Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

George Orwell, in 1984, has his dystopia, the story’s ruling elite, reducing the dictionary word count every year in order to reduce the means of expression and qualification – thinking itself. You take away language and you take away meaning and critical thinking; without language there is no soul, no opposition, and no humanity — but boy, if you are government, do you get great poll numbers!

Today, we awake to Globe reporter Steven Chase who reveals that the NDP, through freedom of information act access, have revealed that the Department of National Defense sets quotas for how many times a year a military think tank it subsidizes must appear in the news media. The verb “appear” really means engaging in state sponsored propaganda.

The “Conference of Defense Associations” is one such organization. The March 2007 government contract sets out “13 expected results” including:
Attain the publication of a minimum of 15 opinion pieces (including op-eds and letters to the editor in national or regional publications (including programs like mine). Attain a minimum of 29 media references to the CDA by national or regional journalists and reporters – including talk radio. This includes taping and making transcripts of my program.

I have had, in the past, the uniquely eerie experience of encountering a senior military member who told me that he never has a chance to listen to my show very often but he enjoys reading the transcripts! (We never provide transcripts.)

Media are also monitored by government organizations for their approach and political proclivities.

Even the Executive Director of the CDA, Alain Pellerin, is embarrassed by the media quotas revealed today and thinks they are a ridiculous measuring stick. The reason: they were found out.

The quotas were put in place in 2002 by a consulting firm because the government wanted, and the Defense department wanted, more measurable results. By results they meant better propaganda. Make no mistake about it — and it doesn’t matter if the Liberals or the Conservatives are in power because they both play the same game. The difference this time is that the government is actively trying to sell the Afghan war, and lives are on the line.

Meantime, Prime Ministerial powers, in both Canada and the U.K., are getting stronger and have already eclipsed, in relative terms, the power of the U.S. Presidency.

Consolidation of power is a reaction to both increased media scrutiny and an enlarged
Bureaucratic class that slows things down by the nature of its glacial ponderousness and red-tape loving ways (you know the kind of people in the office who love “meetings.”)

Consolidating power allows things to get done faster, but it also means an erosion of the democratic process.

Donald Savoie is worried about this; despite the fact he thinks things are bureaucratically top-heavy. He currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at l’Universite de Moncton. He has been advisor to many Prime Ministers, and talked to me about them, most notably, for me, Pierre Elliot Trudeau (“He was painfully shy, but if you bit him he would bite back”).

Professor Savoie was speaking to me today about his new book Court Government and the Collapse of Accountability (in Canada and the United Kingdom). By “Court Government”, he means a King’s Court.

Prime Ministers these days, whether a Minority Government or not, are like Kings.

Donald Savoie mentioned to me that when in Charlottetown recently, Prime Minister Harper was asked about increased powers and government accountability and transparency and increased powers within his office, all things he complained about as opposition leader. In essence, what he said was that when in opposition you see things one way, and when you are inside of government other things become clear.

What really becomes clear is power: its accretion, assemblage, and execution.

The only complaint is when you don’t have enough.