We have become a ridiculous bunch. For the past five years it was hard to find 200 words, in even the Globe and Mail, on the contents or ramifications of any bill before the Commons. In fact, for months at a time, the people whose job it is to cover Parliament would claim there was nothing going on in Parliament. Oddly enough, when a session was suspended or prorogued, or Chrétien dropped the writ for an election, we would read long, long lists of important-sounding legislation that would now never be passed. How come we never heard about a bill until it died on the order paper? One of life’s little mysteries.
I have taken you through this grim landscape to demonstrate something you probably have already noticed: the stuff you devote your lives to — quality, well-designed delivery of services to Canadian citizens — has vanished from the Press Gallery’s priority list.
I asked another friend of mine, a broadcast producer, what public servants mean to her. She said, "That report they spend two years of their lives working on? I pick up a copy of it and give it to my reporter, so when he interviews the minister he can point to it on-camera and say, 'There’s a lot of stuff in here.' It’s a prop. He’ll never read it."
