The PMO has an in-house media team that creates videos of the Prime Minister’s activities as a way of providing the government’s story to the public directly. Stephen Harper’s recent tour of Iraq and Kuwait presented an opportunity to reinforce the government’s efforts to portray itself as tough on terrorism and strong on security and defence. As a result, the PMO wasted no time in releasing promotional videos of the Prime Minister’s tour.
In their haste to get their version of the story out, however, the PMO provided videos that showed the faces of members of the Canadian Armed Forces, leaving them vulnerable to attacks by extremists. Their first response was to claim that Military had reviewed the videos and cleared them for release. This was not the case, however, and when the Military did review the videos after their release, it concluded that they were a risk to the soldiers involved. The PMO belatedly admitted that the videos constituted a security breach and apologized for the incident.
Quite apart from the potential risk to our soldiers as a result of this particular incident, and the initial misleading response from the PMO, the question that needs to be asked is why Canadian taxpayers are paying for a personal media service devoted to lauding the Prime Minister’s activities and achievements. If the Prime Minister and Conservative Party wish to have their own media team, they should pay for it, not the taxpayers.
#2. The Selective Senate Audit Report
The never-ending Senate saga that is the Mike Duffy trial yielded another troubling example of the activities of the PMO. Court documents indicate that PMO staff met with two Conservative Senators from the three member audit committee that was preparing a report on the Senate’s audit of Duffy’s expenses. These two Senators subsequently asked the Clerk of the Senate to remove from the report some of the allegations of wrongdoing involving Duffy. These changes were apparently made without notifying the third member of the committee (a Liberal).
The nakedly partisan behaviour of the two Conservative Senators involved is very disappointing. But even more disturbing is the spectre of staff in the PMO dictating changes in a Senate audit report as a way of minimizing possible fallout from the spending habits of Conservative Senator Mike Duffy. As in the previous example, we have taxpayer-funded staff in the PMO behaving inappropriately, in this case directing what can only be seen as a cover-up.
Who will bell the PMO cat?
Any effort to restore parliamentary democracy in Canada will need to include reining in the PMO. The partisan staff in this office exercise far too much power. One can only hope that their recent transgressions will trigger a public outcry and a demand that their activities be curtailed.