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Prime Minister Stephen Harper will announce his new cabinet at a Rideau Hall ceremony Wednesday morning. According to government officials, Canadians should expect to see more of the same. Officials say that while there might be a few surprises, Harper's cabinet shuffle is unlikely to introduce new faces.

Jim Flaherty will continue as Canada's finance minister, a position he has held for five years. In Quebec, Harper is expected to reappoint Maxime Bernier to cabinet and elevate Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis and minister of state Denis Lebel. 

Meanwhile, the New Democrats are expected to announce the party's shadow cabinet as early as next Wednesday.

Attempts to force release of details pertaining to the Bixi financing plan were blocked for the third time Monday afternoon. Anie Samson of Vision Montreal placed three separate resolutions before the municipal council to gather information about the Bixi financing, all of which ultimately failed.

All three resolutions were denied the unanimous consent needed by Marvin Rotrand of Union Montreal.

Samson’s first resolution would have forced details on the Bixi financing plan to be released. Her second would have sent the Bixi plan to a special city committee that handles contracts over $10 million. Her third would have brought representatives of Public Bike System Co. the operator of the Bixi bikes, before the council for questioning. None of them succeeded.

The Bixi plan includes a $37 million loan from the city of Montreal. This cash is used to cover the costs to develop the Bixi service.

Montreal mayor Gerald Tremblay’s administration is also set to provide guarantees of $71 million in credit to Public Bike to allow it to expand internationally.

Tempers flared while discussing the heated topic with Tremblay saying Richard Begeron, leader of Projet Montreal, has “demonstrated his stupidity” by calculating the costs of each Bixi bike.

Bergeron said the cost of each Bixi bike in operation is $7,400

The debate over the Bixi financing plan is expected to continue Tuesday afternoon.

My boyfriend and I watched a chunk of the first episode of The Voice. If you don’t know it by name, The Voice is a new singing competition reality program à la American Idol with a "twist": what makes this program different from shows of a similar nature - and what they endlessly emphasize in the promotional material - is that while a contestant is singing, the judges (Cee Lo Green, Adam Levine, Christina Aguilera and some generic new country guy) face away from the stage. This way they can judge singers on their talent in a totally non-superficial way, which, as host Carson Daly unenthusiastically claims, "makes this show so important." Apparently this first episode had ridiculously high ratings, but I predict its failure within about two weeks. Think about it: how can this gimmick of refusing to judge contestants on a superficial basis, the gimmick that drew viewers in initially, continue throughout the whole program? The judges and audience have seen what the contestants look like, so where could it go from here? The element that differentiates this show from others has been obliterated within the first episode or two. What a completely unsustainable premise.

Why do I feel the need to discuss the inherent flaws of a reality show’s premise and structure? Because, perhaps naively, I figured “show at 8” meant just that, but considering this wasn’t the case on the evening of April 30th, I’m desperate for something mildly interesting to write about in this review. Upon my arrival at Café Campus around 8:15, I had missed the first two bands scheduled to open for Tame Impala that evening. I’m just glad I didn’t pay for a ticket like everybody else.

Overall, I was impressed by Tame Impala’s performance. It started out rather blandly, a sort of amalgamation of palatable 70’s rock and funk that wasn’t incredibly interesting and half as heavy as I had hoped. I got the psychedelic undertones, mostly presented in the form of “whoa-man that’s trippy” guitar effects. At first, they mostly played songs I could only describe as “soaring” without any precursory buildup or tension, which ends up being a pretty boring note to dwell on. In addition, the laptop on stage being used as a digital guitar pedal kind of threw off the band’s "groovy vibe." The musicianship itself seemed impressive, but we all know I don’t really give a shit about that part.

As the set went on, the songs got heavier and more intense, living up to my expectations of totally rad stoner rock. The songs flowed into each other well and the set became more dynamic, resulting in some serious head banging in the crowd. I was glad I didn’t step out early believing I had caught the gist of the set because it just kept escalating in awesomeness. It was loud, it was kind of sludgy but still accessible and it was a definite crowd pleaser.

I missed openers Yuck and Yawn, but so did everyone else. Tame Impala made us all forget that maybe, just maybe, we were playing second fiddle to Café Campus’ Saturday night clubbing extravaganza and that maybe, just maybe, supporting up and coming artists isn’t quite as important and bumpin’ and grindin’ to last summer’s Hot 100 MP3s. Remember when it was all about the music, man?

-Kelly K hosts Cut Your Hair and Get a Job every Tuesday from 1-2pm

CJLO is very happy to announce that we have received funding from the Community Radio Fund of Canada for a second year to run our After School Mentorship Program for local highschool students. CJLO has been awarded $6,389 to fund the program and will seek up to ten high school students in the community between the ages of 16 and 18 to take part.

Back for a secon year, the program will immerse students in a hands-on, technical environment; teaching them the skills and motivation necessary to achieve success in the field of broadcasting. The students will work closely on a weekly basis with CJLO staff in different departments to learn all of the different elements in creating a radio program with the end goal of producing a two-hour show that will air at the end of the program.

CJLO is thrilled to be awarded this funding and to be able to offer the After School program for a second year. Last year's program saw eight students from various schools come together weekly to learn the skills and techniques involved in putting together a radio broadcast. The students worked with CJLO staff who mentored them through the process and at the end of the program presented several short radio documentaries on topics that were important and interesting to them and their peers.
 
CRFC President John Harris Stevenson agrees. "The Community Radio Fund is all about supporting programming that matters to people in your town, your village, your neighbourhood. I'm very happy that the fund has been able to contribute to so many amazing community projects again this year.”
 
The CRFC supports more than 150 licensed campus and community radio stations across Canada. Its programs aim to strengthen local news and community programming, promote local music and emerging artists, support emerging distribution technologies as well as sustainability of community radio stations to effectively serve their local communities.

On behalf of everyone at CJLO we would like to thank the members of the CRFC for this opportunity and their continued support!

For more information about the CRFC and all of its recipients, please visit www.communityradiofund.org.
 
To find out more about last year's program and to hear the final broadcast, please visit www.cjlo.com/afterschool.

For the full press release please click here.