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Canadian ambassador should stand up to anti-american CBC

By Judi McLeod
Thursday, June 9, 2005

Toronto, ON--

Fresh back from `Bilderberging' with the big boys, Frank McKenna, Canada's ambassador to the United States, was lecturing mainstream Canadians about How Washington sees us from the op-ed pages of the National Post yesterday.

Bilderberg 2005 drew the usual suspects in late May this year. It draws the world's most powerful financiers, industrialists and political figures to a secret annual meeting.

according to enterprising report-on-Bilderberg journalist Daniel Estulin, "Its meeting was held under its usual secrecy that makes freemasonry look like a playgroup."

In his Post piece, McKenna informed Canadians "americans take offence when we endlessly moralize about what they should be doing" and opined about how since September 11, "americans are now consumed with the need to protect their physical and financial security."

"This trumps all other issues in Washington, and everything that we do in terms of the relationship between Canada and the United States has to be understood through that prism," McKenna wrote.

after only three months on the job, the former New Brunswick premier has the big picture on american-Canadian relations.

McKenna goes on to write, "There's no doubt that Canada is in a bit of a national funk right now, whether it's the loss of NHL hockey, the political environment or just the weather."

The weather? Weather experts have just finished telling us that here in Toronto we had more tropical temperatures the first week of June than we had all last summer.

Other ambassadors from other countries, McKenna says, talk to him with "so much admiration, so much respect and so much affection for our country that it would almost make you weep".

"When I try to explain to them, for example, that our health care system isn't perfect, they'll say, `You have no idea of just how good it is compared to other places in the world.' When I try to tell them that our political institutions are going through a rocky patch, they'll say, `You have no idea how lucky you are that you can settle your differences peacefully rather than at the end of a gun."

Only a Liberal politician-cum ambassador could try to explain Canada's current mega-million dollar Liberal sponsorship scandal as "going through a rocky patch".

When it comes to lectures from Canada's rookie ambassador to the United States, it should be the Canadian Government and its state-controlled Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) that McKenna should be taking on.

In the news section of the same daily where McKenna was pontificating from the op-ed page, about how americans really feel about Canadians, was the story, CBC feeding anti-american view: study.

according to the respected Fraser Institute, "(CBC's) coverage of the U.S. in 2002 was very critical".

"CBC Television's news coverage is overwhelmingly critical of the United States and has fed anti-americanism in Canada since the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center," says a Fraser Institute Report released yesterday. (National Post, June 8, 2005).

"Researchers for the think-tank say they found anti-american bias by examining the corporation's flagship news program The National in 2002.

"They chose 2002 because it followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon but was prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

"`Whatever the cause of Canadian anti-americanism, it is unquestionably exacerbated by CBC TV News," said Barry Cooper co-author of the paper and managing director of the Institute's alberta Policy Research Centre.

"`CBC's coverage is marked by emotional criticism rather than rational criticism where you have genuine conflicts such as the softwood and cattle trade disputes,' he said.

"He acknowledged some of the negative coverage stemmed from coverage of statements of Canadians such as former prime minister Jean Chrétien and his senior staff (for example, his director of communications, Francoise Ducros, who famously called U.S. President George W. Bush "a moron")."

The CBC, is, of course denying the institute's anti-americanism findings.

Ruth-Ellen Soles, a spokeswoman for CBC, said the report's findings of an anti-american bias are "patently false".

"CBC News takes fairness and balance very seriously," she said.

If Frank McKenna wants to be taken seriously in his Liberal-appointed post as Canada's ambassador to the United States, he should aim his lectures at a direction where they more rightfully belong, the shamefully anti-american Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.


Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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