Would the Globe and Mail ever run a column with that title. Would it run the by line "Let's give Manitobans the future they desire and deserve"? Not likely. But we are subject to another slightly needy, ittybit insular column by the province of 10% that would rule us all about a conference to deal with Albertaness:
To provide a cross-partisan forum to address these questions, Nicholas Gafuik, managing director of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, and a team of young Albertans are organizing the Conference on Alberta's Future. Invitations will go to members and supporters of the Stelmach government, the Wildrose Alliance, other opposition parties, unaligned policy experts and grassroots Albertans. Representation will be balanced between north and south and rural and urban – the two fault lines that currently threaten to divide Alberta politics.
The first thing you may notice is that the article is by Preston Manning, CEO of the same Manning Centre. He's in the business of promoting Albertaness, among other things. Doesn't this make the article an ad? I mean if I was able to get a column in a national newspaper about my business affairs, that would be a great. Then, by placing the ad within the text of the paper as it does, it presents Manning not as a person making a living at this sort of conferencing but somehow as a news observer. He now hovers above the event of his own making. Finally, by promoting the event as news it aggrandizes the merely provincial political and suggests implicitly that there is something in Alberta that is absent elsewhere, a sort of super politics based on finer principles and ideals than might be found elsewhere if one looks at the give and take of political tussle and disagreement. Which supposedly makes it news. Which is hogwash.
This is the problem of a world with fewer and fewer independent journalists and a world where we have a dopey idea that citizen journalists and participants in events give a better view of what's going on. Analysis of political figures like Manning is dropped in favour of promotion of his interests. He may well be a very fine gent. I am sure he is. His cause may well be worthy. But it is neither news or opinion.
