A lot of ink has been spilled over the death spiral of the legacy media and why this is happening.
Standing in the middle of the wreckage is the CRTC and the Broadcasting Act, which are also relics from simpler times. Rather than scrutinize the relevance of these bureaucratic tools for the digital age, the Liberals are retooling them in feeble attempts to manage the digital age.
We know where this is heading. The public square is already suffering from a lack of respectful dialogue between multiple points of view. The authoritarian streak in this Government doesn’t like dialogue between competing visions and it is very dangerous to position an unelected group of bureaucrats to police content and decide what Canadians will be allowed to see and hear.
The pandemic has taught us lessons about group think and why it is appropriate for dissenting voices to be heard. Sometimes the dissenting voices are the ones who see things clearly.
I smiled a bit when I read the article on Harjit Sajjan being to busy to read his emails during the Afghanistan withdrawal. I’d be interested in hearing exactly how he was getting his updates. Canada Post no doubt. Anyone at this level of management would know that there certainly isn’t enough time to take in all that data over the phone so email becomes imperative as it can be easily prioritized. This man may go down in history as the most incompetent minister in the history of Canadian Parliament. No small feat that.
When Matt and Jen they were talking about bill C11, its vagueness and likely abuse in the future.
Matt - “The conspiracies are always wrong because it always assumes malign intent and hyper-competency, its the opposite, its good intent and incompetency”
Jen - “it is the fundamental flaw with every Canadian Government regardless of political stripe”
I thought those comments really hit the nail on the head…. Keep up the great work!!
One aspect of the deleterious influence of the CBC, and rarely mentioned, is that its lavish funding has the effect of stifling criticism of the current administration
Think about it.
Anyone who toils in the private sector media will be acutely aware that their hold on their position is tenuous and that all it takes is a bad earnings report for their position to be the victim of a corporate reorganization.
At the same time, it will have escaped no one in the business that the shining house on the hill, the state propaganda organ, aka the CBC, is flush with cash.
Sign on there and your days of financial worry are behind you.
Toe the party line and you can coast to retirement and a lavish pension on a salary and benefits you could only dream about in the private sector.
And no need to worry about remaining on the top of your game. As long as you are ideologically correct, the fail up principle will protect you even as you descend into irredeemable mediocrity and spend your days writing the rank puff pieces that the central committee orders.
But the openings are few and the candidates many!
How are you going to one of the chosen few who gets to sign on and put their financial worries behind them?
By pressing the PM and his Keystone Cops cabinet for answers on the hard issues of the day? By taking at face value the adage that the role of the media is to call the powerful to account?
Or, given we live in the real world, do you stand a better chance of landing a sinecure at the CBC by becoming known for fawning, supine, adulatory, coverage of the PM and his sorry and supremely talentless front bench that would make even the reporters at Rodong Sinmun blush in shame?
Defund the CBC and let it compete for audience like every other media outlet has to.
Thomas, I enjoyed your comment but I recommend two things (well, at least two things): a) yes, defund the CBC; and b) remove government ownership of the CBC by selling it in an IPO.
As long as the government owns the CBC, no matter the funding from outside, there will be an impulse to seek favor from the owners and, perhaps, just perhaps!, obtain some "temporary," "transitional," "periodic," "non-continuing," etc. funding. And, what future government (particularly a future Liberal government) would allow it's own broadcaster to founder for lack of cash?
The only way to ensure that the vile creature that is the current CBC is dealt with finally is to sell it off. Further, that gazillion dollars a year has purchased much in the way of real estate and equipment, etc. of considerable value so we do want to get something back. Hence, an IPO.
And, yes, you can prior to the IPO separate out the northern service (or whatever they call it now), Radio Canada, etc., etc. so that you sell of that which is appropriate to sell and keep that which is appropriate to keep. Who knows? Perhaps, RC would also do well as an IPO. Don't know but CBC English? Yup. Get rid of that dawg.
As always, I enjoyed the newsletter and, particularly, the video.
On the other hand, Jen, I am definitely depressed that you knew of neither The Travelling Wilburys nor the particular members. I mean really! Not knowing Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty et al!! One of a few possibilities: a) you are funning us; b) you are really only fifteen years old [and with the age of your kids, we have to send to cops to interview your husband!]; c) you do not partake and never have partaken of popular music whatsoever. Which is it?
Now, for a spelling correction. You say, "And the Ottawa theme park is having a heck of a week." In fact, I submit, the correct spelling should make the sentence read, "And the Ottawa theme park is having a heck of a weak."
Finally, Harjit Sajjan. I, as with Matt [and I am certain, Jen], understand the concept of email overload. On the other hand, presumably a Minister of the Crown receives important emails in addition to the regular junk that we all receive. Said Minister of the Crown has innumerable flunkies at his beck and call and surely at least one such flunky could be given the responsibility to monitor the email feed and bring to the attention of said Minister of the Crown important communications. That is NOT asking too much and, accordingly, Matt, I am absolutely not willing to give anywhere near a pass to Sajjan.
Sajjan has proven once again his lack of competence. At the risk of being excommunicated from The Line, I have to wonder if his staying power in cabinet - albeit in a reduced role - relates primarily to his ethnicity; it certainly does not relate to his ability to carry out the job to which he was appointed.
It used to be that people were appointed to Cabinet on the assumption that their backgrounds would enable them to bring competence and experience to their portfolios.
Today people are appointed without regard to their competence (they have none) but simply on a consideration of the blocks of votes they can deliver to the party.
Minister Sajjan can be counted on to deliver an important block of votes and as long as that remains the case the Liberals will never cashier him despite his obvious unfitness, for lack of talent, to hold high office.
Go through the ranks of the Liberal Cabinet and the story is the same.
And no one should expect this to change when in some distant decade from now the Natural Governing Party concedes power to the Tories.
I am still bothered that Jen had not heard of the Travelling Wilburys as a group or the individual members:
Jeff Lynne: OK, I liked ELO more than most people but his name is not well known
Roy Orbison: I love Roy but his hits were all in the 1960s.
Tom Petty: Hard to believe his name would not be recognized with all his hits.
Bob Dylan: Now hos could Jen not know Bob Dylan? He has been a successful musician for 60 years. He won a Nobel Prize!
George Harrison: Now this is the impossible admission. How could Jen's children not know George Harrison? He had a nice solo career but before that he was in a very popluar band from Liverpool called The Beatles. Jen, you should check out their music on Spotify.
Back in 2010 or thereabouts I ran into a consultant's report, commissioned by the CBC, which assessed the impact of funding the CBC in terms of jobs created. It concluded that nowhere else in the economy would a $1.1 billion expenditure of public funds create as great an impact on employment as it would if the funds were directed to the CBC.
Even the most junior policy analyst would have concluded, rather, that the CBC is greatly over-staffed.
Wow PSAC that’s a new way to strike! Be on strike and get paid. Why end it? The workers aren’t suffering. The government not overly concerned about passports etc. Usually the scabs can be separated and identified easily from the workers who stop work for NO PAY. Ahh but it’s just taxpayer suckers suffering -once again.
I enjoyed the podcast but will admit to some surprise on hearing Jen ask why Trudeau is the point on the Sudan issue.
As she correctly points out it would make sense for either the Minister of Defence or Foreign Affairs to be the point on this issue.
But has Jen really not grasped that Trudeau fears nothing more than the emergence of an heir apparent in his ranks and that, like all mediocrities, his first priority is to surround himself with people who have even less talent than himself? Admittedly, that is hard to do but they are out there, as ex Minister Maryam and Minister Harjit prove conclusively.
That explains why our gormless PM, manifestly incapable of managing one of those chip wagons that show up on Parliament Hill on Canada Day, is the point on, well, everything really.
Woe betide the highest poppies in the field as long as our Junior remains on the throne.
Thank you for this (and a shout-out to you for underscoring how well our military forces can do, despite all of the incompetence we see from senior bureaucrats and, more fundamentally, our politicians).
On an unrelated note, I was very pleased with the analysis of Alberta's "progressive conservatives" that was done last week by Jared Wesley and Ken Boessenkool. Perhaps we could have some equally penetrating analysis the so-called Conservatives of Pierre Poilievre.
Yes, I know they are the official opposition, and therefore not really responsible for very much these days. Nonetheless, I think learning more about who they purport to be and who they actually are might be helpful, as Canadians keen to "overboard" the dreadful Trudeau Liberals could vote for something that the Conservatives are not.
At the moment, the Conservative Party of Canada is little different from the Liberals they so love to pillory, in that it is nothing like what it claims to be.
PS: After having read Karamveer Lalh's follow-up to what Wesley and Boessenkool wrote last week, I still agree with their view that Danielle Smith is not a Conservative.
Lalh's claim, that "Danielle Smith offers a clear vision of Alberta’s narrative... [suggesting that it] has long been overshadowed by central Canada’s power centres, catering to the whims of the Laurentian elite... [and that this story] of Alberta is immensely popular with Albertans", does not clinch the "Smith as Conservative" argument.
I think I understand why he took this tack, as it matches something he raised elsewhere in his article (that W & B's assertion about Alberta under the Progressive Conservatives--that they have always supported Conservative incrementalism). Lalh credibly tossed that notion out by invoking Ralph Klein, who surely was a populist and a libertarian.
But that still doesn't make his claim about Smith credible.
She is what W & B suggested: A libertarian "antinomian" (love the word, BTW).
On a completely different matter, it is interesting how difficult it is to find the video podcast on YouTube. A search told me the most recent was from March. Only by coming to the substack was I able to watch the video - which says it is on YouTube...... are they playing funny games with you?
"All Canadians have to do to ensure our unique perspective is heard in the world is simply to produce interesting stuff that an audience wants to consume."
What this misses is the huge role that platforms and their algorithms play in determining how big an audience a content provider finds. The criteria changes and is opaque; content creators can find their audience grows or falls dramatically based on decisions made by the platforms.
So, what's in short supply now is access to people's attention and that's controlled by a small number of privately-owned global platforms.
There are probably two remedies for this. The first is to regulate some algorithmic transparency. Users and content creators should understand why content gets served. We should have a right to know, given the significant impact.
The alternative is to create publically owned platforms that do offer algorithmic transparency. Think of public, transparent alternatives to current social and media platforms. It could provide a conduit for Canadian content creators telling 'our stories' to Canadian (and global) audiences. It's probably what the CBC should become.
It would be interesting for a public alternative to not be a Crown corporation but instead be something funded by the government that operates as a bit of a co-op model, with content creators actively participating in governance within certain guidelines. Maybe Canada could offer a new model for these platforms that others might be interested in adopting?
“We hate to be so snarky, and so cynical. Honestly we do.”
Have to admit I laughed out loud when I read this. I’ve kinda always assumed that was the tagline on The Line business cards ( if you have business cards). “We may be snarky, but only because we’re cynical “
More and more it looks like Canadians political and cultural elite are living in the past, screaming at clouds as the world passes them by. They are yesterday's important people becoming less relevant as time moves on. The world certainly thinks so.
No wonder Canada has had such 2nd rate leadership from our elites for such a long time.
Re:Bill C-11
A lot of ink has been spilled over the death spiral of the legacy media and why this is happening.
Standing in the middle of the wreckage is the CRTC and the Broadcasting Act, which are also relics from simpler times. Rather than scrutinize the relevance of these bureaucratic tools for the digital age, the Liberals are retooling them in feeble attempts to manage the digital age.
We know where this is heading. The public square is already suffering from a lack of respectful dialogue between multiple points of view. The authoritarian streak in this Government doesn’t like dialogue between competing visions and it is very dangerous to position an unelected group of bureaucrats to police content and decide what Canadians will be allowed to see and hear.
The pandemic has taught us lessons about group think and why it is appropriate for dissenting voices to be heard. Sometimes the dissenting voices are the ones who see things clearly.
I smiled a bit when I read the article on Harjit Sajjan being to busy to read his emails during the Afghanistan withdrawal. I’d be interested in hearing exactly how he was getting his updates. Canada Post no doubt. Anyone at this level of management would know that there certainly isn’t enough time to take in all that data over the phone so email becomes imperative as it can be easily prioritized. This man may go down in history as the most incompetent minister in the history of Canadian Parliament. No small feat that.
The Line podcast April 29th 2023 - 8:15
When Matt and Jen they were talking about bill C11, its vagueness and likely abuse in the future.
Matt - “The conspiracies are always wrong because it always assumes malign intent and hyper-competency, its the opposite, its good intent and incompetency”
Jen - “it is the fundamental flaw with every Canadian Government regardless of political stripe”
I thought those comments really hit the nail on the head…. Keep up the great work!!
One aspect of the deleterious influence of the CBC, and rarely mentioned, is that its lavish funding has the effect of stifling criticism of the current administration
Think about it.
Anyone who toils in the private sector media will be acutely aware that their hold on their position is tenuous and that all it takes is a bad earnings report for their position to be the victim of a corporate reorganization.
At the same time, it will have escaped no one in the business that the shining house on the hill, the state propaganda organ, aka the CBC, is flush with cash.
Sign on there and your days of financial worry are behind you.
Toe the party line and you can coast to retirement and a lavish pension on a salary and benefits you could only dream about in the private sector.
And no need to worry about remaining on the top of your game. As long as you are ideologically correct, the fail up principle will protect you even as you descend into irredeemable mediocrity and spend your days writing the rank puff pieces that the central committee orders.
But the openings are few and the candidates many!
How are you going to one of the chosen few who gets to sign on and put their financial worries behind them?
By pressing the PM and his Keystone Cops cabinet for answers on the hard issues of the day? By taking at face value the adage that the role of the media is to call the powerful to account?
Or, given we live in the real world, do you stand a better chance of landing a sinecure at the CBC by becoming known for fawning, supine, adulatory, coverage of the PM and his sorry and supremely talentless front bench that would make even the reporters at Rodong Sinmun blush in shame?
Defund the CBC and let it compete for audience like every other media outlet has to.
Thomas, I enjoyed your comment but I recommend two things (well, at least two things): a) yes, defund the CBC; and b) remove government ownership of the CBC by selling it in an IPO.
As long as the government owns the CBC, no matter the funding from outside, there will be an impulse to seek favor from the owners and, perhaps, just perhaps!, obtain some "temporary," "transitional," "periodic," "non-continuing," etc. funding. And, what future government (particularly a future Liberal government) would allow it's own broadcaster to founder for lack of cash?
The only way to ensure that the vile creature that is the current CBC is dealt with finally is to sell it off. Further, that gazillion dollars a year has purchased much in the way of real estate and equipment, etc. of considerable value so we do want to get something back. Hence, an IPO.
And, yes, you can prior to the IPO separate out the northern service (or whatever they call it now), Radio Canada, etc., etc. so that you sell of that which is appropriate to sell and keep that which is appropriate to keep. Who knows? Perhaps, RC would also do well as an IPO. Don't know but CBC English? Yup. Get rid of that dawg.
And sort out the issue of Quebeckers loving Radio Canada by selling it to the Quebec government. Even for $1 if that's what it takes.
As always, I enjoyed the newsletter and, particularly, the video.
On the other hand, Jen, I am definitely depressed that you knew of neither The Travelling Wilburys nor the particular members. I mean really! Not knowing Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty et al!! One of a few possibilities: a) you are funning us; b) you are really only fifteen years old [and with the age of your kids, we have to send to cops to interview your husband!]; c) you do not partake and never have partaken of popular music whatsoever. Which is it?
Now, for a spelling correction. You say, "And the Ottawa theme park is having a heck of a week." In fact, I submit, the correct spelling should make the sentence read, "And the Ottawa theme park is having a heck of a weak."
Finally, Harjit Sajjan. I, as with Matt [and I am certain, Jen], understand the concept of email overload. On the other hand, presumably a Minister of the Crown receives important emails in addition to the regular junk that we all receive. Said Minister of the Crown has innumerable flunkies at his beck and call and surely at least one such flunky could be given the responsibility to monitor the email feed and bring to the attention of said Minister of the Crown important communications. That is NOT asking too much and, accordingly, Matt, I am absolutely not willing to give anywhere near a pass to Sajjan.
Sajjan has proven once again his lack of competence. At the risk of being excommunicated from The Line, I have to wonder if his staying power in cabinet - albeit in a reduced role - relates primarily to his ethnicity; it certainly does not relate to his ability to carry out the job to which he was appointed.
It used to be that people were appointed to Cabinet on the assumption that their backgrounds would enable them to bring competence and experience to their portfolios.
Today people are appointed without regard to their competence (they have none) but simply on a consideration of the blocks of votes they can deliver to the party.
Minister Sajjan can be counted on to deliver an important block of votes and as long as that remains the case the Liberals will never cashier him despite his obvious unfitness, for lack of talent, to hold high office.
Go through the ranks of the Liberal Cabinet and the story is the same.
And no one should expect this to change when in some distant decade from now the Natural Governing Party concedes power to the Tories.
I am still bothered that Jen had not heard of the Travelling Wilburys as a group or the individual members:
Jeff Lynne: OK, I liked ELO more than most people but his name is not well known
Roy Orbison: I love Roy but his hits were all in the 1960s.
Tom Petty: Hard to believe his name would not be recognized with all his hits.
Bob Dylan: Now hos could Jen not know Bob Dylan? He has been a successful musician for 60 years. He won a Nobel Prize!
George Harrison: Now this is the impossible admission. How could Jen's children not know George Harrison? He had a nice solo career but before that he was in a very popluar band from Liverpool called The Beatles. Jen, you should check out their music on Spotify.
Back in 2010 or thereabouts I ran into a consultant's report, commissioned by the CBC, which assessed the impact of funding the CBC in terms of jobs created. It concluded that nowhere else in the economy would a $1.1 billion expenditure of public funds create as great an impact on employment as it would if the funds were directed to the CBC.
Even the most junior policy analyst would have concluded, rather, that the CBC is greatly over-staffed.
Wow PSAC that’s a new way to strike! Be on strike and get paid. Why end it? The workers aren’t suffering. The government not overly concerned about passports etc. Usually the scabs can be separated and identified easily from the workers who stop work for NO PAY. Ahh but it’s just taxpayer suckers suffering -once again.
I enjoyed the podcast but will admit to some surprise on hearing Jen ask why Trudeau is the point on the Sudan issue.
As she correctly points out it would make sense for either the Minister of Defence or Foreign Affairs to be the point on this issue.
But has Jen really not grasped that Trudeau fears nothing more than the emergence of an heir apparent in his ranks and that, like all mediocrities, his first priority is to surround himself with people who have even less talent than himself? Admittedly, that is hard to do but they are out there, as ex Minister Maryam and Minister Harjit prove conclusively.
That explains why our gormless PM, manifestly incapable of managing one of those chip wagons that show up on Parliament Hill on Canada Day, is the point on, well, everything really.
Woe betide the highest poppies in the field as long as our Junior remains on the throne.
Right, Bill?
Thank you for this (and a shout-out to you for underscoring how well our military forces can do, despite all of the incompetence we see from senior bureaucrats and, more fundamentally, our politicians).
On an unrelated note, I was very pleased with the analysis of Alberta's "progressive conservatives" that was done last week by Jared Wesley and Ken Boessenkool. Perhaps we could have some equally penetrating analysis the so-called Conservatives of Pierre Poilievre.
Yes, I know they are the official opposition, and therefore not really responsible for very much these days. Nonetheless, I think learning more about who they purport to be and who they actually are might be helpful, as Canadians keen to "overboard" the dreadful Trudeau Liberals could vote for something that the Conservatives are not.
At the moment, the Conservative Party of Canada is little different from the Liberals they so love to pillory, in that it is nothing like what it claims to be.
PS: After having read Karamveer Lalh's follow-up to what Wesley and Boessenkool wrote last week, I still agree with their view that Danielle Smith is not a Conservative.
Lalh's claim, that "Danielle Smith offers a clear vision of Alberta’s narrative... [suggesting that it] has long been overshadowed by central Canada’s power centres, catering to the whims of the Laurentian elite... [and that this story] of Alberta is immensely popular with Albertans", does not clinch the "Smith as Conservative" argument.
I think I understand why he took this tack, as it matches something he raised elsewhere in his article (that W & B's assertion about Alberta under the Progressive Conservatives--that they have always supported Conservative incrementalism). Lalh credibly tossed that notion out by invoking Ralph Klein, who surely was a populist and a libertarian.
But that still doesn't make his claim about Smith credible.
She is what W & B suggested: A libertarian "antinomian" (love the word, BTW).
On a completely different matter, it is interesting how difficult it is to find the video podcast on YouTube. A search told me the most recent was from March. Only by coming to the substack was I able to watch the video - which says it is on YouTube...... are they playing funny games with you?
"All Canadians have to do to ensure our unique perspective is heard in the world is simply to produce interesting stuff that an audience wants to consume."
What this misses is the huge role that platforms and their algorithms play in determining how big an audience a content provider finds. The criteria changes and is opaque; content creators can find their audience grows or falls dramatically based on decisions made by the platforms.
So, what's in short supply now is access to people's attention and that's controlled by a small number of privately-owned global platforms.
There are probably two remedies for this. The first is to regulate some algorithmic transparency. Users and content creators should understand why content gets served. We should have a right to know, given the significant impact.
The alternative is to create publically owned platforms that do offer algorithmic transparency. Think of public, transparent alternatives to current social and media platforms. It could provide a conduit for Canadian content creators telling 'our stories' to Canadian (and global) audiences. It's probably what the CBC should become.
It would be interesting for a public alternative to not be a Crown corporation but instead be something funded by the government that operates as a bit of a co-op model, with content creators actively participating in governance within certain guidelines. Maybe Canada could offer a new model for these platforms that others might be interested in adopting?
“We hate to be so snarky, and so cynical. Honestly we do.”
Have to admit I laughed out loud when I read this. I’ve kinda always assumed that was the tagline on The Line business cards ( if you have business cards). “We may be snarky, but only because we’re cynical “
More and more it looks like Canadians political and cultural elite are living in the past, screaming at clouds as the world passes them by. They are yesterday's important people becoming less relevant as time moves on. The world certainly thinks so.
No wonder Canada has had such 2nd rate leadership from our elites for such a long time.