NHL Has Lost Touch With Reality

Chara drives Pacioretty's head into the stanchion

Given the NHL's reaction to Zdeno Chara's now infamous hit on Max Pacioretty, it's hard not to conclude that the NHL powers are badly out of touch with reality.

It's clear that they also badly miscalculated public perception when they gave Zdeno Chara a pass on his violent and dangerous hit. The league will tell us that they cannot take public opinion into account when dishing out punishment in relation to an on-ice foul, but they should.
The NHL is an entertainment business and tailoring its product to what customers want makes good business sense.
I think it's fair to say that the fans didn't like what they saw and expected the NHL to see it the same way.
One the leagues sponsor's AIR CANADA has already sent an ominous letter to the league warning that they are considering pulling out because of the increased level of violence.

"From a corporate social responsibility standpoint, it is becoming increasingly difficult to associate our brand with sports events which could lead to serious and irresponsible accidents; action must be taken by the NHL before we are encountered with a fatality.  AIR CANADA

The Pacioretty incident was so violent and gruesome that it jumped off the sports pages into the mainstream press and unfortunately, the league's non-reaction solidifies the general perception (outside the league's fan base) that professional hockey is nothing more than glorified roller derby on ice.

The incredibly graphic nature of the hit and the spectre of a motionless body sprawled on the ice for an agonizing amount of time did more to set back minor hockey, than any other incident in the recent past.

What mother charged with protecting the well-being of her child could watch that incident without being put off hockey for her child, thinking perhaps that soccer is a better choice?

Most of you watched the incident after the fact and the chilling effect was no doubt mitigated by the knowledge that Pacioretty made it to the hospital and although badly injured, was not facing a life-threatening situation.

But for those of us of us who witnessed the incident in real time on TV, we lived through several minutes of abject horror as Pacioretty lay motionless on the ice. As we watched the doctors and training staff struggle over his limp body, there was legitimate concern that Pacioretty may have become the first on-ice fatality. 

The NHL and their disciplinary organ in their collective wisdom decided to give Chara a pass, an act that defies legal principles and common good sense.

Is there anyone who doubts that if Pacioretty was killed, that Chara would be facing involuntary manslaughter charges?

The NHL rationale is best expressed by apologist and fart-catcher Scott Burnside who's piece for ESPN explained the attitude of the dinosaurs that run the NHL.

"Tuesday's ruling was plain and simple about separating the result from the act." LINK

WHaaaaaa??

I hope Mr. Burnside never stands before a real judge and tries that sort of defence.

"Your Honour, I know I was driving drunk, but the fact that I hit a child riding a bicycle and broke one of his vertebrae and left him severely concussed, should not have any bearing on my punishment. It was a simple act of drunk driving which should be separated  from the result"

I don't believe that there's a judge in North America who wouldn't throw the book at the fool offering that sort of defence. If Mr. Burnside had legal representation the lawyer would be well advised to tape his client's mouth shut before allowing him to make that pitch.

"The other defence being bandied about by Chara's defenders is that the hit was out of character and that he never meant to injure Pacioretty.

"You honour, I shouldn't be punished because it's out of my character and at any rate, I didn't mean it"

 Hmmm....Really........

Such is the fantasy world of the Scott Burnside and the NHL.
 Let me quote Charles P. Pierce in the Boston Globe;

"Executive assistant district attorney Jack McCoy (Law & Order) used to warn us all that "intent follows the bullet." If you get a little sockless one night and shoot a gun out the window of your apartment accidentally into the wall across the alley, you are not punished as harshly as would be the case if you got a little sockless one night and shot a gun out the window of your apartment accidentally into the noggin of a bicycle messenger who is riding down the alley....Which is about where Zdeno Chara is right now."- Link To Hab and Hab not

Hockey fans are not as stupid or bloodthirsty as the league presumes. Fans like clean open ice checks and yes, a good punch up between two matched players who follow the rules, duke it out a bit and then break cleanly. If a player is outmatched or unable to defend himself, the referees break up the fight and the 'winning' fighter is expected to back off honourably. These are fair rules that everybody follows scrupulously. No fan wants to see a mismatched fight or somebody cheating by biting or kicking or some other dishonourable act.
At any rate we all know that these types of fights rarely lead to serious injury and it satisfies our blood lust rather harmlessly.

That being said, fans don't appreciate players being launched head first into the boards or given a dangerous cheap shot, be it an elbow to the head, knee to knee contact or a cowardly slew foot.
Does it make sense at all for players racing back to touch the puck for icing to be subjected to gratuitous and completely unnecessary body checks from behind?

The NHL has demonstrated in the past that the game can be modified significantly without affecting the competition. I recently screened an old playoff game from the seventies and was amazed at the ghoulish and dangerous behaviour of players, where hooking and interference was the norm. The league changed for the better and can eliminate certain dangerous behaviour without affecting the on-ice product, it is a question of will.

Ten years ago, Formula One car racing suffered a run of dangerous accidents and deaths. Cars had gotten too fast and dangerous. The powers that be realized that such was unacceptable and made significant changes both safety-wise and even took the unpopular decision to slow cars down through technical limitations. It had to be done, those who ran the sport knew it was in their selfish best interest to fix a dangerous situation.
Today Formula One remains as competitive and exciting as ever. Accidents, which are much fewer and farther between have much less devastating consequences.

It's high time that the NHL paid attention to the welfare of their players. If they can't see to it, fans should demand it.

Incidentally, the very worst thing for Chara was not to be suspended, it would have been in his own best interest to sit out for a couple of games. Coupled with a sincere apology (which he has not offered to date,) he could have put this incident behind him, no matter what Pacioretty's outcome.

Most Boston fans concede with good grace, that a 2-4 game suspension would have ended the incident.
Now Chara stands marked forever as a goon in the court of public opinion and just like O.J. Simpson, a man scorned for having gotten away with murder, the perception remains among fans that Chara got away with a dirty hit causing injury.

I'll presume now to speak for all readers of this blog, in wishing Max Pacioretty a speedy recovery.
If you'd like to send a personal public message to Max Pacioretty, please feel free to use the comment section.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Quebec Media Unrepresentatitve of Reality

As might be expected, reaction to Premier Charest's plan to require francophone grade six student to undergo half  a year of intense English instruction drew a firestorm of criticism not only from the language militants and separatist forces, but surprisingly in the mainstream media as well.

A brief Google search by myself indicated that over 90% of stories on the OP-ED pages of mainstream newspapers were either lukewarm or negative towards the idea. It was hard to find more than a few stories that actually supported the government's proposal.
Of course when it came to the unions, the separatist and nationalist, French language doomsayers, the reaction bordered on the absurd, with predictions of gloom and doom making up the bulk of the stories, but that of course was to be expected.

An article in Le Devoir points out that Premier Charest likely announced this new policy after conducting internal polling that indicated that the public was largely in favour of increased English instruction, but you'd never find that to be the case by reading reactions in the media.
In fact that very same article went on to quote a language expert, Christian Dufour, who offered a myriad of reasons why the idea of increased English instruction is dangerous, something to be avoided at all costs.

It's interesting that to date we haven't heard from any of the pollsters concerning Mr. Charest's plan, which is usually the case when a controversial proposal is made. I'm sure that we'd find that the opinions of Quebeckers, don't match what is being said in the media, not even close.

The truth remains that the Quebec media is dominated by those who don't represent popular opinion and that separatists and left-wingers are badly over-represented.

For the purpose of this discussion, I'll limit myself to television, because that is were the majority of Quebeckers get their news and where they are exposed to editorial opinion.

Newspaper editorials and opinion pieces, as well as Internet political websites represent a tiny fraction of this sensibilization. Readers here, are more educated and critical. (as evidenced on this blog!) and tend to be more politicized and opinionated, much harder to push off their conservative or liberal predisposition.

The real battleground is television, where the evening newscast and the choice of editors in the political content of stories covered, help shape public opinion.

"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan, which dictates that what the media decides to cover as newsworthy, shapes our opinion regardless of the point of view of the story.
If the media carries many stories about French students attending English cegeps, the public is conditioned to believe that there is a problem there, regardless of whether both sides of the issue is explored.

The same goes for the ongoing discussions of shale gas exploration. The fact that the media dwells to such an extent on the subject leads the public to conclude that the issue is important.
Sometimes the media exposure is warranted (as in the case of shale gas) and sometimes it is not, (as is the case of English cegeps.) 

Unlike English Canada, Quebec is rather limited in television choices and particularly in the realm of news and current events. That is why the Radio Canada (the French CBC) plays a much bigger role in shaping Quebec public opinion than does the CBC in English Canada, which is forced to compete not only with CTV and Global, but news organizations in the USA, such as FOX news and CNN.
Soon Canada will get a conservative news channel, insuring that the public is exposed to even a wider realm of all manner of ideas.

The impact of Radio Canada in Quebec cannot be underestimated and the fact that editorially it's optic is so largely far-left and separatist is clearly disturbing.

This opinion is not exclusively mine, Radio Canada has been described as being run by the CLIQUE DU PLATEAU by better pundits than I, a denigrating term to describe the ultra-liberal separatists who make up the majority of the on and off-air staff at the crown corporation (ironic, eh!)

"The Clique du Plateau is a term used to describe a certain elite, an intelligentsia, real or fictitious, made up of people who have an important influence on culture and media across Quebec from Montreal, and more precisely one of its neighbourhoods, the Plateau Mont-Royal, home to an artistic community....The Clique du Plateau is often accused of being associated with the political left and socialism and is considered diametrically opposite to centrists and rightist ideology, including that of the Action Democratique du Quebec. It also sometimes involves the PQ and the sovereignty ideology." Wikipedia{Fr}

And so everyday we are treated to interviews and discussions on language issues, most (but not all) from a nationalistic point of view, giving  an over-weighted relevance to the issue.

The 'Clique' is wildly anti-conservative, pro-sovereignist, anti-Canada, anti-USA and of course anti-Israel.
Sometimes, as in the case of Israel, reporters are so biased that they are called to task as in the case of an on-air interviewer who likened Israel to Iran. LINK 
Simon Durivage was forced to apologize on-air when the corporation's own ombudsman condemned his characterization. LINK
Recently the network came under intense fire for airing a 'documentary' on the influence of evangelical Christians on the Harper government. The program was so biased and nasty that a firestorm of criticism erupted. I shall perhaps have something to say on that subject in a future post.  Watch the show

It's not likely that the program in question, "Enquete" will air an exposé anytime in the future, concerning the inordinate amount of influence that unions hold on the Parti Quebecois!
This of course, is an example of how editorial choices and the subjects chosen to be covered by Radio Canada, affect and shape public opinion.

What remains interesting is that despite the bombardment of anti-Canada and anti-English opinions put forward, Quebeckers continue to resist falling for the propaganda.

While Quebeckers are reminded and threatened each day that sending their children to English school or teaching them English in any enhanced manner, diminishes the French character of Quebec, they continue to resist, and opinion polls demonstrate that the majority want English instruction.

Perhaps it is the selfish notion that parents of all nationalities, creeds and languages share, the desire to give their children the very best chance in life to succeed, this despite the brain-washing campaign being waged against them.

It leads us to wonder what would be the political reality if fairness and balance was returned to our airwaves.

Is Quebec City Mayor Melting Down?

A while back I wrote a rather glowing blog piece about the then popular mayor of Quebec City, Regis Lebeaume. LINK
Sadly, since then, it appears that the good mayor has developed some serious illusions of grandeur and has suffered a personality transformation.

Somewhere along the line Mr. Lebaume developed a God complex whereby he believes that he knows better than everyone. Anybody, who publicly opposes him or asks an uncomfortable question, whether that person be an elected official, city employee or news reporter is treated to a vicious tongue lashing and in some cases threatened with legal action.
Lebeaume and his political party have followed through with two lawsuits claiming that his reputation has been damaged. The thin-skinned mayor has sued a city councillor and the  president of the  union of municipal employees, both for $200,000. LINK{FR}
Questions about the chilling effects on democracy these lawsuits bring to the political arena are now being asked and rightfully so.

His bizarre and aggressive behaviour can be linked to his latest political setbacks and perhaps the real Regis is now manifesting itself, a nasty and vindictive, self-important tyrant.
He recently called city blue collar employees incompetents and cheats and even complained that seniors used too many city services without contributing enough taxes.

The new Regis Lebaume reminds me more and more of the old Montreal Mayor, Jean Drapeau, an unstable dreamer from another era who also became infatuated with himself, pursuing an unrealistic  Olympic dream that saddled Montreal with a crushing Olympic-sized debt for thirty years.
Can it be the Quebec amphitheater will become another white elephant which will end up costing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars? 

The Quebec Olympic dream was a non-starter from the beginning and it's hard to understand how the press and the media went along with the fiction that Quebec could somehow change the reality that the city does not have a suitable mountain that passes the criteria for an Olympic downhill ski event.
The last time the city bid for the Olympics, the effort failed largely based on the mountain issue and so how a re-formulated bid including the same rejected mountain could possibly succeed is a testament to the self-deception that is the hallmark and dishonesty of the Quebec City Olympic bid. In fact back in June of last year, René Fasel, an influential member of the International Olympic Committee gave an interview where he said in  no uncertain terms that a Quebec bid was a non-starter. LINK{Fr}

The truth is likely that the Olympic bid was kept alive as a pretext in order to con the federal government into coughing up money to help build a new arena that would potentially attract an NHL franchise By maintaining the fiction that a new arena would help attract the Olympics, justification for a federal subsidy made some sort of sense.

When the latest Olympic bid was flushed down the toilet by the IOC, so early in the game, Lebaume's plan to involve Ottawa in the financing through the fiction of an Olympic bid, went out the window.
In a vain attempt to salvage things, he tried to resurrect the Olympic bid  in order to buy time, but the whole fiasco fell flat on its face as even the most ardent supporters knew that the jig was up.

And so for Lebeaume, it's off to Plan B, but not before cursing out the federal Conservatives for failing to cough up the money, telling reporters that the federal party had committed suicide in the Quebec City area, the only place in Quebec where they hold a modicum of support.

Counting on the local population's mindless lust for a NHL team, Lebeaume reformulated his plan to finance his arena with public money from Quebec alone.

It is here where Mr. Lebeaume goes the way of Jean Drapeau and embarks on a lunatic path that will see taxpayers pay for his arena folly.
And so taxpayers will finance an arena for the benefit of a private enterprise.

Even after the president of the NHL Gary Bettman told the city not to assume that a new arena would lead to a team, the mayor has pooh-poohed the warning and irresponsibly and incredibly continued on his merry way.

His latest move was to designate Pierre-Karl Péladeau the anointed son who has been given a virtual monopoly to negotiate on behalf of the city for any potential NHL franchise.

The city made a poor mans deal with the tycoon, which includes the naming rights for the new building.
This effectively shuts out all other bidders, who would in all likelihood refuse to bring a team to the city if they had to play in an arena named for another business.

It seems that Bettman dislikes the pushy Quebec city mayor something awful and like Jim Basille before him, putting undue pressure and bullying the league is exactly the wrong way to proceed.  

The fanatical pursuit of an NHL franchise on the backs of taxpayers doesn't seem to faze the mayor or local taxpayers at all and if Pierre-Karl Péladeau is the ultimate beneficiary, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, so be it.

This is bound to end badly, but what else is new. Today's dream is tomorrow's nightmare!

I can see Jean Drapeau looking down on all this (or up) shaking his head and mumbling...."Been there, done that!"

Quebec Anglos Prove We Are Pigs as Well

Two stories last week demonstrated  that Anglo Quebeckers and our English Quebec society are no better than our francophone counterparts when it comes to graft, greed and disdain for the public purse.

First came the news that the English Montreal School Board sent six educators on a jaunt to Hawaii, where they were supposedly boning up  on how to reduce the dropout rate in Montreal high schools.

The School board came under fire for investing $10,000 dollars to send the six to Hawaii and when called to the carpet the wagons were circled to defend the indefensible.
Read: EMSB takes heat for $10K Hawaii trip
Mike Cohen the apologist communications director for the school board assured us with a straight face that there was nothing untoward and given his unique ability to blow smoke up our keesters, might I suggest that he apply for the vacant position of Charlie Sheen's publicist.

We were assured that the educators went to Hawaii to get insight into the problem of high school drop outs.....but;
The reality is that a simple verification of the the conference program guide indicates that the four day conference offered just one brief seminar on the subject. In fact the one and a half hour talk included two other non-related subjects that probably reduced the discussion on the dropout problem  to just one half hour!

In fact after reviewing the entire seminar program, it is abundantly clear that the whole seminar was ill-suited to anything that would be remotely relevant to the EMSB.
See the entire seminar program and judge for yourself. HERE

Of course none of the participants are coming forward to defend themselves and the EMSB isn't offering names. Shame on all involved for conspiring to defraud taxpayers on fair use of our money!

This comes on the heels of another dubious training exercise last year, wherein EMSB educators were sent to the Dominican Republic in the dead of winter to ostensibly study how the locals cope with reduced educational resources. No doubt our teachers learned how to cope with educating a class of sixty in a straw hut with just two pencils allotted for the whole class! Excellent work!
How's that tan?

Read: Stupidity and Greed Cross Language Divide

It didn't bother the school commission then and it certainly doesn't bother them now. Spending money on vacations instead of on the children, seems par for the course.
It goes hand in hand with the general incompetence of the EMSB who last year blew their entire year's security budget in under two months because of their inability to manage the simplest of files.
Read about the sad affair.


Shame on the EMSB!

Next comes the continuing sorry saga of Concordia University where the powers that be have been on an ongoing campaign to sack all those that stand in the way of the 'plan' as designated by the all-powerful board of directors.
These millionaire gentlemen run the school as a private fiefdom and are not averse to ordering the dismissal of anyone that displeases them to the tune of millions of dollars in wrongful termination compensations.
The recently deposed rector, sacked in the middle of her term with a package worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, has been replaced by a more compliant yes-man. Given that the job description includes kowtowing to the whims of the real managers of the the university, one would imagine that he'd come in a bit cheaper.

That being said the University opened the wallet and gave Mr Lowy the most absurd contract, one that included buying his million dollar condo and re-renting it back to him, but not before giving him a $3,000 monthly rental allowance.
Even more absurd is paying the expenses of his better half for university related activities, which includes eating cucumber sandwiches and sipping Kir royal at the annual Christmas Holiday party.
Does it include dress shopping at Holt-Renfrew?

The new rector miscalculated badly when he put his contract online in the interests of transparency.
Not many students or faculty were impressed with his civic call to service, considering the golden conditions.
Read a story on the contract conditions. HERE
If you'd like to be ill see a PDF of the entire contract. 

The questions remains for our community. Will we tolerate these excesses or will we bitch and moan for a while and then get back to our television programs.

I think you know the answer......

C'mon.... Give Christians a Break!

I'm not a big fan of Saguenay mayor, Jean Tremblay, the man in the eye of the storm regarding prayers at city council meetings, but that being said, he was elected by the good townsfolk of his constituency and he seems to enjoy their support. Read the background story.

The question of prayers before council meetings seems like a cut and dried issue in our society that is moving towards secularism, though no real political debate has ever really been undertaken and no societal consensus ever reached against retaining aspects of our Quebec Christian heritage and beliefs in Judeo-Christian principles that has been and remains the basis of our society.

The principle of separation of church and state is well established and accepted by all. The days where the senior members of the Catholic church advise or influence the government in any way are long gone and even secularists would stipulate to that.
To maintain that conserving the crucifix in Parliament or placing a Christmas tree on the front lawn is an assault on that separation of powers is unsupportable.

Perhaps secularists are inspired by the American system that strictly forbids any public display of faith, but that doesn't mean that those rules are necessarily suited to us.
A free and democratic state is one where society is ordered according to the wishes of the majority, within reason, of course.
We recognize that this majority can sometimes, in a moment of excitement or delirium, make mistakes, so we voluntarily limit what we can do by way of a constitution.

And so we have a Constitution that defines what we can do, a Parliament that enacts laws within the constraints of that constitution and an independent judicial system that insures that everyone is obeying the rules. It's a pretty good system.

Human rights tribunals were established to insure that individual members of society are treated fairly under the law. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
When, for example, a group of Black people are systematically refused entrance to a night club, in an attempt by management to keep the premises 'white,' it is an appropriate job of the Human Rights commission to intervene on behalf of citizens that have been wronged.

But our Human Rights Commissions (all across Canada) have degenerated into nothing less than out of control, unsanctioned extra-Parliamentary political bodies which have usurped power to impose an ultra-liberal, ultra-feminist, secularist agenda on society.

Unlike our established court system, these tribunals are anything but impartial, believing in principle that society must change to suit the individual and that personal rights are more important than societal rights. It's a viewpoint not shared by most of us, yet because we have abdicated political power to these commissions instead of respecting our elected Parliament to decide these issues, we are now reaping the rewards of that folly.

If the majority of citizens want to have a Christmas tree on the front lawn of Parliament or a short Christian prayer before a meeting, as a people, it is our choice to decide. Society belongs to the people, not Human Rights Tribunals.

Now if as a majority we decide that everyone be obliged to convert to Christianity, our constitution and our courts will set us right. It's a fair system of checks and balances, rules that the Star Chamber Human Rights Commission completely sidestep.


The good citizens of the Lac-St-Jean region are 98% Catholic and although most don't go to church each week, almost all of them consider themselves Christians and would probably tell you that they agree with a little Christian prayer at the beginning of council meetings. If enough citizens disagree, there is always the choice of the ballot box. It's called the democratic system.

There are those, who in wishing to impose secularism on everyone, argue that favouring one religion over another, or favouring religion over the absence of religion, is necessarily unfair.

I cannot say with certainty that the mayor has done anything of the sort. He offers a Christian prayer at the beginning of the meeting, where the majority is Christian, but should a secularist demand a silent moment of reflection from the mayor, I'm sure he'd indulge. If perhaps a Jew or a Muslim or Native would on occasion ask for the opportunity to bless the works of the council, I'd hope he'd also be accommodating.

It seems to me that our Human Rights Tribunals, right across the country have placed Christians and Jews firmly in their sights, siding with the secularists, radical Muslims and ultra-left-wingers who wish to impose a different brand of society on the majority.

How is it that not one secularist complained about the Native participation at the Vancouver Olympic Games opening ceremonies? The natives presented various dances of a religious nature where their own native Gods were entreated for various supplications on behalf of all?
Could you imagine the clamour if a Christian priest recited the Lord's Prayer or a Jewish rabbi offered  a short prayer of good luck in Hebrew?
Before the ceremony would be over, I imagine there'd be a slew of Human Rights complaints filed right across the country by secularists!

Years ago a Christian wouldn't be caught dead in a mosque or synagogue. Jews, Muslims and other minority religious denominations would stick strictly to themselves.
Today there's hardly a wedding in a church, mosque or synagogue that doesn't include guests of different faiths. We as a people have progressed where we are no longer afraid to accept the faith of others.
It's a good thing.

Christmas trees in front of City Halls cause offense only to those who are radicals.
In front of some Montreal suburban town halls with significant Jewish populations, a large lighted candelabra celebrating the Jewish holiday of Channukah is offered. Who is offended? Only radicals.

When the Chinese celebrate their faith with a public parade celebrating the New Year, according to their faith, who doesn't want to participate?
 
The truth is that our society has progressed to where we accept and even celebrate each others culture and faith. To take that away would diminish all.

Many years ago, when my son was a toddler, he was often frightened by the 'scary' parts in some movies, even those rated PG. Sitting beside me he would take both his hands and cover his eyes for the duration of the scene. It was a good solution. I don't think it would have been reasonable for me to complain to the theatre to eliminate these scenes.
To secularists who are offended by a thirty second prayer, here's my advice- Stick your fingers in your ears!

If secularists are offended by a short prayer, too bad. It is a Human rights Commission tenet that when an individual is offended, all society must change to accommodate them. What hogwash!

Many things in society offend me as well, I learn to live with it.

It is high time that the Quebec government take the bull by the horns by declaring exactly how we define our society. We need legislation clearly stating who and what we are. These choices are up to our elected Parliament to decide, after a vigorous and open debate.

There is no shame in declaring ourselves a society that recognizes its Christian past and one that maintains its core belief in Judeo-Christian values.

That being said we must tell all our citizens clearly that religious freedom is a sacrosanct pillar of our society, but that not every archaic religious practice can be tolerated in modern society.

There are some people who do not believe in the above. Fair enough.
But they are the minority and it is incumbent on them to accept the terms of society as defined by the majority.