A Government Failing And Falling
October 22nd, 2009
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.
Read More...The Scotiabank Herald: The Horror?
October 10th, 2009
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.
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