Conservative Attack Zone: Target the CBC

The CBC will soon be the target of an aggressive disinformation campaign by the Conservative Party. The main strategy: have Canadians do a spittake when they learn the CBC costs them one billion dollars a year.

To pre-empt some of the disinformation that will be circulated along with this attack, I thought it would be valuable for Canadians to put the cost of the CBC in perspective.

Proportion of annual federal expenditures: 0.428 %

($1,074 m of $250,860 m)

Cost of CBC per capita: $31.23 per year or less than 9 cents a day

($1,074 m per 34.39 m Canadians)

Cost of servicing the national debt per capita: $881 per year or $2.41 a day

($30,300 m per 34.39 m Canadians)

I took a look at how spending on the CBC has changed over the last five years, and I selected a few other government programs for comparison.

Even the most partisan Conservative can see that while the government is calling for public broadcaster blood in the name of budget cutting, the security apparatus of the government has enjoyed dramatic increases in funding. The military, border security agency, and intelligence agency all received dramatic funding increases of over 40%, and correctional services expenditures increased a whopping 74% while CBC's funding declined slightly.

During this period, CBC rolled out extensive web-streaming services, podcasting, a third radio network, and still preserved an actual news-gathering organization, not mere infotainment punditry.

The real agenda here is not cost-cutting, or value for Canadian taxpayers–they're already getting that. What's really going on is that the government wants to neutralize the public broadcaster:

• first by changing the rules of the game (CRTC now has a weakened standard of what constitutes news reporting),
• then by approving a propagandist media outlet (Ezra Levant of SunTV coined the term Ethical Oil, now embraced by our Environment Minister, and the network's champion Kory Teneycke is Harper's former spokesman),
• now by undermining its credibility to the public,
• then diminishing its capacity through massive budget cuts,
• and finally by cowing it into submission.

Public broadcasters are frequently the target of Conservatives because they consume public funds and they speak the truth. And as Stephen Colbert observed, "reality has a well-known liberal bias." (at 6:38)

Caution Re: Apparent Cancer Progression

In the August 10, 2011 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, authors from Memorial Sloan-Kettering published a simple and provocative study (abstract). Lung tumour nodules were measured on CT scan, then patients were rescanned just fifteen minutes later and the nodules remeasured.

The main findings: differences in nodule measurements in excess of 1 and 2 mm were common (57% and 33%, respectively). Most significant is the risk of misdiagnosing progression. RECIST criteria for progression (>=20% increase) were met in 3% of these cases, about 1 in 30.

Oncologists need to keep these findings in mind when evaluating small serial changes in tumour measurement, and when making decisions about initiating or abandoning treatment.