Silly Little Country

G20 - 'The Current' Provides the Liberal Party Version

'The Current' is an appalling piece of work in the best of times but this morning it took on new levels of wonderfulness.
The second segment did something I think worth doing - it claimed to try to assess the value of the recent G8 and G20 meetings. To get a hint of how the CBC wanted the discussion to go, take a look at the participants - this is Part 2 of this show.
Who did they have discussing this?
Alan Alexandroff from the Munk Centre for International Studies, Andrew Cooper, an expert in governance from U of Waterloo, Daniel Price, who worked in the Bush administration, and WTF???!!!! Ralph Goodale, a political flunky form the Liberal party of Canada? What the H^*& do they think he will contribute? (My guess - the CBCThought on this.)
Well, just listen. Everybody except Goodale is reasonable and makes good points and they make for an interesting discussion.
Every Goodale 'contribution' is a mindless rant against Harper, or, even more wonderfully, a stupid piece of innumeracy from a former Liberal Finance Minister.
Wait for the special moment where he compares what Western governments are committing to maternal health against what the Gates Foundation is.
It is pathetic and revealing. He cites their contributions versus their national GDP. So that seems to assume that as the governments make commitments they have at their disposition the whole GDP of their countries. This makes me never want to see Goodale as a finance minister again.
He also elides the fact that whatever they have at their disposal to spend, they might have things other than aid, whereas the Gates Foundation is there purely to dispense aid.
So Goodale's contributions consist of his innumerate rant (BTW repeated as part of the CBC news for the rest of the day), and several episodes of just dumping on Stephen Harper, almost every time resulting in the other participants whacking him for what he has said.
The CBC went through a recent mini-scandal regarding using a Liberal party consultant as their 'objective' poller, and have been sensitive lately about their not just being an offshoot of the Liberal party. This episode seems to be ill-judged in that context, though maybe the plan was for Goodale to look like a clown and a hack. If so it worked.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 5:07 PM