Yesterday a decision was handed down in Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench following a hearing on July 6th. In the coming days we’ll be discussing the central themes, especially the traditional separation of our news media from governing political machines, and the rights of individuals to expect strict confidentiality from their lawyers.

For now, though, this release has appeared nationally today:

CALGARY, Aug. 6 - An Alberta judge has accepted arguments made by lawyers acting for Canada’s biggest newspaper chain and for a Progressive Conservative Party solicitor in dismissing a lawsuit brought by journalist Arthur Kent against the solicitor, who was legal counsel and electoral agent for Kent’s candidacy in the 2008 Alberta election.

Justice Paul Belzil ruled that Kent could not use information about Kristine Robidoux Q.C.’s communications with Don Martin which were first disclosed to Kent during the discovery process in Kent’s separate defamation litigation against Martin, the National Post, the Calgary Herald and Canwest over an article published in February, 2008 during the election.

The Court rejected Kent’s submissions that there was an over-riding public interest in holding lawyers accountable for alleged breaches of duties of confidentiality to clients and that Robidoux’ s communications with the newspaper were part and parcel of Kent’s defamation claims against the defendants.

Kent says he has instructed his lawyers to appeal the ruling. “When big media climbs into bed with big politics, all Canadians lose. We will take the facts forward and let the public decide.”

The Court of Queens Bench decision in Kent v Robidoux does not affect Kent’s defamation litigation against the newspapers. Kent anticipates that evidence of Robidoux’s communications with the newspapers prior to the Martin article’s publication will be central to a determination of the defendants’ liability for libel damages.

Prior to the July 6 Court hearing which led to yesterday’s ruling, lawyers for the National Post and Herald had obtained a temporary order sealing certain information on the court file in Kent’s defamation lawsuit. Traditionally in Canada, sealing orders are vigorously challenged by the news media on the basis that the public has a right to know what is happening in the courts.

During the May 17 hearing where the partial sealing order was made, the National Post conceded that Martin must be produced for the continuation of his examination for discovery. As well, the newspapers agreed to produce a large number of documents, many of which were provided to the Court by Kent for Justice Belzil’s consideration.

Both cases focus on events in February of 2008. The article by Martin, published in the National Post, the Herald and internationally on their websites, cited unnamed senior Alberta Tory officials in support of an attack on Kent’s campaign for election to the Alberta legislature.

Kent believes the attack was the result of his call for an end to the PC’s patronage culture and his suggestion to Premier Ed Stelmach to rethink his policy on resource royalties. Stelmach has since been forced to reverse the royalty scheme.

Kent says: “The sad fact remains that leading PC party figures sabotaged their own candidate’s campaign in Calgary Currie, as I believe the evidence will bear out.”

Kent was given no opportunity to counter false allegations about his campaign before the National Post and Herald published the Martin article. The newspapers refused to publish his rebuttal and continued to publish the article on the Internet.

Kent says that because the new owners of the newspapers also continue to publish the Martin article online, he has instructed his lawyers to sue them as well for an injunction requiring removal of the article.

Please click here http://blog.arthurkent.ca/docs/Kent_Brief_of_Argument.pdf to view Arthur Kent’s Brief of Argument.

Click here http://blog.arthurkent.ca/docs/Kent_Court_Ruling_August_6.pdf to view the Court’s Ruling.

It has been called the worst decision in the economic history of the province of Alberta.

The historical record will feature another glaring truth about Premier Ed Stelmach’s flawed scheme to boost oil and gas royalties: this policy disaster was totally avoidable.

Any objective review of the market and industry indicators in the months preceding the 2008 provincial election gave ample cause to rethink and revise the across-the-board, one-size-fits-all royalty framework unveiled by the premier in October 2007.

Clearly, the plan’s complex schedules would claw most greedily at Alberta’s natural gas explorers and producers, who were already coping with a low commodity price as they struggled to attract investors lured by better deals in Saskatchewan and B.C.

Much more was at stake than the health of one industry. Revenue from the energy sector provides one-third of the Alberta government’s income. Everything from our deficit-ridden health care system to post-secondary education to policing the streets depends on our oil and gas entrepreneurs having the most competitive playing field possible.

As the candidate for the governing Progressive Conservatives in Calgary Currie, I simply told the premier what our constituents were telling me. Global players in energy, they cautioned that far from giving Albertans “their fair share” the new regime would punish their companies, the producers of the province’s cleanest fossil fuels, by chasing capital and jobs to other jurisdictions, ultimately robbing the people of Alberta of future revenue.

Shockingly, Premier Stelmach didn’t even want to consider the evidence. His mind was made up. His aides and ministers closed ranks and refused to rethink the plan.

Ever since, Albertans have had to endure the consequences.

Below, a few excerpts from previous posts on this website that chronicle the twists and turns of the 2008 campaign trail. Also, a useful primer on the saga is Canwest Witnesses Go Under Oath posted Sept. 9, 2009.

But first here’s the text of our news release, published today, to mark Premier Stelmach’s overdue realization that no policy, or policy maker, is above the pressing need to listen, refine and improve.

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“Stelmach to cut royalties as Kent advances Canwest and PC party lawsuits”

CALGARY, March 11 - Journalist Arthur Kent confirmed today that procedural showdowns are pending in two lawsuits before Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench arising from policy clashes with Premier Ed Stelmach during the 2008 provincial election. At issue was the government’s ill-fated oil and gas royalty review.

Kent was the only one of Stelmach’s 83 Progressive Conservative candidates to campaign for immediate changes to the royalty plan. He also called for an end to the party’s patronage culture, which obstructs public input to government policy.

Today, Stelmach is expected to reverse elements of the royalty regime in a “competitiveness review” aimed at revitalizing Alberta’s energy industry.

“At last the premier will act on the evidence offered to him before the election,” Kent said today. “But he owes Albertans an apology for his refusal to refine the royalty framework two years ago, an error that sent our energy sector into the recession having already lost some 10,000 jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investment.”

During the election, PC campaign officials and backroom figures launched a defamatory attack against Kent by way of a news article written by Don Martin and published in the National Post, Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal, and internationally on the nationalpost.com website.

Martin’s sources were cloaked by anonymity. The article attacked Kent’s character, conduct and reputation with false assertions. No mention was made of the royalty issue or other substantive matters. Kent was given no opportunity to comment prior to publication, and both the Herald and National Post refused to publish his response.

Kent sued Martin and Canwest in July 2008. Martin and Canwest cited the royalty clash in their Statement of Defence two months later, before the negative impact of the regime became fully evident.

In November 2009, Kent filed a separate lawsuit against Kristine Robidoux, Q.C. and ten “John Does”, believed to be senior PC party members. Robidoux was Kent’s campaign counsel and Official Agent, as well as an official of Ed Stelmach’s provincial campaign team who reported to Stelmach via the current party president, Bill Smith.

The Court in Calgary is due to hear Kent’s application that Don Martin be compelled to appear for the continuation of his examination for discovery. In January, Martin failed to appear to continue his testimony under oath, despite formal Appointments having been served.

In an affidavit, publicly available with other case documents at the Calgary Courts Centre, Kent states that Martin’s examination by Kent’s solicitor in July 2009 was not completed, and that “critical documents were not produced by the solicitor for the Defendants until the examination was underway.”

The affidavit states that the defendants had failed to include the documents in their Affidavit of Record “which had been due seven months previous.” The document details “a pattern of delay” which has “had the effect of needlessly delaying the timely progress of this action.”

Kent said today: “This is a sad commentary on the management of what used to be Canada’s biggest news conglomerate. Try as they might to delay justice, they cannot deny it.

“My lawyers and I will take these actions to trial, regardless of changes in Canwest’s ownership, or of leadership at our Alberta legislature.”

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From Petroleum, Patients And Empty Promises October 28, 2008:

Monday, February 4th should have signalled a clean start to our campaign to take back the constituency of Calgary Currie for Alberta’s Progressive Conservative government.

But confirmation that the writ had been dropped for a March 3rd election day was overshadowed by the mixed signals I was receiving from Premier Ed Stelmach’s office. Ed’s chief of staff, Ron Glen, had emailed Sunday afternoon, casting doubt on whether the Premier could “meet with individuals” during the campaign. Glen’s associate in the Calgary office, Ken Faulkner, was even more pointed.

“We just cannot make it work,” Ken wrote me, referring to the Premier’s pre-Christmas promise that he would meet, prior to the election, with myself and one of my constituents to discuss the elephant in Calgary’s oil and gas boardrooms: the “unintended consequences” of the recent royalty review.

Throughout January, the Premier and his people had been dodging his commitment. Twice over the phone and once in person, I reminded the Premier that Alberta’s oil and gas explorers deserved some kind of indication, however preliminary, as to how and when the government would relieve the excessive cost pressures that would affect a swathe of companies once the higher royalties kicked in. Capital, rigs and roughnecks were already fleeing Alberta. Government revenues were sure to follow.

But the Premier was unmoved. On unintended consequences, he and his aides seemed content to wage the election on vague assurances. (Still today, the government has not made good on those promises.)

From Long Reach of the Backroom Boys October 29, 2008:

It was an eerie, unsettling experience. A half-dozen members of our team began telling me to fall into line. All of them held party posts or a party-appointed job, or worked in the private sector as government lobbyists.

“Remember,” one of these party loyalists told me, “you’re just a commodity. You front the party leadership in the constituency. You’re their mouthpiece.”

Commodity? Mouthpiece? Shouldn’t it be the other way around, I asked? As a local candidate, born-and-raised in these neighbourhoods, and now standing for elected office, shouldn’t I be speaking up for the voters of Calgary Currie? I saw myself as applying to be their man in the legislature, pressing for genuine change. On the doorstep, nobody was telling me they wanted another apologist from Edmonton.

People said they were angry and impatient with the status quo in Alberta’s capital. They were tired of the chronic problems that the provincial government seemed helpless to address. The rampant inflation eroding our “Alberta advantage,” caused by labour shortages and bad planning. The tumble-down schools, the surge in violent crime, the unsustainable urban sprawl. And consistently among the voters’ top two concerns, our ailing health care system.

From Pancakes, Politics and a Party in Panic October 31, 2008:

Finally, I said, the Progressive Conservative Party, after nearly four decades in office, had to face up to some challenges of its own. With this, I noticed Deputy Premier (Ron) Stevens and campaign official Bill Smith shifting in their seats.

Could a government constrained by patronage, I asked, be truly responsive to the needs of ordinary people? Wasn’t it the case that after 38 years, too many unelected individuals were feeding at the public trough? In previous days, we had heard the voices of unwilling figures from the past, hangers-on who sought to trip up new candidates – the younger minds who deserve an active role in reenergizing and redirecting the government.

It was time, I concluded, to consign the dinosaurs of patronage to the distant reaches of Jurassic Park.

I glanced at the deputy premier’s expression. I had hit a nerve, a sore one. Beside him, Bill Smith was already reaching for his cell phone. Soon the party’s campaign manager, Randy Dawson, and provincial director Jim Campbell would be getting the word. Arthur’s off message again. He’s talking about genuine change.

From the audience, though, there was applause. Lots of applause. Against the odds, we had made a success of the event, and we had made it our own.

If, at that moment, Ron and Bill had shown a willingness to sit down and communicate in a responsible way, I’m sure we could have rebuilt bridges. But that would have required a new kind of openness to fresh ideas – the only cure for an old, arthritic party that draws fewer voters to the polls with each electoral cycle.

Instead, their frowning countenances told me I was in for more flak and back-stabbing, which was not only silly, but also fundamentally wrong. They were senior party officials, it was true. But I was a volunteer, a candidate who had been courted by the Premier himself, ostensibly to contribute to the process of reinvigorating a tired party. Now I was responsible for my own growing team of supporters, who, like the audience filing out of that ballroom, were responding warmly to the call for a makeover at the top.

For the full text of these and other postings, refer to the archive above right.

Alberta’s award-winning film and television professionals claim that Premier Ed Stelmach’s Progressive Conservative government is driving production out of the province with policies that force big Hollywood films, as well as home-grown projects, to shoot in competing jurisdictions like B.C., New Mexico, Ontario and Manitoba.

It’s a bitter blow for an industry that has earned 46 Academy Award nominations since 1948. Alberta’s majestic scenery and first-class filmmakers have contributed to four Oscar wins: Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain in 2005, 1994’s Legends of the Fall, Clint Eastwood’s 1992 classic Unforgiven and Terrence Malick’s 1978 masterpiece, Days of Heaven.

“One after the other, we’ve lost five big Westerns in just the past few months,” says John Scott, known from Hollywood to Bollywood and beyond as one of the cinema’s foremost wranglers and stunt coordinators. “Some of those pictures have budgets of $100 million or more. Just one or two of ‘em would have brought our industry back to life.”

Scott and more than 250 motion picture union members gathered this week at Calgary’s Blackfoot Inn to discuss the crisis confronting the province’s 2,800 cast, crew and production personnel, and 600 related businesses.

They lament the premier’s recent 15% cut of Alberta’s film development program, and his government’s refusal to consider matching incentives offered to movie producers by other provinces and states. New Mexico, B.C. and Ontario offer filmmakers roughly twice the contribution to production costs available in Alberta.

So it goes with another component of the once-invincible Alberta Advantage. But here’s the real headline: it didn’t have to be this way.

As one of the premier’s candidates in the 2008 provincial election, I was shown evidence of the film and TV production industry’s perilous state by Alberta’s leading producers, artists and technicians. I presented that evidence personally to Premier Stelmach, and tried to impress upon him one fact above all.

Stimulating the film industry is not about giving taxpayer dollars away, it’s a way to guarantee future government revenue. It makes money. It’s not a giveaway.

I explained to him that his own government estimates that every production dollar attracted to the province balloons to $10.80 as it changes hands and spurs the economy forward like a racehorse exploding from the gate.

The math gets even better as more projects bring in bigger budgets. Even if the province were to double its $5 million limit on credits paid back to an individual mega-picture, the multiplier on $100 million of new money entering Alberta’s economy would eclipse the investment with net benefits, and ultimately greater revenue for the province’s coffers.

“It’s like a garden already flowering,” I told the premier. “All you have to do is add water.”

Ed promised to address the matter prior to the election, the same assurance he gave our campaign team on his ill-fated oil and gas royalty review. When he failed to follow through on that promise, I emailed his chief of staff, Ron Glen, on February 2nd, 2008.

“As I mentioned to the Premier last week,” I wrote, “we’re about to see more than $50 million worth of television and film production either leave the province for other jurisdictions, or fold. This is a huge concern for Calgary Currie and the city in general - production is a large and very high-profile employer here.

“Will an attempt be made to resolve the outstanding issues with the Alberta Film Advisory Council? If not, what alternate approach does the government suggest?”

The response from the premier’s office said everything about the government’s inability to listen to Albertans, or to grasp complex policy matters. Glen wrote that the PC caucus had decided not to adjust spending for any department.

He stated: “It would be bad politics to override this policy for one industry while we have health authorities claiming to have operating deficits.”

So there it was, in black and white: the premier and his people believe that industry incentives are no different from hospital budgets. It’s completely beyond them that health care is a vital public service expenditure, while incentives create the future revenue streams needed for just that kind of spending.

By email and phone, I tried to persuade the premier and his people to reconsider. Their response was rebuke and retribution, the same answer they gave to this candidate’s appeals over the royalty matter.

(Please see Canwest Witnesses Go Under Oath, below, as well as our first posting from October 20 2008, Challenging Defamation and Political Vandalism. We’ll soon be updating this website about a separate lawsuit filed in November of last year, as reported by the Calgary Sun on November 29 2009, against Kristine Robidoux Q.C. and “Does 1 – 10”.

The Statement of Claim states that the John Does are all believed to be “senior members of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta.”)

As for Alberta’s film and TV production community, the outlook is grim. The premier’s culture minister declined an invitation to attend this week’s Calgary meeting, then publicly derided the unions for revealing to reporters that he’d been a no-show.

Meanwhile production in Toronto and Winnipeg is booming, with producers in those cities actively pursuing Alberta’s film technicians, hoping to lure our talented crews eastward.

The offers are hard to turn down. Industry leaders like Janice Blackie-Goodine, an Oscar nominee for her set decoration in Unforgiven, reports that she did not log a single day working in film in 2009. She says that her producer on that film, David Valdes (Jesse James, Open Range) has told her that he can no longer bring productions to Alberta with incentive packages so much more attractive elsewhere.

Saddest of all, the man who put that statuesque grey under Clint Eastwood for Unforgiven has decided he’s got to put 50 of his precious saddle horses on the market.

“They gotta eat,” John Scott says, “and we need movies to feed ‘em.”

Don’t we all need movies in Alberta – along with energy, technology, agriculture and all the rest. If only we had a government that understood the links between business and revenue…

Honest journalists and publishers will welcome today’s Supreme Court of Canada ruling on libel, based as it is on our profession’s touchstone principles of responsible journalism.

Conversely, the Court’s sharper focus on the steps taken by journalists to verify the information presented in their stories spells trouble for writers who breach the profession’s basic rules – and their employers’ own standards of policy and practice.

Leading Canadian news companies joined forces to advocate the “responsible journalism” defence in the Supreme Court’s consideration of two cases, one involving the Toronto Star, another from the Ottawa Citizen (which is published by a corporate defendant in Kent vs. Martin, Canwest Publishing et al).

The defence would protect publications, and websites such as this one, from irresponsible lawsuits if the publisher establishes that reasonable measures were taken to check the truth of the content of the article at issue.

Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin, writing for a 9-0 majority, held that the defence would work in the media outlet’s favour “if it can establish that it acted responsibly in attempting to verify the information in a matter of public interest.”

Equally, the ruling’s eight tests of “responsible communication” provide victims of malicious defamation with new measures to identify irresponsible writing and publishing. Among these, with regard to whether the Plaintiff’s side of the story was sought and accurately reported, the Court states:

“In most cases, it is inherently unfair to publish defamatory allegations of fact without giving the target an opportunity to respond… Failure to do so also heightens the risk of inaccuracy, since the target of the allegations may well be able to offer relevant information beyond a bare denial.”

Regarding other tests, the Court states:

“The logic of proportionality dictates that the degree of diligence required in verifying the allegation should increase in proportion to the seriousness of the potential effects on the person defamed.”

“If a reasonable delay could have assisted the defendant in finding out the truth and correcting any defamatory falsity without compromising the story’s timeliness, this factor will weigh in the plaintiff’s favour.”

“…the fact that the defendant’s source had an axe to grind does not necessarily deprive the defendant of protection, provided other reasonable steps were taken… On the other hand, it is not difficult to see how publishing slurs from unidentified “sources” could, depending on the circumstances, be irresponsible.”

Overall, the Court’s ruling makes unpleasant reading for the authors and publishers of “drive-by smears”, to borrow the parlance of David Asper, chairman of the National Post, who in past has complained bitterly when on the receiving rather than the giving end of the shabby practice.

Defamed “targets” now have added reason to cite evidence showing that writers, editors and publishers have:

- failed to verify information

- failed to give the subject of a story an opportunity to comment prior to publication

- sought and/or received information only from a select group of political friends

- sought and/or received information only from the subject’s political adversaries

- failed to seek balancing information from the subject’s supporters

- contradicted accurate information published previously by the same newspaper, resulting in a false and defamatory account

- refused to publish corrections of factual errors as per industry standard and the media group’s own standards of practice

- refused the subject’s right of reply by rejecting publication of the subject’s rebuttal article

- failed to respond to written requests to address these abuses prior to the commencement of legal proceedings…

…among other tawdry breaches of sound journalistic practice. For further reference, please see Canwest Witnesses Go Under Oath, below, posted Sept. 9 2009.

Coming soon: comparative studies in defamatory libel.

Coming now:  our best wishes for a wonderful holiday season, and the happiest of New Years in 2010!

When a government goes into cardiac arrest, a clever leader applies serious CPR, and fast. But last week, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach responded to the many emergencies afflicting his flat-lining administration by downing a couple of aspirin.

The premier blamed his government’s collapse in performance and public approval on a nagging headache:  Albertans just don’t understand him. The prescription was obvious. The premier’s director of communications had to go.

With that one, hapless aide excised, the patient was discharged and the province lurched towards the next crisis.

As ever, Stelmach and his advisors are dodging the hard facts, the realities that speak to a pronounced case of managerial incompetence. Little details, like the loss of Alberta’s competitive edge in a tsunami of red ink and fiscal chaos. Rising unemployment, a health care system headed for bankruptcy — and the refusal, by government, to be accountable for these and other failures.

But there’s a more basic dysfunction driving the Progressive Conservatives’ decline, one that is glaringly obvious to any of us who’ve worked within the machine.

It’s known, rather misleadingly, by a single word:  patronage.

Definitions vary, but come down to phrases such as: “the awarding of jobs, contracts or favours to gain political advantage.”

To fully understand the corrosion brought on by patronage, and how these covert give-and-take practices render governments distant and incapable of responding to challenges and opportunities, a sojourn through electoral politics with a party machine like the PCs is painfully instructive.

You come to recognize the look and the smell of patronage, even its personification:  the party insiders who exploit the ritual workings of patronage for personal gain, and preside over its functions.

This is not about qualified professionals appointed by government to perform vital public services. It’s the doling out of positions, projects or benefits on the understanding that the recipients will return the favour with their unwavering support. Often this includes introducing new contributors to the party’s fundraisers.

The damaging by-product of patronage is obvious in Alberta’s current predicament, as it was when Premier Stelmach and his key aides bluffed their way through the 2008 election campaign on false promises and a resolute determination to ignore the warnings of other, more experienced Albertans — our leaders in business, the arts, education and medicine.

Patronage creates two classes of Albertans:  those the party leadership listens to, and those on the sidelines, the cold-shouldered majority.

In truth, Ed Stelmach and his long-serving contemporaries in the Alberta PC leadership have had precious little experience in direct communications with the public. On election eve, so late in their careers, they felt no need to raise their game, and still don’t.

After nearly four decades in power, they are propped up – shielded and cocooned – by a massive network of dependants, the grateful beneficiaries of patronage.

To this candidate, contesting the 2008 election for Ed’s PCs in my home riding of Calgary Currie, it was impossible not to be moved by the alarming hostility among the leaders of our energy companies. These constituents are international leaders in their field, yet they complained then, as they still do, that the traditionally pro-business PCs ignore their advice on the management of their sector.

It was the same story with many of our leading educators, health care professionals, technologists and entrepreneurs. Why was the government not listening to them? Why was Alberta being allowed to slide into mediocrity by a clutch of elected officials who seemed totally cut off from reality?

The answer was painfully simple, as our campaign team soon discovered. Why should the leadership listen to anyone other than their unquestioning protégés, whose loyalty had been bought and paid for, and who wouldn’t think of troubling the premier with tiresome irrelevancies like public policy.

Worse, the practitioners of patronage constitute more than just a wall separating the public from their elected public servants. They are enforcers, too, ready to be used as the guardians of Tory favouritism, benefaction and conformity.

Next:  how the enforcers deal with suggestions of change (the genuine kind).

You didn’t need to be a fortune teller to predict Ed Stelmach’s trajectory as premier of Alberta. A few months working with Ed, his staff and key cabinet colleagues heralded the direction the Stelmach government has taken: downward, to a public disapproval rating estimated at more than 60%.

One phone-in poll this week suggests that 78% of Calgarians believe the premier will lose his Progressive Conservative Party’s leadership review in just over two weeks’ time.

Confronted with all of this, Ed told CTV Calgary’s Barb Higgins that he has to do a better job communicating with Calgarians. “We have a lot of work to do, in getting the message out…”

He still doesn’t get it. In public service, the top priority is to listen.

As one of Ed’s candidates in the 2008 Alberta election, I discovered that the premier and his people view communications as a one-way street. When I had the impertinence to suggest that voters, educators and business leaders deserved a turn at the wheel, the party’s thought-police loomed large in the rear view.

Here’s what I told one Calgary Herald writer on Feb. 8^th, 2008, after our campaign team had successfully resisted an attempt by Ed’s staff to scuttle one of our key fundraising events - their reaction to my request that the premier live up to his promises, among them his pledge to meet with Calgarians alarmed by his new royalty regime:

“One-way communication of the sort we experienced this week is not the way to go. You don’t just call the bustling heartland of the most exciting city in North America and say, ‘No, we can’t make it’…

“If we really want to rebuild this government we have to do things differently.”

When the Calgary Herald published these words the following day, the premier’s people went into their panic-communications mode. Chains were pulled on the half-dozen PC party campaign officials, insiders and lobbyists on our Calgary Currie constituency team. ‘Silence your candidate,’ was the message.

Then, four days later, a poisonous attack article appeared in the National Post and the Calgary Herald (whose editors formally endorsed Stelmach’s PCs in the election). The article’s by-line was that of a Canwest employee notorious for his close links with Alberta Tories (click on The Page At Issue, top right on our Homepage).

Clearly, Ed’s closest aides, together with a few long-time beneficiaries of Tory patronage, felt they had to muzzle criticism of the party’s failure to reform its old ways.

In the 19 months since the assault on our campaign, many people have asked me why Premier Stelmach has led his government from one disaster to another, with no apparent effort to alter course. They ask: why can’t Ed respond to challenges with fresh thinking and adaptable policies?

Here again, watching the man at work with his senior staff and ministers is hugely revealing. There’s a tangible fear of new ideas. They shrink from even the slightest criticism, no matter how constructive.

Suggestions that the government embrace innovation and diversity are met with a lot of throat clearing and shuffling of feet. Their body-language, too, speaks volumes. These office-holders and functionaries are terrified by the prospect of having smarter people in the room, much less in cabinet.

To them, the concept of change is a public relations ploy, a promise that doesn’t demand genuine action. Above all, there’s deep-seated denial, an abject inability to recognize that after 38 years in power, the Progressive Conservative Party has reduced itself to an ineffectual dealership in patronage, a power structure whose machinery for awarding favours, contracts and jobs-for-insiders has eclipsed those ho-hum tasks of policy-making and governance.

The result?

A government that doles out $44 million in bonuses to its top staffers and executives, even while it claws $44 million back from the school boards educating Alberta’s future breadwinners.

A government that slashes health care by paying registered nurses to leave the province, despite an acute shortage of trained front line care givers, and while an aging population places greater demands on the system.

A government that borrows a billion dollars only ten months after predicting a huge budget surplus.

And whose leader, Ed Stelmach, made himself the highest paid premier in Canada, only to usher Alberta into a steady, seemingly unstoppable decline in economic competitiveness.

Ed blames the recession. Those of us who warned him of his recklessness know better.

By the time the downturn struck, Alberta’s key energy sector had already bled 10,000 jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in scarce capital investment. The fingerprints on that file are Ed’s, not Goldman Sachs’ or Bernie Madoff’s.

Albertans ask: why are we facing a $7 billion deficit, while Saskatchewan will post a budget surplus this year? It’s a reasonable question to put to Ed Stelmach, while he busies himself getting out those other messages.

Meantime, here’s a note that comes our way from an Albertan rancher, whose family lives north of Calgary. In the best traditions of the West, he’s managed to keep his sense of humour:

“I guess there’s places in Canada where Ed wouldn’t be greeted with groans or heckling or a good kick in the pants. But in places like that, Ed wouldn’t be premier.”

Soon enough, Alberta could be one of those places, too. Even “Tory insiders” know an Arctic cold front when they feel it.

And all because the premier and his people failed to practice that crucial first imperative of public service, to listen.

It’s a spectre that should, by rights, send a chill down the spine of every red-blooded journalist - and citizen, for that matter.

Control of Canada’s leading daily newspapers, titles like the Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Province, Calgary Herald and Montreal Gazette, has reportedly fallen into the hands of … a bank.

Yes, a bank, Scotiabank by name, formerly the Bank of Nova Scotia, trailed by a clutch of creditors of the crumbling Canwest Global media empire.

So is it curtains? The end of giving our fedoras a rakish tilt and murmuring “Honey, get me rewrite” down the phone line? What will it be now for the staffers of Canwest’s print newsrooms across the country? Clicking a mouse on “Powerchequing”, then linking to “Gain Plan” with “Paperless Recordkeeping” and the “Private Client Group?”

And what about the people of Canada, the citizens whose last, best defence against untrustworthy government, unscrupulous tycoons - and yes, banks - is the fourth estate, a free press? In this context, Canwest’s collapse constitutes one of the gravest threats to our country’s political culture since big-dollar patronage placed a chokehold on our ruling party machines.

But to the men and women who’ve toiled loyally for Canwest, and for the legion of retirees and ‘rightsized’ former employees who rely on the group’s pensions, a much more basic set of threats looms up from the ashes of the House of Asper.

Will Scotiabank emerge as a safe pair of hands, ensuring that management of the newspaper group minimizes layoffs and arbitrary cuts to severance packages and pension payments? Or will the bank’s supervisory role provide a smokescreen for Canwest’s executive holdovers, desperate to impress future owners with their slashing skills?

Early indications from the group’s television operations are not encouraging. Along with the National Post Company, this region of Canwest’s distressed dominion went under creditor protection this past week. Some former employees claim their salary continuance has evaporated, and we’ve heard from others whose severance packages have been given the chop.

A growing number of concerned news professionals still in Canwest’s employ have pledged to compile details of abuses and make them public. Their reasoning is sound. Judging by the experience of employees at other corporations that have undergone creditor protection, such as Air Canada, this transitional period is hardly a time for staffers to keep mum about maltreatment by number-crunching managers and executives.

Which raises this question. Does Scotiabank understand the extent of Canwest’s problems, and the risks each business unit faces due to past mismanagement?

It’s fair to ask: what does a bank know about managing daily newspapers?

If, as seems likely, Scotiabank soon ushers the newspapers of Canwest’s publishing wing into creditor protection, will print employees be subjected to the same cost-cutting measures now hovering over their broadcast colleagues?

Certainly, in the corporation’s own field, Scotiabank is one of Canada’s best. It boasts high customer satisfaction. Its finances are solid. This is a well-capitalized bank whose books and operations are soundly managed. Scotiabank appears to be everything Canwest management is not: solvent, creative and growing stronger.

Market analysts say that the bank doesn’t want to be in the newspaper business, and in all likelihood will seek the swiftest, most orderly reorganization possible, so that Canwest’s titles can be sold as a block, in groups or individually.

But are the bank’s executives aware of the extent of their responsibility to warn the newspapers’ suitors: “buyer beware”?

As our case, Kent vs. Don Martin, Canwest et al, graphically shows, huge question marks loom over some employees and their proclivity for straying from Canwest’s very detailed codes of journalistic practice, and related performance standards.

Any established media magnate (and most especially any newcomer to newspaper ownership) will want to examine much more than Canwest’s books. Some very basic questions need to be answered.

Have layoffs left too few copy editors? Are senior editors at titles like the National Post and the Calgary Herald able to keep pace with the demands of a changing, leaner industry? Is care taken to avoid embarrassing, costly – and wholly unnecessary – defamation lawsuits?

And what about the unseemly and chummy connections of some employees to backroom political figures? Has the Asper family’s attraction to right-wing political discourse impacted the newspapers’ ability to cover the news objectively - and profitably?

These and other unknowns pose potential pitfalls for Scotiabank, Canwest’s creditors and most especially for the future owners of Canada’s major newspapers.

It’s a concern the companies and their principals should place at the centre of their decision making. The court of public opinion will be judging their every step, coast to coast, in every city served by Canwest newsmen and women.

The employees of this stricken media group have bravely kept their newspapers on the street and newscasts on the air. They are dedicated professionals, family breadwinners and leaders in their communities.

Any party that rewards their sterling performance with harsh measures does so at its own peril.

That’s one of the few certainties in this murky and unhappy affair, one you can take to the bank.

Pursuing the managements of giant media conglomerates through the courts is a costly, time-consuming venture.

But eventually the long, steady climb up the slopes of procedure and the crags of delay ushers the parties onto the sunny plateau known as examinations for discovery. At last it’s time to look at the facts of the case in the full light of day.

Witnesses are sworn in and questions are put to them by opposing counsel. A court reporter notes every word for the record.

On July 14th, examinations for discovery began in Kent vs. Don Martin, Canwest Publishing, the National Post, the Calgary Herald and related companies.

I brought this lawsuit last year in response to the attack article published Feb. 12, 2008 on the nationalpost.com website and the following day in the print editions of the National Post and the Calgary Herald (please see The Page At Issue pdf at the top right of our homepage) and because both the Post and Herald refused to publish my response.

As detailed in previous entries on this site, commencing Oct. 20, 2008 with Challenging Defamation and Political Vandalism, the article grossly misrepresents my name and reputation, both in the New York-based network news industry and as a contributor to Canwest’s own newscasts and newspapers.*

As well, it falsely maligns my campaign as a candidate for the Progressive Conservative government in the 2008 Alberta provincial election. The article has had a devastating, wide-reaching impact.

During the campaign, as detailed in last autumn’s entries, I had urged Premier Ed Stelmach to respond to our constituents’ concerns over his energy policies and to address the PC’s culture of patronage. Both these issues later figured in Alberta’s pre-recession downturn in oilpatch jobs and investment, and the crisis that has seen last year’s projected budget surplus of $2 billion plunge to a deficit of $7 billion.

But recognizing the consequences of dubious practices and bad policy isn’t a priority for some old Tories. My warnings drew the ire of a number of shadowy backroom figures, and some of the premier’s campaign officials.

With discovery underway, it’s important to note that testimony and other evidence gleaned from the process before Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench is subject to confidentiality. From the outset, our side has respected this and all the other rules of the Court and we will continue to do so.

By way of context, it’s worth reviewing the salient points of our earlier entries here. Prior to the publication of his attack article, I had never met nor spoken with Mr. Martin. He afforded me no reasonable opportunity to comment.

As well, comments from my supporters are not included in the article, which is based on false assertions by unnamed sources identified only as “party insiders” and “senior campaign strategists” and “a veteran of half a dozen elections.”

I filed a rebuttal promptly after the election, but both the National Post and Calgary Herald refused to publish it. When my lawyer and I offered Canwest’s bosses an opportunity to resolve the matter, they were unresponsive.

The conglomerate’s lawyers sought a stay of the Alberta action due to our separate libel suit filed last November in New York State Supreme Court. On May 27, the Court in Calgary denied Canwest’s stay motion, clearing the way for discovery to commence.

The Court ordered Canwest to pay my costs in turning back their stay motion. Despite several requests, the defendants have not forwarded these funds.** Later, the New York court granted Canwest’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit there on a procedural issue, a ruling my lawyers and I are now appealing. No costs were awarded.

To understand the political tensions that existed prior to the article’s publication, here are excerpts from my entry A Rough Ride on the High Road, posted Oct 30, 2008:

“(The Globe & Mail’s) Roy MacGregor, a journalist who is no stranger to Alberta politics, had caught wind of the story. He asked me about Rod Love, formerly the senior aide and all round Mr. Fixit to Ralph Klein, Ed Stelmach’s predecessor as Progressive Conservative leader and Premier of Alberta. Love had forsaken me, so to speak, by singing the praises of my Liberal Party rival on CBC Radio. The Calgary Sun termed this an endorsement…

I told Roy: “We know where he’s coming from.” Mr. Love, I explained, probably hadn’t liked what he’d heard of my stump speech. I explained that like most of my neighbours in our constituency, I felt that the Klein government had “run out of juice,” leaving the province spinning its wheels. “It’s a new day,” I said. “The Klein era is over. People want to move on. They want a plan – I’m proud to say I have a plan.”

Of course I could have gone into more detail - mentioning, for instance, the mysterious appearance of both Ralph Klein and Rod Love at the launch party for my candidacy some months earlier. “What are they doing here?” one of my supporters asked. A seasoned, older Conservative among us replied: “They want a new guy, and you’re it.”

Despite never having met Rod Love, the suggestion was as plausible as it was distasteful. For days prior to the launch, one of Love’s close friends, Lee Richardson, a federal Member of Parliament from Calgary, had been urging me to appoint a Klein/Love associate named Alan Hallman as my campaign manager. I declined, explaining that we wanted to take a new direction with our campaign.

Mr. Richardson’s response? “Remember,” Lee told me, “if you make an enemy, it’s for life.”

That’s how it is with some old Conservatives in Alberta. Reject their intrusions, and you run the risk of retaliation. This echoed what another long time Tory insider had told me, that candidates were “commodities” – mere fronts for party strongmen and appointees.

These sentiments left me cold. Were Alberta’s Conservatives looking for new blood, or just another generation of cronies? My supporters and I agreed that this mentality was a low-water mark in the Progressive Conservative Party’s history, one that we had to rise above.” (Excerpt ends.)

Further information on Rod Love is available in the public domain. For example, Love has been criticised by Alberta’s opposition parties as benefiting from the Tory government’s culture of jobs-for-the-boys.

In 2006, when it was revealed that Love had secured a lucrative consultancy with the troubled Calgary Health Region, the opposition leader told the legislature: “This is all about personal favours, buying access to power. There’s no other way to frame this than as an abuse of the taxpayer dollars.”

Mr. Martin, meantime, is widely known in Alberta as a long time friend and confidant of Love’s, and of other “party insiders.” Mr. Martin’s 2003 biography of Klein, King Ralph, makes clear that from Klein’s days as Calgary mayor in the 1980’s, Love frequently allowed Don Martin to read sensitive papers. They dubbed these chummy occasions “Document Perusal Opportunities” or “DPO’s”.

Klein is quoted on page 231 of his book: “I’ve given Donnie more scoops than any other journalist… But he just can’t remember them.” Mr. Martin states: “I’ve spent twenty-three years as a journalist, covering Ralph Klein almost without interruption…”

On page 181, Klein is quoted saying that leaks are “political currency.” Love confides that handling these wily disclosures came down to deciding “to whom and when to leak to get maximum political benefit.”

There’s even a beguiling passage describing how Love engineered stories to be fed to the National Post and the Calgary Herald.

Regarding Mr. Martin’s journalistic performance, documents available to the public at Calgary’s new Courts Centre reveal that he was a co-defendant in a costly defamation action, one of the longest-running lawsuits in the history of the Calgary Herald.

The Amended Statement of Claim includes a lengthy excerpt from an article by Mr. Martin published some 19 years ago – coincidentally, on the same section A3 news page of the Herald that carried the article that is the subject of Kent vs Canwest et al.

Mr. Martin, the Claim states, “falsely, maliciously wrote” about conditions in a Calgary day care centre.

The lawsuit was filed in November of 1990, when the Herald was owned by Southam Inc. It was settled a decade later, in March of 2000 during Conrad Black’s Hollinger era, and on the eve of the Herald’s sale to Canwest.

Thus Mr. Martin has the distinction of facing defamation charges in all of the Southam, Hollinger and Canwest reigns. The same lawyer who acted for the Calgary Herald defendants in the 1990’s action represents Mr. Martin and Canwest in our case today.

It’s hardly possible to assess the merits of a lawsuit settled nearly a decade ago. But in our case, an unmistakeable malice permeates the 754-word rant that is the subject of Kent vs. Canwest et al.

One example was evident upon first reading in February of 2008: the disparaging comparison of the personalities and abilities of two brothers, Arthur and Peter Kent. It’s a strange evaluation for Mr. Martin to make. He has never met or spoken with me, and bases his assessment solely on false assertions about one half of the Kent duo. But like the rest of the text, there’s more to these sentences than meets the eye.

The article fails to mention that Peter was a senior Canwest Global executive at the time. Or that Mr. Martin’s boss, David Asper, the Chairman of the National Post, publicly endorsed Peter as a Conservative candidate in the 2006 federal election (stressing, in his statement, that political discourse in Canada should abandon abusive “drive-by smears”).

The National Post’s leanings carried over to the 2008 vote, when Peter enjoyed his well deserved win in the Toronto constituency of Thornhill. “Our man in Thornhill”, was the headline of the National Post’s article of congratulations on Oct. 15th, 2008.

Certainly Mr. Martin is free to toady up to his bosses’ politics – provided he clearly discloses this bias in his article. But he failed to do so.

The article’s other, much more serious abuses contravene the codes of fairness, accuracy and balance that Canwest newspapers claim to adhere to, both as members of the Canadian Newspaper Association and, in the Calgary Herald’s case, of the Alberta Press Council.

As the plaintiff in this case, and in view of the insecurity so many of our colleagues are facing over their pensions and jobs in Canwest’s newsrooms across the country, I find it perverse that Canwest management appears bent on trying to defend this indefensible act of political vandalism.

After all, we know what Mr. Martin would demand of any politician revealed to have sewn poison and damaging lies, and who tries desperately to hang on in spite of the cold, hard facts.

Ultimately, it is a matter for the Courts to decide. Soon enough, Mr. Martin and his bosses can tell it to the judge.

*Please see skyreporter.com for “Taliban Leaders Mock U.S. 9/11 Legacy From Pakistan Havens” which includes an Oct. 2001 story for the Calgary Herald datelined “BAGRAM, Afghanistan”.

**Funds received on Sept. 11, two days after this entry.

One year ago, we Albertans set a new record. Ominously, it had nothing to do with our province’s economic growth, which we had come to take for granted. This benchmark was about who we are as citizens, and how we see ourselves within our communities, our culture and our economy.

Last March 3^rd, only 40.6% of eligible voters cast ballots in the Alberta general election, Canada’s lowest-ever turnout for a provincial vote. Ed Stelmach’s Progressive Conservatives won an increased majority, but the victory was warped by indifference: only 23% of the electorate had voted PC.

This was embarrassing, to be sure, but few Albertans expected grave economic consequences. Many followed the lead of Premier Stelmach and his cabinet, shrugging off the gloomy statistics as evidence that Albertans are resigned to one-party dominance.

But this year, the headlines aren’t as easy to shrug off. It turns out more than just some vague notion of civic duty was on the line last year. Our families’ jobs, our solvency - our entire economy was at stake.

Now we learn that four U.S. states are headed for budget surpluses this year. Alberta is not.

Saskatchewan’s government looks set to balance its books. Alberta will not. The Stelmach government expects to be $1.4 billion in the red, the first shortfall in 15 years.

Breaking his campaign promise, Ed Stelmach is rewriting Alberta’s no-deficit statute to allow overruns for at least two years.

Albertans wonder:  how did we go from leaders to also-rans in only a few months?

Premier Stelmach and his cabinet blame worldwide recession. In doing so, they conceal this fact:  Alberta’s oil patch, the source of one-third of provincial revenues, had been in steep decline well before chaos struck the markets in September, 2008.

In August, Saskatchewan and B.C. were already leading Alberta in oil and gas land sales, in part due to the Stelmach government’s determination to enforce higher royalties. By the end of the year, B.C’s earnings of $2.66 billion put Alberta’s $937 million in the shade. Saskatchewan enjoyed land sales of $1.2 billion, despite its oil patch being one-fifth the size of Alberta’s.

Throughout 2008, an estimated $2 billion in oil and gas investments left Alberta for other jurisdictions, pointing to even larger royalty losses in future years. This is no accident:  Alberta’s neighbours have worked hard to attract risk capital and the entrepreneurs who depend on it.

By contrast, Premier Stelmach and his ministers turned a blind eye to evidence placed before them, well before last year’s election, that hiking royalties during a time of rising costs and low natural gas prices would poison the well of real provincial earnings.

A number of executives invited us to examine their books and do the math. Clearly, they were right:  the new royalty scheme would chase smart money away from most of Alberta’s junior oil and gas firms. Higher royalties would kick in just as investors would be hoping to recoup.

The premier promised to meet the juniors’ representatives prior to the election. But he dodged them instead, opting for a vague assurance that his government would correct the “unintended consequences” of the royalty review after the election.

That correction never came. By summer, 100 fewer drilling rigs were operating in Alberta than had been the case 14 months earlier. Upwards of 10,000 jobs vanished with them.

Not so long ago, Premier Stelmach enjoyed grading his government’s performance. He hasn’t ventured to do so recently. Having rewarded themselves with 30% pay hikes within weeks of their election win, the premier and his cabinet stuck to a royalties plan that weakened Alberta’s key revenue-earning sector on the eve of the worst recession since the Dirty Thirties.

The province’s Heritage Fund has suffered its greatest loss since its creation 33 years ago. And just last week, the government committed our “Alberta Advantage” motto to history, revealing that it will spend $25 million taxpayer dollars to come up with a moniker more fitting for the times.

That ploy, to somehow “rebrand” Alberta, points to the Stelmach Conservatives’ deeper failing. The party would rather conceal the province’s ailing political culture, it’s democracy deficit, than respond to it.

The PC’s policy blunders - crumbling health care, a flaccid response to urban crime, failing to take assertive action on the oil sands – are all symptoms of a party that has grown old and detached, one whose leadership is militantly averse to innovation, and surrounded by impenetrable rings of appointees, cronies and contract seekers.

Sure, we’re Albertans. We’ll get our edge back – once we deal with the disadvantage of a government that lets patronage trump free enterprise, and stubbornness get in the way of common sense.

Pausing for a while provides an opportunity to reflect on the broader background issues to the case we’re pursuing, among them the crises of mounting debt and plummeting share value besetting the Canwest Global Corporation and its related firms.

We need to bear in mind that the livelihoods of thousands of colleagues depend on their bosses pulling the Canwest empire back from the brink. These diverse companies are some of North America’s largest employers of news professionals and media workers.

Last week’s news that the conglomerate is cutting its workforce by 560 positions, or five percent, alarms all of us who have contributed, at one time or another, to the publications and programs that will now be forced to do more with less.

Most of Canwest’s reporters, technicians and other staffers are just like those of us who’ve gone before: loyal newshounds and skilled professionals, people who get up each day with the intention to commit honest journalism by the time their heads hit the pillow again.

There can be little doubt that Canwest’s owners and managers have allowed themselves to stray from that clear, genuine purpose. A debt burden of the magnitude the group is currently facing - $3.7 billion – speaks of a management team that desperately needs to reconnect with its core values, as is also evident by the outrageous journalistic abuses we’ve examined in this case so far.

After all, should any responsible media organization need to remind its journalists that it’s rather important to visit a battleground constituency - and speak with a candidate at least once - before profiling him in an aggressive way?

Or that accuracy remains a must? As does granting a subject the chance to explain himself, or to respond to any poison that might be put about by unnamed political foes?

And that if balance and fairness are totally absent in a news article (or in two consecutive days of coverage, as in this case) it’s a good idea to give people a right to reply, and to publish their rebuttal if one is submitted.

If Canwest’s owners really want to serve their shareholders, they might try something revolutionary: reconnecting with the best traditions of their bedrock publications, newspapers like the Citizen, the Herald and the Journal.

How do they go about doing that? By working with the overwhelming majority of their staffers who still remember what those mastheads once stood for.

Let me leave you with one reporter’s memories of the kind of public service-oriented journalism that he grew up with, long before Canada’s biggest newspaper chain came into Canwest’s possession. This is an exerpt from my book Risk and Redemption: Surviving the Network News Wars, published by Penguin Canada in 1996, and by Interstellar in the U.S. in 1997.

You see, I was taught at the Calgary Herald that accuracy and fairness and freedom from political interference are all fine qualities worth striving for. Which, come to think of it, is all I’m really doing here.

* * *

GROWING UP IN THE province of Alberta, Canada, my siblings and I were acutely aware that A. Parker Kent, head of the family, was one of the leading newspaper columnists on our hometown paper, the Calgary Herald. I remember, as a child, answering the phone one evening: “Hello?”

“MRS KENT!” (I was insulted, but my broadcast news voice was still a dozen years away.) “PUT YOUR HUSBAND ON THE PHONE!” I thought I recognized the angry man’s voice. From television, I thought.

“Yes?” My father generally spoke quietly, except in debate, into which he gladly entered with anyone. He winced at the violent crackle coming down the phone at him and held the receiver away from his ear. When the tirade subsided, he said, “I’m glad you’ve read my column, Mr. Mayor. Let’s talk about it tomorrow. When I’ll be in my office.” He hung up, loudly.

“Calling me at home?” he said quietly. “Who does he think he is — the mayor?”

I laughed. Journalism looked like good fun. But I was cautioned by my father many times as I grew older. Don’t punish your readers with your opinions, he would tell me. Disturb them with facts.

Stimulate thought and get them angry, outraged if you can, but not by bludgeoning them with strident language. Instead, serve them up a reasoned, truthful presentation of events and persuade them to get off their backsides and vote or write letters or simply think about their lives and their communities.

Journalism seemed to be a kind of mission, when he spoke about it that way - a crusade. I liked that idea a lot…

MY FONDEST CHILDHOOD MEMORIES are of Saturday mornings at the newspaper. I would ride the bus into the city and meet my father as he finished work, which he steadfastly wound up by noon on Saturdays. I’d follow him from his office, where a battered old Underwood held center stage, through the bright city room full of strange, threatening-looking characters in white shirts and ties (these days reporters are more colorfully dressed, though, I believe, much less colorful in character).

Next it was down the long gallery where my father would have to lift me up to look through the window and down on the giant roaring presses.

Those were hot-metal days, every letter typed out by hand and formed on to plates made from molten lead, over which a river of newsprint was transformed to words and pictures before your eyes. It was a vision of power, but I’ll always remember the quiet courtesy with which my father handed over the four typewritten pages of his latest editorial to the typesetters, who stood in their blue coats, stained with ink, beside the clattering machinery.

His work done, my father would slip that week’s editions of Time and Newsweek into the pocket of his woolen overcoat and lead me into the street, where in winter a blizzard might be blowing snow among the tall buildings. After supper, the Rangers and the Canadiens would face off on TV, and Sunday afternoon there’d be Walter Cronkite with “The Twentieth Century.”

Later in life, my journalism teachers and my father encouraged me. Dad had retired from the newspaper by 1973, and his colleagues decided to give me a break with a summer job. I got a shirt and tie and one of my brother’s old sportsjackets and showed up for work at the Herald, circulation 110,000 - every single copy of which, I was certain, would soon represent a reader with whom I would establish profound reportorial contact…

THE DAY AFTER I got my first byline (on a story that had to be extensively rewritten), one of my father’s more liberal-minded colleagues slapped a file of Canada Grade A, small “c” conservative Parker Kent clippings on to my desk.

“Read these,” he advised. “Your father is a good writer. An irritatingly good writer.”

I tried to pick up some of his technique that first summer of my career. But in the end, I scraped through not by virtue of any inherited talent for writing (which I’m sure my disappointed editors believed would never manifest itself) but because of the instincts I had observed in my father’s work and had tried to emulate.

He was a sceptical person, and while he always favoured the forces of law and order over those who called for civil disobedience, deep down he harboured a visceral distrust for all political organizations, government agencies and big businesses.

These, he felt, were either corrupt or incompetent, and any individual who blindly placed his trust in politicians, bureaucrats or ambitious businessmen was exposing himself to great danger. “Be your own boss,” he frequently advised me, “and be your own man.”

So stories about a citizen’s quest for justice, or a good fight against city hall, invariably caught my interest. I loved to chase down tales of official neglect or chicanery and to use the victims’ own words to turn the tables on the villains of bureaucracy or business.

One day a homeowner phoned to complain that a city cleaning contractor had filled her kitchen with great dunes of grit while sandblasting a bridge beside her property. She’d phoned the city works department. They told her to call the contractor. He hung up in her ear. The contractor did the same to me after snarling, “Write what you like - call me Donald Duck if you want to.”

The night editor liked that line. “Donald Duck, eh?” he said cheerfully, pointing to a typewriter. “Go get ‘em, kid.”

And we did. The story was tight and tough and it went on the front page of the city section with the wise-guy contractor getting the “Donald Duck” label he’d asked for in big bold type, right in the headline. Next day, the city agreed to pay for cleaning up the house, presumably from the fee once destined for the quacking sandblaster.

* * *

NEXT, WE’RE TAKING A PAUSE on this site, some time off for a little investigative footwork. But please keep an eye out here, and also at skyreporter.com.