As the Conservative government marks its first three months in power this weekend, Stephen Harper's obsession with secrecy and central control has evidently earned the Prime Minister's Office a new moniker in the everyday lexicon of Parliament Hill.
Everywhere in the political backrooms, chat rooms and local bars, it seems, even senior Conservative staffers have begun referring to Harper's bureau of control freaks as simply "The Kremlin."
This is not another media whine about Harper's gang moving the microphones to locations where the PM and his ministers can more readily dodge reporters.
Dogging politicians
As far as I am concerned, if the politicians won't come to us in an orderly manner convenient for everyone, then we should be going to them without regard for anything but the journalistic job at hand. Night and day, reporters should be dogging the prime minister, his family, his staff, ministers and the rest of the Conservative clan everywhere they work, eat, drink, sleep or court their lovers.
It is what we do, after all. We are supposed to be the eyes and ears of all Canadians, not recycling bins for government press releases.
But far more important than Harper's ultimately losing tussle with the national media is the culture of fear and secrecy this administration is spreading throughout government.
All communications have been strictly centralized in the PMO, where Harper has created a hotbed of paranoia towards the media, a PR shop where the public's right to know is treated as an absurdity, and the truth is all too freely sacrificed for spin:
- The military bans TV cameras from the military base where the flag-draped coffins of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan are returned home, depriving all citizens of a chance to grieve these tragedies, and confront the horrible realities of war.
The government claims the ban is at the request of the grieving families, several of whom pin it all on Harper's office trying to hide the truth.
- Trade Minister David Emerson tells Canadians there is no deal with the Americans on softwood lumber hours after it has actually been finalized.
- In secret, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor signs a new NORAD continental defence agreement with the Americans, and Parliament is allowed to debate it only after the fact.
- Harper meets with everyone from foreign leaders to provincial premiers, and the encounters are treated like the PM's own private business.
In every case, Canadians have every reason to feel they are being treated as dim-witted dupes not to be trusted with serious issues of the day until Harper has dealt with them.
His ministers can no doubt sympathize.
The Conservative front bench is packed with capable, intelligent talent, their offices well-staffed with equally competent communicators. Yet almost on a daily basis, we hear stories of ministers and staff being reminded in no uncertain terms that loose lips lose limos. Shut up or ship out of cabinet.
Even Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, a far more effective communicator than Harper, has been reduced to mechanically reading pre-scripted answers in the Commons.
In short, the PM who campaigned on the promise of an open and accountable government is doing exactly the opposite in power.
Now the Conservatives are trying to institutionalize secrecy in their Orwellian-titled Accountability Act.
Written by bureaucrats with a cultural aversion to public scrutiny only slightly greater than Harper's, the act is one of the most dangerously flawed pieces of legislation in years.
Don't take it from a whining media type. Listen to federal Information Commissioner John Reid, the nation's guardian of access to information laws, and parliament's chief watchdog of open and accountable government.
Five-alarm warning
Reid was so shocked by the proposed Accountability Act that he recently issued an extraordinary five-alarm warning to Parliament. "What the government now proposes," he writes, "will reduce the amount of information available to the public, weaken the oversight role of the information commissioner and increase government's ability to cover up wrongdoing, shield itself from embarrassment and control the flow of information to Canadians.
"No previous government, since the Access to Information Act came into force in 1983, has put forward a more retrograde and dangerous set of proposals."
This week, as a parliamentary committee began reviewing the legislation, it was clear from the tepid debate that even the opposition MPs have not grasped the gravity of Harper's play.
Outside the Kremlin, it's time to wake up and smell the white-out.
Hapday wrote:I support Harper, but I do not like this accountability (or lack there of) act either.
You trolling me Hap?
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No at all. From what I've read, this "accountability" act closes more doors then it opens. This is the only thing Harper has done, or is about to, so far that I disagree with.
