The official independent government report confirms what conservatives and Prime Minister Harper have been saying for years, to howls of protest from liberals who have stacked the unelected Senate from top to bottom with Liberals and sundry leftists: the vast majority of Canadians want an elected Senate. Fully 79% in fact, according to the cross-Canada study, just released.
One headline even dares report the truth as it actually is: The Ottawa Citizen posts an article by Zev Singer with this headline:
“Canadians overwhelmingly support
an elected Senate, government survey finds”
…and it begins:
Four out of five Canadians think senators should be elected, and 65 per cent believe there should be term limits for the upper chamber, according to a report released last night by the Conservative government.
Meanwhile, doom and gloom Canadian Press reporter Jennifer Ditchburn finds the bottom and digs. The headline for her story (which I remind you is about a study which manifestly proves that 79% support an elected Senate) appearing at The London free Press is:
“Most Canadians do not support Senate upheaval”
(holy spin-o-rama, Batman!). It begins:
OTTAWA—While Prime Minister Stephen Harper pushes for reform—and even abolition—of the Senate, the government’s own internal research suggests most Canadians know little about the upper chamber and don’t support massive constitutional change.
Wow! Ya gotta dig pretty deep for that kind of spin!
She proceeds to chose to focus-in on and try to help cast doubt about the very knowledge level of Canadians, and their intellectual wherewithal to even figure it all out, it seems to me. (That does sound familiar doesn’t it, oh stupid Canooks who need nanny-state liberals and their bureaucrats to run every facet of your lives? After all—given the opportunity to keep cash in your pocket instead of it being taxed away, you might spend it on beer and popcorn instead of raising your kids properly like only the state knows how!™2006 liberal planners, early learning strategists and party policy advisers.)
She digs up these juicy bits to convince you you’re stupid, and that readers should therefore discredit the findings and cast universal doubt on the study’s usefulness, it seems to me:
“No aspect of the democratic system elicits as low a level of self-reported knowledge,” the report says of the Senate.
Still, of the 2,474 Canadians who participated in the telephone surveys, 79 per cent said they supported the idea of an elected Senate.
You have to have some kind of agenda to want to seek out and find that to be what’s worthy of mention… not once but twice…
Pollster Conrad Winn blamed the seemingly contradictory views on lack of knowledge of the Senate.
“If you ask them in a survey what they think about or what should be done, in the absence of much knowledge or information they fall back on the tried and true belief that parliamentary institutions should be elected,” he said yesterday.
Having milked that angle as best she could without actually calling you a dumbass, she turns her attention to other problems with the study.
She also claims that the study was conducted for “the Conservatives”, which is at best sloppy journalism or at worst, extremely poor, tendentious journalism, since clearly the study was actually conducted for the Privy Council Office of the Government of Canada, not “the Conservatives”.
The findings, released this week by government House Leader Peter Van Loan, come from a series of public consultations and polls conducted for the Conservatives…
… which she later explains cost us taxpayers $900,000. If she really believes the taxpayers paid for a crappy discredited Conservative Party poll, it would at least help explain her negativity and apparent annoyance, perhaps. More likely though, she’s simply trying to make the mental connection between people who suffer from a “lack of knowledge” —and “the Conservatives”, I think, and the fact that taxpayers paid for a partisan poll amongst idiots.
I am reminded of how the liberal media seems to have no problem calling what is in fact the Liberal Party’s Adscam Sponsorship Corruption crisis a “Federal” or “Canadian” or “government” or “Ottawa” affair, rather than a purely Liberal Party crisis of corruption, for example.
(Hat tip to Maureen for somehow catching this juxtaposition of “news reports”)
EXTRA:
I am too wordy. It’s now official. And I promise to change my ways effective immediately. After reading what I wrote in 8 gazillion words above, just now, compare it to how Maureen conveyed the message in her email to me:
“Hey – we wrote something that shows Canadians agree with Harper! Quick – write one that shows they don’t!!
Does Jennifer Ditchburn even read the report she purports to write about?”
…which explains the same thing in 29 words.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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