Rod McQueen's Blog, page 51

Fearing for the fourth estate

Time was when I’d annually get a call from a friend who would ask me to talk to their son or daughter about a career in journalism. That generation has grown older so I don’t get the call very often these days. Just as well. For a while, I wasn’t sure what I’d say anymore except, “Are you sure you want to do this? It’s a dying profession.”

When I was handing out happier advice, I’d urge them to go work at a provincial daily in Brantford or Kingston or a local TV station in Kitchener or Peterborough. Get published, get on air, get better, and keep knocking on doors in Toronto to move up and make a career. All you hear is layoffs and buyouts. There are too few jobs. I saw a young man working in a gas station the other day wearing a sweatshirt from the University of Guelph-Humber Media Studies. I shuddered.

Most of the hopeful young journalists end up in other fields. At its peak, Groupon employed as many in its “newsroom” as the Chicago Sun-Times. Of course, they were writing 60-word promos for restaurants offering 50 per cent off dinner. Those who do work in print journalism seem to spend most of their day tweeting and blogging before finally getting around to writing something for the print edition. There can’t be any time left for developing sources, researching and checking facts, or thinking. As a result, if you want a good read you have to turn to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Financial Times of London because few Canadian journalists have the space or their editor’s inclination.

As for editing, don’t get me started. Editors no long read for content or style, they’re working at an outsourced location. Their job consists of writing a headline and fiddling with Quark or some other layout software to make sure everything fits on the page. They might as well be watching bottles of ketchup go by on the line at Heinz for all the value added they bring.

And yet there are a few young people who are doing well in the business. Robyn Doolittle started at the Sarnia Observer and is now part of the high profile investigative team with Kevin Donovan at the Toronto Star following Mayor Rob Ford’s foibles. Bryn Weese began at the North Bay Nugget and is now in Washington, D.C., for Sun Media. He’s their go-to guy for elections from U.S. presidential to Nova Scotia provincial where he’s currently covering the October 8 ballot, a story no other national outlet even seems to know exists.

Next time I do my tapdance for a would-be journalist, thank goodness I have some success stories to point to.

Shocked and appalled

There’s been a lot of quite appropriate wailing and caterwauling about the Ontario Liberal government’s cancellation of two gas-fired generating plants. The move was calculated to save a couple of seats in the 2011 provincial election. The costs of getting out of the contracts were initially low-balled and could end up reaching almost $600 million. But as Gwyn Morgan wrote in an eye-opening column in The Globe and Mail recently, those costs are chicken-feed compared with the Dalton McGuinty government’s misguided green policy.

So desperate was the McGuinty government to look as if it were moving into the modern era of alternate energy that it gave incentives for producers of wind and solar power that meant electricity fed into the grid from those sources would receive exorbitant payments. According to a report by the Fraser Institute, those “green” rates will ding residential users about $6 billion more and business users about $12 billion more than they otherwise would be paying. That not only means money out of our pockets, it means companies comparing jursidictions for possible expansion could take Ontario off the list because of power costs.

But that’s not all. Two different people with knowledge of these matters I’ve spoken to in recent days say that the whole system is topsy-turvy. When the wind blows, Ontario has to take that wind power first over cheaper sources. There was one Sunday in May when the wind blew and, because demand was low, output had to be reduced at Niagara Falls and at the nuclear plants. Even then, there was still too much power available so the excess had to be sold to Michigan at a loss. It was, says my source, a $10-million day. And that amount – along with other losing days – goes onto the hydro debt and gets added onto our bill in that line that says “debt retirement charge.”

If it’s possible, the story gets worse. Ontario is not only selling power at a loss, there are times when we’re actually paying places like Michigan to take our power. There’s no way of storing electricity so it’s like The Bay running out of warehouse space and paying consumers to come into their stores and take anything they want off the shelves.

And all this was done on the strength of a minister’s signature. The members of the McGuinty government who put in place such an ludicrous process should be arrested, charged with theft from the public, and then sentenced to life on treadmills to produce electricity for the grid. At no charge.

What if it’s us?

The Blue Jays have come alive again, winning three in a row, but this time it’s not the big names who are playing well, it’s the call-ups: Kevin Pillar and Ryan Goins – even Moises Sierra – as well as everybody’s fave, Munenori Kawasaki. Oh sure, Brett Lawrie is good on defence and Edwin Encarnacion always helps, but the difference in the team recently is that some new, young guys are playing with intensity.

I share a pair of season’s tickets behind the Blue Jays dugout with five others so I get to the park a dozen or so times a year. I saw them wallop the Orioles 13-5 during their 11-game winning streak in June and watched them get drubbed 11-1 by the Tigers two weeks later. There’s been more outings like the latter than the former despite the $125-million payroll of brand-new brand names. Too often we look like the Double AA Schenectady Skunks.

The crowd numbers are up, averaging 31,000 a game, but the fans don’t help much. Recently I was listening to a Jerry Howarth radio broadcast because the drivel delivered by Buck Martinez on Sportsnet drives me crazy. Casey Janssen was headed for a successful save and had two outs in the ninth inning. Said Howarth: “In any other park the crowd would be on their feet.” Finally, with two strikes on the third out, people stood in support. Worse, we’re willing to put up with mediocrity. Who else would cheer for catcher J. P. Arencibia and his terrible .248 on base percentage?

Toronto likes to call itself world-class, but when it comes to baseball or basketball, we’re not a major market. Look at Emilio Bonifacio. During more than four months in Toronto, he hit .218 and couldn’t field. Two weeks ago we sent him to the Kansas City Royals where he’s now batting .283 and has committed no errors. Where the American game in concerned, even Kansas City, population less than 500,000, is better than being outside the country. As Vince Carter used to say, “You can’t even watch ESPN here.”

The lesson in all of this? The Blue Jays would be better off developing young players like Pillar and Goins within the organization. They’re thrilled to be in the bigs so Toronto’s just fine by them. They haven’t yet played in the bright lights and big city of New York or Chicago. Let’s bring them here for a while before they get a taste of there.

Value village

Half a dozen years ago, I attended a corporate reception in Montreal. The catered event in a beautiful venue featured business leaders, famous people, and – with the exception of a four-minute speech by the Toronto-based CEO – was conducted totally in French. I was okay with that. Most of the remarks during the 90-minute program had little to do with the organization that has offices around the world, they were just the usual boring blather of self-congratulation. Still, I saw the full use of French as a remarkable and positive outcome of Bill 101 that demonstrated the self-confidence of Quebec businesspeople.

The Charter of Quebec Values proposed by the Parti Quebecois is just the opposite. Making illegal the wearing of religious items by provincial employees is little more than a narrow-minded fear of “the other.” It’s one thing to tell immigrants they have to speak French, it’s something else to say they also have to look as if their families have been living in Quebec since the seventeenth century. Why should a Sikh doctor have to abandon his turban, a Jewish prof the yarmulke, a daycare worker her hijab?

The PQ has never been comfortable with immigrants. Jacques Parizeau, then Quebec premier, famously blamed “money and the ethnic vote” when the pro-sovereignty side lost the 1995 referendum. In fact, Quebecers have a strange relationship with religion. While people of many persuasions take the name of God in vain, Quebecers go one step further. Some of their worst swear words reference religious objects, words like calice and tabernac. While such words are serious profanities in French, they have no heft at all to English-speakers. Will such words be banned along with burkas? I doubt it.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has roundly denounced the Charter of Values, but other federal politicians have been pussy-footing around. We all need to tell Premier Pauline Marois and the PQ that the cleansed Quebec she envisions is not the kind of Canada that the rest of us want.

Cheap drinks

One of my favorite reads in The Globe and Mail is the Clarification column. Newspapers today are far more likely to admit errors, anything from misspelled words to major whoops. A correction yesterday referred to a story that I hadn’t read (another reason to check the clarifications) about the Nestle operation in Aberfoyle, Ont., where they pump drinking water out of the ground and fill plastic bottles.

Aberfoyle is a spit-and-a-holler south of Guelph where I grew up. When I was a boy, Guelph’s water came from the Arkell Springs, about half way between the Royal City and Aberfoyle. At some point, Guelph grew too big (population 25,000 versus today’s 118,000) for such a small water supply and we began drinking water piped all the way from Lake Huron. I left town for university shortly after but tried to keep up with deep well water from Guelph by drinking Sleeman Cream Ale when it first became available in the late 1980s.

The Nestle operation has become controversial because the locals worry that, if the Swiss company takes water from the aquifer, surface water might be affected. The original story said that the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal ruled against a sweetheart deal between Nestle and the Ontario government that would allow the company to continue drawing water during a drought. The Board went further, declaring the case required a full hearing.

Very interesting, but not as riveting as this sentence: “Under Ontario regulations, the company pays only $3.71 for every million litres of water it draws.” Whaaat? Nestle can pump up to 1.13 million litres a day so that means the company can fill more than two million 500 ml bottles of water for a total fee of about $4.20. Why are we giving away a natural resource so cheap? Telcos pay for spectrum, which is invisible. That’s what the current debate between Canadian carriers and Verizon, the U.S. carrier, is all about. In 2008, the Canadian government sold spectrum at auction for more than $4 billion. Alberta will collect $350 billion in oil sands royalties over the next twenty-five years. And Ontario gets about $1,500 a year from Nestle for millions of litres of water!

Doesn’t make much sense, does it? At Nestle, in Aberfoyle, it’s happy hour all year long.

Suck-up city

By far the best book of the season is This Town, a skewering of the Washington, D.C., elite. Written by Mark Leibovich, national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, the book arrives with a long subtitle: Two Parties and a Funeral – plus plenty of valet parking! – in America’s Gilded Capital.

In fact there are two funerals, one for Tim Russert, erstwhile host of Meet the Press, the other for Richard Holbrooke. Both events are described in vicious detail, right down to how people arrived wearing studio-ready pancake makeup. Barack Obama was the first of fifteen eulogists for Holbrooke, who brokered peace in Bosnia, but found no place in the Obama White House. After his remarks the president remained on stage, looking as if he wished he could flee. Particularly when Bill Clinton introduced the concluding speaker, Hillary, by saying: “Hillary and I were asked to end the program, and we are appearing according to Holbrooke protocol. The one with the real power speaks last.”

Other players are also ridiculed. There’s a wonderful description of Bay Buchanan in a spin room after a presidential debate, with few listening to her views. Finally, a reporter from Iceland asks if she has a minute. Buchanan rolls her eyes and says, “This is what I’ve been reduced to. Iceland.” Or how about Veep Joe Biden on the campaign trail telling an African-American audience that if Mitt Romney were to be elected, “he’d put y’all back in chains.” When asked about his vice-president’s foot-in-mouth disease, Obama shook his head and said, “What can you do?”

Leibovich offers many such deft observations, often capturing people’s foibles with their own words. Or his own. He describes super-sized New Jersey Governor Chris Christie clambering into the front seat of an SUV: “His bright white dress shirt rose a few feet in the air to where it almost touched the glove compartment, making it appear as if the airbag had deployed.” Others help, too. Someone in the White House sent Leibovich an internal email about senior adviser Valerie Jarrett who was being profiled. Among the many positive talking points suggested was this one: “Valerie is someone here who people inside the building know that they can trust.” Then the anonymous writer added, in brackets, “(need examples.)”

But the theme of the book is more important than the impudent fun. Journalism has been trumped by punditry. Everyone sucks up to everyone else. Money rules. Members of Congress never leave. When they retire or are defeated, almost half stay in Washington to become lobbyists or advisers, earning seven-figure annual salaries. Aides are equally self-absorbed. They work on Capitol Hill for a couple of years with their eye on the real prize, landing a high-paying job helping clients gain access to lawmakers.

This Town. It’s irreverent and relevant. You’ll love reading it, but you won’t enjoy the message.

O tempora o mores!

This summer’s Shakespeare in the Park offers two plays, Macbeth and The Taming of the Shrew, in an outdoor setting that’s close to the action. I saw The Taming of the Shrew last night and can report that it’s a popular romp of a production that drew a sellout crowd including lots of families with young children. I am not sure, however, that it is family fare.

The Taming of the Shrew has never been among my favourite Shakespearean plays. While the work has spawned Broadway and other iterations, its theme of taking the rebellious Kate and bending her into the obedient wife has always seemed out of place to me. I first read the play in the 1960s and the tone and temper of the text is even less suitable today.

The ribald production in High Park distorts the original in ways that, to my mind, make it even less likeable. One character is played as a flaming gay. I don’t mind the updated activity where he regularly makes runs to Starbucks and delivers various concoctions to the cast on stage, but his overwrought acting wore thin after a while, and did little more than mock gay men in general.

In Shakespeare’s time, women weren’t permitted on stage. That’s why there are lots of disguises in The Bard’s plays. So having Lucentio played by a woman is an interesting idea. Except that Lucentio takes on a “disguise” as Cambio, a tutor, to woo Bianca, Kate’s younger sister. There is no attempt to make Lucentio look like a man in either guise so their loving and kissing looks outright lesbian. Does all this sound like something your eight-year-old granddaughter should see?

And yet. Among the hottest items on YouTube these days is the unrated version of Robin Thicke’s new hit, Blurred Lines. Thicke and the other two male singers are fully clothed. The female participants are naked except for a tiny, well-placed and flesh-coloured g-string. The video is available to anyone with a computer, which these days covers all ages. By comparison, the Shakespeare I saw last night was a walk in the park.

Toronto the Best

The rest of Canada hates Toronto, right? The venom is so virulent that it infects Torontonians who debunk their city as riddled with gridlock, run by a boor, has an affront for a waterfront and can’t mount a professional team that’s a winner. (Except for the Argos and they don’t count.) In recent days I’ve read disparaging things about the Ted Rogers statue at the Rogers Centre, a restaurant where the chef spent too much time in the front of the house and, of course, the weather. There’s always something wrong with the weather: too humid, too cold at night, too rainy.

Well, I beg to differ. And it took a couple of strangers to remind me that Toronto the Good isn’t just called that because we’re some goody-two-shoes place. I had dinner recently with a couple who had been introduced to me via an email from a mutual friend. I won’t embarrass the couple by naming them, but I will tell you that they were from the Deep South in the U.S. He was on business here for six weeks; his wife came along to see the sights.

We had dinner in Yorkville about halfway through their stay and they were abuzz with delight about Toronto. His contract work was in Vaughan but they had discovered that, of an evening, they could park the car at Yorkdale and take the subway almost anywhere they wanted to go. They were on the move every evening to the Distillery District, the jazz festival, the waterfront, the Mink Mile on Bloor Street. They were astounded by the Path, the underground retail labyrinth. They loved everything about the city and found everyone to be friendly and welcoming. As a typical denizen, I kept waiting for the “but …” but there wasn’t one.

Later, as I thought about their enthusiasm I realized that the Greater Toronto Area has become a lodestar for the rest of the world. We are, after all, the fourth-largest urban area in North America after Mexico City, Los Angeles and New York. We are a diverse haven for people who speak more than 150 languages. Fifty percent of all residents were born outside Canada, a huge proportion when you realize that Canada as a whole is 20 percent foreign-born and the U.S. – that mecca to so many – is only ten percent foreign-born.

So here, in celebration, are my ten favourite places, scenes or tastes of Toronto: the Edward VII equestrian statue in Queen’s Park; eating back bacon on a bun at Saint Lawrence Market; the Allen Lambert Galleria in Brookfield Place; the ferry ride to the Toronto Islands; the flatiron building on Wellington at Church; walking beside the Humber River in Etienne Brule Park; sitting in the Rogers Centre of a summer’s evening watching a Blue Jays game as half a dozen daredevils in red jumpsuits hang off an upper rim of the CN tower; riding the subway; the peregrine falcon nest opposite the King Edward Hotel; having a beer on the terrace at La Maquette and admiring whatever crazy thing is on display in the Sculpture Garden.

Make your own list. Spread the word.

The good wife

What is it about women that they will forgive their husbands any peccadillo? According to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, the reason Huma Abedin continues to support and remain with Internet sleaze Andrew Weiner is that she was raised in Saudi Arabia where women are taught to toe the line. But that doesn’t explain why Ms. Abedin’s former boss, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, stayed with Bill, her serial philandering husband. Hilary was born and raised in Chicago.

Chicago is also the setting for The Good Wife, the popular evening soap starring Julianna Margulies, who stood by her man, even though he dallied with a prostitute. After living apart, and having an affair, the character she plays, Alicia Florrick, agreed this past season to renew her vows with her errant husband. Real life copies art in the case of Silda Spitzer, wife of Eliot. According to the New York Post, Silda is tired of it all and will divorce Eliot after the New York City elections are over in November. That’s what Alicia said, too.

Maybe the explanation why women will put up with such behaviour is low self-esteem. They think if they lose the man they’ve got, there isn’t another one out there for them. All I know is this: the problem has been around for a long while. One of my favorite pieces of sculpture is the tomb of Ilaria del Carretto in the Cathedral of St. Martin in Lucca, Italy. The fifteenth-century work shows her lying with a dog at her feet, a symbol of Ilaria’s conjugal fidelity. I think it’s safe to say that there are no monuments to Italian males, or males in any other country, accompanied by a dog to demonstrate loyalty to a wife. More typical is the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial in Washington, D.C., which shows the president with a bronze version of Fala, his Scottish terrier. Wife Eleanor is portrayed elsewhere on the site, standing alone. There is no statue of FDR’s mistress, Lucy Mercer, who was with him when he died.

Lots of women marry bad men and stay with them because they think they can change them. If they could, half the country and western hurtin’ music would never have been written. As Willie Nelson warbles in To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before, “The winds of change continue blowing/And they just carry me away.” Amy Dalley confirmed the truth in her hit, Men Don’t Change.

You can’t make sweeping pronouncements about anyone’s reason for wanting to remain in a relationship or wanting to leave one. But I think we can all agree that there are more male bounders than female. And too many women who fall for lines, such as the one Jack Nicholson rolled to Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets on his way to winning an Oscar, ”You make me wanna be a better man.” It worked for Jack; every man jack thinks it will work for him. All too often, it does.

The fifth business

The $12-billion takeover of Shoppers Drug Mart by Loblaws has much to recommend it. First, shareholders are happy, particularly Shoppers shareholders who are up more than 20 per cent. Loblaws and George Weston (I hold the latter) have risen less than 4 per cent on the news, but still, every bit helps. Second, according to the information released at the time of the announcement, there will be $300 million in cost savings by the third year of the merged entity. Third, it’s an all-Canadian deal, and I’m always in favour of home-grown.

On the downside, another publicly owned Canadian firm is gone, further reducing the number of investment-grade companies. The combo will have one-third of all grocery sales and one-third of all pharmacy sales in Canada. The Competition Bureau better take a close look because where does all this leave the consumer? In the future, how likely is it that Cheerios, or Canada Dry, or NeilMed sinus rinse, or Mr. Clean will be at different prices in Loblaws or Shoppers? I shop at both chains and often play one off against the other to save $1 here or $2 there. That differential ends in the new regime.

Moreover, I’m dubious about the boasted savings. Every merger makes similar claims but most times it’s illusory. Not to mention that Loblaws has had enough supply chain problems without running another company’s business and brands.

I generally like what Galen G. Weston is doing at Loblaws. As the fourth-generation boss he’s proving that family-run businesses and fortunes can prosper over the long haul. But I’m dinged if I can see how this merger does anything for the greater good. Seems just like a lot of chest-thumping in the face of U.S. competitors although Walmart is unlikely to be aquiver about a $42-billion revenue Loblaws-Shoppers when the U.S. giant is more than ten times bigger.

Of more interest to me than the actual deal was the fact that Galen G. brought along his four-year-old son, Graydon, for the announcement and photo opportunity. After a 1983 kidnapping scare at the family estate in Ireland, Roundwood Park, the Westons were wary about the family profile. Those fears now seem to have flown as the current generation shows the next generation how a business is run these days – right out in the open.