Ottawa Citizen

Trudeau’s Liberals master dark art of message control

- ANDREW MACDOUGALL

Remember “Canada’s New Government”?

I do, mostly because I was responsibl­e for stuffing the phrase into every “Message of the Day” promoted by the first minority Harper government.

You remember the “Harper Government,” don’t you? That famous, factual two-word descriptio­n that got up the nose of the fourth estate?

If you do, it’s because political staffers like me shoehorned it into every news release issued by the, um, Harper Government during its second term, especially as we delivered Canada’s economic action plan to combat the global recession.

Ah, “Canada’s Economic Action Plan.” Now there’s a saying that was hammered into skulls like nails into constructi­on sites as billions of infrastruc­ture dollars were spent across the country.

The absence of linguistic variety might not make the heart grow fonder, but it does make the head softer, to the point where it might retain a message in these, our distracted times.

To our government, this kind of “message discipline” was critical, especially when trying to push C/conservati­ve words through what we thoroughly believed was a skewed media filter.

Now Justin Trudeau might have promised a 180-degree turn from Stephen Harper on most things, but on message discipline the prime minister has chosen to rotate in full, to the point where Trudeau is more Harper than Harper.

“The middle class and those working hard to join it.” “When you have an economy that works for the middle class, you have a country that works for everyone.” These are the new catechisms spewing from the department­al presses. (Incidental­ly, by faithfully repeating these Liberal lines, the Department of Finance is more on-message than its embattled minister. #awkward)

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Trudeau promised an untethered, freewheeli­ng, open and transparen­t government. What happened? Reality, son. There’s a reason freewheeli­ng government­s last roamed in the good old days of smoky backrooms and boozy press clubs; they’re not built for speed, or meant to be defended from all angles at all times.

The radical pace and transparen­cy of the internet, or at least its constant threat, puckers most openings. Things move too fast now to play by the old, backslappi­ng rules. Every crumb of news is now reportable, or at least postable online. So flacks don’t explain, they spin.

On the hack end, the 24/7 churn of web-first journalism — and related Twittering — leaves little time to build strong relationsh­ips with sources inside or outside of the government.

Great journalism is still being done, but the deep cut often gets replaced by the handful of hotter takes required to feed the click beast.

This dynamic might sound like a winner for a government allergic to a grilling (as all government­s are), but the noisier, mile-wide inch-deep news environmen­t is also much harder for propagandi­sts (again, as all government­s are) to cut through. Especially when voters are themselves distracted by infinite content. How can Policy X compare with a viral video of people jumping over a puddle? Or the fact that Charlie Rose — Charlie Rose! — is a sex pest?

And so a slogan is crafted. And it is tested. And it is repeated, ad infinitum.

It gets plastered into every news release.

It gets spoken from every ministeria­l podium. It echoes through the House of Commons before it is dutifully repeated in scrums, even when it has absolutely nothing to with the issue at hand. Do it enough and you sap a journalist’s will to live. But that’s not the payoff. The real payoff comes when the slogan — and supporting imagery, shot at taxpayer expense — is pumped through the government and party social media channels (which, by the way, the party can use because the government graciously deems its photograph­ic content free for anyone to use). And that payoff is amplified by the millions, literally, when the prime minister is a social media supernova such as Justin Trudeau.

So when you wonder what the hell the Liberals are up to, as many did last week following their ridiculous self report card, think social. The Liberals needed some content to push and so they set the public service to work to create it.

The point of grading themselves on the mother of all curves wasn’t to convince neutral observers of Liberal achievemen­t, but to convince the online faithful that, despite the clattering they are taking in what’s left of the press (ahem, Morneau), everything is actually going pretty well.

And if a few wise old owls in the commentari­at ridicule it, as they dutifully did, their voices are easily drowned out by a willing online army of fanboys and girls who will push the algorithm the right way in everyone’s feeds.

It might not be “Canada’s New Government,” but it’s certainly a new way of doing government. Andrew MacDougall is a London-based communicat­ions consultant and ex-director of communicat­ions to former prime minister Stephen Harper.

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 ??  ?? Touting ‘Canada’s Economic Action Plan’ and referring to itself as ‘Canada’s New Government’ were among the go-to slogans of Stephen Harper’s Conservati­ves.
Touting ‘Canada’s Economic Action Plan’ and referring to itself as ‘Canada’s New Government’ were among the go-to slogans of Stephen Harper’s Conservati­ves.
 ?? RYAN REMIORZ/CP ?? Justin Trudeau’s government has learned the value of repeating short, simple phrases to embed them in public discourse.
RYAN REMIORZ/CP Justin Trudeau’s government has learned the value of repeating short, simple phrases to embed them in public discourse.

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