Conservatives’ communications strategy needs work

OAKVILLE, ONT.—Best laid plans often go astray. This is true for mice, for men, and also it seems for Conservative Party strategists.

Case in point is the Conservative government’s proposed internet surveillance law otherwise known as Bill C-30.

As is well-known by now, the plan for this bill definitely went astray.

But why?

After all, on paper, at least, this issue must have seemed like a sure winner to the Conservative brain trust.

Bill C-30 is designed to give authorities more power to police the internet so they can crack down on child pornographers.

This “law and order” stuff has typically played well for the Conservatives when it comes to galvanizing public support.

But in this case something went horribly wrong.

Indeed, not long after the Tories introduced Bill C-30 it triggered a ferocious backlash.

For many Canadians the bill seems an unwarranted attack on personal privacy.

In fact, the reaction from the media and from the public was so negative the Conservatives retreated a bit and agreed to send the bill to committee for possible amendments.

Unfortunately, this action was too late to save poor Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who became the lightening rod for opposition to Bill C-30.

Someone even set up “Vikileaks,” an anonymous Twitter account that released several embarrassing details about Toews’s divorce.

So what went wrong?  Why didn’t the “Law and Order” theme work this time?

The short answer is the Tory communication strategy was fundamentally flawed.

To understand why, you first need a basic understanding of why the “Law and Order” strategy of promising new prisons, new cops and “tough new laws” is usually popular with voters.

Simply put, this stuff plays to a basic “Us vs. Them” dynamic.

In other words, you convince voters that your party will crack down on “Them”—murderers, rapists, drug dealers, terrorists—to protect “Us” the regular law-abiding citizen.

As a communication strategy this works almost every time; we always want government to protect Us from Them.

But the dynamic is a little bit different when it comes to policing the internet. This is because everybody these days is on Facebook or Twitter or uses email or surfs the internet.

And so when the government starts talking about expanding its powers to spy on the internet, it scares people. And why not? Maybe the authorities will use these powers to infringe on the rights of “Us.” Even worse, it could be argued that by introducing Bill C-30 the Conservatives are actually helping “Them”—in this case, the police or other government authorities—invade our privacy.

And this is why the Tories are in trouble on this issue, they have turned the Us vs. Them idea upside down.

It’s telling that even some of the Conservative Party’s media friends have turned against Bill C-30.

The conservative columnist Lorne Gunter, for instance, wrote “[C-30 gives] police too much authority to snoop around in Canadians’ online activities. My fear is ... not the way it will be used against pedophiles or terrorists, but the way it could be turned against innocent, ordinary Canadians.”

And by the way, any analysis could have predicted all this. Politics isn’t rocket science. So why didn’t the Conservatives foresee this anti-Bill C-30 reaction?

Who knows?

Maybe they have just become over-confident since winning a majority government.

And if that’s the case then their unhappy experience with Bill C-30 should be a wake-up call.

In the future they are going to have to work harder when it comes to crafting their political messaging.

Or else their other plans and maybe even their government might go astray.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: GERRY NICHOLLS