Harper failing on communication

hiti · November 21, 2006

The Edmonton Journal

Published: Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's churlish rhubarb with the Parliamentary Press Gallery went a few steps too far this past weekend when, on a trip to Hanoi, Harper allowed an utterly false reporting of the status of his meetings with Chinese leader Hu Jintao to remain on the public record for 14 hours.

The falsehood appears to have eminated directly from Harper's entourage, which continued to tell reporters that the Harper-Hu meeting was off, even though the two men had in fact already met. It was only after the Chinese officials gave details of the meeting that the Prime Ministers' Office aides owned up that, indeed, the two had met and discussed some key points of friction, including trade and human rights.

This was not a question of going out of their way to correct reporters who had overstated what they did or did not know. This was failing to correct misinformation that had eminated from the PMO. This obfuscation of events unfolding at the APEC summit in Vietnam steps over the fine line between managing the government's communications strategy and deliberately allowing the public to be misled.

Whatever one feels about Harper's contempt for the media, it is wholly unacceptable that some government officials appear to have actively engaged in misinformation. Last we looked, Harper was still employed by the Canadian taxpayers and, even if the media isn't, reporters do have the right to know what he is doing and saying on Canada's behalf to the outside world.

In fairness to many of the Canadian officials travelling with the prime minister, Harper's penchant for hoarding information probably means that many Canadian diplomats in attendance and foreign affairs officials who should have known about the meeting were also kept in the dark. Otherwise, they might well have set the record straight.

But the fact that many senior officials didn't know that Harper had actually met with the Chinese leader should be a clarion call that Harper's paranoia about leaks has reached a point that risks rendering dysfunctional Canada's New Government, as the Conservatives still tiresomely like to call themselves.

Harper's failings don't end with his outward communications with Canadians. Internally, communications are also on the fritz and many departments -- agriculture, trade, aboriginal affairs and immigration among them -- are reportedly in various degrees of paralysis because of a system that starves them of information and punishes initiative. Harper might well have done a good job in managing his five priorities -- cutting the GST, funding family child care, getting tougher on crime, bringing in a federal Accountability Act, and instituting wait-time guarantees -- but he runs a government with 27 departments, many of which provide vital services.

To be forced to function in a political vacuum, with ministers and senior staff afraid of their own shadows, is no way to run a government. So thorough are Harper's efforts to control issues, the PMO has taken the unimaginably bizarre step of having ministerial communications staff, who ostensibly are supposed to be loyal to their respective ministers, provide a confidential assessment of their ministers' strengths and weaknesses. Staffers are caught in a no-win situation of having to be loyal to their ministers, with whom they interact every day, or to the PMO.

Is this really what Harper had in mind when, as leader of the opposition, he routinely chided the Liberals for their lack of transparency? In successive elections, front and centre in the Conservative platform was his pitch to voters that his would be an open and accountable government. Such openness starts at the top and here Harper is showing signs of failing miserably.

WOW! This from the Edmonton Journal