Not a lot of coverage of the removal of Minister Barbour from his portfolio on the regional media front. CBC radio had a news brief but no coverage after that.

Maybe that was the intent of the timing of the press release, and its brevity.

But, CKOK did have an in depth interview with President Lyall on the subject on yesterdays broadcast, unfortunately nothing in its news briefs.

Maybe that was intentional too. I am not criticizing, just speculating out loud.
This is a good time to repeat; what a good idea it would be for CKOK to be broadcast on the internet.

This removal of William Barbour has been a long time coming, his behavior was firstly an embarrassment for his constituents, secondly an embracement for NG and thirdly an embarrassment for himself. Let’s hope he seeks help in dealing with his addiction problems.

I think it took a lot of courage to do what Jim Lyall has done; I would think he had to battle entrenched attitudes of self indulgence and self protection within NG and its predecessor LIA.
Maybe it is a heads up to others within NG who maybe think that holding their high paying jobs is solely contingent on the voters, that their public behavior has no relevance.

From listening to the Jim Lyall interview I had no sense of any real plan for Mr. Barbour to seek intervention for his addiction. Barbour gets to keep his salary as member for Nain; it seems he will be working closely with Mr. Lyall briefing him on Mr. Barbour’s old portfolio.

Time will tell if this helps Mr. Barbour. Seeing that self regulation had not worked in the past that more extreme measures would be warranted this time, maybe something is in the works, let’s hope so.