When is a "long standing policy" at the CBC not really a policy at all? When it involves Justin Trudeau.

So CBC ran Justin Trudeau's latest ad during the broadcast of Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday night.

Nothing wrong with that, right?

Flashback to 2009

"OTTAWA, June 4 (UPI) -- Canada's cash-strapped public broadcaster is refusing to run the Conservative party's attack ads on the leader of the Liberal party.

The ads that accuse Michael Ignatieff of "just visiting" Canada after 34 years out of the country are airing on all other networks in the country, but the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. declined, saying it contravened a longstanding policy, the Canwest News Service reported.

CBC spokesman Jeff Keay said the refusal wasn't a political statement.

"We'll only accept political advertising like that when there is an election campaign on," he told Canwest. "We have generally pretty strict guidelines."  (highlighting mine)


Federal broadcast law stipulates all broadcasters must allocate time for political campaigning and advertising, but only after an election has been called, the report said.
Ignatieff said earlier in the week he didn't want to bring the Conservative minority government down with a non-confidence vote any time soon, but that he was under mounting pressure from fellow Liberals."

So when is a 'long standing policy" at the CBC not really a long standing policy?

When it involves Justin Trudeau.

Way to go CBC!





Update: As noted in the comments. A great way to voice your concern/displeasure/etc is to email the cbc ombudsman. It does work as this 2010 example: http://thealbertaardvark.blogspot.ca/2011/04/albertaardvark-1-cbc-0-scott-reid-and.html shows. It was with a  different Ombudsman, but oddly enough the current Ombudsman, Esther Enkin, makes an appearance.






h/t Kate from SDA. 

CBC covers for Justin Trudeau's "excluded" comment.

Justin Trudeau: “Now, we don’t know now if it was terrorism or a single crazy or a domestic issue or a foreign issue. “But there is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded. Completely at war with innocents. At war with a society. And our approach has to be, where do those tensions come from?”

CBC: "Boston bombing suspects were social, but isolated" (please read the story where the author gives their opinion that these clowns "may have felt socially isolated" even though the story lists many example of how they were not)

I know it is not nearly the same type of cheer leading that the Toronto Star does on a regular basis but considering the hubbub over Trudeau's comments and that this story was published under politics it certainly is an interesting choice of words that CBC used for their headline don't you think.  


UPDATE: CBC radically edits the original story. Kills headline, quote about feeling socially isolated removed and basically rewrote the entire piece which originally had a striking similarity to something the NY Times ran. 

Confirmed: AHS paid for health executive to go to US for second opinion.

Yesterday the Wildrose Party raised questions about a $7,233 expense claim for a 3day trip to the Mayo clinic in Rochester Minnesota made by a former Alberta Health Services senior executive.  Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith alleged in the legislature Lahey billed taxpayers for medical treatment abroad, circumvented Alberta’s Out-Of-Country Health Services Committee and jumped the queue for health-care treatment.

The PCs went into full spin mode in the Alberta Legislature trying to dismiss the allegations even though they had no idea of what happened.  Watch Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk as he says that the expenses “probably are legitimate.” calling the suggestion that taxpayers paid for private care for a health executive “irresponsible and wrong.” even though he had nothing factual to back up his statements. (misleading the house?)




Also of note were Premier Alison Redford's comments where she used her favorite catch all line to spin bad news "It did happen in the past." as if anything that 'happened' could have possibly taken place somewhere else but in the past. I can't blame her for trying to use the line though as it makes great cover for everything from outrageous AHS expenses to her own (now broken) election promises from last year. They all were in the past so....

Flash forward to today and it turns out that the allegations were correct and that AHS did pay the expenses for Lehey to go to the Mayo clinic, but not for treatment, as can be allowed in certain circumstances but you do have to jump through AHS hoops to do so, but for a second opinion!

Wow, way to show confidence in the health system you are running AHS. You know, the one that the rest of us have to use because our bosses won't cover our expenses to circumvent the system like AHS clearly did in this case.  Keep up the good work AHS and keep earning those 'at risk' bonuses.


I can't wait to see how Redford's PCs will try and spin this one but given their history I suspect they will again try to lay blame and smear the Wildrose for doing their jobs by bringing up such waste to our attention and asking questions in the legislature.

Wildrose Press release from April 16th.