Welcome to John Stall’s World On Line
Hi there, and welcome to my official personal website that is separate and distinct from other sites with which I am proudly affiliated. www.680news.com
This is the on-line home that combines John Stall Communications, my communications consulting practice with my current and past radio broadcasting/online life. John Stall Profile
This site is designed to preserve the past Jack Layton & Stall back in the day - 1998 and to share the present as we move forward online.
I've posted some archived pics, audio clips and full length radio interviews like this one with the cantankerous late former Leaf's owner Harold Ballard who would never let Russian Hockey in MLG , or field reports from some pretty unusual places. Globe Trotting
So welcome to " Stall's World On Line " and "John Stall Communications". Look around the site. I hope you find some of the audio/visual clips to be educational, Meech Lake Accord interesting, entertaining, The most moving rendition of " Danny Boy" you will ever hear or just plain fun like this question I put to Toronto Mayor Ford during the election campaign.
I also invite you to share and respond to the blog thoughts and tweets I'm posting as well @johnstall_radio & Stall680news.
As for Consulting Services, the John Stall Communications portal speaks for itself. I'm happy to help.
Welcome
All I want for Christmas is a ” real good tan”
By the time you read this, I will be on a beach in sunny Florida with my toes in the water and ass in the sand.
It will be the first time we have ever been out of the snowy Canadian landscape for the actual Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so I’m not sure what it will feel like. I have this doubt that it will feel at all like Christmas (which for me is usually a roller-coaster of emotions that range from joy to melancholy as I reflect on those of my family who are no longer with us). The joyous part is usually accompanied the glorious winter wonderland scene that is usually visible from every window of our cozy country home.
I’ve been waffling back and forth over the emotional wisdom of leaving home for the two special days, but I’m sure I will get over it after the first beer on the beach and first drive on the golf course. In fact, after hearing and watching THIS, I’m convinced.
Talk to you in the New Year.
It’s not the conflict of interest law that has to change, It’s the politicians who have to
Ok, let’s calm down now that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been told by the divisional court that he can remain in the Mayor’s office until his conflict of interest case is appealed on the 7th of January. At least there will be some certainty until then as council considers next years budget.
Speaking of budgets, I got a call from Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion in the 680 newsroom asking to let her clear up some shoddy reporting that led those living in her city to believe their property taxes would be increasing by 7.8% next year. ” Nonsense” said the Mayor who went on to explain that the total budget for next year would increase 7 % over last year but the property tax component would increase by no more than 3% or less.
While I had her on the line I took the opportunity to ask for her take on the Rob Ford case. She balked, saying ” I haven’t commented to date and I don’t want to comment ” then added that the inquiry who heard HER conflict of Interest case concluded that the Municipal conflict of interest act is badly in need of revision and that the Association of Municipalities has made the same case while asking the Province to fix it.
I’m not so sure the Act has to change as much as the cavalier attitude of Politicians do – including Mayors’ like McCallion and Rob Ford ( both of whom I know well and like very much ) who’ve been ensnared by it. The Act is written and designed to ensure that municipal politicians don’t speak to or vote in council on matters in which they could personally gain financially. It shouldn’t matter if the gain is as little as $1.00 or as much as $100,000,000.00, or that it is measured ( as it was in Ford’s case ) by ” funds questionably raised for his football foundation that he didn’t think he or his foundation should return. ( It is also questionable weather the integrity commissioner had the authority to impose that order)
There are myriad situations in which a politician could gain from a decision by council. The Act is not designed to prevent or forbid that consequential outcome. The Act is designed to prevent the political ” gainer ” from having the kind of say or influence in council that he or she is expected to have on all matters except those that involve potential gain for themselves. What is so bad about that? How hard can it be to figure out and to comply? When in doubt-stay out!
Yes, the Ford case is arguable and his lawyers are doing just that stressing as his supporters website states correctly ” Rob Ford gained nothing personally” and that ” the city lost nothing”.
The Mayor’s brother Doug Ford expressed relief over the Judge’s decision to let him remain as Mayor until the appeal is heard. He acknowledge that to assume the process has been stressful ” is an understatement ” and now that his brother the Mayor has been ” hit by a sledge hammer”,” he is likely to change and to handle things differently” ” as he matures and grows as a leader” Isn’t that all that is required?
Premier Pupatello has a ring to it !
Boy, what a difference a week makes in Politics eh ?
A week and a bit ago the former Liberal Cabinet Minister Sandra Pupatello was happy to defined herself professionally as Director of Business Development and Global Markets at Price Waterhouse Coopers of Canada. This morning during an interview with me on 680 news listen here she was giddy and babbling over the prospect of becoming Premier of Ontario, which could happen by the end of January if she decides to enter the Liberal Leadership race and wins!
As you can hear in the interview, she still has fire in the belly, clearly relishes the thought of going for it and probably will if her husband is ok with it. She told me she also has the support of her colleagues at Cooper, leaving the impression that she could return to the job if she doesn’t win.
Pupatello doesn’t relish the divisiveness that goes with the territory of leadership races, but I can tell you she can handle it as well as anyone. I would describe her respectfully and affectionately as a “tough, smart lady with thick political skin” which are at least two qualities required to run for the prize..
Sometimes, it’s all about timing. The stars align in such a way that the unplanned and unthinkable can happen. She left politics before the last election with leadership aspirations but with no apparent prospects. Things have changed in just 7 days. Premier Mcguinty is calling it quits, so now, is Finance Minister Duncan with whom Sandra has been in the trenches since their early 20’s in Windsor. Duncan’s safe vacated seat could become her seat if she runs, wins and calls a bye election.
Unlike John Tory, who’s aspirations seemed to zig when the political zeitgeist zagged, Pupatello is in the perfect position to be catapulted into the Premiers office as the first woman leader of Ontario.
A minority government under Pupatello may not survive very long and it may be decimated in a general election, but hey, at only 50 years of age, It wouldn’t be so bad to have ” Former Premier” as a gig on your resume – just ask Ernie Eves, or Kim Campbell. Plus, she gets her portrait painted and displayed in the corridor of power at Queens Park!
Big bird, Bayonets @ Binders full of women
I’m tempted to worry or be disappointed that all most people watching the three presidential debates remember or talk about is Mitt Romney’s pledge (in the first debate) to cut Sesame street’s funding on PBS (even though he likes Big Bird), or his “binders full of women” remark (in the second debate), or Obama’s condescending comeback line about military having moved on from horses and bayonets to battleships.
Despite the campaign spinsters’ attempt to separate the substance from the malarkey in the morning after media coverage, it is now the Twitter-verse that rules what resonates out of these debates.
Within seconds of the off-the-cuff lines being delivered by the two men who will lead the free world, hashtags and Twitter account handles like @firedbigbird or #bindersfullofwomen emerged as forum for millions of fun, furious or frivolous comments. The conventional media (including 680News) devotes significant attention and news segments to social media response, which in turn restricts the water cooler conversations throughout North America to Big Bird, bayonets and #bindersfullofwomen.
I hope the majority of Americans take more into consideration before they choose who should be president of the United States of America. #gettingalittlefedupwiththefrivolity
Trudeau Mania, the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.
I’ve been predicting for years that Justin Trudeau will be the next Liberal Prime Minister of Canada. That is if the Liberal Party doesn’t merge with the NDP or morph into some other entity. Either way, it is going to be fascinating to watch.
I came to that conclusion while in Montreal covering his fathers funeral where he left us jaw-dropped while delivering the Eulogy. It was clear to me at that moment that Justin had inherited the sense of drama from his father that can be applied to life in general and politics in particular. Some call it charisma, but on the way back to Toronto on the train I sat beside a University of Toronto Professor of Psychology who’s name I can’t recall but who told me that he had attended Jesuit class with Pierre and had witnessed the way he mastered the art of social drama. It’s a concept he told me that is at the core of Jesuit training.
What I took from that insight, is that Pierre Trudeau learned and mastered the art of turning it on, turning it off, dialing it up or dialing it down to suit the occasion and objective. This was confirmed to me while I was partnered as a media trainer with Patrick Gossage between gigs at CFRB and 680 news. Patrick, ( for the benefit of a generation who may not be aware ) was Pierre’s press secretary and witnessed first hand the way his boss was able to galvanize the attention he sought by leveraging the skill; showing up in the house wearing sandals, pulling up to the HOC in a 280 SL Mercedes sports car, sliding down banisters, or pirouetting behind the Queen. It was all calculated to create or cultivate not only a persona, but the kind of attention that he would exploit to his advantage.
Justin Trudeau has learned a lot of things from his father. Like all of us who are sons’, he will embrace and enhance some lessons while rejecting others. In my view, he has embraced the mastery of drama that he no doubt learned or inherited from his dad. That was evident in the the delivery of the eulogy and marinates beneath the surface as he matures. He acknowledged during his the entrance speech last night that he understood his candidacy would generate attention and fill some bleachers while pointing out “what we do with that opportunity is up to us ”
I didn’t think Justin Trudeau would be seeking the leadership for a few years yet, but as Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella told me today , political circumstances trumped the options.
Yes Sir Col. I didn’t know!
You may have been surprised today to find a colleague showing up at work today wearing a military uniform. No, it’s not an early Halloween get up, It’s how they dress quite often while away from the office or work place as one of almost 30,000 Canadians who serve in the armed forces as reservists.
These are folks who juggle their civilian lives to train in their spare time as volunteers with a Canadian regiment in the event they are required by the CAF to serve abroad or here at home.
It may surprise you to learn that almost 30% of the Canadian troops who deployed to Afghanistan were reservists and today the Government of Canada has chosen for the first time to recognize their contribution.
October 3 has been proclaimed Army Reserve Recognition day by Defense minister Peter MacKay who says ” Today, we honour Reservists and show our gratitude for their service in international theatres of operation”
I spoke earlier today to my friend John Wright about the role of reservists. John is among other things, the chair of Wounded Warriors.ca
My Man in Teheran & Kudos to Ben Affleck
Today was one of those really great days at work for me, when you come home feeling emotionally and professionally fulfilled. It brought some closure to what had been a nagging sense of disappointment and anger since last week when I, ( along with others ) learned from my good friend Ralph Lean that our mutual friend Ken Taylor had not been invited by TIFF or director Ben Affleck to the premier the movie ” Argo ”
Lean added that it was probably a good thing Ken wasn’t invited because after seeing the fictionalized movie about the Iranian/American hostage crisis, he would be hurt by the way it characterized his heroic and dangerously risky role as Canada’s man in Teheran who had protected 6 American hostages for 3 months at the Embassy and in his residence before clandestinely getting them out of the Country and back onto American soil by forging Canadian Passports.
We learned only last year ( 30 yrs. later ) that he was also providing intelligence to American officials at the request of then President Jimmy Carter and Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark in advance of the failed American special ops rescue attempt.
In a nutshell, the movie was based on a fictionalized novel by a former CIA agent who was on the ground with Ken at the time, but who takes full credit for the historic caper while diminishing the Canadian role. I called Ken Taylor to talk about it on 680 news last week but he declined, ( he hadn’t yet seen the movie ) only to add that he hoped the Canadian role was not diminished to the point of mere Innkeepers.
Thanks to the buzz that was getting louder and amplified by Toronto Star entertainment columnist Martin Knelman, word got to director Ben Affleck that his movie version was dissing a true Canadian ( and I’ll add), American Hero. Affleck, in my view, did the right and smart business thing by calling Taylor to arrange a meeting and screening in Hollywood where the two men, ( reported the Star ) along with Taylor’s wife Pat discussed a way to add a post script that doesn’t distort history under the guise of fiction.
I called Ken again this morning on 680 News to discuss the meeting and here is a link to the full conversation that is posted on the 680news website.
I first met Ken back in the early 80’s in Newport RI. while I was covering Canada’s entry into the Americas cup sailing race during my CFRB days. He was still with Canada’s foreign service at the time and appeared as special guest ( American Hero ) for a Canada day celebration weekend. I spent a full day with him and his charming wife Pat on a cabin cruiser operated by Bruce Kirby, who designed the Canada 1 racing yacht. I witnessed first hand the American adulation for him and Pat in the wake of the hostage crisis. We’ve remained friends ever since and come together yearly at least for his annual “Team Negroni” dinner here in Toronto.
For God’s sake ( and your’s ) get a %*& Driver!
Ok, this is no longer funny Rob. Get a driver before you do serious harm to yourself or somebody else.
You haven’t yet been caught texting, tweeting or e-mailing on the BlackBerry, but given your personality, no one doubts that you do. Many of us do it too, until we’ve had the crap scared out of us by looking up to see the red brake lights of the car in front coming at us faster than our brains can process.
It took just one change of underwear for many of us to drop the BlackBerry or iPhone while driving, but you seen to think you are immune from disaster because you are “busy.” What is it going to take for you to accept a driver? The cops have begged you, your big brother has begged you and the public is urging you to let someone else drive while you work and return calls.
Is it the cost? Or giving up control? Is it a simmering sibling rivalry that leads you to ignore your big brother? We know you have an uber-work ethic and that you are preoccupied with saving tax payer money. So let your big brother pay for a driver. He’s offered and he can afford it.
What you fail to understand is that you can’t afford to keep being so hard-headed about this because people are laughing out loud at how stupid your reaction seems to be. In politics, it’s good when people laugh along with you, but once they start laughing “at” you, political days are numbered.
Maybe your new chief of staff can convince you to get a driver, or maybe it will have to be George Cohon, or Robert Deluce, or Paul Godfrey or Ralph Lean, or Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, or your mother, or me.
I don’t think anyone could embarrass Rob Ford
As Mayor Ford meets with Prime Minister Harper today in Toronto to discuss this city’s fight against against guns and gangs, you have to wonder how the PM will explain to him that the idea of somehow preventing anyone convicted of gun crimes from living in Toronto after they get out of jail would be a pretty tough legal act.
You gotta love the Mayor’s ” No B.S. ” response though to the Toronto shootings even if he is way off the mark in his understanding of what is legal possible. It’s similar to his simplistic ” stop the gravy train ” mantra that so resonated with so many people. None of his ideas may be legally or ( process ) possible but he really doesn’t really care, which is why his core base of support stays with him.
Ford and Harper are personal pals, back yard bbq buddies and like minded political allies so if anyone can extract money from the federal purse to fight crime, It is Rob Ford. And because they are such good pals, the P,M will find a way to let the Mayor down gently on the municipal extradition idea without embarrassing him – although I’m not sure anyone could embarras Rob Ford.
The education of Mayor Ford
In order for his meeting on Monday with Premier Dalton McGuinty and Toronto police Chief Bill Blair to have a chance of being useful, it seems to me that they first have to be on the same page. But, based on what we’ve heard from all three so far, it doesn’t appear as if they are.
The mayor told Gord Martineau during this week’s Citytv/680News special that he will be asking the premier to direct money toward TAVIS (Toronto’s Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy). He said the “TAVIS police work magic — they know the gangs, they know where the guns are, they need the resources to stake them and to arrest these people.”
Not long after the mayor’s rant, Chief Blair made the point that TAVIS is “not an anti-gang strategy,” but rather an intervention strategy where police go into neighbourhoods in an attempt to build relationships among those who might be tempted to engage in violence.
The mayor has also said he will be asking Prime Minister Stephen Harper to review immigration laws (that he acknowledged he didn’t fully understand), in order to make sure those charged with gun possession in Toronto are not allowed back in after they do time in jail.
Again, his heart is in the right place, but I sense that senior political leaders like McGuinty, Harper and Blair will have to spend a lot of precious time educating Ford before considering what he has already said he will ask them for.