Democracy and Parliament not sidestepped, only suspended

We would like to thank Con MP Brent Rathgeber for that lovely explanation of Steve's dismissal of parliament - first ignoring its will and then proroguing it - and move on to how the media props up that contempt by ignoring it.

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With a little help from his friends ...

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As pointed out by POGGE here and here, CBC and CTV/CanWest both blew their year-end interviews with Steve.

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Mansbridge took a stab at getting some explanation from Steve on why he prorogued parliament but then allows Steve to blow him off with bafflegab about how Canadians don't care about it anyway. The question Mansbridge should have asked is why Steve is ignoring a parliamentary motion to hand over unredacted documents on the Afghan detainees and did he shut down parliament to avoid doing so?

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At least Mansbridge gave it a shot. In their year end interview, the CTV/CanWest tagteam of John Ivison and David Akin don't even mention proroguing or detainees, never mind ignoring the will of parliament. They just skip the whole friggin thing. In fact their interview, which ran in the National Post, opens with this :

IVISON: "Prime Minister, it seems there is not going to be much for us to write about, unless there are Senate appointments in our near future."

Yup, year end review, not much goin' on here right now. What ever will we write about?

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In his blog entry : Interviewing Harper: What to ask? Why not ask about prorogation? David Akin explains that Mansbidge already covered that issue - no, David, clearly he did not - and that they did not have much time to ask questions that could be rewritten up by their affiliate papers :

"[T]he goal for Canwest, at least, is to leave the interview with a story that the local editors of the Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen and other Canwest papers would find interesting enough that they would make (valuable) space for in their papers."

Yet within that admittedly short 13 minutes there was apparently ample time for questions like this :

AKIN: Do (you) see yourself in a decade -- you may not be prime minister -- do you see a career for yourself after this? I don't sense you're the board of directors type but I don't know, maybe you are -- an academic? What do you want to do? Where are you in a decade?"

Steve in a decade? Who gives a rat's ass? We want to know where our parliament is right now.

Akin responds in comments at Pogge's.

Happily the conservative US UK mag The Economist, in two separate articles, goes straight to the heart of what the Canadian media to a truly frightening degree ignores :

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Harper goes prorogue

Parliamentary scrutiny may be tedious, but democracies cannot afford to dispense with it

Never mind what his spin doctors say: Mr Harper’s move looks like naked self-interest.
His officials faced grilling by parliamentary committees over whether they misled the House of Commons in denying knowledge that detainees handed over to the local authorities by Canadian troops in Afghanistan were being tortured.

A legislature matters more than the luge
Mr Harper is a competent tactician with a ruthless streak. He bars most ministers from talking to the media; he has axed some independent watchdogs; he has binned campaign promises to make government more open and accountable. Now he is subjecting Parliament to prime-ministerial whim. He may be right that most Canadians care more about the luge than the legislature, but that is surely true only while their decent system of government is in good hands. They may soon conclude that it isn’t.

Canada without Parliament - Halted in mid-debate

Stephen Harper is counting on Canadians’ complacency as he rewrites the rules of his country’s politics to weaken legislative scrutiny.

The danger in allowing the prime minister to end discussion any time he chooses is that it makes Parliament accountable to him rather than the other way around.
It is now up to [the opposition] to show that Canada cannot afford a part-time Parliament that sits only at the prime minister’s pleasure.

One would hope it would also be a matter of some concern to the Fourth Estate.

CANADIANS AGAINST PROROGUING PARLIAMENT - 92,000 120,000 140,000 and counting ...
On Facebook .

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Canwest, Natty Post, CBC ... and Goldman Sachs

Canada's largest media company, Canwest Global Communications, aka AsperMedia, filed for bankruptcy protection on Tuesday in a deal that essentially would hand control to its US creditors :

"Canwest reached a deal with a key group of lenders - mainly U.S. and foreign distressed funds that own most of the company's bonds - which will give them control of most of the restructured media company. Current shareholders would own just 2.3 per cent of the shares of the new Canwest, effectively wiping out most of their value."

The filing covers Global TV and the National Post but thus far not Canwest LP - Canwest's major daily newspapers across Canada - or its 15 money-making tv specialty channels whose profit rose 41% to $53-million in the most recent quarter over last year.

In January 2007, Goldman Sachs - this Goldman Sachs - bankrolled 64% of Leonard Asper's purchase of of 13 Alliance Atlantis specialty TV channels :

"a level far above Canadian foreign media ownership limits. However the CRTC approved the deal after the partners persuaded it that Canwest - not its giant Wall Street financial partner - would have effective operating control of the TV channels."

On the other hand, as the G&M Investor blog Streetwise reported yesterday (italics mine):

"Financiers working with Goldman said that over the past year, the investment bank put forward programming ideas for the TV networks, and offered strategic advice on restructuring, but was ignored by CanWest management and its creditors.

One concept that’s been tossed around, but couldn’t move forward until CanWest recapitalization was set, would see Goldman Sachs provide programming and financial support to the conventional television network as part of a larger deal that reworks the entire ownership structure to more closely align all the TV holdings.

There are three hedge funds driving the CanWest restructuring, and two of them are U.S. money managers: GoldenTree Asset Management, Beach Point Capital Management, along with Toronto-based West Face Capital Inc. ... These funds are also Goldman Sachs clients."

So, CRTC, you still good with this?
Goldman Sachs was not supposed to interfere with the programmimg of the Food Network but now expects to "provide programming and financial support" to local TV news stations?

More complications : The National Post - which never misses a chance to slag the CBC - and the CBC are now sharing content :

"The Post [will] republish CBC sports stories in the online National Post and sometimes in the newspaper. The CBC will run daily financial stories and podcasts from the Financial Post in cbc.ca’s Money section."

Translation : the publicly funded CBC will move further right as promised to run corporate news daily, while the privately owned Natty Post will now be partly funded by our tax dollars.

And those remaining 12 national and 26 community Canwest papers?
Paul Godfrey, CEO of the National Post, says he has found backers for a buyout of them.
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Who will own what we think now?
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