A ninth member of the government caucus yesterday was cited for unethical conduct. Liberal MP Greg Fergus (Hull-Aylmer, Que.), parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, was caught lobbying for a TV license on behalf of a Québec businessman: “I fell short.”
Nearly 4 in 10 Canadians are now borrowing money to pay for groceries, shelter and other daily expenses, say federal researchers. One report described it as the worst of times for many Canadians, “the biggest financial challenges of their lives.”
Parliament must combat the “radicalization of white people in this country,” a former Calgary mayor yesterday testified at the Senate human rights committee. Naheed Nenshi said unnamed politicians “have seen short term political gain in this.”
The Department of Canadian Heritage yesterday admitted it did not do its homework in awarding a six-figure grant to an anti-Semite who fantasized on Twitter about shooting Jews. The department did not explain why it took months to cancel the contract with activist Laith Marouf, now a resident of Beirut: “Has there been disciplinary action for any staff over what happened here?”
Tips from informants led auditors to recover more than $26 million in penalties and incorrect payments under the costliest pandemic relief program, records show. Tipsters led the Canada Revenue Agency to conduct hundreds of audits under the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy: “How many did the Agency investigate?”
Federal departments have spent at least $50.6 million on hotel bookings for illegal border crossers and lawful refugee applicants since 2015, piecemeal figures show. No department has attempted a complete costing of illegal immigration since the Budget Office put expenses at a billion: “How many hotels?”
Cabinet has replaced its chief pandemic manager for the fourth time in 28 months. Heather Jeffrey, a career civil servant, was named $274,000-a year president of the Public Health Agency. The last three presidents abruptly resigned without completing their contracts: “Was there anyone who faced any discipline at all?”
Trade Minister Mary Ng will not repay the cost of contracts improperly awarded to a personal friend and CBC pundit. The payments for media coaching were the equivalent of more than $2,800 an hour: “Do you think taxpayers should be reimbursed?”
More than a quarter of young children eligible for Covid shots went unvaccinated over parental worries, data show. Mothers and fathers were concerned vaccines had unknown side effects, said the Public Health Agency: ‘They worried not enough research on the vaccine has been done in children.’
A Calgary trucker arrested as co-organizer of the Freedom Convoy has lost a bid to move his trial out of Ottawa on claims of jury bias. However Ontario Superior Court agreed residents, workers and commuters who witnessed the Parliament Hill protest are disqualified from sitting in judgment of James Bauder: “There may be a legitimate concern about securing an unbiased jury.”
A Russian-owned tractor factory has won a Tax Court claim for a six-figure federal tax credit. Buhler Versatile of Winnipeg avoided blacklisting under cabinet’s Russian sanctions: “We are very aware of Russian interests in Canada.”
In the Patent Office,
young Einstein gets bored.
His job repetitive.
His mind seeks intellectual stimuli.
He finds inspiration
in the nearby clock tower.
Without leaving his desk
he conducts thought experiments
where space and time intertwine.
Relativity is born.
Today
I haven’t left my desk.
My job repetitive.
My mind needs stimuli.
I look at the clock,
wonder if Jennifer from Accounting
is free for lunch.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Years ago a friend of mine, a defence contractor in a spot of trouble, asked: “How can I manipulate media?” It was a blunt, honest question deserving a response in kind. “You can’t,” I replied, not from any claim to newsroom virtue but in observance of Lincoln’s Law that nobody can fool all the people all the time. If public opinion was that malleable, every movie would be a blockbuster, every book a bestseller. every political candidate a winner. Focus group failure speaks for itself.
Yet the myth persists. The lure of manipulation as an expedient problem-solver is irresistible. As every gambler has a “system” so every bureaucracy has a “media strategy.” The practitioners are known as comms guys, communication directors.
Professor Alex Marland of Memorial University is a former comms guy. Brand Command is a compilation of conventional wisdom unexpected in what purports to be a scholarly work. Here are comms guys’ essential themes.
First, digital media are now so lightning-fast it almost defies human comprehension. “There are fewer gatekeepers, less verification of claims, more gossip, more noise and less time to think,” writes Marland. He cites the “turbulence brought by social media” and “cacophony of urgent demands.”
The same could be said of the underwater cable introduced in 1858, the launch of commercial radio (1920). first teletype (1927), the first affordable fax machine (1980). In the 1870s results of the Derby were telegraphed from London to Calcutta in 12 minutes flat. Media have sped along at an industrial pace ever since.
Brand Command further asserts corporate media are all-powerful. “Television still dominates Canadians’ primary source of news and information,” Marland writes. He quotes a fellow comms guy, “You used to be able to wait for a news story to develop. Now it’s not even a matter of it happens and then you respond.” A CBC executive says, “Everything’s changed because of the internet, the timing of things; news come out 24/7.”
In fact the audience for CBC-TV’s The National has fallen 50 percent in a generation. The network’s flagship all-news cable channel draws spot ratings of 85,000, a third the listeners of the AM radio station in my hometown.
Confronted by the Kung Fu spectre of rapid electronic media, Marland concludes politicians and comms guys are able to manipulate messages and public opinion itself. “Branded communications save time for both the sender and the receiver by simplifying information for a disparate audience,” Marland writes. “Complex topics are distilled into messaged themes”; “However, branding threatens idealized notions of democratic government and party politics. It harmonizes and dumbs down. It requires strict message control and image management. Above all, public sector branding contributes to the centralization of decision making within the prime minister’s inner circle.”
This was a timely thesis in 1953 when Liberal managers transformed Louis St. Laurent from a dour corporate lawyer into a silver-haired grandfather. Staffers even had St. Laurent pose on a swing with a toddler. The strategy didn’t save St. Laurent in a1957 election. Easy come, easy go. In 1965 “branders” told Lester Pearson to lose his trademark bowtie after focus group testing suggested it made the Prime Minister appear effete.
Still Brand Command stands fast. Readers are told media manipulation is hip, now, happening. Marland has a breezy style uncluttered by contradictory research. An example: “Containment of off-message remarks in Canadian politics is now an art form,” he writes, citing a 2014 statement by an MP that legislators should use miniature video cameras to “prevent besmirchment”: “Apparently the MP was so worked up into a state of paranoia about inopportune encounters destabilizing his personal brand and the party’s brand that his anxiety and poor judgment did just that,” Brand Command states. The incident raised questions “about the state of Canadian democracy in the digital age.”
This is demonstrably misleading. I knew the MP in question, libertarian Peter Goldring. In 2011 he was falsely charged by an Edmonton constable with impaired driving. Goldring suffered public embarrassment and expulsion from the Conservative caucus till his acquittal in 2013. Goldring liked mini-cams because he didn’t trust Edmonton police. The omission of these facts by Professor Marland is striking.
By Tom Korski
Brand Command: Canadian Politics and Democracy in the Age of Message Control, by Alex Marland; University of British Columbia Press; 528 pages; ISBN 9780-7748-32038; $39.95
The RCMP yesterday said it did not conduct any criminal investigation of alleged Chinese interference in the 2019 federal election. Members of the House affairs committee said the testimony was not reassuring amid repeated claims of illegality: “I am very, very frustrated right now with the lack of information.”
Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan yesterday said Canada needs more oil and gas workers, not fewer, and cursed cabinet’s “just transition” climate retraining program. “I can’t stand the phrase ‘just transition,’” said O’Regan: “We asked workers in Saskatchewan and Alberta to figure out how to get oil out of sand and by God they did it.”
