Foreign Affairs Follies

No sooner than Harper loses his nigh-incompetent Foreign Affairs minister, then Harper himself starts messing up the portfolio. It would seem that the Harper government is so desperate to put a positive spin on the Afghanistan mission that they'll they'll tell the media about agreements that don't exist only to retract the statements when in flight, reducing the ability of reporters to change their stories before publication. Now I'm sure the Tory apologists out there will simply state a mistake was made, but one has to wonder about the timing of the mistake, not to mention that most PMO staffers don't go to the bathroom without prior approval from Harper himself. It all seems that the "mistake" was planned so that the headlines back home would read "Harper gets troop deal" as opposed to nothing at all.

Further, if the reporters in the field hadn't been able to get in touch with their editors, any retraction would of course be printed way back in section B for print media, and the story would have simply been dropped for the electronic media. As it was, the PMO allowed the reporters to call home and stop the presses, as it were. Now at this point it does look like a mistake was made, but where was that mistake? Was it the initial press release or was it a mistake in timing for allowing the reporters to use the phone on the government aircraft? If the former, it's an indication of just how incompetent the Harper government is, and that this incompetence goes all the way to the top. Nothing happens in the Harper government without Harper's personal approval, or at the least that's the impression we get from his micro-managerial style. This slip shows just how incompetent Harper himself is in the foreign affairs portfolio so it's no wonder he hasn't picked strong people to be the minister. From this angle, the Harper government is going to destroy 60 years of Canadian diplomacy and reputation in the world through shear inability.

If the latter, bad timing on the part of the PMO staff, not only is it incompetence, but manipulation for cheap political points back home at the expense of our foreign relations. It's not hard to imagine that the plan was something like this: Tell the press what we want them to hear, that the great statesman Stephen Harper (sic) has triumphantly found additional troops to help ours out in Afghanistan, even though this is not true. Herd the press onto a government aircraft and get them airborne before they find out we're lying. Wait a period of time so that the initial reports about Harper's "triumph" hit the media then go "oops, we made a mistake, there is no triumph" and then graciously allow the reporters to call in and have retractions printed on the back pages of the next day's paper. A simple enough plan, if you get the timing of the retraction right. It's just the sort of manipulative plan Harper's capable of and probably would have worked if they didn't tell the media too quickly about the "error".

Now basically we have our government demonstrating through their actions that they are either a) buffoons or b) sinister buffoons. Either way our government are showing the world that Canada is being run by a bunch of buffoons. The second case is a way more frightful scenario as it shows that Harper and his cronies would do anything to stay in power, but either case is not good for Canada. My only hope is that other Canadians are starting to see the clowns that are the Harper Tories for what they are: a bunch of power hungry zombies that will do anything to get and keep power, and then use that power to help their friends at the expense of the rest of the country. Hopefully that will sink into the electorate and someone else, anyone else, will be the government at the conclusion of the next election, if we have one.