Just a couple of months after Stephen Harper warned his caucus away from Hy’s — a warning prompted by last fall’s sexual harassment controversy on the Hill — the popular drinking establishment near the Hill was filled with Conservatives on Tuesday night.
To be clear, the MPs, ministers and staffers weren’t there to stage a show of defiance. They were bidding an impromptu farewell to their colleague, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, who had surprised them all by quitting his job that day.
Baird, a familiar figure at Hy’s, was not known for cowering in the face of heavy-handed PMO rules, which is partly why he earned praise from friends and rivals after his announcement.
The question, however, is why there are so few like Baird in Harper’s government — why so many MPs and ministers have decided to spend their political careers doing, and saying, exactly what the boss tells them to do.
In recent weeks, even before Baird’s announcement, I’ve been struck by how many Conservatives are not even going to the trouble anymore of hiding the fact they are reading scripts provided by staff in the PMO.
On Monday, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair accused Harper of fomenting anti-Islam sentiment, after the prime minister made a speech that traced home-grown terrorism back to “a mosque or somewhere else.”
“It was irresponsible of the prime minister to throw the mosques into his comments. It was a form of Islamophobia and it was wrong,” Mulcair said.
Harper wasn’t around to reply to Mulcair, but that wasn’t a problem, since he had more than enough people to speak in his defence — word for word, with no independent thought added.
One parliamentary secretary, Roxanne James, appeared on TV and dutifully repeated her lines over and over again about Harper’s remarks, no matter the question. But just in case anyone was under the impression that James thought these answers up herself, the PMO sent out an email to be read on the TV show, with exactly the same words.
“Radicalization towards jihadi terrorism can happen anywhere,” PMO spokesman Carl Vallée said in the eerily-echoing email. “Following the attacks last fall, the prime minister specifically thanked members of the Muslim community for categorically and unequivocally condemning the attacks, and recognized the Muslim community for their efforts in fighting radicalization.”END
Rote repetition has its purposes, in the branding of products, for instance, or teaching children new words. But its rampant use by political communicators risks insulting the intelligence of the listeners. It’s like hearing “your call is important to us” on an endless answering-machine loop as the minutes tick by.
At the same time this week, the new Minister of Veterans Affairs, Erin O’Toole, was being criticized for the way he had delivered an awaited progress report on the government’s treatment of ex-soldiers. The report was due on Friday, Jan. 30, and O’Toole met the deadline by posting an infographic on Twitter late in the day — before he shared details with Parliament or veterans’ groups such as the Royal Canadian Legion.
The excuse? Friday was a “busy day” in federal politics, with the release of the government’s anti-terror legislation and the Harper speech in Richmond Hill and such.
Yes, it was a busy day for the Prime Minister’s Office, but does that mean the rest of the work of government has to grind to a halt, too? Of course it does, because the PMO is everywhere — writing lines for spokespersons to say on TV, organizing the release of ministerial reports, telling MPs what to do after work.
In the early years of this Conservative government, the tight PMO discipline was justified as a way to keep tabs on an inexperienced group of newly elected MPs and ministers. But this is now a government nearing its 10-year-mark in office, and the leash is still as tight — maybe even tighter.
Is that important? Well, yes. All of this Big Brother-type culture would be simply the story of Parliament’s dysfunction, or a sad workplace, if it wasn’t for the new focus on anti-terror measures. Canada now has to have a serious debate about security versus freedom of expression and the degree to which Canadians want to live in a surveillance state.
That debate is being led by a government that has tried to impose its “message discipline” on a long list of people and institutions over the past nine years — Parliament, public servants, the media, charities and, as it happens, many of its own MPs and ministers.
While many in Ottawa have become accustomed to strict limits over what they say — or even where they socialize — Canadians may be a little less willing to shut up and do what they’re told.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com/
Author: Susan Delacourt
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