When an open government isn't actually that open
The departure of his finance minister is just the latest sign that Justin Trudeau isn't the prime minister he said he would be
There was a time earlier in my career when I was able to get federal Cabinet ministers on the phone quite easily.
It was sometime around the mid-aughts, and I was working at the National Post as what was then called the night news reporter. Newsrooms were wildly different then, even though it was not that long ago: they had many more people, for a start, and everything was organized around making late-night deadlines for the following morning’s paper.
The night reporter’s job was to either chase late-breaking news or try to fix stories that the editors decided needed fixing. Sometimes it was easier to just get the night reporter to make a call for a story that needed something added than to try to chase down the original reporter, who had already left for the day.
Which is how sometimes I would have to call Cabinet ministers. The federal government of the day was the Liberals, under Jean Chrétien and then Paul Martin. They had a media hotline — I’m pretty sure it was a government phone number, as opposed to one for the Liberal Party of Canada — and if you had a question about something you could call the hotline and a nice person would take your request. Then they would get the minister responsible for the file to call you.
It was a fine system. If the story was about, say, a diplomatic tiff with Denmark, then the foreign affairs minister might call you back. Or the parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs. Or maybe an MP with Danish relatives. Anyway, you get the point: media has question for government of Canada, government of Canada gets back to media before deadline to make sure there is some kind of official response in the story.
That was two decades ago, but it might as well have been a lifetime, given how much the relationship between the media and government has changed. Stephen Harper put an end to the practice of ministers and MPs speaking off script, partly because he didn’t trust them not to say something that would become a scandal, but also because that way the Prime Minister’s Office could control all messaging. That strategy also extended to the bureaucracy, which meant that even formerly routine questions to federal departments became torturous exercises in which political staff had to vet even the simplest answers. You might ask how many weather stations were operating in the Arctic, and have found a person who knew the exact number was six, but then had to wait while an official reply was crafted from someone with PMO oversight: “The Government of Canada is committed to robust weather surveillance in the Arctic and will continue to provide resources as required.” Then you’d have to argue with the comms staffer about why you couldn’t just say the answer was six. And if you wanted a word with someone more significant, like the minister in charge of the department? Forget about it. You might as well have just hit your desk with your head. Same result.
Why I am giving this history lesson? Because Justin Trudeau was supposed to end all that. He said he would open things up again and let departments do their jobs. Right around when he was elected, there was a hilariously awkward moment when he visited the Department of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa and was treated like a rock star. One story described him as being “joyously mobbed” by civil servants. There was some hand-wringing over whether this was proof of the bureaucracy’s obvious Liberal bias, but I suspected a lot of those people were just happy that they wouldn’t be so tightly controlled anymore.
The Trudeau government, it has turned out, has been as top-down as the one that preceded it. Media inquiries are all dealt with in a manner that would make Harper smile: questions are asked, a comms staffer requests they be sent by email, and then a reply is given, either right before deadline or just after it, which doesn’t actually answer any of the questions.
That control extends to much more significant matters, too. As became obvious when Chrystia Freeland stuck the shiv in Trudeau on Monday, the GST holiday and $250 cheques that were announced last month were very much a Trudeau joint, and not something the (former) finance minister agreed with. This was hardly the first time that Trudeau was accused of being controlling, but it was still striking coming from someone like Freeland, who was thought to be pretty influential in government herself. Turns out: nope.
The rest of my thoughts on that particular issue can be found here, in the Star.
Also in that very same paper, I made fun of Jagmeet Singh again. Grow a spine, man.
And now, the sports
In my last newsletter on Friday, I spent so many words making fun of polo that I didn’t include any blurbs about columns I had written for theScore. The post was already long enough,
And so, in case you were curious:
On the College Football Playoff, a thing that has made a lot of people frustrated. Once you get past all the arguing, though, the sport has been fundamentally changed.
On Bill Belichick and the University of North Carolina. I am skeptical. Also, that headline made me laugh.
And, on the Bills and Lions. This was, obviously, published before Buffalo’s great triumph on Sunday evening.