Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Choosing Winners and Losers?

While James Moore is rather oblique in his comments here, it will be interesting to watch this story.

Knowing that he and the government have been unwilling to help the CBC, it seems to me that they are playing a rather dangerous game here.

Moore has been out quite a bit this week in an attempt, I guess, to put a friendlier face on the heritage file. Did anyone catch him on Tout le Monde en Parle, on Sunday?

I understand that there has been quite a backlash in Quebec about his appearance. I saw the show and to be honest I thought he did pretty well. He piled on the expected BS as to how the government loves culture, the CBC and how they have been funding same at historic levels. The hosts were polite at that news. Overall though, he was charming and they seemed impressed with his French. Where he got caught out was when they brought out a pop quiz. He was asked to identify mostly contemporary media personalities and of course, many of them were French Canadian. I think he only got two right and they were Rick Mercer and Feist.

Anyway, while it is true that the demise of CanWest Global would change the face of this country in ways we likely haven't considered, for him to say this evening that the matter of the CBC is closed, is risky business in my books.

This, I thought, was the government that would never choose winners and losers. Of course, this is also the government that said it wouldn't do a lot of things and has. Will we throw yet another log on that fire?

More opinion - Here and here.

2 comments:

penlan said...

Check this out, knb. Apparently he wants to help out Canwest/Global - them being private & all. Interesting changes.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090318/national/tories_tv_help

Niles said...

Well heck, if our Science Minister needs know nothing about science, because he has people for that, whyfor should anyone fuss that the Heritage Minister knows nothing about Canadian culture and what it means to the little people? All he needs to know is public airwaves=bad, privatized airwaves=good and he'll get speeches for the rest.