Category: New

The following material is intervention # 114054 to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for its hearing No. 2009-614 beginning December 7, 2009 in Gatineau, Quebec:

The CRTC has asked for comments on a) affordability of cable and satellite services, b) availability of local television services, c) adapting to a digital communication environment and d) evolving business models facilitating access to local television stations. This paper will briefly deal with the four requested topics and then provide some additional comments.

a) AFFORDABILITY

In looking at the affordability of cable and satellite services, the only comment is that the constantly rising costs of services from broadcasting distribution undertakings (BDUs) and their complex packages of channels are denying many seniors on fixed incomes and younger adults working at retail and/or part-time wages, access to these services. Another mandated charge on cable and satellite bills such as the Local Programming Improvement Fund will just engender further resentment and more cut-backs in services. One solution to this is to require that BDUs price their service at a base cost that includes a specified number of channels, of the customer’s choice, and the balance of channels be available individually, cafeteria style, at listed prices. The CRTC can hardly mandate that certain broadcast channels be carried on basic BDU service if the broadcasters want to charge, through the BDUs for receiving those channels. Private enterprise has the right to charge for its services. That is their choice. The Canadian consumer must also have the right to decline to receive them without having to forego other BDU services.

b) AVAILABILITY

In discussing the availability of local television services, it is assumed that ‘local’ is defined politically, not geographically. Municipalities, with their elected councils, community programs and services and often professional sports teams, create a viable base for local communication needs. Television broadcast contours do not conform to this ‘local’ definition while cable can more easily pinpoint delivery to specific municipal boundaries. Local needs can be better met by improved cable and microwave production capabilities than by today’s broadcasters.

c) ADAPTING TO DIGITAL

In a sense, digital broadcasting capabilities have reversed the roles of broadcasters and BDUs. While digital broadcasting cannot provide the extended coverage, it does solve the poor signal quality problems that encouraged the broad deployment of cable distribution 40 to 50 years ago. Why should the consumer pay a BDU an additional monthly amount to receive geographically local stations that can provide a much better quality high-definition picture with improved sound through an inexpensive digital antenna than the compressed signal carried on satellite or cable? If broadcasters really believe local TV matters, they would be promoting the use of over-the-air antennae to their local viewers.

d) EVOLVING BUSINESS MODELS

Evolving business models are a serious problem for both broadcasters and BDUs. These corporations have become too big and too heavily invested in the past. If the ability to send live or recorded pictures and sound (at today’s standards) was invented last year and there was no government regulation involved, it is most likely the family entertainment centre model that has been with us since the 1950s would be fighting it out for audiences with hand-held personal communication devices. The television networks would be as they were originally intended—smaller, independent sources of news, sports and/or entertainment programs. The world of advertising would be learning to deal with consumers as individuals and not just as gross rating points. The main distribution mechanisms would probably be a combination of cellular-based multicasting and satellite.

DISCUSSION

In the current, quite vehement but little understood advertising tirades between BDUs and broadcasters, there is very little light being shed on the issue of compensation for local television. The broadcasting networks say, for example, that, for years, cable and satellite companies have been charging their customers for local programming that the stations provide. The inference is that the BDUs are selling something that does not belong to them.

This is not true. In its inception, cable television and later satellite television services were modelled on community antenna services. Community antenna services were the solution for apartment buildings that did not have room on their roofs for individual antenna required by residents to receive television signals. Community antenna distributed the signals through coaxial cable. This is how cable became and still is very much a delivery service for television. Simply put, they are there to deliver the pizza, not make it. The charges are for delivery.

The rapid success of community antenna service was not just the elimination of individual household antennae. In the beginning, it was broadcasters who benefitted the most from the relationship. Cable companies went deeper and deeper into debt running cable everywhere, while providing expanded signal coverage for television broadcasters. Broadcasters gained larger audiences, with what, at the time, were enhanced analogue signals. And since advertisers want to buy large audiences, the broadcasters enjoyed many very fat years.

But over the next 50 years, that original model has changed. It should be noted that many of the changes have been promoted by the CRTC. Today there are broadcast channels, high-definition channels, super channels, news channels, movie channels, sports channels, foreign language channels, shopping channels, time-shifting channels, local cable channels and specialty channels available through BDUs. There is broadcast and cable delivery and satellite delivery and microwave delivery and delivery of television entertainment on compact discs. At any given time, day or night, the consumer has many hundreds of choices of channels and entertainment material.

Today’s broadcasters are the people who seriously need to rethink their business model. They complain to us that “the environment has changed, advertising is down, program expenses are up, and audiences are fragmenting, along with the economic downturn.” Yet who made the rule that they do not have to change, to adapt, to be meaningful in today’s environment? In a digital world, does ‘broadcasting’ of a single channel even make sense? Digital broadcasting has opened up new broadcast spectrum, new quality standards and new broadcasting opportunities. To ask the consumer to pay for their last century ‘local’ channels can only be considered a callow act by people bereft of creativity and business acumen.

And surely there was no Moses who promised the TV networks they would never have any lean years. Today there are more than 30 million Canadians facing tough times. Are television networks high on the list of those deserving of a hand out? While Canwest Global is drowning in debt of its own creation and the CBC always cries poormouth, there is absolutely no excuse for CTVglobemedia to be standing in front of this commission with a tin cup.

The broadcast networks tell us that local TV matters but do not explain: what is ‘local’ TV? They have no reason to care about local television. CBC/Radio Canada used to have wonderful local/regional news across Canada. The politicians starved the public broadcaster out of that idea. The private networks are not interested in anything ‘local.’ They provide regional news because it is the only way to justify the costs. I live in Barrie, Ontario and I find that Rogers Cable does a better job covering what you need to know about that city than the television station located there—that is owned by CTVglobemedia.

Before anyone thinks I am carrying a brief for the BDUs, let me assure you that they also have buckets of sins on their backs. You would not believe the numbers of times I have wanted to call a Rogers executive and give him a heads up on his company’s poor quality service and the unconscionable prices charged for it.

But all you ever get if you call Rogers Cable’s listed numbers is ignorant, poorly trained and underpaid call centre employees who have to follow foolish scripts instead of providing intelligent answers. They call me regularly to use their voice-over-Internet-protocol telephones but they cannot run decent quality cable to my apartment suite. And Bell Canada is no better. Every year Bell service continues to deteriorate as more employees leave the company to be replaced by cheaper and cheaper call centres.

If local TV meant anything, I would use an inexpensive digital receiver to get the signal from the CKVR tower that is a few kilometers away. I would get a far better quality, high definition picture with a digital signal than Rogers Cable can currently deliver to my television set.

But I forget. The CRTC has exempted CTV from converting CKVR to digital!

CONCLUSION

The most serious concern we should all have is that despite the many discussions about the question of compensation for local television signals, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has announced that the Cabinet will make the decision and not the CRTC. One does not need psychic powers to connect the dots as to why parties involved do not trust the CRTC to make the decision they want.

This Commission was created 31-years ago with the honest intent to forestall political interference such as this. Despite the very clear statement by the Conservative members of the Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, earlier this year, of their “most fervent and rigorous opposition to any potential fee-for-carriage system, either negotiated or imposed,” we can make a very good guess at what the Cabinet wants to do.

Never in world history has a government had the opportunity to win the hearts, minds and editorial approval of so much of the country’s news media without having to use troops.

The anger of Canadians who will pay for this will be ignored by the broadcasters and the newspapers they own as they will be much too busy counting their profits.

I do hope though that when the Cabinet announces its decision, this Commission will have the grace to resign. The CRTC will have lost all authority to do its job.

Respectfully submitted, October 2009,

Peter Lowry

There has been admirable restraint involved. After many weeks of news in newspapers and on TV about eHealth Ontario, something more really needs to be said. There needs to be discussion of what eHealth is all about. What is the purpose of eHealth? How could our provincial government spend over a billion dollars of our money with no accountability and nothing to show?

There is absolutely no excuse for the costs involved. Over 20 years ago, I was running a company that created massive searchable databases for fees between $50,000. and $150,000 depending on the input quality. If the data was clean and well organized, the job was easy. If there was a lot of garbage to clean up, it became expensive. There are all kinds of database frameworks on today’s Internet that could easily be adapted for a database of health records? What are eHealth’s problems?

There are two concerns that are critical. The first problem is security. The last group of consultants could not even figure out how to hide their tea and cookie charges from the auditor so how do you expect them to understand the need for privacy of health records.

The second critical need to make a project such as this happen is leadership. What it had instead was a ‘possible’ under Conservative Health Minister Tony Clement, a tentative ‘maybe’ under Liberal Health Minister George Smitherman and a guaranteed disaster under an incompetent David Caplan. It has always seemed axiomatic that to accomplish any task, you have to know what it is you want to accomplish. The problem was that eHealth and its predecessor, Smart Systems for Health, never had properly stated program objectives.

And you will never solve problems such as this with consultants in any event. A consultant without incentives to complete the project is always going to run in circles, drawing fees and expenses and making the project last.

What Clement or Sitherman should have done is make a deal with a company that understood the objective. There are some out there. A proper search for companies capable and then a proper bidding process, could have addressed the problem.

Privacy for the patient and security can be guaranteed by simple expedients such as the government’s assurance that records for an individual can never be accessed without a medical-emergency override or health card with signature. The reason for the medical override is when there is a life-dependent need for speed in a trauma centre situation. Doctors’ offices only need the patient’s written permission.

Queen’s Park should stop playing politics with our safety, wasting our money and get the job done.

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Writing about political oddballs recently, it is logical that the name of Eugene Whelan should surface. This space would be devoted to nothing else if once we start to recount fond memories of Gene. Member of Parliament, Minister of Agriculture and later Senator, Gene Whelan is actually a shy and charming gentleman. He is well into his 80’s today but this is not a eulogy.

While that stupid green stetson might have become some kind of a signature, it was actually a crutch of a sort for him to hide behind. While travelling around Ontario for the Liberal party in the 60’s and 70’s BS (before Stetson), I cannot say how often I bumped into Gene at Liberal party meetings. I most often found him in a corner, by himself, just watching and absorbing what was going on. I always made a point of stopping to say ‘hello’ and enjoying hearing his insights into the event. I will never forget our first meeting after Mr. Trudeau appointed him Minister of Agriculture. Gene was in the usual corner, by himself, doing his thing. I shook his hand warmly and congratulated him on Mr. Trudeau’s remarkably good sense.

“But,” I asked him in mock concern, “did Mr. Trudeau think to put one of those boot scraping thingees outside the cabinet room for you?”

“Nope,” was his sardonic reply, “I jus’ tracks it all in.”

I am not privy to the reasons Gene chose to run against John Turner for the party leadership in ’84 but I suspect it was because Gene was not as forgiving of some of the nasty things insiders had heard John say about Mr. Trudeau. Gene was very loyal and I was pleased that Mr. Trudeau insisted that he be made an ambassador after John refused to have him in his cabinet. That rotten Brian Mulroney cancelled the appointment as soon as he took over the Prime Minister’s office. The Italians almost had the rare treat of having Gene Whelan as Canadian ambassador.

I have a couple favourite stories about Gene. The first was when the party president asked me to cover a nomination meeting for the party in Hanover, Ontario. It was immediately after the convention had selected Pierre Trudeau as the new leader and nobody wanted to take time to go to this particular meeting. It was for a by-election that we knew would never take place because by then we knew Mr. Trudeau would shortly call a general election. I was surprised to find a couple thousand people in the Hanover arena when I arrived. And it was a very enthusiastic crowd. The second surprise of the evening was when Gene Whelan showed up and told me he was the guest speaker.

It certainly surprised the attendees but they were all enthusiastic Liberals and greeted Gene loudly and warmly when he was introduced. The introductory remarks in Gene’s speech were classic Whelan:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow Liberals, I betcha you expected Pierre Trudeau to be here.” (A roar of agreement.) “Maybe you thought Mr. Trudeau would send John Turner.” (Another roar from the crowd.)

“But he sent me.” (A smattering of applause from the crowd.) “You wanna know why he sent me?” (A murmer of agreement from the crowd.) “Wull, he sent me, cus he wanted you to see that anybody can get elected to Parliament.”

Another favourite story about Gene was the time I was sitting in the lounge at the Ottawa airport reading Richard Gwyn’s new book at the time: The Northern Magus. The room was full of Conservative MPs and senators but I had noted Gene come in and go directly to the bar to get a Creme de Menthe that I am sure they kept there just for him. I continued to read, I was at a good part of the book. Next thing I know, someone is poking rudely at the book. It is Gene and that dreadful green Stetson and his worse liqueur. “Whatcha reading Peter?” he asks.

“Oh, it’s Richard Gwyn’s new book about Mr. Trudeau,” I told him.

“He’s a liar you know, that guy from the Toronto Star,” he responds.

Having read Richard’s articles for many years, I asked: “What does he lie about?”

“Bout me,” Gene almost whimpered. “He calls me a pig farmer. You know I wus always in mixed grains.”

Gwyn was probably not aware that in Southwestern Ontario referring to anyone who is not in the hog production business as a pig farmer is not considered flattering.

I had noticed that the room had become very quiet while this dialogue went on so I came up with a simple closer. “Gene,” I said, in something of a stage whisper, “that just proves that Richard really likes you. We certainly don’t want him telling the truth about you.”

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Have you ever asked a blogger why? Did you get an answer? Did you get an honest answer? You wanted to know why they did it. You cannot believe that so many people have that big an ego. Could they really consider their pontificating so profound?

Or is the answer very simple. Take the case of this blog. What is it all about? Why does it cover so many subjects? Why call Barrie, Ontario Babel? Simple answer: I am a writer. As a writer, I am available for hire. I write for people who pay me. If someone needs a writer to produce a speech, a lecture, a presentation, a brochure, a résumé, a book, a script, a poem or a posting for twitter, I am your ghost. The web site babelonthebay.com is a sampler. It showcases my wares.

It helps that I love writing.

I also make it easy for my employer. Take a speech, for example. All you need to tell me is to whom you will be speaking, what is the subject and if you for it or against it. You can tell me more if you wish but I am mindful of the time a client gave me a two-hour explanation of a 15-minute speech he needed. He was angry when he read my first draft. “That is just what I told you,” he blustered. “What have you contributed?” I thought I had done an excellent editing job.

And then there are clients who are not interested in your view. I was once offered more than twice my normal rate for a 50-minute lecture a client was giving at an American university. The reason for the higher rate was that the client was extremely rightwing politically. The client might have got a standing ovation for his speech but I deserved every penny of that fat fee for fiction writing.

Hands up everyone who thinks all business people write their own presentations. Those of you with your hands up; I bet you also believe in the tooth fairy. When I started writing presentations for others, we were still using slide shows. PowerPoint makes life much easier.

Modern low-cost, on-demand publishing has given impetuous to the world of business book ghost writing. It has reached a point that if you open a restaurant, the opening can be shared with the introduction of your new book of recipes that is a regular reminder of a good place to eat out. You have an auto parts firm, so you produce a book of tips on doing minor auto repairs. No matter what your business, there is a book that can be written that reminds people that they should deal with you because you are the expert. Just leave the writing to an expert at writing.

I am not sure I want to resume writing résumés. I used to brag that nobody I wrote a résumé for ever failed to land a suitable job. Today, I have to qualify that bravado. One problem is that younger people do not trust someone my age to know their audience. And they might be right. Today, there are many barriers to getting your résumé to the person with whom you really need to communicate. I still believe in my résumés but I am losing touch with those barriers. It is becoming more of a team effort.

You might never see any of my poetry in this blog. I tend to inflict it only on friends and family. While they are not always enthusiastic about my poems, they are kind.

What some people say is missing from this sampler blog is humour. I apologize for that. I do not write humour. I have been accused of being a bit capricious with whimsy. That is the reason that I refer to Barrie as Babel. I think Barrie gets a bad rap. Babel is a more whimsical place, more open and accepting. Babel seeks challenges and opportunities. Barrie is a harsher, colder environment, full of potholes and bars, hockey players and hookers. (Yah, I know, your sister plays right wing.)

But I love twitter. This is a venue where writers can shine. Effective tweets are full of alliterative allusions, weighty words of wisdom and devoted to doggerel. It is a medium that eschews whole sentences while demanding clarity. It is in twitter where everybody knows your name but not the name of your writer. Can you imagine a writing gig that pays you to write less than 280 characters a day? It’s golden!

And one last comment about the art: Writing to precisely fill a column is a big part of a writer’s training. A column is usually limited to an average of 800 words. As is this one.

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One of the things my wife has noted over the years is that I seem to accumulate the acquaintance of some unusual people. This includes political people and, it should be obvious, politics produces some very unusual people. We are reminded of this by seeing my old friend Hazel McCallion the other night. Hazel has been mayor of the City of Mississauga for more than 30 years. What was most unusual about the event was that Hazel was doing a duet with television personality Regis Philbin.

When she and I first met, Hazel was mayor of Streetsville. I was connected with a company that wanted to build an assembly plant nearby. Our meeting had nothing to do with my interest in politics. I was simply there to further good relations for the company with the community. Hazel and I liked each other. I found her easy to work with. She found that I willingly accommodated her love of publicity. We were a good team.

Hazel has come a long way since then. The plant in Mississauga was in full swing when she became mayor of the much larger municipality of Mississauga in 1978. And she was no spring chicken then. I remember many fun times when I would give her a call to take part in some function or other and she would show up, chain of office at the ready, for the photographers I always had for her.

I expect she considered me a supporter as she made prodigious efforts to get me to move to Mississauga. Her blandishments failed though as I was too committed a Torontonian.

I could go on about the friendship but this is about Hazel and Regis Philbin. Regis is harder to explain than Hazel. He is not a friend. He was on stage at Casino Rama and in a weak moment I agreed to take my wife to his show. This was a political move on my part as I wanted to stay in her good graces. I have sometimes caught my wife watching Philbin’s daytime television thing with Kelly Ripa. If the show at Rama had featured Kelly Ripa, you could not have kept me away.

The biggest surprise when we took our seats for Philbin’s show, in that awful barn of an auditorium at Rama, was that there was a sizeable symphonic orchestra on the stage. I was not aware that Regis Philbin considers himself a singer. It turned out the orchestra was there because, as a singer, he needs all the help he can get. Later in the program, he brought out his wife Joy. She also fancies herself a singer. It is my humble opinion that singing does not run in the Philbin family.

But the treat for the evening was Hazel and Regis’ duet. To put it as politely as possible, the word ‘awful’ keeps coming to my mind. You can probably guess why. Here is a dapper 78-year old entertainer who sounds like he has post-nasal drip and is not much over five feet tall, singing along with an even shorter 88-year old politician. And they are doing this in front of a stage with a full-size orchestra playing their hearts out. His only comment on the effort was that he noted that the politician got more applause than he. It would have helped if he had practiced pronouncing “McCallion.” It rhymes with “scallion” Regis!

Shortly after the number with Hazel and while Regis was singing some ballad with his wife, we made our getaway. I thought of sticking around to say ‘hello’ to Hazel but it was obvious from the reception she got from the couple thousand people in the audience that she had many well-wishers there. While it might seem rude to some people that we left before the end of the show, it is sometimes necessary. One of the problems you often run into with free tickets for casino entertainment is that you get what you pay for.

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Denis Coderre quit as Quebec lieutenant for Liberal party leader Michael Ignatieff earlier this week. It is a minor story. It changes few votes. For the Liberals in Quebec, it is really an opportunity.

To fully understand the reasons, you need to start with the ugly truth that, in Quebec, federal politics is a blood sport. It is not democratic. It is not honest and it is that way because Quebec voters are used to it that way. Nothing is more ingrained in the Québécois psyche than the desire to make sure that the pur laine (real Quebeckers) get everything possible from the blockheads (les anglais).

Once you know that about Quebec politics, life becomes much simpler. And please do not get me wrong. I love the part of my country that is Quebec. I regret I will never be as bilingual as I would like to be but that takes living for some period of time in a French-speaking environment and I have never had that pleasure. We were in Quebec recently and I was delighted to find during the visit that there were less of the antagonisms that used to worry me about relations between our two language groups. In politics it is not so much antagonisms as it is leverage. And you do not have to be a Bloc Québécois politician to make use of it.

What we in Ontario would consider cynical, in Quebec is considered merely practical. For example: What if Denis Coderre flipped a coin with his rival for the Quebec leadership of the federal Liberals, Martin Cauchon, to see who would support Michael Ignatieff and who would support the other likely Ontario contender for the national leadership, Bob Rae? Denis Coderre probably feared he had lost when he drew Ignatieff. In the long term, he won. Now, as Quebec lieutenant, he uses the opportunity to tell his old friend Martin that he cannot have his old riding back when Cauchon decides to return to the game. Denis was deeply affronted by Ignatieff’s office telling him that he cannot do that. His authority has been compromised, so Denis quits, complaining in a news conference about the blockheads in Ignatieff’s office.

That might be considered by some to be a Quebec version of the middle finger. What it really does is give Michael Ignatieff a chance to clean house in Quebec. It will give him a chance to find a less dictatorial Quebec Lieutenant. It might just give him an opportunity to find a new breed of Quebec lieutenant who can bring some democracy and honesty to Quebec Liberal politics. That might not be what is really wanted by all Liberal politicians in the province but it really has to happen sooner or later.

The idea that the Bloc Québécois is going to benefit from Denis Coderre’s complaint is quite unlikely as Denis is only complaining about something Bloc voters already believe. There is nothing new about the complaint that the federal Liberals are run from Toronto. (You just have to listen to Alberta Reformers to learn that.)

What Coderre knows is that the coming election campaign is going to be won or lost in Ontario. The strategy for the Liberals in Quebec will be to hold traditional seats and to target weak Conservative seats and the one NDP-held riding. If the swing occurs, Ignatieff will get the credit, not the Quebec lieutenant. If the swing does not happen, Denis gets another chance, with another anglo leader, probably from Toronto.

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Much of older Babel sits in a valley running down to the water. Our aerie, in the middle of the valley, rises high above the lapping waters of the bay and serves as a leg to help prop up the sky. Occasionally the clouds slip and we get to look with wonder on the tops of the clouds made whiter by the unshielded sun.

It is the vagaries of weather that enthral us every day. It is a million dollar view. The water shows every shade of sparkling blues and greens in summer, the whitecaps and riffles raised by the breeze, the browns of runoff from the rains and the foreboding black of the depths before the freeze. The water, stretching to the horizon, is in sharp contrast to the surrounding hills garbed in the many greens of spring and summer, the cacophony of color of the Canadian fall and the snow capped evergreens of winter.

Sometimes blotted by early morning fogs off the water that are soon burnt off by the warming sun, each day starts with the light of the east coming across the water. As the sun follows its predetermined route to the west, the clouds gust mainly from the west to east. The occasional black clouds from the east crossing and tossing the water warn of the coming of a storm.

From the weight of soggy, overcast fall days to the bright promise of spring, we enjoy the vagaries of the Babel weather. When neighbours leave for the warmer climes of winter, we feel they leave the best of Babel for us to enjoy. How could we miss cocooning high above the piling drifts of winter white? How could we forego watching the ice boats, air boats, para-skiers, skidoos and ever interesting modes of transportation across the ice of the bay?

Babel is a city that accepts winter and its many challenges. It has nearby ski hills and a myriad of hockey arenas. Fishermen are not thwarted by ice as they create a hole to bring up their catch. There are piles of snow throughout the suburbs higher than the cars. More snow comes to be piled even deeper. Former Toronto drivers only go through one season before joining the line for snow tires.

And Babel is a summer place. The activities around the beautiful bay are intense and fill the summer with fun and color and music. Our fountain down below our aerie is a magnet that draws Babelites and visitors alike. Tour boats, power boats and sail boats of every kind mix with the Seadoos, kayaks and canoes to explore our bay.

From the frenetic actions of beach volleyball to the gentle Rorschach of the clouds, our home in Babel keeps us enthralled with what nature and humans choose to share.

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Canada’s English language television networks are launching their own television campaign to demand they be paid what are called ‘fees for carriage’ by cable and satellite dish TV providers. These fees are to be paid to local stations for carrying the local station’s signal. These are the channels that the cable companies originally picked up from their own television antennas and fed into their customers’ homes.

Fees for carriage only came into existence for channels that cannot be received with a television antenna. Channels such as the History Channel and Arts & Entertainment are a good example of channels that are not sent over the air but are fed by satellite to cable and dish resellers throughout North America. Instead of using just advertising revenue, these channels are paid a fixed fee for each cable or dish customer who includes that channel in their package.

The cable and satellite television companies have provided an important service to local broadcasters even though the customer did not necessarily need the intermediary to deliver the signals.  What they did was eliminate the rooftop antennas and improved the television signal quality to viewers. By the time the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) got around to regulating these resellers, the CRTC demanded that all local stations be included in their basic service.

It seems the television networks missed something in their capitalism 101 classes. It seems clear to most of us that if you are lucky enough to be awarded a broadcasting licence for a commercial television station, you become rich. It is that simple. How could the television networks get it wrong?

Realizing, of course, that there are good times and bad times and this might not be a really good time, did they hear about what Moses told the Pharaoh? In fat years you set aside something for the thin years. Did someone promise CTV and Global that there would only be fat years for them? Do they think they do not need to heed Moses’ good advice?

While back in Moses’ time, he would not be aware of how commercial television makes its money, it would be very easy to explain to him. It centres around the camel dealer who wants to let people know about the low prices and high quality of his camels. He talks to the representative of the television station and asks for a good prime time buy for his commercials to reach potential customers. In exchange for an appropriate number of shekels per thousand viewers, a deal is made. Moses would have no problem understanding that the television station makes money by providing an audience for the camel dealer’s commercials.

And that is why an exception is made for the CBC in this story. The CBC is somewhat restricted in the commercial time it can sell and the publicly owned network sets higher standards than the really commercial broadcasters. And that is why CTV and others are always sniping at the CBC. They just do not like that holier than thou attitude from the public broadcaster.

But the CBC is going along with its fellow broadcasters in this circumstance. This is not because the CBC brass all want to be one with the boys but because it will take revenue wherever it sees an opportunity. With the current government slashing funds to the CBC every chance it gets, the CBC is getting a bit desperate. Carriage fees can help the CBC as well as the other networks.

But the problem is that carriage fees have to come from somewhere. There is no magic money tree around where we can go and pick up a few shekels. The cable and satellite dish people have made it very clear that if the CRTC legislates that there will be fees for carriage, it will be the cable and dish users who will pay. That is you and I folks! On top of outrageous fees, terrible service and autocratic billing from the cable and satellite dish providers, they will expect us to pay even more for channels that we might not want.

And that is the rub. We are talking here about a fee for channels that are mandated by the CRTC to be provided. As a customer, you have no choice: you have to take those channels. It ‘s not like Arts & Entertainment and the History Channel where you might buy one but not the other. You can now contribute to the cost, for example, of your local CTV news—an endless round of self-aggrandizing promotions of CTV shows and personnel wrapped around clips about the latest teenage murder.

Babel used to have a local channel but now one can argue that it is just an estranged appendage of the Toronto CTV station. It is sort of like an ex-wife to whom you owe alimony. This is the one that the silly local MP has been touting at his voters’ expense on behalf of CTV . This channel ran a program that built a strong and faithful audience over its first few seasons. Surprise, surprise, that program is now on the Toronto CTV station’s listing and the Babel station gets more old reruns. Did we mention that CTV owns our local station?

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When writing in disagreement with our old friend Colin Kenny on June 26, there was little to really argue because he gave no logical support to his stand in a Toronto Star article on Canada/U.S. border needs. In writing today (Sept. 21) on Afghanistan, he uses better support for his position but he is wide of the mark in his reasons to withdraw our troops. He believes the cause for our troops to be there no longer makes sense. What he fails to note is that our troops should never have been there in the first place.

Senator Kenny says that Canadian troops went to Afghanistan to confront radical Islam. That is just about the silliest idea since the Children’s Crusade of the early 13^th Century. The only people potentially capable of defeating radical Islam are fellow Muslims who want to bring peace and prosperity to their countries through effective political reform and industrialization. You would have thought that some people in the U.S. government would have been smart enough to tell that to George W. Bush before he started Gulf War II.

What are Canadians doing in Afghanistan? We are there to support our U.S. allies. That is our only excuse. It is a sorry excuse. We were committed to it by a foolish Paul Martin when Prime Minister and by his replacement an even more foolish Stephen Harper. Thanks to former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, we refused the American invitation to send troops to Iraq.

And when we got to Afghanistan, we found we had the dirty end of the stick in troubled Kandahar Province. Not only were we faced with an embedded enemy but we had the wrong equipment for troops who were untrained for counter-insurgency operations. While we might have learned a bit since the British first marched up the Khyber Pass almost 200 years ago, we were no better prepared.

Maybe the Afghan tribes are fed up with being constantly rescued from oppression by foreign troops. The British exploited them, the Russians killed them, Americans used them and now they are trying to figure out NATO troops from countries such as Canada. The sharia law of their Taliban is far easier to understand.

We need to realize that the Pashtun tribesmen we call Taliban are from both sides of the Afghan/Pakistan border. They are recruited and trained at Pakistani religious madrasahs (colleges) and funded by the thriving opium poppy trade out of Afghanistan. The Taliban use the same safe routes across the border that the CIA used to travel to provide the Taliban with missiles to destroy Russian helicopters. And we are there propping up a corrupt group of tribal warlords as a government who want the opium poppy trade for themselves.

And we should not forget oil. The West does nothing in that part of the world unless there is oil involved. We should bear in mind the persistent claims that Hamid Karsai, the erstwhile president of that country is bought and paid for by American oil interests. His previous employer, if that was the case, had him arranging for an oil pipeline through Afghan and Pakistani territory to bring oil from former Soviet republics.

Nobody can claim intimate knowledge of that part of the world without years of study and involvement. We are all dilettantes, casting our limited knowledge before a confused public. Colin tells us he has been to Afghanistan three times. That hardly means he is more knowledgeable than someone who has been there twice.

In writing about the failure of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan, he must have sent a chill up people’s spines by putting the cost in lives and dollars in the same sentence. The lives lost to the insurgents in Afghanistan can never be replaced nor forgotten. We are above staying there for revenge.

Canadian troops have proved in world wars and in police actions that they are among the bravest and most disciplined soldiers of any country. We do not need to prove it again in a country that so desperately needs to choose its own destiny.

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It was a couple decades back when our local city councillor came to a ratepayers meeting and told us smugly that he had voted against having a McDonald’s at our small local plaza. Why did you do that, he was asked. The questioner went on to tell him that we needed a franchise such as McDonald’s at the plaza to raise the standards in cleanliness and to set a good example for other retailers. We were thinking of this the other day realizing how times can change.

McDonald’s has gone down the slippery slope of the no longer caring. What used to be high standards of cleanliness and conscientiousness has been replaced by carelessness by the incompetent and the lazy. Where at one time you could expect the same high standards throughout the world-wide chain, today it is hit or miss if anyone at that location cares.

McDonald’s, once a bastion, a caring franchise, set standards that you could count on. Whether in the streets of Tokyo’s Ginza district or off the canals of Amsterdam, you knew the taste and delight of a Big Mac with fries. Sure, you knew the calories could do you in but you deserved a treat that day and you could fast for the next week to make up for the excess.

What is changed is not so much the flavour of the Big Mac but the surroundings and the attitude of the staff. And it is the attitude of the staff that affects the surroundings. It is the attitude that says whatever is wrong is somebody else’s problem.

We went into a McDonald’s the other day because it seemed to be the only place to get something to eat on that stretch of our trip. We regretted the choice. The franchise was on a stretch of road that links two major highways and must be a prime and profitable location. We expected better than we got.

When going up to the counter to place our order, we found the manager had one massive hip resting on the counter as she kibitzed with her staff who seemed to be lackadaisically looking after drivers at the service window. It took a few polite “excuse me’s” and one of her staff pointing behind her for the manager to finally turn around and acknowledge that she had customers to serve. We soon wished she had left us to her staff.

My wife is a coupon saver. No matter where we shop, if it is a place that provides coupons, my wife probably has some. We have to check for expiry dates when using them but she saves us quite a bit of money. She always has McDonald’s coupons because she knows I like the grilled chicken and she likes wraps. (She talks me into Wendy’s occasionally because she says they have the best salads.) I did not read the details on it but this time she produced a coupon that gave us the second sandwich free. I gave it to the manager and placed our order.

When the manager asked for $14 and change, it seemed excessive. “Did you take off the coupon,” I asked.

“Oh,” she answered and picked up the coupon from where she had left it on the counter. Without apology, she found the real price was just over $9. I realized that this was the second time recently that a person at McDonald’s had ignored the coupon I was using. Was the cost of the coupon coming out of their pocket?

My wife had gone to the restroom while I waited for the food and she did not give a good report on that experience. I can only add that the bloom was off the McDonald’s sandwich, the fries like salted cardboard and the drinks must have been 90 per cent ice, soon just watery.

Maybe it’s age. The length of time between visits to the golden arches seems to be getting much longer.

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