When one works for one of the best law firms in Canada (as I do), and when one is therefore within walking distance of the CBC’s national headquarters (as I am), and when one is a notorious loudmouth (as I certainly am), it is inevitable: a youthful producer from Mother Corp will call up, asking for help.

She or he (but it is usually a she) will breathlessly explain that a CBC television/radio program – Counterspin, or Midday, or any number of other shows – is about to go to air, and a Liberal is required to shamelessly shill for continued Grit hegemony. On the opposite side, most often, is some sort of Fraser Institute crypto-fascist, screeching about brain drain, or flat taxes, or the need to keep out all of those untidy refugee people.

Usually, I decline. The CBC (and CTV, as well) have many more programs than there are hours in the day, after all.

Recently, however, I again succumbed to the seductive siren song of the punditocracy. I could not help myself. I had become irritated, you see, by what I was seeing and hearing about Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s trip to the Middle East. (By the time your eyes caress this page, the prime ministerial trip will be long past and, perhaps, long forgotten. But it is a cautionary tale, worth recalling.) So I told the CBC that I was most eager to do battle; I was informed that my adversary would be University of Toronto professor Michael Bliss.

Unless you were in a coma at the time, you will recall that the foreign policy experts in the Parliamentary Press Gallery were utterly apoplectic about the Prime Minister’s public utterances in Israel and elsewhere. On one memorable occasion, for example, the National Post and the Globe and Mail ran front page stories which were highly critical of Mr. Chretien. The Post’s headline, which was approximately the size for the one which will announce Armageddon and/or the return of the Messiah, screamed: “POLICY CHAOS AS PM STUMBLES AGAIN.” The Globe did essentially the same thing, but sans the sort of hysteria that naturally results from having denied a newspaper baron a peerage.

The problem with the Post and Globe stories, of course, was that they were false. As in, factually incorrect. As in, unmitigated bullshit. The Prime Minister of Canada made no promise to accept 15,000 Palestinian refugees to the Prime Minister of Israel. None. No less than Ehud Barak, the Israeli Prime Minister, forcefully pointed this out to the Canadian scribes. So what did the Post and Globe do? Well, they ran a couple of mitigating lines inside their editions the next day, on pages four or nine, respectively. No correction.

Steam emanating from my ears, clutching a copy of the Post, I made my way to the CBC’s gargantuan edifice, squatting at the foot of the CN Tower. I had come to do battle with Michael Bliss. This is the gentlemen man who has written that he is “ashamed,” quote unquote, to be a Canadian, because our government had the temerity to oppose Slobodan Milosevic’s campaign of rape and murder against Kosovars. He is also the same fellow who told Policy Options magazine, just a few months ago, that Canada needs to stop being a “ventriloquist’s dummy” in foreign policy. When Mr. Chretien speaks his mind, however, Mr. Bliss apparently deplores the Prime Minister’s unwillingness to be a “ventriloquist’s dummy.” It is all very confusing to those of use who do not breathe the rarefied air of academe.

The CBC producer lead me up to the roof of the ten-storey building, and positioned me in front of a camera. Professor Bliss had been positioned elsewhere, out of sight, presumably so he will not fling me off the roof.

The host, a very nice woman, lead off. She asked Professor Bliss whether he is surprised that Prime Minister has done such a terrible, awful, lousy job. Why yes, responds the professor, delighted to have been pitched a big, fat soft ball on national television. The Prime Minister has done a terrible, awful, lousy job, he says in a professorial sort of way, and he should be flogged in a public square somewhere.

I, not surprisingly, demur. I note, for starters, that the Canadian public disagrees with the good professor. Just last year, I declare, the Angus Reid Group pollsters found, of the ten things they feel Mr. Chretien does well, Canadians ranked foreign policy as number one. Number one. I also note that the various Team Canada missions have been rather popular, too, resulting in billions of dollars in contracts, and loads of jobs.

Professor Bliss is undeterred. The Prime Minister’s aides are poltroons, and have caused huge and lasting embarrassment to the nation. And, to wit, as it were, blah blah blah.

Feeling a coronary coming on, I ask the good professor to acknowledge the inescapable facts: Canada is not a superpower, and nobody is hanging on every word we have to say about the Middle East. I suggest that everybody – the press gallery, tenured university professors – should just take a Valium and calm down. The Middle East is filled with extremists, I note, and extremists are notoriously difficult to please. No less than Hilary Clinton (who was criticized for giving Mrs. Yassir Arafat a peck on the cheek), France’s Lionel Jospin (who was stoned for calling Hezbollah terrorists what they are – terrorists), even the Pope (who is supposed to be infallible!) were roundly criticized for what they said, or didn’t say, in the Middle East.

I opine that Mr. Chretien showed guts for agreeing to be the first PM to visit a region where, politically, you can’t please all the people all the time.

I am selling, but the good professor – and, it seems, the Canadian media establishment – is not buying. The camera is switched off and I am thanked for my two cents.

Making my way back to the real world, shaking my head, I recall Lord Northcliffe’s delightful line: “Journalism: a profession whose business it is to explain to others what it personally does not understand.”

[Warren Kinsella is a public policy lawyer with McMillan Binch and a former assistant to Jean Chretien.]