Welcome to the Parliament High School of Governance.
Stephen Harper has announced that all his MPs’ public communications will be vetted by the PMO. That means every piece of communication: from interviews to speeches to letters to the editor. Conservative MPs have been told that unless they want to talk about the government’s key priorities, they’re to minimize contact with the media.
The micro-manager is at it again. Soon, Harper will be telling his MPs what colour socks to wear.
It’s as if Harper wants his ministers to adopt the mentality of shy teenagers at a high school dance: don’t say anything, stare at your toes, and hopefully, you won’t make a fool of yourself.
Fifteen year-olds across Canada will tell you that approach doesn’t work. It’s not going to work for our government either.
There’s already been controversy over Harper’s attempt to remove the microphones from outside cabinet meeting rooms. When press gallery officials went ballistic, Harper caved, though he still told his ministers that they weren’t to speculate on the future direction of the government.
The prime minister who ran on accountability is also refusing to use the national press theatre, restricting photographers’ access to parliament, and planning to hand-pick the journalists allowed to ask questions at events. These are all questinalble practices, but trying to vet everything MPs say is crossing the line.
What are they supposed to do? Stand there and look pretty?
Or maybe Harper is expecting his rookie MPs to be on the defensive so often that they won’t have time to speculate about what’s to come.
Either way, it’s easy to keep your MPs cloistered when they’re spending most of their time in their offices learning the ropes. It’ll be more of a challenge when Parliament resumes.
How will question period work? After all, government answers are considered public communications. Maybe ministers will just defer to the Prime Minister on every question. Maybe he’ll have PMO s taff roaming the government benches, playing Cyrano de Bergerac for MPs.
And how about post-question period scrums? What will the response be then? Excuse me while I run over to the PMO to vet my answer, I’ll be back in five?
It’s understandable that Harper would want to rein in a group so short on political experience. But new MPs will need a while to adjust to find their comfort zone in front of the cameras. As Peter MacKay has shown, that adjustment is going to involve making some mistakes.
Some observers have speculated that Harper’s gag order has more to do with reining in the right-wing members of his party. He’s got to realize that he can’t keep them quiet forever.
This prime minister is too concerned about his public image. During the Shapiro ethics probe, he paraded around the Hill, gallantly telling reporters he wasn’t going to co-operate with such an unreasonable attack on his character. It turns out that behind closed doors, our tough, rebel-with-a-cause prime minister was meekly cooperating with the ethics commissioner every step of the way.
It made him look bad, as does this latest image freak-out. It’s as if he never got over Paul Martin’s quips about that little leather vest.
Even the prime minister himself — when asked about the very issue of secrecy — refused to answer right away. Maybe he was busy vetting his own comments.
This government was supposed to be about trust. But how is the public supposed to trust this government when even the prime minister can’t?
Harper’s round of peek-a-boo with the Canadian public is over, but he’s still playing games. Let’s hope hush-puppy becomes just as tiresome.