05 Aug Invidious habits at CBC News
Earlier today, former Finance Minister Graham Steele voiced appreciation for CBU President David Wheeler’s thoughtful comments about the all-too-common incivility of public discourse in Nova Scotia.
“[I]magine you are a politician,” wrote Steele, “facing this level of incivility and mudslinging, day after day, on issue after issue…. It happens, eventually, to everyone.”
To judge from the CBC’s gratuitously nasty treatment of former Premier Rodney MacDonald’s appointment to the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board, it happens to politicians even after they leave office.
“Rodney MacDonald gets federal plum,” screamed the CBC headline, before describing his pay package in breathless prose that would make you think he’d been caught robbing the corner store.
Seriously? MacDonald served 10 years in the Nova Scotia cabinet, three of them as Premier. While Premier, he stared down the government of Stephen Harper and won a significantly improved offshore royalty deal for the province. It was the signature achievement of his government. It would be hard to imagine better qualifications to serve on the federal-provincial board the regulates offshore oil and gas operations in Nova Scotia.
The second paragraph of the un-bylined CBC story zeroed in on the filthy lucre: “MacDonald… will be paid $5,000 annually plus $300 per day when the board is meeting. The board meets about 10 days per year.”
Some plum. Assuming a full workday for each meeting, and allowing eight hours for MacDonald, who lives in Cape Breton, to drive back and forth to Halifax, the former premier will haul down about $18.75 an hour for these sessions. I don’t know how much turgid technical reading a CNSOPB board member has to slog through in preparation for 10 meetings a year, but a $5,000-per-annum honorarium hardly seems lavish.
This treatment of the story only makes sense if a reporter comes to the news with a firm conviction that every pol is a crook, and a determination to pander to every viewer who shares that view.
Harping on MacDonald’s surprisingly modest compensation is particularly rich coming from a publicly owned corporation that refuses to disclose the salaries of its managers and stars, let alone how much tar sands companies have paid to host/commentator Rex Murphy, who ceaselessly promotes their cause with sesquipedalian bombast.
Bonus: Don’t miss this priceless clip of a tired and emotional CBC celebrity beguiling Alberta oil execs: