As a news junkie, it has been important over the years to end the day with a regular dose of CBC National News. It also might now have become an excellent cure for insomnia. Lately I have been finding that even my favourite At Issue panel can put me to sleep. Because the topics were of interest this past week, I had to stream the video from the Internet the next morning to figure out what I might have missed. What I was missing was the liveliness of debate that Peter Mansbridge used to bring to the telecast.
Rosemary Barton is a nice lady but she does not cut it. She is not fit to hold the coats for that panel. The purpose of a panel is to find differing, well-presented opinions. If everyone keeps agreeing, what is the point?
Maybe Andrew Coyne from PostMedia has been mellowing. Where are those large, ripe Conservative cantaloupes that he used to throw at us viewers? Even Chantal Hébert seems to be taking on more of a dowager role. We viewers count on Chantal to be feisty and knowledgeable.
And is the third position on the panel just being used for a series of try-outs? While Kelly Cryderman from the Calgary office of the Globe and Mail has great credentials, I would have thought she would have had more on-air experience. She needs some broadcast training.
But what I did not understand was the lack of discussion of the appointment of the new chief justice and Beverly Mclachlin’s replacement from Alberta?
Even the subject of Bill Morneau and the Liberal tax reforms(?) got less than a glancing blow as the panel was ended. It is as though the CBC has stopped talking about anything that could impact its government handouts.
To cut off Coyne and Hébert just when they started on the subject of the entitled Liberals was cruel. Coyne was questioning the attitude of the voters to the Liberal’s presumption of entitlement and Hébert pointed out that there was no reflection of this in the recent bye-elections. Mind you, even this writer ignored those bye-elections because they were neither likely to be interesting, nor were they.
What that panel should have been discussing was the lack of political impact of the new leaders of the Conservatives and the NDP. This also posits a bleak future for Canadian politics.
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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