been much written about the declining media presence in this country, paper-thin newspapers, all struggling for survival. Video supplanting the written word, the truism of a picture being worth a thousand words is now being fully tested.

The media tells us that there is a rapidly dwindling interest in in-depth analysis or reportage.  We want to see pictures or video they say, we want  the news in staccato bursts which hints at a fuller story. The  full story now often remains uncovered,  buried and forgotten in a few hours.  Further development of that story needs more time and effort than the news agencies are willing to give.  They scrape the surface because they say we demand it, we want to move on, there is another story coming.

They blame our inattentiveness, our clear lack of interest in all things grey. They say we demand only black and white answers.

As a result, we are now  reaching absurd levels of polarity. We seek out what will quickly fit into our version of events, our pre-conceived notions reinforced.

To get the attention of all these scrolling eyeballs one needs to scream louder, one needs to make statements that inflame or capture ones attention by being outrageous or absurd. It is the most obvious in the  Red or Blue United States: FOX news exhorting Trump as a saviour, MSNBC seeing him sitting next to Hitler.

In the more modest Canada, cheap news reigns, a deer stuck in the ice is now headline news. Fire personnel rescuing a cat replacing city or provincial legislation coverage.

In this fight over dwindling ratings, empathy fuelled stories reign supreme.  Blood and tears in 10 second increments, video the needed currency.  Youtube and hand held devices determining the news lineup.

The CTV and CBC have purged senior reporters, even video librarians, replacing them with inexperienced twenty five year olds.

Writers working up through the ranks, covering city hall, writing obituaries are no longer required. Replaced now by pretty, under 30,  gender and ethnic balanced newsrooms. The new talking heads on fifteen minute loops endlessly playing throughout the day, with the “Breaking News” banners.

Monies that used to be spent in covering detailed stories, are now being spent on staged newsrooms, filled with massive monitors, all to give an impression of being technically advanced, cutting edge, trying to appear more like NASA’s control room. The assumption is that no younger generation person can resist a screen as a background. It is  blatant to the point of being laughable.

There are five maxims of ethical journalism.

1) Truth and Accuracy.

2) Independence – where it is expected that they should not act formally, or informally on behalf of special interests whether political, cultural or corporate.

3) Fairness and impartiality – most stories have two sides, stories must be “balanced” and in “context”.

4) Humanity – in other words, it should do no harm

5) Accountability – there must be correction of errors

Which leads into the role in Canada of the CBC in all this, the government funded Liberal backed and supported Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

This tax payer funded agency in 2016/2017   had a budget of $1.09 billion.

66% of that funding comes from government, which of course means the taxpayers. Only 8% comes from subscribers and a paltry 18% from advertising. They do not need to play by the same rules of fiscal responsibility when it comes to reporting of the news.  The government-supported CBC does not have to compete on a level playing field with the privately held television networks, or the newspapers. They have the advantage.

So one would have thought that if there were any hope for sticking to the ethics and professionalism of journalism, it would be the CBC, where striving to find viewers and monies was not crucial to survival. It was hoped that this may have been the one place where some in depth reporting could emerge without the usual budgetary constraints.

Unfortunately, they may be the worst offenders.

There is one rub that has become obvious. Besides showing all the vestiges of a government agency in terms of bloat and inefficiency, they owe their very survival to the government.  Clearly they believe that they must  be loyal to the government of the day, especially when it is Liberal, regardless of the rules of ethical journalism.

Their bias is discomfiting, no longer are they being journalists, they are being conduits for current government policy, whether it be the incessant push of indigenous issues, or defence and social policy.  Their editorializing and clear bias for the Liberal party is telling, difficult for them apparently, to bite the hand that feeds you.

Examples can be found everyday, one does not need to look very deeply.

The Colten Boushie coverage was a glaring example of both the Liberal/CBC  agenda towards indigenous policy and inflamed sub-standard reporting of “systemic racism”.  The facts took a back seat to their already reached conclusions. Editorial content blurred the facts.

Their follow up in their news series the “Investigators” pushed the agenda of a “botched police investigation”, pushed clearly by the Boushie family and their legal representative. Colten’s mother, said the “RCMP did a botched-up job”.

They “investigated” and then headlined their story, splayed it nationally, and trumpeted the police investigation as being  “sloppy and negligent”.

Of course, they had very little evidence to support this, and so even went out to find experts that would confirm their version of the story.  All of their allegations centred around the interrogation of Gerald Stanley and the seizure of his clothes. Claiming that Stanley had been let to go home prior to being interviewed, and that they never seized his clothes at the time.

Both of these allegations were completely false and eventually discounted. In a ten second apology they admitted to the wrong doing. Of course the damage was done. These top notch reporters had two basic facts central to their story completely wrong. Their sources clearly had not been tested, clearly their fact checking was completely lacking.

Were they further stoking the flames of racism that they had done throughout the whole trial? Maybe the intent was not that evil. But clearly they had a bias, and clearly nothing was going to stop them in their pursuit of the truth as they perceived it. It fit with the Indigenous theme.

If this had been the NY Times the journalists would have been fired.

Investigative journalism is for the most part invisible inside this journalistic behemoth. They are no longer reporting, they are “tracking” stories to use their own terminology.

It is no coincidence that they now concentrate on those teary stories which require no work in terms of reporting. The Humboldt crash fills our screens for days on end, where their reporters ask such probing questions as “How is Humboldt surviving this crisis”? to anyone walking in front of their cameras. Days of trying to have someone speak about one of the victims, then coverage of all the funerals in all the different cities, coverage of the Go Fund me account as much as the Stock Market. They even fly in the National talking heads to sit in front of the hockey arena.

A tragic accident to be sure, but days of self flagellation is not reporting, its just easy.

If we believe that other news sources are not being competent or trustworthy, we can turn them off, or cancel our subscriptions. The CBC survive only because they are funded. And generously funded. They have lost their way, they have lost sight of  the rules of honest journalism. What is covered in terms of news is often just the regurgitated stories of other news agencies. How does the BBC for example, enjoy the journalistic reputation they have, even though they are government funded. The two are incomparable.

So you can turn the CBC off; or go to a rerun of Schitts Creek , but it is time for a serious discussion of their role and whether it has any place in the sadly dwindling Canadian journalism landscape. Maybe it is time to read the paper instead.

 

 

Photo Courtesy of Elijah van der Giessen via Flickr Commons Some Rights Reserved

Diversity vs Merit…planned discrimination?

Posted on by Pete Cross

The term, affirmative action, in the 1960’s was a dictate given to the Government of the United States under then President John Kennedy to hire or give equal opportunity to the disadvantaged, to hire “without regard for race, religion and national origin”.  It was often designed to compensate for past discrimination, persecution, or exploitation by the ruling class.

A laudable goal to be sure, as the intention was to pull up those that were disadvantaged, to take away any roadblocks that kept some down and not able to compete in the economic world of the day. It was a typical liberal policy reflective of those times, it was  “Camelot” and the Kennedy era, where equality and fairness were the principle objectives and would be emblematic of the ensuing two decades of U.S. policy. It was the era in which I grew up and came to self-identify. It was the era when governmental change was an instrument of good and it was a time when people wanted to give back.

The goal of  affirmative action advocated a generational change, a lengthy process to be sure. Not to be accomplished overnight, or even over a single Presidential term. In almost all circumstances, a formative change actually requires patience, and it requires a cultural change.

If these goals outlined by Kennedy and to a smaller extent by Pearson in Canada in the 1960s were to reach fruition, then there needed to be education and time. Politicians being what they are in our democratic and fixed term systems are not patient, they want to see and boast about change in shorter windows of time. Long term planning or even projecting out for 10 years is difficult if not impossible, and there in lies the rub.

So “affirmative action” and what it came to mean began to evolve, mainly to suit political need for instant gratification.  They needed to force the issue, to put persons into roles or jobs, or education, earlier than generational change would allow.  Qualifications, or deservedness would have to take a back seat. That some tolerance be built into the selection process, that qualifications be bent and sometimes lowered so that these persons could immediately or quickly fill these roles.

In other words instead of all boats rising with the tide, it became necessary to “favour” certain groups. This re-interpretation of the meaning of affirmative action was not a subtle change, it was one which has had a massive ripple effect.

The world began to follow suit.  Some countries, including the U.S. even began to use a quota system, where a certain percentage of government jobs, political positions, and school vacancies were reserved for specific  members of certain politically chosen groups. And this continues to this day.

Of course this by definition means that not everyone is treated equally and it would be only a matter of time, before some took umbrage with a system, which by its very nature excludes certain individuals, albeit usually the more advantaged groups.

So in most recent years, it has been generally true that countries where there are laws dictating racial and gender “equality”, many of these affirmative action programs which had dictated quotas were now declared illegal. The U.S. courts in particular saying that affirmative action programs  dictate that not all persons are treated equally, and therefore should not be allowed.

However there are countries in the world where quotas are still allowed, and have been used, and continue to be used extensively.

Nathan Glazer in the Harvard Crimson argues that the quota system divides people into categories, into racial, ethnic, and gender profiles. And benefits, and penalties would now adhere to these various compartments. “People would try to advance on the basis of group membership rather than individual capacity”.

In Canada, the politicos sensing some possible rejection of affirmative action and quotas,  began to use a new term, something they believed to be less offensive.  So we now have been programmed to accept the new “diversity”. Diversity, is defined as “the condition of having or being composed of different elements”. The Miriam dictionary then goes on to say that it can mean”the inclusion of different types of people, (such as people of different races or culture)”.

It is government speak for affirmative action in general, and they have replaced the likely illegal “quotas”, with “goals” or “targets”. They play to the “disadvantaged” groups, to try and counter balance a legally tenuous position. There is little argument to the fact that affirmative action is in fact discriminatory. Discrimination defined as “treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favour of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather on individual merit”.

But whether one agrees or not, we have a government who has become fixated with the need for “diversification.”

Of course the real balancing act is how far does one swing the pendulum, how far and to what level  is for instance, is one prepared to ignore merit in favour of ethnicity, or gender, or a visible minority.  Practically, in terms of hiring or university admissions, it is difficult to give specific policy or guidance as to how one needs to approach the problem without stepping over the line. How does one apply goals or targets without imposing quotas? Very few politicians and bureaucrats seem capable of reflection, they approach it like a quota, easier to apply, and easier to boast about their numbers.

In 2016, the Federal government announced a new appointment process for boards, agencies, tribunals, officers of Parliament and Crown Corporations. It specified that “diversity” was the goal, while it opened up the applications to the public. In other words, it did not set or say the word “quota”  per se but encouraged the government mandarins, and put them on notice that they would be measured by their attempts and delivery of “diversity”.

According to this same article, the Privy Counsel office has now released its numbers so that of the 429 appointments that have been made to date since 2016; 56.6 per cent women, 11.2 per cent were visible minorities, and 9.6 per cent were indigenous.

It then goes on to prove its point by counting the numbers:  48.3 % women, 16.1 per cent minorities, and 6.5 per cent indigenous. In Canada it points out, there is actually 50.9 per cent women, 22.3 per cent visible minorities, and 4.9 per cent indigenous. They are not arguing a generational change, they are pointing to their targeted “goals”, their “quotas” having been met. There is no other way of explaining it. Are we to believe that in one year, more indigenous people, or more visible minorities have been in a position to apply for more governmental posts because of improvements in their education or in their qualifications. That would be difficult to believe. It is far more likely they have been pulled up to fulfill a quota.

Justin Trudeau often brags about his “diverse cabinet”.  What he actually means is that his cabinet has been chosen in a quota system. Today in the news, the CBC headlines the fact that the Canadian government is now beginning to be as “diverse as Canada”.

Wendy Cukier, who is the director of Ryerson University “Diversity Institute” is happy with the numbers and lauds PM Trudeau for having made “great strides on gender”. She would like us to believe that in a year period, more females became more qualified for various jobs because there was “equal opportunity” got those jobs. Or is it possible that they were told to fill more positions with women regardless of merit?

This is playing out in every walk of governmental life. In policing we went through the quota hiring of women, and various visible minorities over the years. Every government department Provincially and Federally has fallen in line with this type of quota hiring.

Persons are gaining management positions, or being accepted into specialized jobs, not because they are the best person for the job, but by the fact there application is being skewed in their favour, sometimes to a large degree; skewed by their colour of their skin or their gender. It is troubling, for example, if a hospital is hiring a doctor, should merit not be the only single factor?

There are those that would put a strong argument in favour of “quota” hiring as a way of righting the wrongs of the past. If one accepts this principle, one is in effect accepting and proposing one level of discrimination, to right the wrongs of a historical discrimination. But be it as it may, my argument is that if the government of the day feels that this is acceptable, then at the very least they should be honest in their intentions.  It should not be allowed to be portrayed as an equal playing field to the general public. It is not.

Where “diversity” is a stated goal and gender or sex is part of the selection criteria it should be stated clearly. People should know that if you are applying for a police force as an example, other factors are coming into play, including the colour of your skin and your gender, and they should be told what is the given priority, and how it would affect their application.

An issue that also naturally evolves from this process is the growing need to determine if there are some significant after effects to this practise. If one continues to hire under qualified people, does the job suffer, does the output suffer? If they are not the best people for the job, is the job being done in the proper manner? If one throws out merit, or lessens merit in a bureaucratic system, does advancement and morale suffer?

We are now in a position where we have to question both the deserved and the undeserved. When you know the hiring process, and the priorities of government, it makes one question, why or how someone was chosen for this job. It may reflect badly on the person holding the job, tainted by this quota policy, even in cases where in fact it was deserved.

Were members of Trudeau’s cabinet chosen because they were the best for the job, or because they met his mandated quotas and play to his constituencies for whom he wants to be seen as the saviour. Women voters, non-visible minorities, and the up and coming indigenous groups are the stronghold of the Liberals, the bastion they hope to win over in future elections. The answer seems obvious.  Trudeau and the Liberals are engaging in obvious vote buying, and the Conservatives and the NDP are trying to do the same and get in on the action.

They are all playing politics to a high level, and it is costing this country. Merit has been given a back seat, “diversity” is the mantra being extolled by every politician from every pulpit. Do not challenge or you will be portrayed as a racist.

One could point out that the apartheid government in South Africa, as a matter of state policy favoured white-owned, especially Afrikaner owned companies.  It was clearly in place  to prolong white rule and power, and this quota system was discriminatory and the world celebrated its eventual downfall. But any quota system is discriminatory, the only thing that changes is the target of that discrimination.

I believe that when merit is given such short shrift, when merit becomes secondary to optics, everyone loses. We become compartmentalized. My stand is the one echoed by Nathan Glazer in that affirmative action, as it was originally intended is still a worthwhile intention. However,  quotas, thinly disguised as “targets” or “goals” should not be acceptable at any level, whether being practised by your government or your workplace.

And if you think some level of discrimination is o.k., then at least have the backbone to articulate and specify who in society you wish to treat as more equal than others. And then let the public decide.

 

Photo Courtesy of Creative Commons via Flckr by Edyta Mazur – Some Rights Reserved

And then there were none….

Posted on by Pete Cross

Last night I re-watched the 1976 movie “All the Presidents Men”; the story of an investigative journalistic effort that led to the discovery of the illegal activities of The Committee to Re-Elect, and then to President Richard Nixon himself. In the end there were many guilty pleas, and the resignation of the President himself. The two year long investigative reporting was unprecedented, and may be never duplicated in our current climate as we head forward, where we seem to only want news fixes, like a junkie in the alley looking for a cap of heroin. We want this short burst of adrenalin laced news feeding our eyes and not our heads, before we duly nod off.

The parallels to the situation in the U.S. in 1974 to today, become obvious upon review, almost startling. The Trump presidency is difficult to even fathom, but in no way do I think that Trump and the family lackeys who are already proven liars, are not capable of further deception, not capable of illegalities, in order to maintain their power.

The positive side of this, in some backward fashion, at least in the short term, has been the rejuvenation of an active and determined group of journalists who have now tasted blood. They have the resources, and the experience to both confront the administration and write about it. Even more importantly, they seem to have the backbone necessary to withstand the onslaught of government power run amok, who try to bend, or deny each and every story with a spin that is both dangerous and sometimes laughable.

The Washington Post and the New York Times seem to be the central figures in this relentless daily battle with the truth. Both are decorated newspapers. The Washington Post with Woodward and Bernstein were the central figures in the Watergate matters in 1974, which brought down Nixon. And here again the Post is providing in-depth laudatory coverage of the daily crisis, which is the Trump Whitehouse.

Before Trump, both newspapers were in financial trouble, both cutting personnel and funding. Since Trump, their subscriptions have increased and they have been given a temporary respite from the unenviable and seemingly inevitible dwindling of subscriptions.

The sourcing of their stories, and protecting those stories is relentless. Anybody with an interest in how to conduct, and source investigations should take note. This is not an easy undertaking, their jobs are often on the line should they misspeak or be wrong in any of their reportage.

Where is television in all of this?  Unfortunately, in the last few years, it is trying to re-invent itself, it has become a medium, not a message. They are consumed with banner headlines, breathless “breaking news” but make no mistake, and they seem to have abandoned the time and effort needed for investigative reporting. Their  “news” is no longer journalism.

In an effort to capture the attention of the latest generation, they have come to believe, maybe correctly that this generation is only capable of 30 second attention spans. Therefore anything on video, twitter, Facebook, or trending on YouTube is re-invented as the news regardless of its worth. A good video of a cat up a tree jumps the news queue and becomes headline material. It is cheaply available, and citizens with their phones have become their “stringers” in the field, at no significant cost.

In covering Potus, the TV news groups; CNN, Fox, CBS etc. are for the most part reporting what the newspapers are writing, then putting a lot of talking heads around a dais to pontificate about it.  The more outrageous the talking head, the better the chance of capturing the eyes of the viewing public so we get the likes of Kelly-anne Conway spinning ludicrous analysis and misinformation about the latest Presidential gaff posing as policy.

In many ways, this President has mastered Twitter and the wants of the new age, and has reduced governing to a sitcom. His statements, such as the one where he talks about grabbing women by the genitals, is outrageous, but it goes no further than that, the outrageousness is the news, not the meaning or the implications.  The United States reputation around the world is now tarnished, and may not recover for some time. The United States is now reduced to being a large military with an unstable leader. Sound familiar?

Of course this lack of investigational interest is all applicable to Canada, with its smaller population concentrated around the cities and the borders with the U.S., our television is a smaller mirror image of the U.S. It is astonishing to see how much the CBC National news coverage now revolves around the U.S. trending stories. In  the last couple of days, hours of repetitive footage of the hurricane stories. Here they are able to rollick in the abundance of 10 second videos that are available showing  bent over palm trees, shot through a rain covered lens;  and of course always maintaining a look out for  a “Canadian” located in the centre of the storm to give them some relevancy to Canada.

I am not saying this big story should not be reported, but it should not be all consuming. Are there no issues in Canada worthy of some form of journalism? Of course there are, but they are hampered by this new age of video at all costs, and dwindling funds to conduct those stories. A journalistic Catch-22.

As I opined before, television should be written off as a model of investigative journalism as it simply does not exist at any measurable level, nor is it even possible in their new corporate mission statements.

Newspapers in Canada are in equally dire straits, The Globe and Mail, although business oriented still is the bell-weather of Canada’s newspapers, today they announced a couple of further layoffs.

But the other problem, although we are a highly literate country, is that we are no longer reading.

The newest generation has fallen prey to the love of convenience, wanting summaries, not depth in their reporting. Coles Notes versions, not the details. They need to be constantly fed only enough for them to form an opinion in a few seconds, and damn the details.

Of course, the devil has always been in the details.

This leaves us susceptible to being victimized by misleading or downright false reporting. We are often misled by the headlines, and only when one chooses to read the whole article does it make sense, and it is usually a more calm explanation than advertised.

We are manipulated as a result. Our own governmental agencies have learned that if they issue singular statements of little meaning, it goes unquestioned. The reporters can not be bothered to check the truthfulness of the statement as they are being pre-empted and diverted to a story which may have caught the attention of YouTube and the assignment editor. If you don’t believe me, check out what is currently trending on Youtube, or what the top 10 stories are on Reddit.

Justin Trudeau gives speech after speech making generalized statements of fixing this problem or the next. It goes un-examined for the most part, but we will get pics or video of his latest selfie canoeing, or of him photo bombing a wedding. It makes me think that Trudeau may be a Canadian version of Trump, one who has mastered social media, but but not the relevant issues, but he is young, photogenic and polite. The left in the United States think he is god like, as they too are only reading the headlines. He is a former high school drama teacher, born with a famous name and reputation, how could we not be concerned about what he actually understands.

As experienced journalists are being replaced by the young, the photogenic, who stand in front of endless monitors and fast-moving graphics (I assume it is their attempt to show they are on the cutting edge of technology), and push buttons which play the latest newly trending video.

And now the Americans have confirmed that the Russians and other intelligence agencies have figured this out. You just need to put out the headlines, no need for details, nothing gets checked.

Facebook just revealed the confirmation of false ads, a total of 3000 from 470 “dark accounts”, during the American election, in-directly tied to the Russians, and aimed at altering the election to a candidate they feel they can manipulate. Despite some intrepid reporting a few months ago which Facebook initially denied, it was not until two days ago that Facebook admitted to the problem. The New York Times summed it up by saying “we are in the midst of a world wide, internet-based assault on democracy”.

None of this sounds good, or leaves much room for optimism.

Will we go back to newspapers, unlikely?  Will television be simply a stopping off point where they re-package video? Likely.

There is no immediate answer to these changing times, but this generation does need to question, and it needs to go deeper than Twitter; our democracy depends on it, and we will lose faith if truth becomes the first casualty.

Photo Courtesy of : Razvan Orendovichi via Flickr Creative Commons licence

 

 

 

An apology to my faithful but few readers

Posted on by Pete Cross

In the last few weeks there has been a lack of output from your faithful scribe, for two reasons.  The first is the inability to force myself to sit in front of a computer, which is  a human fraility, the failure to be disciplined. Instead, I have been enjoying the comforts of a warm summer; bbq’s, still and sultry nights, family members coming together, shorts and flip flops. But in my defence, I did feel a twinge of guilt.

The second reason is that about mid-August, just as I was being pulled back to the laptop, unannounced,  I was forced to undertake an investigation into the Canadian medical health care system; having being literally forced to my knees by sudden acute sciatica. A few weeks of intense pain has a way of taking away your ability to concentrate, and did not even allow me to sit in front of the afore mentioned computer. I am not looking for sympathy, just trying to justify my lack of written output.

My medical investigation so far by the way, has revealed that although better than the third world without a doubt, I have some serious questions on the costs of our system, and the eventual medical outcomes. I have concluded that you are your own best diagnostician, and the enormous monies being spent are feeding some segments but not others.  After two emergency room visits surrounded by crying babies, alcoholics, and drug addicts with their often ill-defined problems, and an ambulance ride where we discussed poor pay and our mutual dislike of firemen, I was left wondering where all the money that goes into health care. Is it really finding its way to where it is needed? But that is for another time and blog.

So now, still on crutches, and probably destined for a life style change which incorporates physiotherapy for the duration of it, I have been re-defined, and find myself in need of the succour of writing. When I first started this sometimes moving target blog I wondered if I would find enough issues which would inspire me to undertake and dedicate myself to a daily writing process.

Rest assured. That has not been the case. Quite the opposite actually as I, like you, are continuously being bombarded by “breaking news”.

There is the continual distraction of the bombastic, idiotic, and war mongering U.S. President, who can not put a grammatical sentence together. But that aside here are the few things that are of interest to me.

Hurricane Harvey in Houston happened a few weeks after BC was declaring the whole province a state of Emergency due to wildfires. Stunning photographs from Houston, while here, thousands of people evacuated under growing frustration with the process itself. Emergency planning as exercised in this Province, I think needs to be placed under a microscope. Hidden behind the “rescues” and the “hero” stories there is a need for an audit, a need for some non-emotional analysis.

In Ottawa, the Indigenous inquiry is proving to be a political disaster and at the very least, as predicted, will be an ineffectual exercise. But the Liberals push on, now making two departments in the Federal government to deal with indigenous affairs, rather than INAC.  Billions of dollars in expenditures seem to be on the horizon, apparently without a smidgen of opposition.

Also in Ottawa, Senator Mike Duffy, guilty of gouging the system legally and lacking any ethical and moral compass, he is now suing the RCMP and the Federal Government for $8 million. I suspect he is going to get a payout, due to an inferior RCMP investigation of which I have some personal knowledge, and an investigation which was wrapped in political interference.

Locally, Surrey and the surrounding areas seem to have a new drug war developing. So what else is new you ask?  Meanwhile, IHIT (Integrated Homicide and Investigation Team) at last count solving only 6 out of 36 murders this year.  I am hearing rumblings that the officers in the Unit itself, are now questioning the effectiveness of their own organization.

The daily Fentanyl news coverage has now dwindled from public view, the news agencies finally running out of variations on the theme of reporting the “crisis”.  A sense of acceptance seems to have taken hold in the general public.

The Mounties still have no Commissioner, still awaiting for a large committee of eight politicos led by ex-Premier Frank McKenna to render their decision. I wonder what that will all cost, and what direction will the new Commissioner take this organization.

And in a more comic and reflective vein, the CBC, could not make a decision on who to replace the venerable Peter Mansbridge. Instead, and I can just picture the boardroom meeting, they have chosen to not pick a singular person, but to pick four possible persons.  Why use one, when you can use four for the same job? And the genius of course, is that the four will represent the gender and ethnic groups that are now championed throughout the Federal government.

So there are just a few of the things that interest me and my wandering mind (and it may be the medication) …. I will keep you posted.

Photo courtesy of Enric Fradera via Flickr at Creative Commons