Canada’s immigration minister, Jason Kenney, shouts for a living

Surrounded by speech writers skilled in the toadying arts, politicians can be as sonorous or affectionate, even slightly scolding, as they wish. Or they can just be themselves, which is never advisable.

If your public communications reveal you as greasy or possibly unwell, you have caring staff on hand to save you. But you don’t have to listen!

A federal minister of the Crown sent out a press release last week that I downloaded and read with great joy. Aimed at every journalist in the country, it throbbed with large rage, it bellowed and blew. The statement had a red swollen face. Its jaws were so clenched it had temporal mandibular syndrome.

I had an image in my mind of the man who sent it, a gnarly sodbuster in moth-eaten long johns shooting varmints with a trigger made of twine.

You’re right. It was Jason Kenney. The guy’s a yeller. Kenney had bust a gasket over the veracity of a La Presse story on a Colombian refugee claimant.

“Journalists should present the complete story, and not simply rely on one person’s self-interested and uncorroborated account of events. Misleading stories on important subjects damage the public discourse in Canada.”

Well, yeah. It’s an editor’s job to say this, or a press council or maybe Miss Dockstader, my grade school teacher. “Meghan may not have school spirit but she is not the only student in the class. If she does not like the cafeteria food, she should talk to the principal and then missy should zip it.”

But Miss Dockstader would never have been as rude as the distinguished Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism was in a public document. This is not Oklahoma. This is Canada. This would have been frowned on.

Kenney went on shouting in print: “If the subject of your story or their lawyer is refusing to provide you with a privacy waiver . . . you may want to ask them and yourself why they are refusing to do so.”

Shades of Vic Toews on the subject of online privacy, which he treasures for himself but the rest of us are clearly not just camping with the child pornographers but sharing buttered toast with them. See, when you interview someone, you do not ask them to waive their entire privacy rights because that may not be ethical, and also they would not talk to you. They’d be crazy if they did.

This would lead to the end of people talking to each other, a.k.a. journalism. This is clearly the minister’s gauzy dream of happiness, but Jason, it’s not real. Your HR person will guide you through this as your blood pressure descends. The prime minister is canny and private in his yelling. Learn from him, Jason.

In Britain, it’s different. Politicians and the press ladle the charm on each other like great dollops of clotted cream. The world learned this during one of the most embarrassing public episodes a prime minister has endured.

David Cameron is friends with journalists but not really, he says, because that would not be right.

But on Thursday, during the hugely entertaining public Leveson inquiry into bad journalism, there was a revealing email from a former tabloid editor, the spiky Rebekah Brooks, to Cameron in 2009, prior to his being elected prime minister. Elevating Cameron was a task Brooks was working on with her doddery boss Rupert Murdoch.

Cameron had to sit as the email was being read aloud in posh tones, the nails in his casket being hammered, not quietly screwed in by Ikea Allen keys as is more customary at these courteous hearings.

“As always Sam (Cameron’s wife) was wonderful,” wrote Brooks warmly. “I am so rooting for you tomorrow not just as a proud friend but because professionally we’re definitely in this together. Speech of your life? Yes, he Cam!”

I am trying to imagine Kenney sending — or indeed receiving — such emails. “As always, the country supper was delicious, Heather. Shall we have the speaks soon, just a chat, no pressure, I do love your scribbles. Let’s go mad and waive the privacy!”

“Oh shouty Jason, I am so rooting for you to chop that immigrant application backlog, not just as a pal but because we are on the same wavelength about unwanted guests, shall we say. Our next PM? You, Jason of the Argonauts!”

(Personal bias declared: I would send this to Heritage Minister James Moore or Government Whip Gordon O’Connor, two Tories of whom I am fond. But I would not get caught.)

In Canada, the Harperites hammer at the computer keyboard. In Britain, they lick each other like cats. Same difference really.

Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Heather Mallick