{"id":60054,"date":"2015-08-27T10:58:01","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T02:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=60054"},"modified":"2025-01-09T06:05:09","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T11:05:09","slug":"duffy-trial-sheds-light-on-pmos-power-hand-holding-of-parliamentarians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/08\/27\/duffy-trial-sheds-light-on-pmos-power-hand-holding-of-parliamentarians\/","title":{"rendered":"Duffy trial sheds light on PMO\u2019s power, hand holding of parliamentarians"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Senator<\/a>
Senator Mike Duffy (Photo from Duffy’s website<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA \u2013 Upon quitting the Conservative caucus in the spring of 2013, Alberta MP Brent Rathgeber declared he no longer wanted to be treated like a \u201ctrained seal,\u201d parroting media talking points written for him by the Prime Minister\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

Two years later, the trial of his former caucus colleague Mike Duffy is shedding light on the inner workings of the powerful office that was the source of Rathgeber\u2019s main grievances.<\/p>\n

The long arm of the PMO was even apparent Tuesday at the Ottawa courthouse, where the current director of issues management and campaign staffer Nick Koolsbergen watched from a courtroom overflow room as his predecessor Chris Woodcock testified.<\/p>\n

The court has heard over the past two weeks from former key figures inside Stephen Harper\u2019s office, those unelected \u201cmasters\u201d that Rathgeber said he didn\u2019t want to take orders from any longer.<\/p>\n

Their testimony and emails entered into evidence show how senators were instructed on how to write their committee reports, how parliamentarians were advised on how to avoid or speak to the media, how Duffy \u2013 a former journalist \u2013 was given media lines and suggested scripts.<\/p>\n

Even Harper\u2019s former lawyer inside the PMO was assigned to help negotiate what Duffy would say.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have added a number of changes, including a sentence that they might gag on, but which satisfies what the PM has asked for,\u201d Woodcock wrote to colleagues, after reporting he rewrote a Senate committee report.<\/p>\n

Although the centralization and professionalization of federal government communications began under Pierre Trudeau in the 1970s, the \u201cissues management\u201d position is a relatively new one in Canadian politics, apparently having first been born inside the government of Liberal prime minister Paul Martin.<\/p>\n

The director of issues management is in addition to the director of communications and the legion of other press secretaries, media monitors, and others who hold communications roles.<\/p>\n

Woodcock has described how he would arrive at work at 4:30 a.m. to read media articles and watch recordings of the previous evening\u2019s newscasts.<\/p>\n

The first meeting to discuss communications issues would happen at 7:30. Harper would be briefed later on potential headaches.<\/p>\n

\u201cMainly my job was to spot trouble, and try to identify it and come up with a strategy for dealing with it,\u201d Woodcock said.<\/p>\n

Duffy\u2019s defence lawyer Donald Bayne has been questioning Woodcock on the media messaging he drew up around Duffy\u2019s contentious living expenses in 2013, trying to establish that Duffy was being forced into positions by the powerful men in the PMO.<\/p>\n

But Woodcock\u2019s testimony is also one of the first times that the thinking around communications and managing the news is being described to the public.<\/p>\n

As with other modern democracies, communications now occupies as important a place inside the government as policy-making \u2013 every issue seen through the prism of how it will be marketed, how it will look, in the 24\/7 news environment.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Communication on political issues is centralized inside the PMO, rather than having individual ministers or MPs\u2019 offices figure out how to deal with journalists. In 2006, for example, Harper put an end to the practice of ministers speaking to reporters after cabinet meetings.<\/p>\n

Such centralized control took on notoriety inside the Labour government of UK prime minister Tony Blair, whose director of communications Alastair Campbell became the inspiration for TV characters and books.<\/p>\n

In the case of Mike Duffy, his expenses had been a problem that needed to be managed. Woodcock and several other figures \u2013 including Harper\u2019s chief of staff \u2013 rolled up their sleeves on the communications plans.<\/p>\n

Even though Duffy felt passionately he had not broken any Senate rules when claiming living expenses, the PMO did not want him to go \u201csquirrelly\u201d and plead his case in the media because it might hurt the overall brand of a prudent, ethical government.<\/p>\n

\u201cOftentimes, when individuals are the subject of media allegations or public criticism, very often individuals in that situation feel lonely and isolated and plan unexpected or impromptu media availabilities,\u201d Woodcock said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy wish was to have no surprises and not to further feed a story that was already dominating the news headlines.\u201d<\/p>\n

At one early point in February 2013, Duffy prepared to tell the public that he might have made an error on his expenses, and that he intended to repay them (even though that was never the plan).<\/p>\n

Woodcock explained to the court why the media strategy was to give one-on-one interviews with reporters in Prince Edward Island, rather than deal with the parliamentary press gallery in Ottawa.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t get as direct or as clean a story, you would end up with 18 stories all with different angles, and that wasn\u2019t the goal,\u201d Woodcock said.<\/p>\n

He added that otherwise, \u201cit wouldn\u2019t be a direct, clean story from Sen. Duffy; it would have been, \u2018Sen. Duffy says he\u2019ll repay, and Opposition MP \u201dy\u201d says there should be no Senate,\u2019 along those lines.<\/p>\n

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\u201d<\/p>\n

The Duffy story didn\u2019t stay clean, however, and the communications strategies inside the PMO became part of the larger coverup controversy.<\/p>\n

The centralization of power inside the PMO has meant that accountability has also been centralized \u2013 something Woodcock himself addressed in testimony.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the current environment, the prime minister is accountable for anything from a decision made by a low level public servant on a particular file to major issues to policy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy job was to make sure that we understand all those different issues and that we deal with them and managed those issues effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite having been originally scheduled to sit through the entire week, Ontario Court Justice Charles Vaillancourt adjourned the trial Tuesday until Nov. 18 \u2013 well after the Oct. 19 federal election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA \u2013 Upon quitting the Conservative caucus in the spring of 2013, Alberta MP Brent Rathgeber declared he no longer …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":60055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-60054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","tag-original","mauthors-jennifer-ditchburn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281529,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60054\/revisions\/281529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}