Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Talk About Misfiring On The Talking Points

When it finally became public that the HarperCon$ were slashing at arts and culture programs, one of the first talking points thrown about was how Gwynne Dyer had leeched off one of the programs - as if to demonstrate that the program was being badly abused by people who didn't (or shouldn't) be taking advantage of it.

Then Gwynne Dyer shoots back:

But, in fact, I was asked to go to Cuba in early 2007 by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Some embassies in Havana were bringing in experts to talk to groups of influential Cubans about how things work in free societies. Fidel Castro was on the way out, and the embassies were being creatively subversive. I talked about the media to young journalists, and about civil-military ties in a democracy to senior military people.

I didn't get paid for the work, but the Canadian embassy gave me $3,000 in cash to cover my travel costs. I never applied for a grant, and I never heard of PromArt until last week, but obviously some wily accountant at Foreign Affairs took the money for the Cuban project out of the wrong pocket. Stephen Harper's ministers just can't keep control of their departments.


So ... in short, Harper's government asked Dyer to speak, and poached money from this program to pay the bills.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And yet it is okay for Harper's government to dump a shit-load of cash into the lap of Father Alphonse de Valk to publish hateful, harmful and hurtful attacks on gays and lesbians??

And Heritage Canada's own investigation found that Catholic Insight's publications were in violation of their Publications Assistance Program. Did they cut off the funding???

No, they just put Catholic Insight on their WATCH LIST and required them to send a copy of each magazine for monitoring. That is why de Valk's rhetoric has been toned down for the last year or two.

It seems like the God fearing Father de Valk can clean up his act to get his government subsidy, but he can't tone down his website to prevent discrimination and violence being directed at gays.

And Harper can subsidize hate material, but not cultural groups who don't conform to his riegh wing doctrine!

quixote said...

I love Gwynne Dyer. Apparently being a realist makes you "left-wing".

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