I’m no media insider, but learning from this article that CBC and CTV will soon downgrade to Category 2 licenses and that this new application is now also for a Category 2 license leads me to believe that Sun TVs rrejected Category 1 application was just a lark to make people okay with Fox News North getting special treatment to get “just” a Category 2 station up and running in time for a spring 2011 election.

It’s also worth noting that since this post was published, the issue has attracted much more attention in the media (well, the Globe and Mail anyhow) after Avaaz began promoting a high profile petition (which I have signed), and and Canadian literary paragon Margaret Atwood has publicly declared her support for. Kory Tenyeke (pictured above) responded predictably that her concerns lacked merit as Separatist who had advocated for strategic voting in the past election (she said if she lived in Quebec she would have voted Bloc over voting for Harper), and that the petition was illegitimate due to funding by American Billionaaire George Soros.

In short, “Margaret Atwood is both a quebecois separatist and an Americanist who does not believe in free speech”. I think this is a pretty good example of how they will continue to dodge factual analysis of what they’re up to by changing the channel to emotionally charged signposts regardless of their relevance.

Obviously this is a scary situation. Fortunately the Harper gov’t is only representative of a fraction of Canadians and their appeal is shrinking. Brian Topp pointed out in the Globe and Mail this week that if you compare their #s to the combined results of the Canadian Alliance and PC parties before the merger, less people are actually identified as Conservative since Harper took over. If the opposition is able to put the needs of the country ahead of internal party politics, there is an extraordinary opportunity get rid of these guys. If you explain what is going on here to any non-Canadian with a knowledge of the Parliamentary system, they’re just like, “Why doesn’t the opposition get together and stop this from happening?”

I think civil society has to put a lot more pressure on the parties to stop putting their needs ahead of the country with an emphasis on the right-leaning folks that surround Ignatieff who would rather lose an election than share power with anyone else.