The task of the opposition is harder: awaken the Sleeping Beauty of the millions who didn’t vote last time.
In Harper’s case, it’s tough work, but God knows the PM is giving it his best shot. Every trick in the book, and a few not yet codified, are in play.
The robocalls have already begun. The phone rings and a voice asks if you plan to vote for Stephen Harper. The caller uses your first name, and in some cases, has managed to get unlisted telephone numbers. My house got that call last October. Readers have shared similar experiences with me on many occasions since then.
The plucking of the electorate has been underway for quite a long time — a great deal of it financed on the public dime. In very real terms, the Canadian taxpayer is now the biggest contributor to the Conservative Party of Canada. Consider the wretched Economic Action Plan. The Harper government has squandered more than $100 million of public money since 2009 on these glorified, partisan selfies. Every time the Harperites bring down a budget, they filch more public money to advertise their claims of success as economic stewards.
Though the government claims this advertorial tripe is to keep Canadians abreast of “important” work it is doing on the public’s behalf, the ads have the feel of a bad travelogue. As for substance, there is more truth in your average fortune cookie. Canadians paid $100 million and what did they get — a giant blue ball of dubious fluff.
There is also a $26-million-a-year ideological support group for Stephen Harper’s spin machine that includes outfits like the Fraser Institute. As Donald Gutstein, the author of “Harperism” put it:
“Think-tanks transform the doctrine into research; sympathetic academics provide research studies compatible with the think-tank’s goals; corporate executives and the foundations of wealthy businessmen finance the research; and sympathetic media owners and commentators disseminate the research to target audiences.”
If think-tanks project ideology and call it information, pollsters purport to be taking society’s pulse but end up, inadvertently or not, recommending a doctor. Which is just to say that polling doesn’t only become the news on a given day, but creates a momentum all its own. Sometimes it’s for the good, other times it is simply nauseating.
Take for example, the endless polls about an election that has yet to be called. What good are questions about voter intention when no writ has been dropped, the legal date for the vote is set at October 19, 2015, and no party has made its full policy platform public? And since the results are only good for the moment in time frozen in the poll, what is the point?
One could easily get the impression from these polls, especially since not all of them are created equal, that major changes are occurring in the electorate when the truth is probably a lot more prosaic: people aren’t paying attention and won’t pay attention until the real thing is upon us. They were peeling potatoes the moment before they got the robocall, and went back to peeling potatoes the moment they hung up.
The trouble that is shaping up for Canada in 2015 is all about two things: poisoned information sources, led by the Harper government’s publicly financed mind-control, and 9 million citizens in the last election who found something better to do on May 2, 2011 than vote. There is actually a connection between bad information and a lethargic democracy.
The mainstream media could once be relied upon to distinguish the hot air from the facts. That is still partially true, and there are many fine journalists on the scene. But the media landscape is profoundly changed. You could be forgiven, for example, if you mistook CBC board meetings these days for Conservative party fundraisers. According to the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, it is donor country, full stop, with eight of the eleven current members of the board having contributed to the CPC. It is transformation-by-patronage of a national institution, handing over the controls of a 767 to someone without a pilot’s license.
Nor does it help that some of the Corporation’s biggest stars have been cashing the cheques of some of the people they report on, a practice that has thankfully stopped — sort of.
And while it is also admirable that many CBC personalities still believe in free speech (and free speeches), sadly, it is the star players who forge its reputation. Even in front of the cameras, these key hosts have been softer than a freshly baked muffin when dealing with political zombies like Tory Paul Calandra or the big boys from the bank. The CBC used to be the place to appear if you were a serious journalist interested in countering the spin; now it is alternative news sources like Canadaland.
The truth is, the mainstream media outlets have ceded obscene tracts of their authority to people they should be covering, not covering up for. Why should Stephen Harper be writing editorials for the National Post? Why did the calamitous Fords get a radio show from CFRB, a news/talk station with a CRTC license? What was John Tory doing on his radio show, informing his listeners or setting the stage for a successful campaign for mayor of Toronto?
Far too many of the facts that fill our newspapers and television broadcasts come from people with skin in the political game – either as representatives doing PR for the political parties, or former politicians embarking on post-political image-revision. If you had to choose, who would you rather listen to on one of those back-slapping panels that plague contemporary television – Andrew Mitrovica or Stockwell Day? What on earth is Stockwell Day doing on the CBC as a political commentator? Are we supposed to believe Day has suddenly rediscovered his honesty and cojones now that he only has to make his living as a “political consultant” (a.k.a. lobbyist)? He is still a partisan and he now stands to lose hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, if he is no longer part of the “in crowd” in Ottawa.
There are a lot of theories floating around about why 9 million Canadians didn’t vote in the last election. I lean towards the view that the hellish cascade of agenda-driven, special interest, utterly poisoned communications has persuaded them that dropping out is better than engaging. They don’t know who to believe, they don’t trust anybody, and they don’t think they matter. And the less wealthy and more disenfranchised they are, the more likely they are to ‘fuggit.’
Sadly, these same people have never mattered more. But the political rescue of this lost generation of voters, and with it, of Canada’s democracy, is beyond the petty bribes of politics as usual. The kiss that will awaken Sleeping Beauty is the promise of a land that is so much bigger than the single issue of the economy.
If no one is up to the job of rekindling the interests of those who went MIA in 2011, Colonel Sanders could well be back in charge of the chickens.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris
No comments:
Post a Comment