Speculated on for years, more concrete testimony is popping up re: Simpsons: The Movie. See Yahoo article. Choice quotes: Groening thought South Park’s movie was the only based-on-TV feature that wasn’t horrible, while Simpsons producer Mike Reiss cuts to the chase: the Simpsons movie is “gonna suck pretty hard.” I say honesty’s always the best policy.
In other, equally important, news our fine Federal auditor has released her two-year report on my old co-op employer, the Communications Dept. of Public Works, and its Quebec sponsorship scandal. My old boss, Gagliano, has been recalled (fired) from his post as ambassador to Denmark. The media of course is having a field day, and Sheila Fraser gives them all the hay they need. She’s running with her new Folk Hero status a little too enthusiastically, describing PWGSC’s misuse of our public funds as, among other hyperbole, a “reign of terror.” Except for this more balanced article in the G&M today, every other journalist is fawning over Fraser like she’s the Moral God of Parliament. And why haven’t we seen any articles discussing the possible good the sponsorship program may have accomplished after the ’95 Referendum? What effect has increasing Govt. of Can. awareness and unity in Quebec had on the province’s general sovereignty opinion?
Finally, I was listening to a report on The Current this morning about the new Israel Wall, when an official quoted Sir. Winston C. (and which I paraphrase here): Governments eventually make the right decision…after they have exhausted all the other ones.
Simpsons, PWGSC and Sir WC
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3 Responses to “Simpsons, PWGSC and Sir WC”
I don’t think that the main issue raised by the Auditor General was the effectiveness of the sponsorship program. Sheila Fraser claims that the goverment abused the contracting process and there was possible fraud committed by unknown persons.
From the report itself: “We found widespread non-compliance with contracting rules in the management of the federal government’s Sponsorship Program, at every stage of the process. Rules for selecting communications agencies, managing contracts, and measuring and reporting results were broken or ignored. These violations were neither detected, prevented, nor reported for over four years because of the almost total collapse of oversight mechanisms and essential controls. During that period, the program consumed $250 million of taxpayers’ money, over $100 million of it going to communications agencies as fees and commissions.” http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/domino/reports.nsf/html/03menu_e.html
Someone spent some money and it didn’t end up being advertising!
PS – why doesn’t your website let me use html???
The main issue I tried to raise in my commentary was that Fraser’s terminology seems overly media-pandering. I then simply raised another point – i.e. if the program was actually effective. I suppose I should have put a paragraph break in to seperate the two, rather than just use the word “and”.
I have HTML turned off in comments under the assumption people could insert tags I wouldn’t particularly want (bogus links, img references, really big text?) I could be mistaken about this. Just thought it was a good precationary measure. I have had it pointed out to me that someone could easily screw up my whole Weblog in other ways, so maybe this is pointless?
Right, but it should be noted that the fact there was a sponsorship program is (at this point) irrelevant. It could have been helicopters, hotels or anything the government decides to spend millions on.
html codes – you could let people use things like italics, bold etc..
Why does your response appear above the comment you are responding to? Weird.