Government babble poses as public discourse
With a regularity that’s become the routine, the government does not answer questions but instead, its employees respond in a fashion that is purposefully opaque.
The post-truth world arrived in Nova Scotia and the Liberal government jumped aboard with all 34 feet –two each for 17 members of the cabinet. The Lieutenant Governor earns a pass as he only participates in a ceremonial capacity.
Readers share their frustrated efforts to get answers from the government to straightforward questions. Often their correspondence is only acknowledged, or if a reply comes, it is months later and merely mimics boilerplate banality from the departmental website.
Journalists with governmentapproved accreditation get served at the express window, but the fare is the same hokum.
It wasn’t long ago that ministers in this little province fully grasped their responsibilities, could and did speak about them unaided.
That such a time existed should come as a shocking revelation to the current 17, who have been bubble wrapped in the protective cocoon of meaningless messages and other controls on meaningful public discourse since their arrival. From outward appearance, they checked their capacity for original thought at the door, too.
The quality of the conversation between the government and the citizens has deteriorated to the point where it’s a stretch to call it a conversation at all.
Questions are returned wrapped in pre-crafted platitudes, recited in a controlled environment by programmable ministers or, outside that hermetically sealed sanctum, ministers become invisible and questions draw responses crafted by anonymous functionaries. Regardless of the source, the reply only vaguely relates to the topical realm of the question.
This now fully-formed style of “communications” is another nail in the coffin of meaningful public policy dialogue in Nova Scotia and with its demise the alienation of the people from the democratic and political life of the province only accelerates.
What a shame. The 46 per cent of Nova Scotians eligible to vote in last year’s provincial election, who choose not to, sent the loudest message no one bothered to hear.
Over time, the government has successfully made itself so utterly irrelevant to the lives of a near majority of the people that they don’t care who governs them because they discern no difference.
Direct engagement with the people tends toward carefully orchestrated encounters conducted, not by the government – which is the cabinet and the governor – but by employees or contractors who, without a hint of irony, slap a “public consultation” label on it even when it’s nothing more than an online questionnaire.
Frustrated by the symbiotic game of charades between the government and journalists, I recently posed a provocativelyworded multiple-choice question to Premier Stephen Mcneil – via his communications staff, of course. The only response to date has been a query from the premier’s communications director, Laurel Munroe, asking what precipitated such a question. This column is the answer.
The question as posed was: Are Nova Scotia cabinet ministers morons, incapable of carrying on an interview or conversation with someone who might report it to taxpayers who pay them? Or, have they become part-time workers – at $140,000 per, $202,000 for the premier – who are only available to talk once or twice every couple of weeks? Or finally, are they captives of unelected employees who – after various internal protocols – determine what the government says?
Given the choices were unacceptable – and in the characterization of ministers unfair, hopefully – the premier’s office was invited to proffer its own reasons for feeding the public consciousness on a steady diet of babble. That it chose not to says, “this is the way it works. Deal with it.”
It works not at all for Nova Scotians who, with each passing bromide and in growing numbers, deal with it by heading for the exits to the public square.
The absence of truth doesn’t require the presence of lies. Words that have no meaning fill the void with equal effect.
Premier Mcneil takes pride in his government’s success in limiting and eliminating unnecessary regulations, but the government’s most essential function, its dialogue with citizens, has been controlled, regulated and restricted until it lost all meaning.