PC Women's Caucus Speech

On March 18th I was guest speaker at the PC Women's Caucus dinner. It was an opportunity for me to talk about  my transition from journalism to politics and why I feel both are a form of public service. Here is my speech.

When you think about it, journalists and politicians have a few things in common. There are a lot of jokes about both groups, and when people are asked in surveys how much trust they place in the two, neither journalists nor politicians do very well.

And yet, most enter these professions with the best intentions. For me, I wanted to make a difference for people, for communities.

Journalists CAN make a difference by informing people about what's happening in their world and by holding people to account...the heads of organizations, political parties, businesses and individuals.

Mary Jones, a social activist in the United States in the late 1800's and early 1900's said: "My business is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

Many journalists have tried to live by those words.

Nova Scotian Joe Howe, a journalist before he was a politician, is quoted as saying, "When I sit down in solitude to the labours of my profession

the only questions I ask myself are, What is right?

What is just? What is for the public good?"

Howe is the kind of journalist many of us in the profession strive to be although he was more fortunate than most journalists. After all, Joe Howe owned the newspaper, was the editor and personally reported the legislative assembly debates in the paper's columns.

How good a journalist you can be is sometimes determined by where you work. To me, CBC was the best there was. A place where you could work to make a difference. The news division had a tradition of integrity and high standards. And CBC had excellent journalists.

In the spring of 1980 I graduated from Carleton's School of Journalism. And I got lucky. I snagged one of six summer internships with CBC Television.

I landed in the Montreal newsroom on Referendum Day. What a beginning!

I worked in a newsroom with some of the best journalists Canada has produced:

Patrick Brown, Don Murray, Alan Fryer, David Bazay, Jeannette Matthey, Don MacPherson. I thought:  What an opportunity to learn.

The discussion in that newsroom always came down to the most important question journalists can ask; "Why?". Why were so many Quebecers dissatisfied with Canada? Why were Americans taken hostage in Iran that year? Why was Ronald Reagan elected President that year ?

Why IS ALWAYS the most important question to ask and the toughest question to answer.

One of my first stories  at CBC Montreal  turned out to be one of my favourites. It was about a school janitor who was being forced to retire because he had turned 65. He happened to be the janitor at my former school. I can even remember the beginning of my script.

"Everyone calls him Albert.

He's not sir

Or Mr. Bance

Just Albert.

Albert's been at this school for 40 years.

He loves his job.

And everyone here loves him.

But Albert is about to turn 65.

and according to the law, he has to retire."

In the end Albert still had to retire. But the school found a way to keep him on for as long as he wanted to stay. I like to think my story had something to do with it. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. But to me it was important because it told the story of a law that didn't always make sense. A law that forced good, contributing, active people out of the workforce. To me, doing that story was a public service.

Being a journalist OR a politician can consume one’s life. A colleague of mine told me a story that occurred when he worked for the Montreal Gazette. He was going to interview then Premier Robert Bourassa. He was shown into Monsieur Bourassa’s office. He stopped, startled. The Premier was sitting on the floor surrounded by documents full of facts and figures. Monsieur Bourassa looked up at my friend and said: “Ceci est ma pornographie” (“This is my pornography”).

There are and were many other journalists at the CBC who believed in public service. Barbara Frum for example. I worked with her at The Journal. Barbara was as comfortable talking to a grain farmer on the prairies as she was talking to Benazir Bhutto. She was dedicated to doing interviews that were honest and fair and that revealed the truth.

I remember the night we persuaded Jamie Astaphan to come on the program. He was Ben Johnson's doctor during the Seoul Olympics when Johnson was

found to have used performance enhancing drugs. He never admitted in the interview that he had supplied the drugs. But based on Barbara's questioning it became pretty clear to viewers that he had played a role.

I set up a lot of interviews for Barbara and I can tell you she was an exacting host. Some of my colleagues were a bit intimidated by her. To be honest, at the beginning, I was too. Your research had to be top notch and thorough. The questions needed to be searching, clear and smart. That's how you get at the truth. A good interviewer doesn't provide the interviewee an opportunity to avoid the truth.

Barbara was also an extremely generous person.  A couple of years before she died, the wife of one of our videotape editors was dying of cancer. Barbara took the money from one of her speaking engagements and sent the couple on a vacation to the south while this woman was still healthy enough to enjoy it. We only heard the story after Barbara had died. It was one of many.

One of my favourite Bruce McKinnon cartoons was published just after Barbara’s death. Miles Davis had died around the same time. The cartoon showed both of them heading toward the gates of heaven.

Barbara is asking Miles Davis:

“Do you think he’d do an interview?”

That was the Barbara I knew.

One of the enigmas of television is that the content of a program can easily be usurped by the look of that program. Sometimes Barbara could do a brilliant interview but the next day you would hear someone say "Did you see what Barbara Frum wore last night?" No mention of the interview.

I remember one night calling my mother after one of my stories aired that I was particularly proud of. I said, “Mum, did you see my story tonight?”

“Honey”, she said, “you really need to get a hair cut”.

The visual side of television and the content have to complement each other, not compete. Otherwise, it's a distraction.  Some would say that many news programs now have too much of the visual, too much performance and not enough content.

I agree.

One reason is good content costs money.  To research a story properly takes time and therefore money.  To travel to the heart of a story takes money.

To write and edit a story properly takes time, therefore money.

Today we seem to be in an age where the exploits of Lindsay Lohan garner more attention than, say, the reasons for a continued economic slump, or whether foreign ownership of our natural resources is good for Canada, or whether political debate is being stifled in Canada and, if so, what effect does that have?

Television networks have decided viewers have shorter and shorter attention spans. When was the last time you saw a comprehensive documentary on television?

Instead we get news stories that are more like 'short snappers'. If a person in a news story can't say what he or she wants in eight seconds or less well, too bad. John Ralston Saul calls these short clips “primal shouts, pulsations as opposed to arguments or thought. Endlessly repeated tiny little fractions of ideas. The exact opposite of a public discussion or debate.”

It`s a worrying trend. And I don't see it turning around.

I spent almost half my career in TV, the other in radio.  For 6 years I produced Maritime Noon. We had a great team that told stories Maritimers seemed to relate to. We met so many honest, hard-working, wonderful people; mainly over the phone. There was trouble in the fishery in the mid 90’s and a lot of people were searching for work. We started searching for some success stories. People who’d found a new way to make a living. I remember one man who started a business building floating docks. Another former fisherman told us about using his net mending expertise to start constructing and selling soccer nets.

We felt we were providing a valuable service to our audience by telling them stories about people turning their lives around, about communities helping each other. We also told stories about the big issues facing this region.

Many networks say that in order to get younger audiences they have to make programs lighter with a faster pace. They say younger audiences have a shorter attention span, that they prefer style over substance. I'm not sure.

People in their 20's, a demographic all networks and advertisers want, are at a crucial stage in their lives. They are making major decisions about education, jobs, relationships, family, mortgages etc. They need good information they can trust to make those decisions. It isn't the information you can find on an app or by watching a reality TV show.

I think we underestimate young people's need for good information by concentrating on style over substance. They are smart.  They know what they want and they'll go wherever they have to go to get that information. And the media should explain to them why an economic slump may affect their ability to find a job, or why foreign ownership of our natural resources may or may not be good for their future, or why a lack of good political debate may affect the decisions they make at the ballot box, or if they vote at all.

And that is why it is important for politicians to understand the changes in how our society consumes information. Like the media, we as politicians want our message to be clear and reach the largest possible audience.

I have found many parallels between my life as a journalist and my new challenge as a politician. It’s a challenge I took on just over a year ago after I retired from CBC. I'd covered a lot of politics during my career and I love politics. But I'd always seen it through a journalist's lens. How interesting would it be to see how a political party worked from the inside? So I decided to volunteer to work for one. That’s evolved into becoming a candidate for election.

Journalists spend a lot of time covering politicians. The relationship between the two groups has always been complex. On the one hand journalists are often called cynical, nasty, and unfair. On the other they're said to be too soft or biased in favour of one party.

Being objective is a difficult line to walk. It’s sometimes tough for journalists to reconcile their personal opinions with their work. I've known journalists who've refused to vote their entire career because they were afraid of letting their personal views interfere with their professional work.

It's not surprising then that many journalists view those journalists who go to work for a political party or become politicians as having gone to the "dark side".

But working for 31 years at CBC; the public broadcaster, was for me a form of public service. Seeking public office is also public service. Interestingly, what I've found in making the transition to politics is that many of the same tenets that were important to me as a journalist are just as important to me as a politician.

Journalists seek to find the truth about a situation or issue. Not a version of the truth, the TRUTH.  Because I believe truth is absolute.

I believe a politician has an obligation to the truth.

Too often we hear politicians say everything but  "I made a mistake".  We all know they made a mistake but they can't force those words out of their mouths.

Not being able to acknowledge the truth often gets politicians in trouble.

A journalist's credibility is their most valuable commodity. Once it is gone, you never get it back.  I believe it’s the same for a politician. That is why I believe honesty, transparency and accountability are just as important to me as a politician as they were to me as a journalist. If you can preserve your credibility, you can then get on with doing a proper job.

I have been fortunate to meet a lot of people as a journalist. They invited me into their kitchens and told me what was on their minds. Now that I’m going door to door as a candidate, the same thing is happening. 

Everyone has a story. And just about everyone has something to say about the issues facing our province. Last week in the New Ross area I met a woman whose mother is on a fixed income. She gets 840-dollars a month.  When she filled up her oil tank two weeks ago it cost her 820-dollars. As her daughter said, “It’s a choice, heating or eating”.

Being a good journalist is being a good listener.

Being a good politician is being a good listener too.

 As a journalist we hope we can effect change through our stories. Being a politician means that I can effect change in my community and my province through government action and legislation.

Joe Howe decided to leave journalism and run for office because he wanted to effect the changes he talked about in his newspaper.

Me too. I want to make a difference...for people, for communities, for this province. It's a natural continuation.

Remember the story about Albert, the school caretaker? Most provincial governments  have finally changed the law about mandatory retirement. So that one's almost done.

But there are lots of other laws that need changing.

Lots of people and communities that need help. That is public service.

And I want to be part of it.