“Our natural resource industries—energy, mining and minerals processing and forestry—account for more than 10 per cent of our gross domestic product and provide close to 800,000 jobs in Canada,” said Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose (Edmonton-Spruce Grove, Alta.) in a press statement released last week. “Responsible Resource Development will ensure that our abundant natural resources are developed in a sustainable way for the benefit of all Canadians.”
That was Ms. Ambrose’s message and the same message delivered by nine other Cabinet ministers, line for line, to Canadians on Monday, June 4, as the government tried to sell the merits of Bill C-38, the Budget Implementation Act, which faces heavy public and political opposition.
Ms. Ambrose, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz (Battlefords-Lloydminster, Sask.), Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan (Vancouver Island North, B.C.), Democratic Reform Minister Tim Uppal (Edmonton-Sherwood Park, Alta.), Industry Minister Christian Paradis (Mégantic-L’Érable, Que.), Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield (Fredericton, N.B.), Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.), Finance Minister Jim Flaherty (Whitby-Oshawa, Ont.), Treasury Board President Tony Clement (Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont.), and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Peter Penashue (Labrador, Nfld.) all left Ottawa to deliver locally-tailored messages on the benefits of the budget bill’s overhaul of environmental regulation for the Canadian economy.
“I was at a steel plant in Thunder Bay that is exporting to Athabasca, to the Northwest Territories, to Saskatchewan for potash development. They’re creating good-quality jobs in Thunder Bay in manufacturing steel for our natural resources sector,” Mr. Clement told The Hill Times following last Tuesday’s Question Period on the Hill. “I think it is our obligation, just as we’ve done with previous budgets, to communicate to Canadians about the contents of the budget.”
Last week’s ministerial push to communicate directly to the public on the economic benefits of the budget coincided with the BlackOutSpeakOut campaign. More than 500 websites of environmental NGOs including the David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace, and World Wildlife Fund as well as the sites of the NDP, Liberals and Greens were darkened to protest Bill C-38’s overhaul of environmental regulations and its tightening of restrictions on political activities by charities.
The sweeping budget bill replaces the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act with new legislation that imposes a 24-month timeline on the environmental review and public consultation process for major industrial projects. The bill will also limit the Fisheries Act to the protection of commercial, recreational and Aboriginal fisheries, and give Cabinet the discretion to overrule the National Energy Board in approving pipeline projects. In total, Bill C-38 amends more than 70 pieces of legislation.
Former Tory Fisheries ministers Tom Siddon and John Fraser, and Liberals David Anderson and Herb Dhaliwal recently went public with an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) voicing concern that the changes to the Fisheries Act would “reduce and weaken” habitat protection for marine life, and last week five former members of the soon-to-be eliminated National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy added their names to a lengthy list of signatories to a letter requesting that the Prime Minister reverse plans to eliminate the in-house think tank.
On Parliament Hill, the Liberals last week tabled 503 deletion amendments to Bill C-38, and NDP House Leader Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley, B.C.) said that his party has some 506 deletion amendments of its own. Green Party leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.) has also promised to introduce some 200 amendments, and on June 4 rose on a point of order asking House Speaker Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.) to withdraw Bill C-38 on the grounds that its sweeping legislative changes rendered it “imperfect” and contrary to Parliamentary democracy.
Adding to the government’s problems, the Tories have dropped in polls in recent weeks and were neck-and-neck with the New Democrats nationally at the end of last week, according to poll aggregating blog ThreeHundredEight.com. The site puts national support for the NDP at 34.2 percent, the Tories at 33.9 per cent, and the Liberals at 21.3 per cent.
Environment Minister Peter Kent (Thornhill, Ont.), who visited Ottawa’s Aviation and Space Museum on June 4 to announce a new action plan for reducing emissions in the aviation industry, told The Hill Times that the government was focused on “getting the good news out” about Bill C-38.
“It’s a communications challenge to get our government’s message out when there is so much criticism and misinformation at play,” Mr. Kent admitted, referring specifically to the BlackOutSpeakOut campaign. “It’s the government’s obligation to counter not just legitimate criticism, but also clear obstruction and intent to block [legislation].”
Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.) accused participants in the BlackOutSpeakOut campaign of “propagating information that wasn’t rooted in fact.”
“We will be talking to Canadians as we have been doing for many months now,” Mr. Oliver said. “[T]his so-called BlackOut demonstration had a lot of speech attached to it and they’re entitled to propagate their views, as we are entitled to counter the misinformation.”
As Toronto Star national affairs columnist Chantal Hébert put it in a February syndicated column in The Hill Times, “ministerial careers could be made or broken over the marketing of the 2012 budget.”
In this week’s syndicated column Ms. Hébert names Mr. Oliver, Mr. Kent, Mr. Duncan, International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda (Durham, Ont.) and Defence Minister Peter MacKay (Central Nova, N.S.) as “five problem cases” likely to be reposted in a summer Cabinet shuffle.
Summa Strategies vice-president and Conservative strategist Tim Powers told The Hill Times that only the Prime Minister knows who will be moved and when, but conceded that the ability to sell the budget is one of the measures for grading Cabinet ministers.
“It’s been a longstanding tactical approach of the government to have mass minister sales on key issues,” said Mr. Powers. “There’s that old adage in messaging: it’s all about repitition, repitition, and more repitition. That’s what you tend to see on the big economic announcements that the government believes are important to defining their strengths.”
But Mr. Powers also said Cabinet ministers are judged on more than how well they sell the federal budget, which will continue through the summer months. They’re judged on overall performance, which can be more important than how they sell their government’s budget.
“Some people will be graded on their effectiveness as communicators and team players. Whatever Cabinet shuffle comes, part of it may be about how people performed in the selling of the budget, but there will be a number of other factors at play,” said Mr. Powers, who himself anticipates a summer Cabinet shuffle and cited Ms. Oda as a candidate for reassignment given recent disclosures of her travel expenses, and Mr. MacKay, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews (Provencher, Man.) and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson (Niagara Falls, Ont.) as possibly being moved given their lengthy tenures at their respective postings.
Mr. Powers said he expects the government to reinforce its budget sales pitch throughout the summer.
“There’s been a thematic approach to the economic story of the government since the 2008 budget,” Mr. Powers observed. “It’s been the Economic Action Plan and each budget has been a phase, so I don’t see them deviating from that at any point soon.”
Mr. Powers said that because Bill C-38 is the Harper Tories’ first budget bill crafted as a majority, the government’s success in selling the budget would be measured differently.
“We’ve gauged past sales efforts by the government on whether they’d hold the minority or not. Now the metrics are different. We may not get the grade until 2015.”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Chris Plecash
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