“French release harperized and good to go.” One comment from a public employee after orders were handed down to the formerly impartial federal public service by the Privy Council Office. Read those orders and weep:
“The directive we have from the (director general’s office) is that if PCO adds the Harper Government reference, then we leave it in,” says an e-mail to communications officials at Industry, dated Oct. 5, 2010. “Please proceed with this approach. Sorry – it is what PCO has instructed.”
I recall some readers taking me mildly to task for my “Harper Government™” references in past. Inner-circle Harper operatives, for their part, have insisted that this is all the stuff of fiction, and, despite the new revelations, continue to do so:
When the change in nomenclature was revealed last March, Mr. Harper’s chief spokesman at the time, Dimitri Soudas, wrote to Canadian newspapers asserting “no directive” went out to civil servants. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he declared.
Mr. Soudas, who has since left the PMO to become executive director of communications for the Canadian Olympic Association, also called the revelations by The Canadian Press the stuff of “black helicopters and conspiracy theories.”
And:
Stockwell Day, then the Treasury Board president, told the House of Commons “there has been no change of policy or practice.”
And:
“Dimitri’s comments from March stand,” Andrew MacDougall, Harper’s associate director of communications, said late Monday.
All serviceable rogues, unflinching in their loyalty to Canada’s Maximum Leader, and all caught lying through their teeth. Whoops. How soon before Access to Information is abolished by our one-man government?
[H/t jimbobby]