Your PMO at work

In today's Star, you can read how the Prime Minister's Office  has been keeping busy, in part, during prorogation --  making statements or sending out emails that attempt to smear various people who get in the way of the government. In this case, it's TD Bank CEO Ed Clark. (** Point of clarification -- the email officially came from the Conservative Party, but it found its way to us, and a few others, from the PMO.**)

There is a quaint old notion that the Prime Minister's Office is supposed to govern for all Canadians, not just friends or mouthpieces for the partisan line. But now we have Conservative attack lines being sent out by the Prime Minister's communications team. Yesterday, for instance, Dimitri Soudas sent out an email blaming the NDP's Libby Davies for a protest that dogged the PM in Vancouver -- the email was a strange mix of attempted reportage and drive-by smear. Here it is, in its entirety (unedited, as well):

 

- Inside the chinese cultural centre are 250 chinese canadians who have gathered for a dress rehearsal of their chinese new year parade.

- At approx 125pm, about 200 protestors descended on the cultural centre and swarmed the building, will bullhorns, plackards and masking tape.

- They proceeded to block access to and from the chinese cultural centre, then began taping all the doors shut 
- Another 50-75 protestors arrived and began chanting and cursing. Protestors totalling close to 300. 
- Of the 250 chinese canadians, 50 are uniformed veterans, 50 are young children who have come to showcase their culture to the pm and media

in the horrible event of fire of emergency, all those goodwilled people would be prevented from exit

Is libby davie proud of this?

*** Update: I missed this last night, but here's Soudas and Davies, head-to-head on CBC's Power and Politics. http://www.cbc.ca/politics/insidepolitics/2010/02/in-the-ring-pmo-vs-ndp.html  ****

Soudas has also been put forward in recent weeks to explain the prorogation of Parliament and why the government isn't going to go along with a Supreme Court of Canada ruling on Omar Khadr. Those are official, PMO functions, requiring some dignified detachment from partisanship -- his salary is paid by all Canadians, not Conservatives.  

 Yet Soudas has  also been busy  casting aspersions on  people who've appeared at the Liberal roundtables the past few weeks and, let's not forget, he's also the person who twice made himself infamous on the international stage last year with misguided attacks on Harper's perceived opponents.  For those who have forgotten, see here and here. Should the Canadian taxpayers be financing these duties, or the Conservative Party of Canada?  You be the judge. 

Comments

[MyThought]

Did anyone talk to the folks inside the building? Did they even know what was going on?

I read that the chains were "plastic" and by the look of the photos Kady O'Malley has - the tape was very strong tape.

If all Harper and his gang have to fight with is smears, there's definately something wrong.

Does Canada really want to go to the American way of demeaning and smearing everyone?

[MyThought]

Whoops, I meant to say the "tape WASN'T very strong"...sorry

[wascally wabbit]

I only have two things to say here Susan.
1) I have known a number of journalists / communications specialists - and they all have one thing in common. They are required to report what their "client" wishes them to report. Therefore, one cannot hold Mr. Soudas responsible for the content of the message - he is responsible only for its form. Correct?
2) Haven't said that, I find that Mr. Soudas has been verging on incompetence more or less since he took over as chief thrower of barn yard byproduct on behalf of the Prime Minister - and it would probably be in the PMO's short term interest to replace him - if they can find anyone else with the appropriate lack of integrity and facility to mangle the facts and spit them out in the form of propaganda!

[Tom Stewart]

This will lead us down the slippery slope that plagues American politics where we take the smallest item, spin it to make others look bad and the facts become irrelevent.

I am also concerned with the grammar and what appears to be a complete failure to use one of Canada's two offical languages in this memo from the PMO.

[True Canadian]

I say to Mr Soudas keep it up. Soon there won't be anyone in Canada they haven't slaged. It will be pretty hard to get a majority many just about everyone hates your guts. I note that the PMO thinks the civil service, judges, business leaders and opposition parties are against him. Someone who has thoughts of grandeur and percsecution are defined in the dictionary as having paranoia.

[Anonymous]

Soudas, like Polievre, is always put up because (a) no self-respecting Cabinet minister will do it; (b) the party probably wants no part of it; and (c) they are dispensable, much like toilet paper or diapers.

The face may be that of Soudas, but the voice is Harper's. There's no point getting mad at the bulldog. He's just doing his master's bidding.

[Matthew]

Dimitri has reached that point within the Conservative Party where the reaction to him is very polarized. They either love him or hate him. A lot of the latter comes from Caucus, which may be displaced anger, fairly or unfairly targeted at Dimitri rather than his boss. At some point, when a staffer continually becomes the story they are a liability. If Dimitri was truly loyal to Stephen Harper he would realize his best-before date has passed, and it's time to move on to the private sector in Montreal while he still can (unlike his former boss Sandra Buckler, who had to return to the demotion of working for a cabinet minister).

[Michelle]

Clearly Mr. Soudas does not understand that as a staffer he is not meant to be the story. His confrontation with MP Libby Davies yesterday was a disgusting display of immature behavior.

As a staffer to the Prime Minister, what makes him think it is appropriate to be screaming at an elected official on a nationally televised program?

While he may not respect her views, he should be respecting the office she holds. When you combine this with his past actions, it is time for Mr. Soudas to be leaving the Prime Minister's office.

[Sarann]

Protest should no longer be allowed according to the conservatives. It is too partisan. When will voting become something that will not be allowed for opponents of the conservatives because it is too partisan. Soudas is scary.

[Sarann]

One more thing:

Protesters expected at the Olympics - 1400
Terrorist activity expected - none
Police, soldiers and private security people present - 16,000
Cost for security measures - $900,000,000
And the conservatives feel threatened and accuse Libby Davies and 200 people of being a danger to anyone.?

I wonder if there will be an accounting of the money on security spent after it is all over.

[ASME]

"Soudas has also been put forward in recent weeks to explain the prorogation of Parliament and why the government isn't going to go along with a Supreme Court of Canada ruling on Omar Khadr."

I suggest Susan and for that matter anyone in Canada who seem to be concerned about Omar Khadr, they read about the Khadr family in MacLeans Feb.15.10. This family is unsavoury as they can get. Mr. Chretien even went so far as to tell one of Omar's brother's a weapons purchaser for al-Qaeda that "I was once the son of a farmer, and I became Prime Minister. Maybe one day you will become one". This let ito the country long before Harper was on the scene. Canadians need to forget the Americans apprehended Omar for that is what this objection is all about and not the safety of Canadians from people like the Khadr family.

[Jim M]

I like Evan Solomon because he is one of those people who can remain calm while talking with someone like Dimitri Soudas. Calling the peaceful demonstration that I saw the same footage of as Soudas "a day of almost terror," as Soudas did, is the kind of titanically hypocritical analogy that makes my blood boil, especially coming from a Party that believes in State Terrorism on the scale that I believe his does. How does Evan stay calm? That is a bigger mystery to me than why Dimitri Soudas is a shill for the American Military Industrial Complex, which is a conclusion that I reach all by myself, listening only to him. I liked the footage of calm RCMP officers standing around just in case a war grew out of peace, which they did not look like they were expecting to start at any moment. This must be Canada because only Dimitri Soudas spoiled the scenery today of Libby Davies, the group of peaceful demonstrators, the RCMP, and Evan Solomon.

[ConEd]

unsavoury or not, don't most people have access to a fair trial?

[Frank Docherty]

Your PMO at work: continued: http://fairwhistleblower.ca/content/pattern-delay-ottawas-kafkaesque-information-denial... The only thing "getting in the way of government" is truth and justice. The Freedom of Information Act is the only vehicle to access that truth, and the government is the only entity that seems to be able to derail that vehicle???