Message control a force too powerful to resist

Remember “Canada’s New Government”?

I do, mostly because I was responsible for stuffing the phrase into every message promoted by the first minority Harper government.

You remember the “Harper Government,” don’t you? 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.

Ah, “Canada’s Economic Action Plan.” Now there’s a saying that was hammered into skulls as billions of infrastructure dollars were spent.

The absence of 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 our distracted times.

To our government, this kind of “message discipline” was critical.

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.

“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.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Trudeau promised an untethered, free- wheeling, open and transparent government. Then reality happened.

There’s a reason free- wheeling governments last roamed in the good old days of smoky back rooms and boozy press clubs; they’re not built for speed, nor meant to be defended from all angles at all times.

The pace and transparency of the internet puckers most openings. Things move too fast to play by the old, back- slapping 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 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. How can Policy X compare with the fact that Charlie Rose is a sex pest?

And so a slogan is crafted, tested and repeated, ad infinitum. 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 is pumped through the government and party social media channels. And that payoff is amplified by the millions when the prime minister is a social media supernova.

So when you wonder what the Liberals are up to, as many did last week following their ridiculous selfreport 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 wasn’t to convince neutral observers, 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, their voices are easily drowned out by an 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 Londonbased communications consultant and ex- director of communications to former prime minister Stephen Harper.