A Great Man, Much Maligned

The liberal press in Canada is taking great joy in the suffering of Lord Black of Crossharbour, a personal hero of mine. The actual owner of Hollinger Inc. (though, at the moment, he's been stripped of effective control of that company) appears to be under siege these days.

In the last two days I've read, in the Canadian Press, at least three negative stories. One was about shareholders attempting to prevent Lord Black from converting Hollinger Inc. (which he presently owns 82% of) from a publicly-traded company into a private company. Another was about a criminal fraud investigation of Black by the US Justice Department. The third was about Black mortgaging his home in Florida as part of a dispute with the Canada Revenue Agency.

Now, off the top, I'll admit that I'm not as familiar with the details of what Lord Black is accused of as some people. But I'm going to begin by telling you what I do know about the man.

I, as most of you know, am Canadian. I first began to truly read daily newspapers during the age of Black, when he controlled virtually every newspaper within reach. Not only did he own the Vancouver Province and Vancouver Sun but, in 1999, he launched The National Post, Canada's first national newspaper with a conservative bent. At one time, Black owned a majority of the news I read. Not only did he own the locals, but he also owned London's Spectator and Daily Telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post, and a number of other newspapers all across the globe. Unlike his most similar rival, Rupert Murdoch, his holdings were concentrated in newspapers and those that he owned tended to promote his conservative views. More than that, unlike so many other newspapers, they tended to be interesting to read.

I think it can be declared, with reasonable precision, that the moment he left Canada was the moment that our press truly went off the cliff. As a Canadian I can say, of Lord Black, simply that he is missed.

It's interesting to see the degree to which Black's present troubles can be traced to the official harassment against him by Canada's elites, most notably our former Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien.

This began several years ago, when Black was originally appointed to the British House of Lords. The Prime Minister, no fan of Black's, invoked an obscure and eight decade-old law in an attempt to prevent him from accepting the honour. In response, Black renounced his Canadian citizenship in order to accept his title.

Events later forced Black to divest himself of his Canadian holdings. This was truly a sad day, for it marked the turn of the National Post towards what, for lack of a better word, may be termed as the "Canadian mainstream." It was then that Black gave some advice that I took, but later regretted. Upon leaving he declared he was selling his holdings to the Asper family, well known for their Liberal Party connections, because it was clear to him that Canada was a one-party state and that the best option for those of the right would be to work with the right-wing faction within the Liberal Party.

Though I eventually found this course of action too personally distasteful to pursue (the events of early 2003 on gay marriage and Iraq making the Liberals too personally distasteful for myself to associate with), I've yet to see nothing to disprove the fundamental rightness of his thesis. That, after the Liberals managed to steal more than a hundred million dollars in taxpayer money and the Tories managed to turn themselves into essentially a carbon-copy Liberal Party, the Liberals still maintain a lead in the polls seems to me to provide proof of the eternal destiny of that party beyond any reasonable doubt.

The pursuit of Lord Black by various regulatory and law enforcement agencies is, to me, a prime example of the fundamental wrong-headedness of much modern thinking on law and order. There's no real reason for the harassment of this man, beyond the fact that some people apparently do not much care for him on a personal level. He owns virtually all of Hollinger: it's his bloody company. Absent the efforts of Lord Black (and his equally maligned friend David Radler) there'd be not Hollinger for anyone to invest in or make any money in.

Right now, the company has been essentially stolen from Black by a renegade board of directors as Hollinger International. Whatever abuses Black may or may not have committed, strike me as immaterial in view of the fact that he owns a controlling interest in the company. It's his company; he ought to have a perfect to do with it pretty much as he wishes.

Of course, that's a little extreme. And so, I suppose, were a few of Black's actions here and there. Using $9 Million in company money to buy FDR memorabilia does, admittedly, seem a little over-the-top. But, then again, as I've said: no Black, no Hollinger, so who are the people who bought in to complain? If you buy into a company owned by someone like Conrad Black, you should expect them to behave like Conrad Black.

So, here's to Conrad Black. May he overcome all of his enemies. We're all a little poorer without his unique presence on the world media scene.