Justin Trudeau may have found a campaign direction that could help him seal the deal with enough voters to win power in next October’s federal election.
He has taken direct aim at the prime minister’s penchant for secrecy, the apparent muzzling of cabinet ministers, MPs and bureaucrats, and what Trudeau terms “message control.”
While partisan voices have railed against it for years, even people who otherwise have few issues with the Conservative government are not happy with the current flow of information – which seems to have a uniformly manufactured, stage-managed and manicured quality.
Other than taxpayer-paid image ads which sing the praises of “the Harper government,” actual information from MPs and civil servants is often sparse. And while some Conservative MPs have a reputation for being open and accessible to citizens and local media, many more do not.
Our own local representative, Russ Hiebert, has had little to say to local voters since announcing he would not seek re-election this year. His public comments have been largely confined other than defending his own controversial private members’ bill calling for full disclosure of unions’ financial dealings, celebrating emergency aid to refugees in Iraq, and championing the party line on income-splitting for tax purposes.
For many cabinet ministers in the Harper government a press conference on any topic is a rarity – the exception rather than the rule.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself is almost permanently unavailable to the media. He makes a few appearances, such as a recent year-end interview on CBC, but he never answers questions in an impromptu fashion.
When he appeared at a fundraiser in neighbouring Langley in the summer, he did not say one word to any media person, national, regional or local. Even supporters who wished to talk to him had to stand in a lengthy lineup.
Prime ministers don’t have to be your friends. But they do have to be accountable, and that includes saying something that isn’t scripted, at least once in a while.
Like Bard the Bowman in The Hobbit, Trudeau has taken aim at this weak spot in the dragon’s scales, and it may ultimately score enough votes for him to at least win a minority government.