Slash first, get asked questions later

Murray Mandryk digs into the question of whether the Wall government bothered to do anything to figure out the consequences of its decision to destroy the Saskatchewan Communications Network. And the answer as to just how clueless the Sask Party has chosen to be is rather stunning:

Gamracy (the chair of SCN) would have even been happy with the simple courtesy of either of the Sask. Party government's culture ministers meeting with her or the SCN board in two and half years of government.

Gamracy, who has served as SCN board chair since 2007, says she has not met with a government minister since the last NDP minister responsible for the film industry. "I can say unequivocally I've never been treated so disrespectfully," she said, adding that she certainly called and e-mailed to arrange meetings with Sask. Party government ministers and their officials.

And what might be most galling about what Gamracy calls the government's "draconian" move is that government decided to shut down SCN on what seems to be a lot of misinformation, without any appreciation of the consequences.
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(W)hat seems lost on the government is how critical SCN was to that jigsaw of federal and provincial tax credits and facilities like the Regina soundstage that are needed to create a viable film and video industry in this province.

Also, there appears to be a total lack of understanding of how Canadian Radio Television-Telecommunication broadcasting licenses work and what will actually happen if SCN does fade to black at the end of the month. "What do you do with the broadcast licence?" Gamracy asked. "SaskTel is not a broadcaster.

"I don't know where they got their information, but they didn't get their information from us."

For the sake of SCN's relatively modest $5-million budget, it's possible the government will collapse the province's entire film and video industry worth several fold more, the financial investor said.