DOES CBC'S "MARKETPLACE" SOMETIMES CREATE "FACTS"?

​The ChronicalHerald cites the now-notorious peeing plumber, outed on CBC's Marketplace, as an example of poor screening of candidates for election:

• It shouldn’t be that hard to find candidates who respect all their fellow citizens. But somehow it is. Brutes keep getting elected.
• Remember the 2015 election, when a Conservative candidate was dropped after video surfaced of him urinating in a client’s coffee mug? That was just one outrage among many that caused nominated candidates to be ousted despite having passed their party’s screening processes. Altogether, 12 candidates were forced out over offensive comments or other bad behaviour.

All the other bad behaviour aside for the moment -- as egregious as I'm sure it is -- I have a problem with the credibility of the peeing event itself.

The video was professionally produced by the CBC's Marketplace "When the Repairman Knocks". The pee incident begins around 22:20.

My first reaction on watching the full video was to wonder how long it took to produce it, considering that appointments had to be made far enough apart so individual plumber visits would not coincide.

But later I was bothered by the CBC's inaccurate reporting of the incident.

• Bance was filmed during an episode of CBC-TV's investigative series Marketplace. He is seen peeing into a coffee cup before dumping its contents into the sink he was supposed to be fixing. 

In the video, the plumber is not seen peeing -- he is crouched down behind the counter -- and he was not "supposed to be fixing" the "sink"; it was the dishwasher that had a problem -- a clogged drain.

The CBC appears to be trying to implant a scenario that did not exist.

All of which caused me to wonder if Jerry Bance might have been a paid actor for Marketplace. The camera could have been stopped at any time to allow him to fill the cup with water. Not to mention that the brief close-up of him from behind as he put the drain pieces back together could have been spliced in anywhere.

The camera took shots from every angle, yet there was none that showed him actually pulling down his fly and peeing into the cup.

It's also interesting that, when Bance came on the job, the Marketplace foil went to another room, though she had stayed to watch all the preceding plumbers. It seemed as if Bance was scripted to say, "Leave it to me" to show that he was finished with his questions and to provide a cue for her to exit the scene.

She could just as easily have replied, "Is it okay if I watch?" or even "I'd prefer to stay." But she took his words, which I might have thought were simply an expression of self-confidence, to mean "Go away" and away she went.

We never actually see him either undo or redo his fly, as is suggested by the Marketplace peepers. There was a very brief hand gesture when he was crouched down (seen from the rear) -- and when he stood up (seen from the side) he simply performed what amounted to a cursory zipper check, not an actual zip-up.

So much splicing went on there that it created a vague-enough scenario for the show's host to find it necessary to look straight into the camera and say, "He peed in the cup" -- to make certain we got the picture without actually providing one.

So it's the host's word for it, since there's nothing in the video to prove that Bance actually peed.

Something else I noticed was that, while we clearly saw the faces of all the other repair people, Bance's face was not seen up close or in much detail at all.  And he was the only one not confronted on camera after the deed as were all as the other repair people. If the omission was due to a concern for viewer sensibilities, why broadcast the incident at all?

So -- I have to ask: was Bance a paid actor for this event?  Certainly if Marketplace admitted to paying actors, it would lose credibility.

Likewise, if Bance were paid to act, he couldn't subsequently blow the whistle on Marketplace in order to defend himself because he would very likely have signed a non-disclosure agreement. If that's the case, they must have paid him very well. And he must have felt certain his identity had not been exposed.

There's more: the video also showed that Bance's company was called "XPress Heating & Cooling", as indicated on the side of his truck. Google that and you'll come up with "Xpress Heating and Air" and "Express Heating and Cooling". Later in the video it's announced by the voice-over that his company is either Express or Xpress Applicance Service.

​Were the names of all the other companies foggy as well?

The CBC article quoted above says that Bance "owns and operates Xpress Appliance Service" in Toronto, but Google that and you'll come up with only a company named "Express Appliance Repair" which has a customer service rating of 4.2.

So, like the bunny says: "What's up Doc?"

Yet another CBC confuser quoted the Conservative spokeperson as saying only that: "Bance was dropped for not being truthful during the candidate screening process."

Not truthful about what? That he didn't really pee in a cup? Or that he was an actor for Marketplace? Is this the kind of information we will have to wait 30 years to obtain -- like the fact that Canada's beloved Tim Horton was high on drugs and alcohol when he crashed his car and died?

Well, the pee incident has created a lot of laughter; so it's not all bad. Here's what I think is the funniest quip about the incident: -

• From Vice: Apparently, baking soda, boiled water and vinegar can be used as a DIY version of Drano. Who's to say pee doesn't work just as well? When we called a plumber to ask this very question, he hung up, so it could be an industry secret.

And here's what I'm most grossed out about: that the toilet bowl badly needed cleaning!  In such a nice home, you'd think the stains would have been scrubbed away before putting it on display.

Now you're not likely to believe the following, but it's true.  I actually knew someone who was a radio host at the CBC in the 80's, and apparently none of the staff liked the station manager, who one day discovered that someone had defecated in his in-basket.

​That's a true story, but it never made Marketplace. And, for all we know, we may never see the real poop on this reported in the news, even if the offender turned out to be a candidate for the next federal election. Why? Because it might make the CBC appear gross -- as if Marketplace doesn't.

Below image borrowed from here. The T-Shirt slogan is: "We're #1 when it comes to #2"

---