Now let's see if I have this right: Sun TV, an entity which enjoys neither awards nor prestige anywhere, is subsidized by countless taxpaying cable subscribers who are tricked into funding it as part of that broadcasting shell game called "packages", subscribers who would never otherwise order it and are largely unaware that they must actively petition their cable providers to remove it from their feed and their bills. We know the latter because there were huge objections raised when, in an even more brazen earlier attempt, Sun TV sought unprecedented and special treatment from the CRTC - the cable TV equivalent of the Canada Arts Council - to make it a mandatory, not an optional, offering.

Having thus tricked the public and having attempted to take advantage of a government-sponsored agency, this imitative and widely-dismissed Fox News clone has the unmitigated and hypocritical temerity to take a world-renowned, very highly regarded, multi-award-winning and original Canadian artist of very modest means to task for having successfully applied, with full and up-front disclosure, for grant money that exists to be used in precisely the kind of ways she has used them.

As anyone familiar with the grant application process knows all too well, it is demanding, frustrating and unpredictable; and its approvals often fall well short of the full amounts required, resulting in untold hours of work looking for ways to cover shortfalls, ways that, equally often, include the people involved making personal economic sacrifices just to see their projects proceed.

Frequently those projects mean jobs for dozens at a time, if not more and generate other economic spin-offs - over and above their cultrual and spiritual benefits as well as the national/international prestige they can and do garner. These are real and tangible accomplishments that serve to enhance Canada's image as an encouraging, thoughtful and progressive home for talent and ideas. Such a reputation can have - and has had - unexpected ripple effects when it comes to a country's voice being respected when raised in dialogues among nations on matters having little or nothing to do with the arts, matters that can be of significant economic consequence. It also counts for a great deal when it comes to attracting new talent and potential to be added to this country's already-impressive array of gifted and committed visionaries.

How a shrill, ill-informed, unoriginal, insignificant, unrecognized and colossally unaccomplished entity can even attempt to pretend it has anything of value to add to the very debate it has raised - and then go about its attempt in the form of some of the most despicably rude onscreen behavour imaginable - is a tragic testament to its cluelessness and utter irrelevance. How deservedly it toils in the obscurity it enjoys.