Sorry we don't speak Liberal

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon is due to announce "an important initiative to support the language industry in Canada" tomorow, across the river in Gatineau Quebec.

Presumably, judging from this article in Embassy magazine,  Mr Cannon won't be introducing anything to support the *Liberal* language industry.

DFAIT insiders tell Embassy that since the Conservative government took power in 2006, political staffers have directed rank and file Foreign Affairs bureaucrats to stop using policy language created by the former Liberal government.

"There are phrases you are not supposed to use," said one Canadian diplomat, on condition of anonymity. "Anything that smacks of the previous government is totally verboten.

"There is this tendency, almost like a knee-jerk reaction, to discount or ignore or change whatever it is the Liberals did and let's put a new Conservative face on it," he added. "There's a whole range of words and expressions that are being depopulated out of the documents, and are replaced with ones that are more to the [Conservatives'] liking."

Chief among the forbidden phrases, multiple DFAIT insiders have told Embassy, are "human security," "public diplomacy" and "good governance." Preferred key words include "human rights," the "rule of law," and "democracy" or "democratic development."

Comments

[woods]

I don't think "good governance" is anti-Conservative, but it does seem to be anti- Harper's brand of Conservative. If one does not believe in the role of government, then one definitely does not want to provide good governance since it would work against convincing people government is bad.