Category: Other

These young women were protesting the “illegal occupation of Afghanistan” on Remembrance Day. They waited until the moment of silence to unleash this tirade against the ceremony.

On Remembrance Day, a war memorial in Toronto’s Coronation Park was vandalized scrawled with the words “CANADA WILL BURN PRAISE ALLAH”.

The news hit the pages of the Toronto Sun, CTV, Global and the Toronto Star with the Toronto Police investigating the incident as a “hate crime”.

CBC.ca, however, has not reported on the incident at the time of this writing.

Perhaps it doesn’t fit their narrative?

Days ago, a video of soldiers mocking Osama bin Laden dressed up in a turban in “brown face” surfaced and the CBC cleared space for the “exclusive”. A warning even preceded the story suggesting that viewers/listeners may be offended by the video.

Sources in Ottawa report that CBC was in possession of the video for at least a couple of months and sat on the “story” until Veteran’s Week.

CBC even covered the story on the National.

CBC ran a follow-up story on the reaction that its story generated with, er, Shaun Majumdar, their own on-air talent. The top three comments from their audience on the story?

“9 out of 10 real Canadians would not find that offensive…Its time for some people to get a life…” (2566 up votes / 569 downvotes)

“Breaking News…. “Canadians have a Sense of Humor” (2096 / 293)

“Big deal nothing wrong with it” (1923 / 356)

It’s clear that the folks over at the state-funded broadcaster seem more interested in reporting perceived insults by Canadian soldiers than an actual crime of vandalism that offends the memory of fallen Canadian soldiers.

Why is that?

UPDATE: Hope is not completely lost. CBC later covered this story on their 9pm National newscast.

UPDATE: CBC.ca posts story at 10:18pm.

UPDATE: CBC Toronto did a TV news hit on the story at around 2pm.

Russ Hiebert’s private members legislation is bill C-377, “An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act (labour organizations)”. The bill aims to increase transparency in every union in Canada, compelling them to submit annual financial statements to detail the $4 Billion in forced dues they collect per year from their memberships.

Journalists have written about “high-level” meetings between advocates for the bill and senior government officials. For the interests of full disclosure, the National Citizens Coalition too has an interest in seeing this bill pass.

Notably, the union that represents many journalists in Ottawa is the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP). We have no idea how much money the CEP is spending on trying to defeat this bill in the House of Commons because this bill hasn’t passed yet, but we do know that the union has an official position on it:

An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (Labour Organizations) is part of the Conservative government’s efforts to weaken civil society organizations that articulate a worldview different from their own. Sponsored by Conservative MP Russ Hiebert, Bill C‐377 is set for a third and final reading in the House of Commons this fall.
 
The Bill appears to address a problem that does not exist. Labour unions operate for the benefit of their members and, as such, the transparency, governance and operations of the organization should be a matter of concern to its membership. Bill C‐377 would be very expensive to administer and would create bureaucratic red tape for government, businesses, employee pension and benefits plans and unions.
 
It is our strong view that the Bill must be withdrawn or defeated in its entirety, regardless of suggested amendments.

How much money from the forced dues of Ottawa journalists is going to help defeat bill C-377?