StunTV *fakes the Oath*.

Last summer CBC producers started planning with communications staff at Citizenship and Immigration Canada an event that would be broadcast during the month of October.

The CBC broadcast an hour-long, full-fledged citizenship ceremony for 75 new Canadians that featured a studio audience, a bagpiper, a retired Mountie in his red serge and local dignitaries. That event, which was broadcast live a day after the Sun’s reaffirmation ceremony, had been planned with the department since the summer.

From here.

Quebecor's StunTV however, took a different tack with CONtempt Party hacks in Kenney's office.

Documents released to The Canadian Press under access-to-information legislation show that just a few weeks before Canada's Citizenship Week last October, Mr. Kenney's staff directed departmental officials to add a last-minute citizenship ceremony at the network to their list of scheduled events.

Bureaucrats scrambled to work out the logistics, suggesting to the minister's office that Sun News could cover one of the 13 scheduled ceremonies in Ontario — four of them in Toronto, including one at the Air Canada Centre.

One senior bureaucrat at the registrar of Canadian citizenship expressed concern to Mr. Kenney's office that Sun News seemed to want to feature “only” the oath, which might short-change new Canadians from the full ceremony experience. [...]

When a bureaucrat sent Sun News a list of possible citizenship ceremonies to cover in Ontario, a network employee suggested another scenario.

“Let's do it. We can fake the Oath,” reads an email from [name blacked out of the document] at sunmedia.ca email address [...]

So instead of sending out a camera crew and *real* journalists to cover an actual citizenship ceremony, StunTV insisted on staging a ridiculous, trumped-up cheap facsimile in their studio.

The kicker though, is this:

[Minister] Kenney has emphasized the solemnity of the act of citizenship, recently moving to force Muslim women who wear burkas or niqabs to reveal their faces.

“Finally we are ensuring that the citizenship oath itself is properly respected by all of those who take it so that they in taking a solemn commitment, being a witness publicly to the rest of their fellow citizens, demonstrate who they are and their commitment to Canada,” Mr. Kenney said last December.

One staff member from Mr. Kenney's office who appeared in the email chain about the event requested their name be blacked out before release under the Access to Information Act.

Grand merci to @a_picazo who tweeted this and this.

UPDATE: Quebec columnist Patrick Lagacé is no longer gobsmacked by StunTV fakery and calls it what it is: Con propaganda. As he points out, if StunTV only acknowledged that what it broadcasts is *infotainment* as their boss PK Péladeau freely admits, and not "Hard news, straight talk" as it's claimed.

He also directs a poke at Levant's brand of faux-journalism, which confuses staged *reality* with ethics.

Contempt Party attacks against CBC have a purpose.

It should come as no surprise that ConJob MPty suits are biddable lackeys for Quebecor.

Pierre-Karl Péladeau is following the corporate model Rupert Murdoch so ruthlessly and successfully exploited in the UK: make sure that rightwing politicians silence your competition, or at the very least, any criticism of the way you run your business.

Conservative MPs are expressing concern about the CBC and its reluctance to release its corporate secrets under access-to-information laws – but the government itself has something to answer for on this issue, a leading democracy advocate says.

Duff Conacher, the co-ordinator of Democracy Watch, points out that the Conservatives have failed to keep their campaign promise of 2006 to strengthen the Access to Information Act. [...]

Meanwhile, reporters and others with an interest in obtaining information about government initiatives continue to be stymied by long delays, high search fees, blacked-out documents and outright refusals – including, apparently, Quebecor in its quest for information about the CBC.

Interestingly enough, Radio-Canada has been able to successfully expose Quebecor machinations. Journalists who have been told to change the content of their factual reporting to suit Péladeau's editorial whims and ideological bent have spoken publicly about these practices.

Macleans has also consistently lifted up rocks to observe what makes Quebecor and its magnate tick.

How can the public find out what financial considerations and rewards ConJob party members are receiving in their war against the CBC? And ... from whom?

More from Chantal Hébert though she overlooks fact that Cons are supporting concerted attack against CBC.

Anti-Quebec *study* from Institute of Marriage and Family Canada: FAIL

The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada just released a biased and unscientific 28 page report about the province of Québec. From QMI, the Quebecor (owner of SunMedia) *information* clearing house for Rightwing Nutjob propaganda.

"A Quebec family portrait," also suggests the preponderance of single-parent and common-law households will be less equipped to handle the possible dismantling of big government in La Belle Province.

Some studies suggest married men have more motivation to work harder and earn more money for their families than boyfriends, but numbers show husbands are in short supply.

Quebec has the highest percentage of unmarried couples in the world, according to the study. The 2006 census indicates that 34.6% of Quebec couples were in common-law relationships, compared with 13.4% in the rest of Canada.

Quebec also has the highest rate of children in daycare, noted study author Andrea Mrozek, which strains the province's much-vaunted $7-a-day daycare system.

"These things feed into one another in a bit of a circle," said Mrozek. "You have an expensive program, it increases the taxes, then you have to work to support the lifestyle to make money to make ends meet."

Huh? Andrea Mrozek .... gotcha. No wonder that sentence was pure bafflegab.

Mrozek is just a R.E.A.L. pro at cranking such retrograde *septic-tank* stuff out. "Marriage tames men ..."? Snort. Yeah, that's why the license bureau issues tranq guns and cattle prods to new brides.

Grand merci to @censoredversion for the tweet.

Corporate Welfare for Quebecor and thus Sun TV

Look who's another MASSIVE liar.

Why, it's none other than Quebecor, owner of Sun Infotainment.

For more than three years, Quebecor has been using its newspapers, and more recently, its SunNews Network TV license to pursue a campaign against CBC/Radio-Canada. But there are some things Quebecor won’t tell you:

• Quebecor has received more than half a billion dollars in direct and indirect subsidies and benefits from Canadian taxpayers over the past three years, yet it is not accountable to them.
• Quebecor uses this public subsidy and its dominant position in protected industries to make record profits yet complains that its TVA television network "competes” against Radio-Canada.
• Quebecor boss Pierre Karl Péladeau has sent over a dozen letters to the Prime Minister and others in government to complain that Radio-Canada does not spend enough money advertising in his newspapers.

From here.

More background on Quebecor, here.

PKP's nefarious motive finally revealed.

Never underestimate the byzantine machinations of a Media Overlord, even a lesser one in the firmament of Media Maggots Magnates.

In this Macleans' item, which Gardner called "an indecently enjoyable read", all is revealed.

Though Pierre-Karl Péladeau may suck on the corporate welfare teat, he has devised a way to demonstrate to the world how MASSIVELY stupid, trashy and malevolent Ezra Levant and other assorted right-wing midiot™ nutjobs from Rest of Canada really are and how easy it was to corral them and put them on display.

He is after all his father's son, a man who supported the views of Adrien Arcand.

Sarah Palin caricatures.

"Please stop pointing those at me."

These were discovered at 'Rue Frontenac', the collective of journalists and one political cartoonist (Marc Beaudet, creator of these delightful caricatures of Palin) who were locked out from their jobs at Le journal de Montréal.

The labour dispute has now entered its third year and though Pierre Karl Péladeau, CEO of Quebecor is charming and generous when it comes to public displays of financial and political clout, he is intransigent and brutal with the unions representing these 253 workers.


I think Beaudet perfectly captures the essence of Palin's political tactics.

Did the good guys just win one?

Seems so.

On Tuesday, after a speech in Ottawa, Quebecor chief executive officer Pierre Karl Péladeau said the company would withdraw its request to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for an exception to the rules of its licence that would have made Sun TV News available to more Canadians.

So, now they're going for an ordinary Category 2 licence, despite the fact they had previously argued that Fox News North wouldn't be financially viable without the three-year 'must offer' special licence.

Oh, and speaking of special, isn't this? Quebecor is actually going to follow the rules.

“We’ve decided to go with the policies of the CRTC,” said Quebecor spokesman Serge Sasseville. . . .
“We are in favour of deregulation, but that [three years] would have been a transition period for us ... but we are part of the free market, so we decided to renounce that special request.”

Now they're part of the free market?

Impolitical speculates on the reasons for the walk-back, but I'm going with the straightforward.

After their ReformaTory bumboy with, supposedly, the ear of the PeeEmmOooo made a complete ass of himself and had to resign, Quebecor simply didn't have the juice.

And, of course, more than 83,000 pissed off Canadians who signed the infamous Margaret-Atwood-backed Avaaz petition had zip zero nada nothing to do with it either.

Mr. Sasseville said the decision to change its request to the regulator “had nothing to do with the Avaaz petition.”

Yaaaaaah, riiiiiight.

No juice and egg on their face. Not quite the hog's trough banquet they were expecting.

Let the market decide. And I'm betting this venture is falling flat on its eggy face.