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The latest issue of Concordia’s alumni magazine carries a hand-wringing piece about the future of journalism as the university’s J school prepares to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Department chair Brian Gabrial gives us the usual hand jive about the loss of jobs (90 at PostMedia and as the CRTC warned last week, potentially hundreds more in TV newsrooms across the country) and the subsequent “damage to what a democratic society is supposed to be in terms of keeping the public informed.”

Nah. I don’t see a connection between layoffs in mainstream media and “damage to what a democratic society is supposed to be.” The thread of the piece — that there will always be a need for university-trained journalists in the newsrooms of the nation — strikes me as less than honest, albeit understandable in an upbeat vehicle designed to elicit donations.

PostMedia is going down because their apps and websites are obsolete, their content is generic and their weeklies can’t compete. The mountain of debt incurred during the Black, Asper and Godfrey iterations have have stripped value from local franchises; time will tell us whether the shotgun marriage of PostMedia’s broadsheets with the Sun’s lowbrow tabs is the kiss of death. Whether it’s 10 words or three, a boring headline is a boring headline.

What killed Canadian journalism?

– the CRTC, Canadian Association of Broadcasters and the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. This cozy conclave of colluders has silenced Canada’s talk radio community and turned electronic journalists into whipped curs who dare not leave the pack for fear of breaking a story that might piss someone off. So we get news conferences, talking heads and millisecond bites.

– Industry Canada and the federal Competition Bureau. It began in the late ‘70s with the approval of a Southam/Thomson deal giving each a monopoly in Ottawa and Winnipeg. Ownership concentration and the convergence myth fell prey to waves of disruptive technologies — internet, cable, live streaming, tablets smartphones. Every daily in the country suffered the same agonies at approximately the same time — circulation churn, skyrocketing production and distribution costs and a shrinking wedge of the advertising budget. Newsroom cuts meant the end of zoned editions and hungry young reporters eager to accept the drudgery of municipal council meetings. Less local coverage meant fewer readers.

– Incompetent management. Franchises like La Presse and the Toronto Star will survive on their app platforms because they saw the writing on the wall before everyone else. Others are adjusting.The Globe and Mail has dropped its paywall on access to all but a restricted core of business stories and the New York Times (10 free stories/month) now appears to be offering its twice-daily digests free. Meanwhile, PostMedia squandered millions on apps that don’t offer substantially more than CBC, TVA, CTV and Global. Who failed to understand free access pays in eyeballs? Or have PostMedia web hits/visits dropped that far that nobody dares access the analytics?

We thought the weeklies were immune. That changed in November 2014, when Transcontinental and Quebecor reached agreement on a deal transferring 74 Quebecor weeklies to TC for $75 million. The Competition Bureau approved the deal on the condition that TC put roughly half those papers on the market before closing them and laying off their staff. By my own estimate, maybe a dozen survive, leaving communities throughout Quebec with a single weekly newspaper or none at all.

We were an independent, independently printed but distributed by Quebecor. TC refused to distribute us unless they printed us, something that would be prosecuted in the U.S. under federal racketeering laws. The Competition Bureau didn’t see it that way.

The consequences of Quebec’s weekly implosion? Municipal councils, never known for their democratic ideals, have become emboldened. Transparency, what there was of it, is a thing of the past. Weekly journalists know better than to report on anything that might anger the local power structure and cost their papers advertising or the threat of a boycott. Quebec’s freedom of information laws, the Fédération professionelle des journalistes du Québec and the Quebec Press Council are the only weapons we have. They have no teeth but censure and those they censure usually have no shame.

– Lazy, derivative, unproductive newsrooms. How many times when I was Montreal assignment editor did I hear a CBC reporter tell me ‘there’s no story there’ because it wasn’t a news conference? How many times did I see a reporter checking out a file from the Radio-Canada library and putting together the context for a story before heading out? How many radio/TV/online outlets credited the Globe and Mail’s Cathy Tomlinson for the B.C. shadow-flipping investigation? How many times did I read our stuff in other newspapers and see it on television and be told ‘Jim, it’s diffuse provenance’”?

I’ve worked in daily print as a reporter, editor and manager (Gazette, Star, Montreal Daily News), in television (CBC) and as a talk show barker (CBC, CFCF, Corus) before returning to weekly journalism from whence I sprang. To be be honest, I hired people even if they were J-school grads. As the editor of a small-town weekly, I was looking for the same qualities in my editorial staff that one finds in advertising salespeople — curiosity, inventiveness, perseverance and a refusal to take no for an answer.

Concordia’s journalism school vaunts a handful of successful grads. Here’s a better test of its relevance: how has Concordia’s journalism school evolved in its 40 years? Is it struggling to remain relevant surrounded by dying dinosaurs? Where it should be going from here? How can it redefine itself in terms that don’t include fat jobs in mainstream newsrooms?

Ethnic and cultural community newspapers, radio and television outlets are thriving. Online media — websites, online streaming and social media pages — are evolving as quickly as a Twitter feed. How are they dealing with AI-vs privacy issues? Libel and defamation? Balance and fairness? Sourcing? Political and societal pressure to remain silent or to spin a story? Are we courageous and dispassionate in our exploration of  journalistic integrity, bearing witness, point of view, context?
This is how Concordia’s journalism program should be reinventing itself. Either that or accept a slow death by irrelevance.

For Albertans like Garth Pritchard, it’s simple math.

In 2016-17, Ottawa will transfer $21 billion to Quebec, including $10 billion in equalization payments “due to the limited relative strength of its economy when compared to other provinces.”* The $21 billion works out to $2,521 per Quebecker.

Despite the collapse in oil prices, despite having cut crude production from 3.4 to 2.2 million barrels a day (and much of that produced at a net loss), despite a 7.4% unemployment rate (topping the national rate for the first time since the ‘80s), despite the loss of upwards of 100,000 full-time jobs since September 2014, “Alberta does not qualify for equalization due to the strength of its economy relative to the other provinces.”* Federal transfer payments in 2016-17 per Albertan: $1,366.

Alberta isn’t the only have province; Saskatchewan, B.C. and Newfoundland/Labrador likewise receive $1,366 per citizen because of the relative strength of their economies.

*(You’ll find all this and more on the Ministry of Finance website, http://www.fin.gc.ca/access/fedprov-eng.asp)

Even Ontario gets more per capita — $1,532 — beginning in 2009-10 “due to the limited relative strength of its economy when compared to other provinces.”

What was once a financial tool to overcome regional disparities has become a political boondoggle and a reflection of rural Canada’s impoverishment. New Brunswick will get $3,626 per citizen; Nova Scotia $3,240, the Yukon $24,333, NWT $28,351 and Canada’s transfer-payment winner, Nunavut – $40,364.

Late last week, Trudeau’s damage control team assigned the publicity-hungry PM to pay a visit to Alberta’s NDP premier Rachel Notley. In his pocket was a $250 million EI topup so that laid-off Albertans will get the same benefits and be governed by the same eligibility periods as EI recipients in most of Canada. Nary a word about the transfer-payment structure which created the double standard in the first place, because that would have called into question Alberta’s status as one of Canada’s three remaining ‘have’ provinces.

“Jimmy, $250 million would not start a hundred half-tons!,” Garth roared. “Peanuts! This man is out here embarrassing us!”

Pritchard, a former Montreal Gazette photographer who went on to become one of this country’s greatest battlefield documentarists, blames PostMedia mergers for the demise of journalism. The Calgary Herald and Sun are operating out of Sun offices, leaving the city-block-sized Herald building to the ghosts of Calgary’s outspoken past, like Robert Chambers Edwards and Ralph Klein. “The same in Edmonton…we have no media.

“Today we have the prime minister of Canada standing beside the premier of the province and it’s quite obvious the media has no idea what’s going on and they’re asking childish questions. The question needed to be asked today while they were both there: “Is it a fact that Quebec got $9.8 billion in transfer payments last year?”  Because the real people, not in the political bubble and certainly not in the journalistic bubble, they’re all looking at each other because it’s so obvious.”

Pritchard credits the CBC’s Rick Mercer with making Albertans aware of the double standard. “A week ago on his program…spoke harshly about Quebec’s greed. And he’s the one who put out the $9.8 billion transfer payment from Alberta to Quebec.”

Technically, Quebec’s equalization payout doesn’t come directly from Albertan pockets, but it may as well as far as Albertans are concerned. “In rural Alberta that’s all they’re talking about…thousands and thousands of laid-off Albertans. And these were good-paying jobs. When an oil rig is decommissioned, 14 people directly involved with that rig are out of work. The lowest-paid guy is probably making $200 a day. The top-paying guy on that rig, the rig manager, is probably making $1,000-$1,200 a day, plus per diem plus expenses.”

Another harsh realization: U.S. companies, once bullish on the Alberta oil patch when crude was topping $100 a barrel, are treating Canada as a Third-World country, another dispensable link in their supply chain. Year after year, the Americans have been buying up Canada with the complete support of our government. Now that oil is down to $30 a barrel, they’re firing. “Anyway, Alberta’s not getting $32 or $30 a barrel,” Pritch adds.  “We’re getting $17. Who made this deal?”

The deaths of the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway projects and the Liberal government’s vow to raise the bar for approval of the Energy East project are triggering a tsunami of pessimism sweeping a province with a history of booms and busts. Many of the thousands who moved to Alberta’s’s streets of gold for the oil boom are either headed back home or trying to get out from under a mountain of debt now that their properties are underwater. A piece in last week’s Globe and Mail included a number that even the math-challenged can grasp: for every U-Haul driving into Alberta, seven are heading out.

“If you’re an oil man in management, you’re gone,” Pritchard says. “ If you’re on an oil rig your job is gone. And the PM shows up with peanuts in his pocket. And our premier, you should have seen her. This pretty boy beside me, isn’t he beautiful, love was in her eyes. No hard questions, nothing from the Alberta government about what we want.”

Albertans are seeing themselves being reduced to beggars and it’s not going down well. “The question on everybody’s lips: what is this transfer payment all about?” Garth tried to put the question to his MP for Bow River, without success. “He has had the Nepean lobotomy,” a repeat of how how quickly Preston Manning’s Reform MPs ignored Western concerns once they’d stormed the gates of Babylon.

Invariably, Alberta’s anger is focused eastward. Rick Mercer’s retort to Montreal mayor Denis Coderre’s outright rejection of TransCanada’s million-barrel-a-day pipeline to St. John, N.B. was what it took to remind Albertans of the unfairness of the Canadian equalization payment deal. Trudeau’s Liberals will doubtless try to sweeten the pot but the damage has been done. Petitions are circulating demanding Notley’s impeachment. The mayors of Calgary and Edmonton are suddenly silent, caught between their constituents and federal politicians warning them to stay out of interprovincial squabbles. Everywhere, Albertans are talking about betrayal, humiliation and separation – an eerie echo of 1995 Quebec.

Whatever happens, Canadians can be sure of one thing — in Alberta, the discussion of transfer payments is no longer confined to politicians. That and the folly of looking at Justin Trudeau with love in your eyes.

Whether it’s PKP coming clean on offshore tax havens or Rona’s inevitable takeover by Lowe’s, the myth once known as Québec Inc. is being debunked by market realities.

Take Bombardier, once the jewel in Quebec’s treasury of entrepreneurial successes. On Friday, shares closed at 80 cents after falling 8% on news the Trudeau Liberals are prepared to finance the struggling aircraft builder on the condition that the Bombardier-Beaudoin family agrees to a modification of its shareholder agreement.

It would end the family’s ability to control the firm without majority ownership by means of a class of shares conferring multiple votes.

Such a demand never would have been possible in the days of Jean Chrétien but times and allegiances have changed, so it falls to the family to decide whether they’ll risk everything by refusing or diluting their control by accepting Ottawa’s terms for a bailout loan.

On the one hand, the Couillard government set the precedent for an unconditional financial rescue last year. The Quebec Liberals came under withering criticism, especially in light of the Caisse de dépôt’s demands in taking an equity position in Bombardier Rail.

 

On the other hand, we’re beginning to see daylight for Bombardier’s CSeries single-corridor passenger jets, what with emerging markets looking to acquire new fleets. It would be a pity for Bombardier to collapse on that threshold.

One hopes the family will recognize this as an offer they can’t refuse. The old rules of governance are being replaced. One doesn’t need to see the writing on the wall to get that.

 

Hudson’s big-hearted ratepayers will be on the hook for the proposed low-cost senior’s residence on Wyman Memorial United’s parking lot. All that’s missing is the size of the financial hit.

This afternoon I drove up there and had a good look around to get a feel for what it would be like to live in an apartment block next to public works. It’s not a bad location, especially if you’re not particularly mobile. You’re close to everything. Apart from the brisk hike up from Main Road and the absence of traffic access via Park. Or underground parking.

The folks in Stephenson Court and neighbours on Hazelwood and Park may have something to say when it comes time for a zoning change. You may recall how vocal they were when the Elliott administration opted to plunk the new firehall up there and pushed the public works yard to the edge of the setback, cutting the green screen in the process.

What concerns me is the vagueness in the costing of this administration’s latest warm and fuzzy pet project.

Projected cost: $3.4-$4.5 million (50% from the Société d’habitation du Québec, 15% from   Hudson taxpayers, 2% from Novoclimat and the remaining third from a guaranteed mortgage. If the estimate is correct (in Quebec, there is good reason to be skeptical of projected construction costs) Hudson’s fantastically philanthropic citizens would be on the hook for anywhere between half a million and $675,000. The other night, councillor Nicole Durand inferred all that would be coming back to the town from other agencies. Citizens would be wise to ask for that in writing from the funding agencies, rather than from those with skin in the game.

Which brings us to operating costs. It’s unclear what services are provided with the basic rents ($556 to $802). A kitchen and dining room will serve three meals daily but we all have different needs as we age, so one can assume nursing, medications and housekeeping will be extras. We’re told the town will assume responsibility for 10 per cent of the operating costs, which will be rebated to us by the Montreal Metropolitan Community. As with construction costs, let’s see all that in writing from the CMM – but not before ratepayers have a hard number representing annual operating costs.

The regional palliative care residence is a handy yardstick. Quebec pays roughly a third of the annual operating costs, approximately $2 million. The rest is up to the generosity of the region’s municipalities, businesses and institutions. Why would the financial model for a subsidized senior’s residence be more generous?

Instead of telling people it’s for a good cause and weaselling the numbers, be honest. Tell them what it’ll cost them and why they should support it. Nobody can forget how Hudson zoned a sizeable parcel of land and paid for a sewer hookup for the construction of a continuing-care senior’s campus. The project was put out of reach due to an unfortunate combination of malfeasance and ineptitude, a recurring theme in this town’s development history. That said, R-55 remains zoned for a senior’s residence. If this administration is that hooked on a senior’s residence next to the public works yard, then rezone R-55 back to single-family residential and hope the tax revenues from the abandoned seniors project will defray the annual costs of this latest pipe dream.

Footnote: As with all zoning and borrowing bylaws, this is subject to referendum. I hope this administration will see fit to post this and all decisions before it’s too late to do anything.

 

 

Warning to developers: Hudson doesn’t want you and will make your life hell.
The latest sighting of Hudson’s true anti-development colours came near the start of Monday’s February council meeting.
It’s the part where the councillors take turns reading the decisions of the Town Planning Advisory Committee. I tape these singsong recitations because they’re the only tangible proof that something has been decided since this administration has seen fit to turn TPAC into a policy instrument and ceased posting TPAC minutes online.

“448-450 Main Road: Commercial/residential project R443, considering this project subject to SPAIP (site planning and architectural integration program) Bylaw 571
First submitted in February 2014, with [four subsequent meetings], TPAC does not recommend preliminary rendition of the preliminary proposal for mixed building project.

“Members of TPAC do not see justification for extension of corridor between the buildings. In addition, both sides of the building should be connected as one building as per national building code. It is proposed by Durand, Woodhead that council agrees with TPAC that extension does not meet security and technical norms and that they can be joined underground to permit more parking and aesthetics.”

Josie Pascoe, owner/developer of the commercial/residential project at 448-450 Main Road, was stunned by this latest twist of the Hudson screw. “I had no idea what’s happening,” she told me Tuesday. “There’s no openness, no communication.”

Pascoe had planned to start construction of a 12-unit condominium block this spring, but after two years of negotiations with TPAC and Hudson’s urban planning department, she sounds ready to toss in the towel.

“Is it really worth going on? It’s not as if Hudson has an excess of major projects demanding attention,” she said. “They should give their people a mandate to get things done…if something doesn’t agree with them, they should pick up the phone, find solutions.”

She has already dropped money and energy into the total rehab of the 100-year-old former Habib’s, to the benefit of the entire community. Included in the commercial reno was the sales office for a dozen condo units in a separate building to the rear of 448-450 Main. Hudson’s zoning bylaws allow only one building per lot, so the plans for the condo included a glass-enclosed breezeway joining the old and the new.

Two years later, these clowns are asking her to forget the breezeway and build a tunnel.

If Pascoe decides she’s had enough of being jerked around, she’s not alone. Remember Chris Vinson, the hopeful Hudson resident who wanted to build an office/retail complex on Cameron opposite Cunningham’s? Cunningham’s enjoys taxpayer-subsidized parking; all Vinson was asking was the right to be able to claim access to a few public parking spaces along the mini-park opposite his property so he could satisfy the town’s selectively applied parking requirements. Even though he was ready have the park space landscaped to the town’s specifications at his expense, he was turned down. Instead he was told his clients could hoof it the 300 feet up to the former medicentre at 98 Cameron.

So rather than incur the cost of maintaining the two derelict structures on the double lot, he had them torn down.

Hudson’s stiff parking requirements for multi-unit residences and commercial properties are famously flexible when it comes to an administration’s pet projects. One of the councillors who refuses to explain to Pascoe the reasons why she’s being jerked around was all aglow at Monday’s meeting about a project to build a three-storey apartment block in the Wyman Memorial United Church parking lot. Unlike Pascoe’s proposed condo block, it would have no basement and therefore no underground parking. Wyman would retain the land but lose its parking, presumably because it would continue to enjoy public parking on the municipal lot at the corner of Main and Selkirk. If that isn’t a double standard, I’m the Pope.

Never mind that Hudson already has R-55, a 12-acre site off Côte St. Charles zoned for a seniors’ continuing-care campus. Never mind that Hudson has already been screwed twice by unscrupulous developers who promise an assisted-care seniors facility when they get their permit, then renege on the deal.

Louise Villandré, Hudson’s former town manager who is to be sentenced February 22 after pleading guilty to charges of fraud and abuse of trust, was far more honest in ensuring that people knew what was happening at the administrative level and why.

At first it was a joke, people wondering if the Town of Hudson could have Louise back to clean things up at town hall. It’s not funny any more.

The best gauge of how Hudson’s taxpayers feel about their current administration is the attendance at monthly council meetings. Monday’s February session attracted another full house, eager to catch the latest episode in the embattled burg’s ongoing political-reality show, now in its fourth season.

Both question periods heard residents clamouring for answers on contentious files, including:

– Employee X’s suspension. Director-general Jean-Pierre Roy hinted at an indefinite suspension in response to a question from Eva McCartney. (Everybody in Hudson knows they’re talking about about Parks and Recreation director Julia Schroeder’s 15-day suspension for questioning the planning for the Radio-Canada Petite Séduction shoot, but God help anyone who says so in public.)
The exchange began with McCartney asking the mayor whether the sanction had been lifted.
“The inquest still going on,” said Prévost, an unfortunate choice of words as he tossed the hissing bomb to Roy.
“It is a confidential matter concerning an employee,” Roy began. “Technically the suspension was to have finished on the 26th of this month, but for some technical reason it continues but I cannot tell you more, this is confidential.”
McCartney persisted. “Until when is the suspension continuing?”
“ Indefinite, but don’t write…” (audible reaction from the crowd.) Roy struggled to contain his temper. “I’m trying to give you some information in your language…if I do not say it correctly I will tell you correctly. This is a confidential matter…he is not suspended indefinitely…for a technical reason, because we did not receive some testimony we needed to continue. That is all I will say this evening, because it’s not respectful for the employee to talk about his case when it’s not settled.”
“Do you foresee when the suspension will continue until?”
“This is confidential for the moment.”

The strange exchange highlights this administration’s increasingly costly failure to suppress dissent, both internally and from without. This month’s list of cheques issued by the town included one of more than $20,000 to legalists Dunton Rainville to cover eight invoices. That prompted Helen Kurgansky to note this administration has blown $120,000 on legal advice over the last three months.
“The last thing I want to do is fill the pockets of the legal community,” Prévost told her.

We don’t know which budget envelope the legal fees will come from, but we will later this month. There is reason to believe this administration has juggled its 2016 budget figures to create a $600,000 contingency fund. If so, it will emerge when the town has to forward its final version to the municipal affairs ministry at the end of February.

This administration never passes on an opportunity to blame its predecessors in whatever way it can. The culture and tourism director got a Jan. 11 email from the Lester B. Pearson School Board together with a March 2012 letter of intent “signed by the former recreation director and the former director-general” committing the town to cover a third of the $75,000 cost of new playground equipment at Mount Pleasant Elementary. Council resolved to find the $25,000 but the inference was that the exes had acted inappropriately in binding the town to a deal the council of that period had never approved. (I’m told by people close to the file that those smeared by the administration have the documents to disprove council’s accusations.)

UPDATE: Former interim mayor Diane Piacente confirms the issue was discussed. (See her comment.)

Council’s critics note the absence of cost-cutting zeal when it comes to funding publicity-generating events. Hudson will pay $6,000 toward the $18,500 cost of the Land Art project to deface Hudson’s greenspaces, $7,500 plus insurance and security for the annual St. Paddy’s alcohol festival, 10 grand for the Hudson Music Festival (but no insurance) and $15,000 for the Hudson Village Theatre.

The subsidized seniors housing block being proposed for Wyman Memorial’s parking lot is another financial albatross in the making. We’re told (by the councillor for the area (who also manages the Manoir Cavagnal) that Hudson taxpayers won’t have to subsidize it much because they’ll be reimbursed by the Société d’habitation du Québec and the MRC. How much is much? People who know these things tell me 24 to 32 units are not financially sustainable, especially when rents starting at less than $600 must cover the cost of employees to care for, cook and clean the residents. They wonder where churchgoers and employees of this new facility will park once Wyman’s parking lot is gone. They wonder why the town is considering rezoning for this facility when the town has R-55, a 12-acre site already zoned for a continuing care seniors campus.

Mayor Prévost noted with gloom he was mulling dropping Saturday morning meetings, “…an underwhelming success…there have been four, five, six at the most.” The aim was to open an informal back channel by giving residents the opportunity for one-on-ones with the mayor and councillors. “Instead, people prefer to come up to the mic at council meetings and ask questions. Have to deal with that…try to come up with a better way of communicating with you and your concerns.”
There was no clear explanation of why the town was budgeting up to $35,000 to prepare for a March 17th or 24th continuation of this administration’s interminable strategic planning process.
“Sometime in March, we will provide you with shortened version of strategic plan which will become known as the mission statement where you will be asked again to comment, suggest or otherwise your agreement or disagreement. That will be mailed out.” To what end? Governments are elected to lead, not to follow.

If it’s not someone else’s fault, obfuscate.“Several residents are upset with amount of tax increases, and rightly so,” the mayor said in his customary opening monologue. “Most are because of the impact of property values, generally five per cent…however in light of some of the substantial increases, we’re meeting with the evaluators Wednesday (today) so we can understand the basics of their work that we expect to share with you shortly thereafter. We have no control over municipal evaluation procedures. We tendered under the banner of the MRC. I ask you to be patient, wait to hear from us.”

Later, an impatient Jim McDermott asked the mayor what line item on the 2016 budget was affected by the new property evaluations.
“We have a budget we’re not about to start playing around with,” Prévost countered.
Under McDermott’s prodding the mayor admitted the valuation roll was filed Nov. 1, six weeks before the adoption of the 2016 budget.
“So why didn’t you make adjustment before tabling the budget?”

What DOESN’T the town spend money on? On Monday, council approved a bid from collection agency ARO to collect $87,229 in back business taxes for 2014 and 2015. It will cost the town a quarter of whatever ARO succeeds in collecting. In neighbouring Rigaud, mayor Hans Gruenwald, when he finds himself with a few spare minutes, gets on the phone with the town’s tax deadbeats and warns them to pay up because he’s got bills to pay.

Just sayin’ but isn’t that the way to run a town?