Politicians are always putting out press releases for one thing or another. Whether to congratulate little Johnny Asshat on finishing fourteenth out of fifteen on some national competition, or to announce government policy, or to apologize for diddling a prostitute, the PR people for politicians are busy all the time.
When you slap a “Government of Canada” logo in the header, though, all that partisan nonsense is supposed to stop. It’s longstanding policy that government releases deal solely with policy, not with politics. That is to say, because we end up paying the money to wire services for press releases through tax revenue, we expect press releases issued by government to be of importance to Canadian people, to contain actual substance, and to be free of partisan bickering.
Why the lesson, you ask? Well, it seems the Conservative government is having some problems with this notion. Twice last week, the Conservatives issues press releases attacking the Liberals for something or other, and both releases were under the Government header. Gail Shea, token Easterner in cabinet Minister for Fisheries and Oceans, released a press release attacking a “hidden Liberal agenda” in the case of Liberal Senator Mac Harb, who introduced a bill in the Senate this week seeking to close the Atlantic Seal Hunt. What’s notable in this, of course, is that the bill failed to find a seconder, which is unbelievably rare in a system where Senators will often second a bill they may even disagree with out of professional courtesy. Not only is ending the Seal Hunt not Liberal Party policy, it shows that opposition to the hunt is muted within caucus.
The other press release concerns the same subject, this time made by former Danny whipping boy and triumphant loser-cum-Senator. What’s worse with Manning is that he doesn’t even have a tenuous connection to the DFO, yet his release was still on departmental letterhead.
The stupid, it hurts.
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