Blacklock's Reporter

Newspaper publishers hired a Liberal lobbyist to negotiate a $595 million press bailout. Records including Access To Information documents detail the lobbying blitz by Isabel Metcalfe, ex-Liberal candidate for Parliament and campaign organizer for Environment Minister Catherine McKenna.

Metcalfe was hired by News Media Canada, a publishers’ trade association. The group yesterday did not comment. Metcalfe held seventy-nine separate meetings with senior officials including staff at the Prime Minister’s Office as cabinet reversed a 2017 pledge not to subsidize money-losing dailies. No news media that are members of the association reported the fact.

Metcalfe in one January 11 email to staff at the Department of Canadian Heritage “attached some background materials” for terms of the bailout that later appeared in a cabinet bill submitted to Parliament, including criteria for applicants and disqualification of start-up media from receiving taxpayers’ aid.

Cabinet two years ago rejected subsidies for newspapers. “Our approach will not be to bail out industry models that are no longer viable,” said then-Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly. “Rather, we will focus our efforts in supporting innovation, experimentation and transition to digital.”

Cabinet subsequently reversed the policy in Bill C-97 the Budget Implementation Act passed by Parliament June 20 that awards 25 percent payroll rebates and 15 percent subscription tax credits to federally-approved media. Beneficiaries include Torstar Corporation that reported $31.5 million in losses last year, and Postmedia Network Canada Corp. that lost $33.9 million.

Lobbyist Registry records show Metcalfe met then-Minister Joly and her successor, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, among twelve separate sessions with department staff. Metcalfe also lobbied thirteen deputy and assistant deputy ministers; had five meetings with the Prime Minister’s Office; and lobbied the Department of Finance eight times including repeated meetings with Ben Chin, then-Chief of Staff to Finance Minister Bill Morneau.

“I’m a large-L, hard core Liberal,” Metcalfe earlier told a reporter. The lobbyist was an unsuccessful Liberal candidate for the Commons in 2006 in Carleton-Mississippi Mills, Ont. and Ottawa City Council in 2010. Meetings by the lobbyist on newspapers’ behalf included:

• • August 8 with the Deputy Commissioner of Competition;
• • June 26 with a senior advisor to the Minister of Public Works;
• • January 15 with Ben Chin at Finance Canada;
• • November 11 with James Cudmore, ex-CBC reporter now a policy advisor at the Privy Council.

Environment Minister McKenna in an earlier tweet described Metcalfe as “one of our awesome volunteers”. Metcalfe’s husband Herbert was an advisor to then-Liberal leader Stéphane Dion in 2008 and a longtime Party organizer until 2015, when he pleaded guilty to evading $396,259 in taxes and was sentenced to one year’s house arrest.

By Staff

Consumers are wary of buying farmed fish and worry about the industry’s environmental impact, says in-house research by the Department of Fisheries. Nearly a third of Canadians surveyed, 29 percent, said they oppose aquaculture altogether.

“Those opposing aquaculture most often point to two main reasons: because of perceived irresponsible practices by the industry, or because of perceived negative effects aquaculture has on wild fish populations,” said a report Aquaculture In Canada 2019. The fisheries department paid Ekos Research Associates $99,934 for the survey of 2,015 consumers nationwide.

The findings follow a 2018 audit by then-Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand that regulators failed to monitor the use of pesticides in coastal aquaculture salmon pens, and failed to complete nine of ten promised risk assessments of disease in farmed fish. “There is no validation of industry self-reporting,” Gelfand said in November 22 testimony at the Senate fisheries committee.

In the department survey, 54 percent of consumers said they prefer to buy wild fish “because it is more environmentally friendly”, “healthier”, or “because it is seen as being higher quality”. Only five percent said they preferred to eat farmed fish.

Asked, “When you think about fish farming, what is the first thing that comes to mind?” the most common responses were fish grown for food (11 percent); “negative effects” on the environment (7 percent); diseased fish (7 percent); “irresponsible practices” (7 percent); “poor living conditions for fish” (6 percent); and genetic engineering (4 percent).

“Most Canadians, 42 percent, trust a scientist employed by a university to provide accurate, reliable and unbiased information about aquaculture,” wrote Ekos. “In comparison, ten percent of Canadians trust a scientist with the Government of Canada to provide that information.”

A majority, 62 percent, said news and information they’d heard about aquaculture was negative. And fifty percent of respondents said the fisheries department’s most important consideration should be “protecting biodiversity and sustainability of wild fish populations”. Only six percent named support for aquaculture companies as most important.

Commissioner Gelfand in testimony said the department appeared too close to fish farm operators. “Where there’s long-term funding for research, that’s to help promote the industry,” said Gelfand. “So, that just puts the department at risk. One of the big concerns we have is, is the department at risk to be seen to be promoting aquaculture to the detriment of wild salmon?”

“They’re not monitoring the health of wild fish,” said Gelfand. “So, really, if they’re not monitoring the health of wild fish, how can they really know what the impacts are of aquaculture?”

By Staff

A new species
has emerged
in the United States.

The Base.

Comprises predominantly
white, uneducated males,
who appear heterosexual
but hate females.

They cheer a leader who calls women
dogs, low IQ, disgusting pigs.
They blame the victims
of sexual assaults.
They block access
to safe abortion.

They hate scientists too,
or anyone who speaks about
evolution,
vaccination,
climate change.

They hate Russia
but admire Putin.
Hate North Korea
but adore Jong-un.
They see “some very fine people”
on the side of Alt-Right and KKK.

Their own ancestors
came to America
from foreign countries.
Now they hate those
coming to America
from foreign countries.

In a bid to seal their borders
they reinforce walls,
call in the military,
separate mothers from children
at the ports of entry.

They believe
Mexicans are rapists,
Muslims are terrorists,
and U.S.-born congresswomen
should go back
to where they came from.

The Base
is forever hungry.
It must be fed
twice a day.

A favourite meal is 140 characters
mixed with fake news, manufactured crises
and a dose of bigotry.

Its ideology of
fear, hatred and intolerance
echoes in Europe,
Australia,
Brazil.

Canada watches,
waits.

(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)