Those who prefer facts to his relentless manipulations of reality are, in the PM’s mind, members of the ‘reality community’. Like the “plankton people” — to borrow a phrase Russians sometimes use to describe the flotsam and jetsam of Russian society. The nobodies.
But why is the media — including some of the biggest players in the mainstream — enabling him? It’s particularly baffling when you remember that the Harper government wanted to steal material from news outlets in order to schlepp it out as political advertisements. Thankfully, CTV’s Don Martin zapped the Cons with the right word: What they were suggesting bordered on fascism.
In recent weeks, the government has been campaigning on the public dime on the marijuana issue. It’s supposed to be an educational program designed to teach kids about the dangers of marijuana. Its true purpose, of course, is to act as a Trojan Horse political campaign aimed directly at Justin Trudeau and the Liberals over their promise to legalize marijuana.
A couple of things come to mind. First, why would the Globe and Mail, for example, get played for a sucker in an obvious abuse of the public purse for partisan purposes by running these ads on its website? Second, why on earth would anyone be presenting them as “educational” — when the Canadian Medical Association itself rebuffed the government’s request for its participation and endorsement?
And while the ads have not appeared on CBC TV or its website, the case of another set of ads the CBC rejected offers an interesting comparison. The CBC refused to run ads produced by the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, which criticized the Harper government on a range of issues in a fair, factual and forceful way. The reason given by the CBC for refusing the ads was that they were too “political”.
So how political is too political for a mainstream media ad? Why would Harper’s overtly political ads get aired in one outlet while allegedly political ads get banned in another? Is being “political” now defined at the CBC as criticizing the Harper government?
Recently, the government has also been struggling to clear the track of the train wreck that is the Department of Veterans Affairs. So the latest episode of let’s-pretend marketing goes something like this: The Harper government is going to hire new front-line workers for VA — ergo, its commitment to veterans is confirmed.
It’s nothing of the sort, of course. In fact, it’s more tarnished than ever. The Harper government has fired thousands of VA staffers and are hiring dozens. There is no information on how these new front line workers will be deployed. There never is any detailed information in Harper “news” releases; he saves that for information leaks about his enemies, like Helena Guergis or Jim Prentice.
And keep in mind, this government is famous for allocating money but not spending it; more than $1.13 billion went unspent and was returned from VA’s budget since 2006.
Julian Fantino — considered by many veterans to be an odious traitor to their cause — is still holding the reins at the VA. He said recently the government has no apologies to make for its treatment of veterans.
The Auditor General says otherwise. The delivery of veterans’ mental health services is a disgrace. Closing VA centres only made the problem worse. The government has known about its shortcomings in estimating the needs of its clients since 2012 — and did nothing about it.
The Harper government will now be launching an ad campaign that will cost the public $5 million — undeclared Tory election spending. Instead of trying to brainwash people with their own money on more of Fantino’s made-in- the-PMO whoppers, Harper could have re-opened all nine of the Veterans Affairs centres that he shuttered — and he’d still have $1.2 million left over to fly his limo to India again.
We’re living in the age of propaganda politics financed by the public between elections; appearance and reality are now separated by light years of marketing BS. As the PM postures as the veterans’ champion, his government has quietly agreed to transfer to Quebec the last Veterans Affairs hospital in Canada run by the feds. It hasn’t been announced yet, but Quebec’s health minister, Gaetan Barrette, listed St. Anne’s Hospital in the Law Number Ten Project, merging the federal facility with other establishments in Montreal’s West Island.
(For anyone who would like to like to see it for themselves, Sainte-Anne is listed on page 44 of the bill, which was introduced in the first session of the 41st legislature of the Assemblee Nationale by Minister Barrette.)
So bear this in mind when you see Harper spouting baloney about his commitment to veterans over a swelling soundtrack of violins: A lot of veterans are very worried about this hospital transfer.
Why would a veteran from British Columbia be worried about something happening thousands of miles away? Simple. St.-Anne’s Veterans Hospital serves veterans from all over Canada, not just those living in Quebec. St. Anne’s has the only in-clinic treatment centre for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the country. St. Anne’s, in fact, has the only ten beds in Canada to treat veterans suffering from PTSD.
Finally, the wretched F-35 project has reappeared like something dragged up from the bottom of the sea. The news from DND is bleak. The price tag for this experimental aircraft gets higher by the month. It is a replay of the F-22 Raptor — a hangar queen of legendary proportions.
Here’s the skinny. Either Canada pays another billion dollars or it reduces its order of F-35s. Remember all the marketing attached to this file? The PM confabulating that there was a contract when there was no contract. The PM saying the price was $16 billion for sixty-five F-35s; it was $10 billion higher and cabinet knew it. The PM saying the parliamentary budget officer was wrong on his numbers; it was the PM who was wildly, consciously wrong. The Auditor General finally put the Cons out of their misery by completely backing up Kevin Page.
Like all marketers, however, Harper doesn’t care about facts — just making the sale. It’s high time the journalism business started feeding this government back its record of deceit and dishonesty — and holding Harper to account.
Shout-out to Peter Mansbridge: Pass off one more clip of Harper’s ego-liberation in front of a keyboard as news, and you might as well give some thought to joining his band.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris
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