NDP Clearest Alternative, Globe & Mail Is Loathe To Admit

The G&M must be loathe to report stories like this. But the NDP are so much in the lead and seen as the party of clear change, that they have no choice. But, that doesn't stop them from trying to tilt the story in the Conservatives favour. Let's take a look at where the G&M has problems writing a news story:

Canadians will be asked to choose between political stability and renewal - G&M states here that we currently have political stability. Funny, since when do these mean political stability?:
- subverting democracy (Bill C-51, Bill C-377, Bill C-23 among many others, cheating in elections)
- racking up the most debt of a Canadian government ever,
- running a deficit for most of their time
- balancing a budget only by looting from the EI fund
- ignoring the urgent issue of Climate Change
- focusing our economy on the oil extraction industry to the great detriment to the manufacturing industry.
-  corruption and cronyism
- warmongering instead of peacekeeping
- and the list goes on.
A more accurate line would be:
Canadians will be asked to choose between gross fiscal mismanagement & the brink of fascism, and stability & democracy.


Pollster Nik Nanos said the NDP has staked out the clearest policy positions in opposition to the Conservative Party, while the Liberals have a more nuanced approach.
- Okay, these were probably Nik Nanos' words but using "nuanced" here is a nice way of saying that the Liberal policy positions are mainly just like the Conservatives, except for when they try to copy some of the NDP policies to try to steal their support. History shows that time and again, the Liberals, whose policies mirror (especially more recently) those of the Conservatives, always campaign on the left only to toss these left leaning policies to the wind if they win the election.

The NDP has been working hard to reassure Canadians its economic policies would be largely in line with those of the current government. The biggest change proposed by the NDP is to increase corporate taxes, although party officials said the planned rate, to be revealed in coming months, would be “reasonable.”
-  Actually, the NDP has been working hard to show Canadians that its economic policies would NOT be in line with those of the current government. The NDP plans to NOT waste money on more and bigger prisons (not needed as the crime rate has been steadily dropping), unnecessary/problematic/costly jets, corporate welfare, unaccountable missing $3.1 billion, and many other porky Conservative pies. NDP governments, on average, have a much better fiscal record than Conservatives.

Party officials said the NDP is looking for candidates with an economic background who could serve as ministers of finance or industry. The recent upswing in the polls could make that easier.
- It may well be that the NDP is looking for more candidates with economic backgrounds, but they already have a number of MPs with economic backgrounds. And unmentioned here is Erin Weir, who has been suggested as a potential Finance Minister.

While both parties want to replace the Conservatives, their partisans have been at one another’s throats. Last week, the Liberals suggested Mr. Mulcair’s flirtation with the Conservatives in 2007 undermined the NDP’s promises to clean up the environment.
- The G&M fails to mention that this has been debunked a number of times, including recently by some high-up Conservatives.
- And "undermined the NDP's promises to clean up the environment"? The facts on this story actually result in boosting the NDP's seriousness about cleaning up the environment. 


I'll leave you with a few choice comments made after the G&M news item (these are all in the top ten most liked comments, and from the G&M readers no less!):

Mr Leblanc's first paragraph is flawed, or the poll was flawed. The choice is not between "change" and "stability." It is between "change" and "no change." I certainly would neither call what our economy had gone through in the last year as anything approaching stability, nor would I call the government actions in domestic and foreign policy as stabilizing.



My wife and I are in the over 65 age group and for the first time ever will be voting NDP as we have seen never ending corruption with the Libs and Cons for way too many years. Many of our friends have also decided to vote NDP as it is clearly time to send a big message to all elected officials, the voters are fed up and will not take it anymore and you will be forced to understand this come the election.



choose between political stability and renewal,..........
Nope......It's choosing between getting a country back to sanity...or carrying on with the most corrupt, crooked, manipulative crew of PROVEN liars and cheats This country has ever been controlled by .....A government rife with contempt, disrespect.....There have never been so many from a political party involved in fraud, lies, election irregularities...legal proceedings, and criminal investigations...ever.....
Duffy, Wallin, Brazeau, Porter, Grestein, Stewart/Olsen, Wright, LeBreton, PMO staff
A LONG list of crooks......
It's about voting OUT crooks and taking the nation back from the brink of fascism!!


the first sentence claims there is a choice between change and political stability. Huh? If the government loses an election in Canada, that does not mean there is less stability.
By the Globe's definition of that term..I guess North Korea has the most political stability of all.

No One To Blame For Rob Ford But The Media And Ignorance

This article in the Toronto Star points to the voters as those solely to blame for Rob Ford being elected.

I disagree. The voters are partially to blame, but there were other major factors.

1) The Media
The Media is very much to blame for the election of Rob Ford. During the election campaign they, pretty much as a whole, focused much more on the celebrity of Rob Ford than on the policies of the candidates. This influenced the many voters who are more easily swayed by name recognition and celebrity than policies.

Also, the Media is largely to blame for discouraging people from voting, by convincing many that it is pointless to vote as it will change nothing. Remember, the vast majority of media is or is owned by large corporations. So, it is in their best interests for the most part to support Conservative ideology. It is known that the most avid voters are conservative supporters. So, by convincing those who disagree with and are disappointed by government policies and trends that it is a waste of time to vote, they are removing votes against the parties/people that support the conservative/corporate agenda/ideologies.


2) Ignorance
A large part of Conservative ideology is the celebration of ignorance over knowledge and reason. Just look at the popularity of the Tea Party in the USA, especially a couple of years ago, during the time of the last Toronto municipal election. Those people in Toronto who embraced this celebration of ignorance over knowledge and reason at the time of the election were/are at the core of Ford Nation. The popularity and sensationalizing of this ideology convinced many more to jump on the bandwagon of celebrating ignorance.

And now, with all that, there is the issue of trying to reason with those who have chosen to abandon reason.

It is easier to fool someone that to convince them that they have been fooled.

We have our work cut out for us. And it is made especially hard for individuals to fight against the Media for the attention of people, especially for those people who currently won't be reasoned with.

Conservatives and Their Media

Earlier today a friend and I were discussing how the Conservatives get away with telling lies all the time. My answer was this:

The Conservatives have confidence in the mainstream media and their ability to help pull the wool over the eyes of so many Canadians. The fact that we have a majority Conservative government right now is proof of that. So yes, the Cons have confidence that with the help of the majority of the news media in Canada, they can con enough Canadians on a regular basis. Most unfortunate. The difficult task we face is convincing those who have been fooled that they have been fooled.

Oh Noes! The Grope & Fail To Become A Pay Site

Over the past few years the news reporting and columns in the G&M have really gone down hill, IMHO. I used to read a lot of the G&M as part of my daily news reads. But lately, I read maybe a few articles per month now. So, for me, no big loss.

The Globe and Mail announced today that they will limit free on-line reading beginning in the Fall.


Toronto Star article.
The metered paywall will allow site visitors to read a certain number of stories per month for free, starting in the fall. The number of free clicks hasn’t been decided yet, Crawley said. The paywall will be for the entire site, not just the Report On Business, as previously anticipated.

See also:
David Climenhaga's Alberta Diary blog: A leaky paywall won't keep the Globe and Mail afloat
If the Globe is so desperate it has to stop paying staff to survive, a leaky paywall to protect uninspired copy produced by overwhelmed journos isn’t going to save it.

Sun News reporter's conduct results in thousands of complaints

Complaints over Sun News interview overwhelm watchdog - The Globe and Mail
No surprise here.

Excerpt from article:

Viewers have sent in more than 4,350 complaints since the interview aired on the Sun News program Canada Live on June 1. The CBSC receives on average 2,000 complaints in total in any given year.

Ms.
Erickson challenged Ms. Gillis to explain why artists like her deserve
public funding. The host shouted over many of her answers, and later
criticized Ms. Gillis for commenting in a different interview that
society has become less compassionate.

“I personally take
exception, and I know some of my colleagues do as well, to your
assertion that we are lacking in compassion when we have lost more than
150 soldiers who have served in Afghanistan, who have put their lives on
the line,” Ms. Erickson told her. “Which is frankly, quite a serious
business, okay, compared with people who are dancing on a stage. I just
don’t get where you get off suggesting that we are lacking in
compassion.”

The council has a code of ethics governing Canadian
broadcasters, which includes a clause requiring “full, fair and proper
presentation of news, opinion, comment and editorial.” That clause is
likely to be at issue in this process, said Ron Cohen, the CBSC’s
national chair.

Facebook page: How to help stop Sun News TV hate propaganda

Harper wants 100% control of the media, not just 90%

LAWRENCE MARTIN: Shades of Nixon: The PM’s media suspicions | iPolitics
Harper is aiming to wage a war against the so-called Liberal media - the media of which 90% supported the Conservatives in the recent election. Harper wants control of that last 10%. Read the article.

Excerpts:

Here’s a prime minister coming off a triumphant election, one in
which he received editorial endorsement from 90 per cent of the
country’s newspapers. He has the country’s major media chains in his
corner. For an official opposition, he has a party, the New Democrats,
with barely a single major media backer in the land.

Yet one of
Stephen Harper’s first post-election moves is to mount a vituperative
campaign against journalists. His party president, John Walsh, sends out
a letter soliciting funds to fight what he calls the hailstorm of
negative attacks from the media elite. Stockwell Day joins the fray with
broadsides at the Conservative convention. Senate leader Marjory
LeBreton climbs aboard with fourth estate denunciations.

Does this
have the look of something straight out of Nixonland. We recall Spiro
Agnew, Tricky Dick’s Vice President, and his attacks on the “nattering
nabobs of negativism.” Whether he went so far as to try and publicly
bankroll an attack fund, I’m not sure.

...

The Conservatives’ post-election media strategy is a continuance of
the Harper campaign to limit access to real information. It piggybacks
on the vetting system Harper brought to Ottawa, the roadblocks put up in
front of the Access to Information process, the limits on questions at
press conferences and the like. It’s part of the wider strategy to make
all the Ottawa power blocks — Parliament, the civil service, agencies,
watchdog groups and his own party — more and more subservient.

Even
though the media here is predominantly conservative, even though the
preponderance has been augmented with the arrival of Sun TV, it still
isn’t enough. The PM wants to go further. He wants the fourth estate,
like much of the rest of the nation’s capital, down on bended knee.

Brigette DePape speaks out

Why I did it: Senate page explains her throne speech protest - thestar.com:

Brigette DePape

I am moved by the excitement and energy with which people

from all walks of life across this country greeted my action in the
Senate.

One person alone cannot accomplish much, but they must at least do

what they can. So I held out my “Stop Harper” sign during the throne
speech because I felt I had a responsibility to use my position to
oppose a government whose values go against the majority of Canadians.

The thousands of positive comments shared online, the printing of
“Stop Harper” buttons and stickers and lawn signs, and the many calls
for further action convinced me that this is not merely a country of
people dissatisfied with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s vision for
Canada.

It is a country of people burning with desire for change.

If I was able to do what I did, I know that there are thousands of others capable of equal, or far more courageous, acts.

I think those who reacted with excitement realize that politics
should not be left to the politicians, and that democracy is not just
about marking a ballot every few years. It is about ensuring, with daily
engagement and resistance, that the vision we have for our society is
reflected in the decision-making of our government.

Our views are not represented by our political system. How else could
we have a government that 60 per cent of the people voted against? A
broken system is what has left us with a Conservative government ready
to spend billions on fighter jets we don’t need, to pollute the
environment we want protected, to degrade a health-care system we want
improved, and to cut social programs and public sector jobs we value. As
a page, I witnessed one irresponsible bill after another pass through
the Senate, and wanted to scream “Stop.”

Such a system leads us to feel isolated, powerless and hopeless —
thousands of Canadians made that clear in their responses to my action.
We need a reminder that there are alternatives. We need a reminder that
we have both the capacity to create change, and an obligation to. If my
action has been that reminder, it was a success.

Media and politicians have argued that I tarnished the throne speech,
a solemn Canadian tradition. I now believe more in another tradition —
the tradition of ordinary people in this country fighting to create a
more just and sustainable world, using peaceful direct action and civil
disobedience.

On occasion, that tradition has found an inspiring home within
Parliament: In 1970, for instance, a group of young women chained
themselves to the parliamentary gallery seats to protest the Canadian
law that criminalized abortion. Their action won national attention, and
helped propel a movement that eventually achieved abortion’s
legalization.

Was such an action “appropriate”? Not in the conventional sense. But
those women were driven by insights known to every social movement in
history: that the ending of injustices or the winning of human rights
are never gifts from rulers or from parliaments, but the fruit of
struggle and of people power in the streets.

Actions like these provide the answer to the Harper government. When
Harper tries to push through policies and legislation that hurt our
communities and country, we all need to find our inner activist, and
flow into the streets. And what is a stop sign after all, but a nod to
the symbol of the street where a people amassed can put the brakes on
the Harper government?

I’ve been inspired by Canadians taking action, and inspired too by my
peers rising up in North Africa and the Middle East. I am honoured to
have since received a message
from young activists there, saying that we need not just an Arab spring
but a “world spring,” using people power to combat whatever ills exists
in each country.

I have been inspired most of all by Asmaa Mahfouz, the 26-year-old woman who issued a video
calling for Egyptians to join her in Tahrir Square. People did, and
they together made the Egyptian revolution. Her words will always stay
with me: “As long as you say there is no hope, then there will be no
hope, but if you go and take a stand, then there will be hope.”

Brigette DePape is a recent graduate of the
University of Ottawa. She has started a fund to support peaceful direct
action and civil disobedience against the Harper agenda: www.stopharperfund.ca

Let Freedom Rain delves into the corporate media's misunderstanding of DePape's protest.
Jarvis doesn't get it. What needs to be done in this country is to
destroy Canada's conservative journalism. The overwhelming
misinformation and prejudice of our journalists' overreaching embrace of
conservative values and money is what is rotting away in Canada's
psyche. We are tired of a news monopoly owned by the Conservative party.


Brigette DePape broke through that monopoly and made its beneficiaries,
like Jarvis, squirm in their privileged seats. While DePape thrives in
blogs, news stories and on T-Shirts, Jarvis collects cheques for doing
virtually nothing but represent the Globe's beloved Conservative party.

Toronto Star attempts a smear-job on Jack and Olivia

MPs lap up free trips courtesy of groups, foreign governments - thestar.com
Towards the end of the election campaign, the Toronto Star very grudgingly endorsed the NDP. Before that they usually directly or subtly attacked the NDP. Now, we see they are back to their old tricks. Being one of the big corporate mainstream media, it is in their best interest that only the corporate-backing parties (Conservatives and Liberals) should get their support. Any other party they see as a threat. So, day by day they do what they can to make those parties look like what they are not. Today the Star took an issue which is not an issue, something that is totally legal and above-board, and tried to make it look bad. And, even though their favourite parties are the ones who took the most sponsored trips, they put the spotlight on the the federal party that took, by far, the least sponsored trips (over a 5 year period, the Conservatives took 132 trips, the Liberals took 142 trips, while the NDP only took 36 trips).

And "free trips" is misleading too. The Star is trying to make it look like these politicians were bribed. But, if that was the case, this would have been an issue a long time ago. The key here is that the Star wants you to think of these as bribes, although these trips were/are not . These trips are legitimate and totally above board. Many of these MPs were sponsored to
travel to have meetings, give talks, or to investigate/learn.

Yes, the article talks about the other parties at fair length. But, many people don't read the whole article, but just look at the picture and read the first few lines. With the placement of the picture and the choice of wording, the picture and the first few lines intend to make people who glance at this article think "Jack, Olivia and unions are bad".

This is the kind of slimy biased reporting that the NDP has always been up against. And now that they are the official opposition with a record 103 seats, there will be much more slimy biased reporting from the mainstream media.


Update:
The National Post also got in on the smear-where-there-is-no-issue game.

Right-Wing Political Violence: More Terror, Less Coverage

Right-Wing Political Violence: More Terror, Less Coverage | Common Dreams
Excerpt:
On the morning of January 17 in Spokane, Washington, city workers found a backpack with a bomb that was set to go off along the route of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade. An FBI official (Spokane Spokesman Review, 1/19/11) called the bomb “a viable device that was very lethal and had the potential to inflict multiple casualties.” Another official told the Associated Press (1/19/11), “They haven’t seen anything like this in this country.… This was the worst device, and most intentional device, I’ve ever seen.”

On March 9, Kevin Harpham, a white supremacist with past links to the neo-Nazi National Alliance, was arrested and charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and possessing an improvised explosive device. The device contained shrapnel dipped in rat poison, which can enhance bleeding (Hate Watch blog, 3/10/11), and was set on a park bench where its impact would be directed toward marchers.

The Spokane bomb plot received sparse coverage compared to that lavished on a far less dangerous plot attempted in Manhattan’s Times Square just a few months earlier. On May 1, 2010, a poorly made bomb incorporating Fourth of July firecrackers and nonexplosive fertilizer (Washington Post, 5/4/10) was allegedly set by Muslim-American Faisal Shahzad, who was reportedly outraged by civilian deaths from U.S. airstrikes (New York Times, 6/23/10). The device smoked, drawing the attention of a man who alerted police, but failed to go off.

However, network news shows considered the Times Square dud 14 times more newsworthy than the far more sophisticated Spokane bomb. According to the Nexis news media database, in the 10 weeks following the respective acts of terrorism, the Times Square story received 49 mentions on network evening news programs to the Spokane story’s three. (ABC World News didn’t mention the Spokane bomb a single time.)

Likewise, as Salon blogger Justin Elliott pointed out (2/19/11), the very real Spokane bomb plot received one-third the coverage given a November 2010 FBI sting operation in Portland, Oregon, that used a fake bomb, provided by an undercover agent, to ensnare a Somali-born Muslim teenager. On the scant coverage of the Spokane story, Elliot concluded, “The incident does not fit into the reigning narrative of Muslim terrorism.”

That narrative is fundamental to understanding the skewed coverage of domestic terrorism. For instance, on the eve of congressional hearings on domestic Muslim extremism, chaired by Rep. Peter King (R.-N.Y.), a Wall Street Journal editorial (3/11/11) attempted to justify the bigoted proceedings by misrepresenting a RAND Corporation study as finding that Muslims are responsible for virtually all U.S. domestic terrorism. What the 2010 RAND study actually found (FAIR Blog, 3/16/11) was that the vast majority of “homegrown” terrorist attackers—those of all ideologies who successfully carry out an attack—were not Muslims: Of the “83 terrorist attacks in the United States between 9/11 and the end of 2009, only three…were clearly connected with the jihadist cause.”

Running his own interference for King’s hearings, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly (O’Reilly Factor, 3/8/11) responded to domestic terrorism expert Mark Potok’s statement that “our biggest domestic terror threat…pretty clearly comes from the radical right in this country,” by exclaiming: “Are you kidding me? The radical right? The last terror act assigned to them was the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995.”

To make his claim, O’Reilly had to overlook many right-wing domestic terrorist attacks that have happened since Oklahoma City, including two that appear to have been partly inspired by his Fox News colleague Glenn Beck, and one in which O’Reilly himself has been accused of whipping up hatred.

In reality, there have been dozens of violent domestic attacks perpetrated by right-wing extremists in the U.S. in recent years. On the Crooks and Liars blog (1/21/11), right-watcher David Neiwert keeps a running list of domestic terror attacks by rightist and anti-government extremists. Since August 2008 alone, Niewert’s list includes two dozen such attacks.

NDP Mulcair statement about bin Laden photos taken out of context ...

NDP's Mulcair clarifies bin Laden comments - Montreal - CBC News

... and blown out of proportion by the media.

Mulcair said the context of the conversation had been lost, and that he
was referring to whether a photo of bin Laden reaching for his gun
exists or not.
"I clearly reference the pictures themselves and say that if the
Americans have them and they're holding them back, it's for reasons of
human decency. So that couldn't be clearer," Mulcair said on Thursday.

Media bias and the steady drop in the TSX before and after the election

Random Ranting, Raving and Ratings: TSX tanks after Conservatives win a Majority
Worth re-posting:
I just thought it would be interesting to note that the Toronto Stock
Exchange has been down all week.  And continues to slide even after a
Conservative majority victory in the House of Commons.  I notice that no
one in the main stream media is blaming Prime Minister Harper for this
slide but I can't help but wonder if they would be blaming a Prime
Minister Jack Layton if the NDP had won the election.  The press
were correlating the drop in the TSX with the rise in popularity of the
NDP prior to election day.


It looks that Stephen Harper does not have a magic wand that protects us from the Global Economy after all.


I'm just saying...

No Surprises Here: The Globe Endorses Harper

Politics and its Discontents: No Surprises Here: The Globe Endorses Harper
Nope. No surprise here at all. Hats off to Politics and its Discontents:

As if to once more remind people of how hollow its claim to being
Canada's national newspaper is, the Globe and Mail has offered an
endorsement of Stephen Harper. Its reasons for recommending that the
electorate (or at least that portion lacking critical thinking skills)
give yet another mandate to Harper and his regime would be laughable
were the stakes not so high, and once more amply demonstrate the
journal's increasing irrelevance to the Canadian political discussion.


I am reproducing a small portion of its rallying cry for the Conservatives to illustrate. The bolded portions are my own:




Only Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party have shown the
leadership, the bullheadedness (let's call it what it is) and the
discipline this country needs. He has built the Conservatives into
arguably the only truly national party, and during his five years in office has demonstrated strength of character, resolve and a desire to reform.
Canadians take Mr. Harper's successful stewardship of the economy for
granted, which is high praise. He has not been the scary character
portrayed by the opposition; with some exceptions, his government has
been moderate and pragmatic.


It is because of this kind of fatuous thinking that I have not spent a day regretting my decision late last year to cancel my subscription to the once venerable paper.


More:
Peace, Order and Good Government, eh?: When mediocre editorial boards go bad
The people who run the Globe have lost touch with reality.

Far and Wide: Shame on the Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail has endorsed the politics of fear, the notion of unaccountable democracy, the idea that a budget is fiction, the precedent that one can lie about military expenditures with no recourse, THIS IS WHAT an ENDORSEMENT means.

Polygonic: Oops they did it again
No intelligent being (and I include dolphins, puppies and bonobo chimps) can honestly consider Stephen Harper a sober steward of the Canadian economy. The historic deficit proves it wrong, and the simultaneous drunken sailor spending, with its “state secret” price tags to-boot, only underline it.

A Creative Revolution: Predictions were right
It wasn't rocket science to know that Corporate media are going to endorse the most corporate owned party.
No matter how many laws they break, how out of touch they are with Canadians, or how absolutely wrong it is for any media to take sides. They did it again.

Orwell's Bastard: "Find new ways to protect Parliament?" WTF?

Indeed. The Grope & Fail, claiming that the Conservatives are the best to protect Parliament is just insanely absurd. The Conservatives are the ones who have done more harm to tear down and undermine a democratic parliament than any other governing party in my lifetime. The Grope & Fail's reasoning for their endorsement of the Conservatives is a joke.

Toronto Star makes things up and plays the FEAR card to try to bring voters back to the Liberals

Tim Harper: Majority so tantalizingly close for Harper - thestar.com
Incorrect Tim.
Actually, if you look at all the polls (except for the Ipsos-Reid polls), they all show the Conservatives in the lead, but only in minority territory. And, the latest EKOS poll (random landline/cell phone poll of over 3,000 adults across Canada - which gives it a very high accuracy rate) shows the Conservatives slowly losing support, while the NDP, in second place, quickly catching up to them.

What is usually a sure-fire way to get soft Liberal-NDP swing voters to line up behind the Liberals is to scare them with a possibility of a Conservative majority. This has worked in the past. But now, with the NDP well ahead of the Liberals in most areas across the country, this tactic is not working. And, it doesn't make sense either. The logic would be that to stop the leading party, you would want to shore up support for the party with the next highest support. Well, today, that is the NDP. Logic would now show that a vote for the Liberals would split the vote and let the Conservatives in.

Even their readers, in the poll at the side of the story, don't believe them. The question: Do you think the Conservative Party is on the road to a majority government? Out of 63,999 votes, 58% said No, and only 31% said yes.

If you are scared of a Harper majority, the only party in position to stop it is the NDP. The NDP continue to gain in the polls and are now only 6 points away from the Conservatives. The trend shows that the NDP continues to gain support every day. If those on the wall throw their support behind the Liberals now, it will split the vote and may give the Conservatives a majority.

So, put away your fear and vote this time for a party that actually shares your values and beliefs. Throw your support behind the NDP now and we may just get an NDP government, a government that actually cares about what you care about.

The NDP has a national public transit strategy

National Public Transit Strategy Still Missing from this Election - Torontoist
The Torontoist published this misleading bit of journalism today. Again, like most MSM, they only count the Conservatives and Liberals when speaking about the election. The Torontoist did include a mention of the NDP, who do have a national public transit strategy. So, why the misleading title of the article?

Excperpts from the article:
In addition to the FCM, the Canadian Urban Transit Association has called for a national transit strategy—something that the NDP’s Olivia Chow had put forward in the form of Bill C-615,
which had its first reading on February 3, 2011. The bill (aptly named
an Act to Establish a National Transit Strategy) called for all levels
of government to work together to establish and maintain permanent
federal funding mechanisms for public transportation.
Sadly, as we've already noted, a full slate of urban issues, including transit, is not getting very much airtime in this federal election.
...
As mentioned, the NDP is calling for an additional cent of the gas tax
to be dedicated to cities, which could be used for public
transportation. However, they are also calling for a National Public
Transit Strategy, and, given that Olivia Chow had proposed a bill
establishing this before parliament was dissolved, we can assume they
are taking this seriously.


Sadly, what is missing is not the platform items and the attention of parties, but the lack of coverage and the lack of attention given to certain topics by the MSM, and sadly, by the alternative media like Torontoist, along with the total discounting of the NDP, who, by the way, are now 2nd in the polls.
I expected better from Torontoist.


The NDP National Transit Strategy:
    * Provide a permanent investment plan to support public transit
    * Establish federal funding mechanisms for public transit
    * Work together with all levels of government to provide sustainable, predictable, long term and adequate funding
    * Etablish accountability measures to ensure that all governments work together to increase access to public transit.
(From the bill tabled in parliament by NDP's Olivia Chow this past winter)
See:
http://www.ndp.ca/press/new-democrat-tables-national-transit-strategy
http://www.ndp.ca/press/new-democrats-outline-new-national-transit-strategy
Also, from the NDP platform:
* We will enact a National Public Transit Strategy in order to maintain and expand public transit across the coutnry, with a clear mechanism for sustainable, predictable and long-term funding
* We will immediately allocate another cent of the existing gas tax to public transit funding for municipalities
* We will encourage transit use by providing a tax exemption for employee workplace-based transit passes

CTV Conservative bias plain to see

Buckdog: CTV And Jane Taber's Anti-NDP Bias Caught On Film

Read the link.

Uncovering more MSM slant - Pro-Conservative Grope & Fail's take on the NDP

NEW MEDIA AND POLITICS CANADA: DAY NINE: Platforms (part one)
Excerpt:
What's also remarkable in the above two linked articles of what took
place at the town hall meet-up that Mr. Layton held at Laurentian
University in Sudbury, Ontario is that somehow the Globe reporter failed
to mention Jack Layton was using this particular backdrop to unveil his
party's platform on health care and the Sudbury Star reporter picked
right up on this little tidbit. Jack says his plan will bring 1,200 more
doctors and 6,000 more nurses into the country's heath care system in
the next 10 years - that's a news worthy announcement that would seem to
trump reporting on unseen rotten tomatoes. But it is illustrative. Not
only will NDP policy ideas have a hard time getting a fair reading in the media, sometimes they won't even get a mention.


Since the Globe and Mail prides itself on being a national newspaper,
the failure to report on the NDP platform announcement about their
health care plan is more than puzzling. This would seem to be the
singular most important aspect of the story at least so far as Canadians
not living in Sudbury are concerned. Yet it fails to garner mention and
there were some pretty specific details too: Mr. Layton
proposes creating a fund to repatriate 300 Canadian doctors now
practising abroad -- investing $80 million a year over four years to
upgrade medical schools across Canada to make room for the next
generation of family doctors -- and his party would forgive student
loans for medical professionals who choose family medicine for at least
10 years, regardless of where they practice. He calls these "...practical first steps to ensure that you and your family have access to the health care you need -- when you need it."

Example of MSM bias towards the Conservatives

Democratic Progress: G&M
I'm not a Liberal party supporter, but anyone should be able to see that the Grope & Fail intentionally posted (see the example at the link) a positive photo of Harper and Flaherty, and a very unflattering photo of Ignatieff together. MSM (Mainstream Media) does this all the time. And it does sway thousands, if not millions of gullible voters. Their choice of how they word the titles of articles and what they say in their "news" items also shows a lot of bias. But again, there are a lot of gullible people who are swayed by this. If you point this out to these people they often get very angry and deny they are being swayed, etc. etc.

Another example of what the Left and middle are always up against.

Fox news makes stuff up - no surprise at all

FOX NEWS INSIDER: “Stuff Is Just Made Up” | Media Matters for America
And this is why Stephen Harper stacked the deck of the CRTC and is pushing for changing our broadcast regulations so he can have his own station of lies - Fox News North - be able to broadcast bald lies and propaganda.

Worth Repeating: CRTC Becoming Conservative Central

Let Freedom Reign: It's not just the courts Harper is stacking with partisan hacks: CRTC becoming Conservative central.
Excerpt:

NDP heritage critic Charlie Angus noted that the job notice for the vacancy listed a range of qualifications that Pentefountas does not have.
"This appointment stinks," he said.

"This government has intervened and undermined again and again at the CRTC. In the case of Mr. Pentefountas, they not only broke the vetting process, they did it with the direct intervention of the PMO. So now we have the political strings of the prime minister directly at the senior level of the CRTC."

Harper government would like to be able to lie to you even more

Globe & Mail: CRTC plan to lift ban on false news prompts political investigation
Excerpt:

NDP MP Charlie Angus noted that the proposed change precedes the start of Sun TV, a network that has been shepherded in large part by Kory Teneycke, the former director of communication to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

“We all know our Prime Minister well enough to say we don’t have to be in the realm of conspiracy theory here,” Mr. Angus said at a news conference on Monday. “We can draw our conclusions and they are pretty clear.”

Behind the scenes, officials say the timing is purely coincidental, the PMO had nothing to do with it, and that the CRTC simply realized it eventually had to answer the concerns of the regulatory committee.

But Mr. Angus persuaded the Commons committee on Canadian heritage to initiate a study of the CRTC proposal. And he urged Canadians to let the commission know how they feel about it before the Wednesday deadline.

“What’s disturbed us with this [proposed] regulation change is that it’s happening very quickly and there’s very little awareness of it,” Mr. Angus said.

“It seems astounding that the CRTC would consider such a move at a time when we see the growing backlash in the United States to the poisoned levels of political discourse in the American media.”