Truthiness, revisited

OK, so Jamie's off the hook.

The partial text of today's Canadian Forest Service story as it ran in The Telegram, under the byline of "Jamie Baker and Cliff Wells":

The province’s Intergovernmental Affairs Minister, Tom Hedderson, says there is a slow departure of federal presence at the Canadian Forest Service centre in Corner Brook, and that it’s not going unnoticed.

When the centre was announced in the mid-1990s, the full complement of staff was to be 30 but the centre has never employed that many. The highest staffing level was 22 around 2001, but the crew has diminished to 16 at present.

…

“We set it up with them (feds) to make sure the research would be carried out and here we are a decade later — and you know the challenges that the forest industry is having — and they’re cutting back on research.”

There are some mighty curious differences from the version of the almost-but-not-quite-same story, bylined "Cliff Wells and Jamie Baker", which ran across the island in the Western Star:

Tom Hedderson says he’s struggling to keep the federal presence in this province safe from the penalty of death by a thousand cuts.

The Intergovernmental Affairs minister said a slow departure of a federal presence in this province is being felt keenly in places like the Canadian Forest Service centre in Corner Brook.

When the centre was announced in the mid-1990s, the full complement of staff was to be 30 but the centre has never employed that many. The highest staffing level was 22 in around 2001, but the crew has diminished to 16 at present and Hedderson says that’s not acceptable.

…

“We set it up with them (feds) to make sure the research would be carried out and here we are a decade later — and you know the challenges that the forest industry is having — and they’re cutting back on research.”

He said the number of federal employees in this province has dropped by 25 per cent in the last 10 years or so.