Rex Murphy, who I believe is a CBC contract employee, talks about the lockout. He's not on side with management.

An excerpt from the Globe and Mail commentary:

The scope of this country, culturally and geographically, compounded by a chauvinism that is the most bashful on the face of the globe, means that securing the idea of Canada is a matter of continuous and daily endeavour. Canada is an evolving aspiration much more than a settled fact.

Canadians need, singularly so, to see a constant refreshment of our national ideas, a continuous exploration of the continuities and themes of our common enterprise: that beyond the contests and strife inevitable in a federation -- what Quebec wants, how the West "gets in," how rural and urban Canada achieve a healthful equilibrium -- there are pulses of harmony, shared value and common aspiration around which we are composed as a nation.

It is within that context that the idea of a national broadcaster should be seen: as one of the necessary instruments of a country under continuous call to reinforce the elements of its commonality. Not, by any means, the only one. Private-sector journalism and broadcasting are part of this effort as well, as are manifold other institutions and enterprises, with the essential difference that the CBC exists, specifically and by mandate, for this purpose.

It is because in varying degrees people are drawn to serving this notion that many come to work at CBC, however self-serving such words will seem to be, coming from my laptop. And this is what makes this lockout seem both intemperate and chilling. I agree with Knowlton Nash that "a very big gamble" is taking place at the CBC, that at a critical time in our national affairs, the public broadcaster is not functioning.

The lockout is a tactic larger than the dispute that has occasioned it, and may itself work more injury than the differences that presumably it was designed to resolve.