In many ways being a producer for a current affairs television program is a great job. You get paid to read the news. Publishers send you books before their release dates. You get to talk to the country’s opinion leaders.
However, this job is difficult insofar as I have to make an hour of TV every week no matter what. Even the most forgiving viewer would not keep watching the Agenda if we occasionally let the screen go black.
Our programs involve many elements, but the base is always guests. No guests, no program. So it's stressful when no one will come on your program, because you don’t know how else you can fill that hour. And that pretty much sums up my week at work this week.
For some time, we have wanted Christie Blatchford to come on the program to discuss her book Helpless. In Helpless, Blatchford tells the story of the Caledonia dispute. She argues that there were two-tiers of justice in Caledonia. Blatchford claims that the OPP allowed aboriginal protesters to break the law, while law-abiding citizens who lived around the Douglas Creek Estate were left to fend for themselves.
All the stars aligned for her to come into our studio on Jan. 13th.
It was envisioned that the program would start with a quick interview with Blatchford that would allow her to lay out the book. And then she would join a panel where her account of the Caledonia dispute would be debated.
But things didn’t work out that way. Everyone wanted to talk about the book, but no one would come on the program to disagree with Blatchford that the rule of law broke down, that the government turned its back on the residents of Caledonia, and so on.
After three calls to the OPP, I was told that they would not provide a representative for the panel. They would not participate in equal time interviews. They would not appear in an interview on broader issues of aboriginal policing if it aired during the same program as the Blatchford interview. The OPP media rep said that they didn’t want to entertain the theories of someone who was trying to sell books.
I contacted the Ontario cabinet ministers who were discussed in Blatchford’s book. Some are now in the backbenches and one is out of politics altogether. None were available.
The premier’s office informed me that since the sitting ministers responsible for this portfolio were not available, I should go to the federal government (the federal government maintains this is a provincial responsibility – it was the province that bought the Douglas Creek Estate site after all).
The Six Nations band council couldn’t make anyone available.
Former OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino was unavailable and I couldn’t get in touch with former OPP Commissioner Gwen Boniface (I heard she maybe in West Africa working for the United Nations).
I talked to numerous residents, academics and politicians, but they all either agreed with Blatchford, or were unavailable, or were camera shy (I’m camera shy too, so I understand).
The Chiefs of Ontario couldn’t make anyone available (but in their defence, I requested the regional chief the day before the program because all of the above had failed).
Debates are not debates when everyone agrees, so we had to scrap that idea.
But the show must go on. Blatchford agreed to participate in a longer interview. After a few calls, I was able to book former Toronto Police Chief Bill McCormack to talk about the Toronto police budget and loss of Sergeant Ryan Russell in the line of duty.
Hopefully you will enjoy the program, even though it’s not the one we planned.