Vancouver Province
for March 31, 2000

I have just done the un-Canadian thing – may I be condemned as a traitor. Though I was branded that over the Charlottetown Accord my sin is a hundred, nay a thousand times more serious than merely fighting the Establishment in general – I’ve canceled my subscription to the Toronto Globe and Mail!

Now our relationship has always been a tad tenuous. In fact I turned down a column for them some six or seven years ago and no Canadian writer turns down the self styled Canada's National Newspaper, does one? Well this one did. And lest you think I may have an ax to grind, my confession. In my book, Canada" Is Anyone Listening? I was critical of the Toronto Globe and Mail - and of course they got even. One Paul Sullivan reviewed my book and never did get to and it's theme but concentrated on slagging me for my comments on his paper. What I expected – and probably deserved unless, of course, his readers wanted to know what I had to say. So in fairness you should know that I’ve never liked the buggers nor they, me. But just because I don’t like them doesn’t mean I’m wrong about them either.

If the TG&M billed itself honestly, as a Toronto paper, I could accept it as a real window on Central Canada. But it claims, against all the evidence, to be "Canada's National Newspaper" and persists in treating BC as part of "The West", betraying either colossal ignorance or a desire to piss off British Columbians or perhaps a bit of both.

But I didn't cancel the Toronto Globe and Mail just because I see the paper as typified by Jeffrey Simpson's smug arrogance (any journalist who accepts an Order of Canada in my view has to be an establishment suck) or because its weekend edition is a far faster read than either those of the Sun or the Province’s which make no pretensions to national status. No, I canceled because there is a better alternative. A far better alternative.

The National Post is by no means a great newspaper but it has become far and away the better of the two competing for the national title and has a number of BC contributors including Mark Hume and Vaughn Palmer.

My criticism of the Post is that while the presence of BC is noted, and it's affairs much better reported on than in the Toronto Globe and Mail (though that's damning with pretty faint praise) it does not present BC's argument, it's case so to speak. This is especially important as BC moves towards being the second largest province in the country and is showing serious signs of drifting from the federation. There’s a real and legitimate sense of disconnection from Ottawa and it's politicians and thus there is, from all parties, a promise of profound reform. Change, profound change is in the wind. Before the next election all three political parties will have reform initiatives in their platforms. These initiatives might be stillborn but I’m confident that the appetite for change won't go away and that we will keep trying until we've made some reforms.

The reforms British Columbians want are really an image of what the nation should be doing. The fundamental issue, becoming more obvious every day, is the people are not being represented in the lawmaking process. If we can make it better for ourselves that will be an important example of how we might fix out faltering federation. It's important not to just British Columbia but to the nation as a whole that these slow moving but steady efforts at fundamental reform in this province be reported. In this area, the National Post has a long way to go and the hiring of a columnist like, say, Gordon Gibson would do much to fill the gap.

I hope that the National Post listens and doesn't simply think that being a better national newspaper than the Toronto Globe and Mail is enough. That standard’s not difficult to achieve. Canadians are entitled to much better and the Post should strive to be a paper where all regions will come to understand each other because each region will not only be reported on but have the opportunity to speak for itself.

That would indeed be a first and would entitle a paper to call itself "national."