The scam is as simple as it is brazen: Harper has spent hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars promoting his government. Often, it’s the highly partisan stuff that should be paid for by the Conservative party. He’s using public money for political gain — and doing it in a time of cutbacks.
The prime minister’s excuse for this raid on the public purse — like his account of the Wright/Duffy affair — depends on the day you ask him.
When Harper first started promoting his government with public money, ministers like Rona Ambrose were trotted out to say that the justification for showering ad agencies with tax dollars was the task of “informing” Canadians about government services and programs.
That was funny, actually. The Tories carpetbombed the NHL playoffs in 2013 with ads for the Economic Action Plan, tagging this shameless self-promotion with EAP 2013 identifiers. The playoff ads cost $95,000 a pop. But the Harper government had to admit later that the ads did not contain any actual measures from the 2013 budget.
In other words, not only was it a freeloading political announcement paid for by Canadians on behalf of the Conservative party, it was false. The Canada Jobs Grant which was being advertised at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars didn’t even exist.
When Harper himself was forced to explain his profligate ad offensive at the public’s expense in the House of Commons, he no longer talked of informing citizens about government programs, the way Rona Ambrose had. Now it was a matter of national pride — in him.
No one is better at giving himself straight As than this PM. The new explanation went something like this: The ads were worth it because after seeing their key message — that Canada was doing better than any other developed country in tough economic times — Canadians would burst with pride at what a good government they had.
Setting aside the neck-snapping shift in the justification, there was another problem with the ads. They weren’t true either. Canada does not have the highest growth rate in the G7 — the United States does. Outside the G7, the economies of Australia and some Scandinavian countries also grew faster than Canada’s did.
The Economic Action Plan was a propaganda vehicle originating in the Finance Department to make Canadians think Jim Flaherty is the best finance minister on the planet … you know, ‘STFU’ Jim.
Believers in that steroid pantomime known as Wrestlemania may have been taken in. People who can read are a tougher sale. The EAP ads tried to turn viewers into Pavlov’s dogs — and then bill the dogs.
After viewing the ads, Canadians were urged to “take action” — which meant going to the government’s website for more self-congratulatory nonsense. Only 7 per cent of the people who have viewed these ads recently (they’ve been running since 2009) bothered to ‘take action’ in the end. The whole thing was nothing but nauseating propaganda from start to finish.
Jim Flaherty isn’t the only Harper minister who has dropped a major ad bill on the public (his was the biggest, though). The government has earmarked $16.5 million to promote pipelines and “responsible resource development” — up from $9 million last year. Joe Oliver may be pleased, but not even Rob Ford on a bender could fail to see the politics at work here.
On the issue of the Northern Gateway pipeline project, the Harper government has never acted as a regulator — always and only as an advocate. It has nothing to do with access to government services, or programs for citizens, or civic pride. It’s about making Canadians get with the only program this PM really cares about: rigging the system to get bitumen-bearing pipelines to the B.C. coast come hell or high water.
How far has Harper taken Canada on the journey to become what Green Party leader Elizabeth May calls the “North Korea of the environment”? Quite far indeed.
First, the PM changed the rules so that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency deferred to provincial environmental assessments. Then, just last week, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans truly disgraced itself. It surrendered its authority for assessing potential impacts from pipelines on fisheries to another government agency.
So who’s looking out for the well-being of aquatic life now? You guessed it: the National Energy Board. The same agency that gives pipeline and power projects the green light will decide if those same projects imperil at-risk fish species. Like a crooked real estate transaction, one broker now works both ends of the deal thanks to a government where the fix is always in. This, Stephen Harper calls “streamlining.”
While the Harper government has been very free with using public money to promote itself, that’s only part of the story. The other part was on display this past week when the government announced an $11-million ad campaign about the perils of marijuana use.
Even Pierre Poilievre must have blushed at this one: a blatant use of public funds to attack a political rival, Justin Trudeau, who says he will legalize marijuana if he becomes prime minister.
Once again, the prime minister is campaigning on taxpayers’ dollars. His real message? Justin Trudeau used an illegal drug while serving as a Member of Parliament. Justin Trudeau is unfit for public office. Justin Trudeau will put a joint in every ten year-old’s lunch pail.
This multi-million dollar ‘initiative’ out of Health Canada, paid for by taxpayers, is not about illegal drug use and the Harper government’s fundamental opposition to it. If it were, the prime minister would have had something to say about Rob Ford.
After all, Ford admitted to crack cocaine and marijuana use, drinking and driving, and threatening to kill someone — all of this while in office. Silence on Ford, who helped deliver a Conservative majority in 2011 — versus an $11-million publicly-funded attack on Justin Trudeau over a toke.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Stephen Harper.
The bottom line? No prime minister has any business spending hundreds of millions of dollars of other people’s money to boast about his accomplishments. If only the PM would unmuzzle his ministers — and give a few interviews where he didn’t supply the questions in advance — the media would be delighted to offer the air time and column inches for free.
What a terrifying concept that would be for a control freak not particularly restrained by the facts — someone who would rather spend pots of public money creating them.
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