More news from Canada: Strong politicians and weak media

It was a pretty strong contrast coming down from the Great White North. While the elected government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper continued to show strength in the face of Communist China, the nations' "public" broadcaster (CBC) embarrassed itself beyond all measure.

We'll start with the bad news, courtesy of Friendly Blog Stephen Taylor:

The CBC has recently come under fire for rescheduling and retooling a Falun Gong documentary at the 11th hour. The state-funded broadcaster admitted to reacting to requests by the Chinese government to pull the doc and provide 'balance' . . .

Said "balance" went further than that - even to the point of the CBC conveniently forgetting the Communists' history of poison exports.

In an earlier era, the CBC's antics would have embarrassed all Canadians. However, things are different now, and the Canadian people can look past the CBC debacle, and see their elected leaders act with honor (Embassy):

Canada is therefore starting to engage in more frank and more public diplomacy with China on our human rights concerns. The prime minister's recent meeting with the Dalai Lama was mostly about sending a message to the regime in Beijing, which is that we respect the Tibetan cultural identity and oppose Chinese government measures designed to suppress it.

Once again, Canada can be proud of its leaders, and of the choice it made to elect Stephen Harper nearly two years ago.