Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

The Internet!

by Aaron Wherry on Thursday, March 11, 2010 10:38am - 13 Comments

While we await the long overdue day when “politician engages with magic computer thingy” isn’t a particularly novel idea, there is news this morning that the Prime Minister will stream his reply to the Throne Speech—due in about 10 minutes—on YouTube, then invite you to send along your questions. All of which will apparently play out here.

Behold, the future.

Tags: democracy, internet, Ottawa, Speech from the Throne, Stephen Harper, Throne Speech, youtube

More by Aaron Wherry

http://intensedebate.com/people/LynnTO LynnTO

Nice try, mister PM. However, asking people to have their questions submitted by two days ago (so you can pre-script your responses) and then have people vote on their favourites (so that you can take the softballs first, and possibly, only softballs) curries no favour with me.

Canadian

I'd also like to criticize the prime minister for cherry picking the easy questions he hasn't yet been asked!

knick

The stream of 'innovations' flowing from 'recalibration' boggle the mind!
http://intensedebate.com/people/Tceh Tceh

A question Harper will never answer:

Rather than lie, conceal and fabricate policy that hurts Canadian Investors why don't you come clean and show Canadians the numbers to back up your Income Trust Flip flop in 2006?

What you did in 2006 to Canadians: http://www.caiti.info/resources/fla_docs.pdf – 18 pages of blacked out documents

What you are attempting to do in 2010: Bury the Afghan-Rendition issue in blacked out documents
kcm

i have an old fashioned suggestion Mr H. Why not hold some town hall style meetings with some real people, and deal with it?
catherine

Harper's reply to the Throne Speech? Oh, the suspense! Will he support it or trash it? I guess we have to watch YouTube to find out.
Dee

I'll be impressed when Harper takes questions from Canadians in a free, open-ended townhall setting (video or live) with no editing or pre-selection of queries. This is just another stunt.
http://intensedebate.com/people/sourstud sourstud

This will make Canada's democracy stronger if he can keep this sort of thing up. Of course the mainstream media hates it, because they always hate it when a politician takes his message directly to the people, without being filtered by them first. The people slagging it are only ticked that Iggy didn't think of it first.

Dee

From the youtube page: "The Prime Minister will answer a selection of your top-voted questions in an exclusive YouTube interview next Tuesday March 16, 2010 at 7 p.m. ET."

So, who do most Canadians trust to do the filtering: the PMO or the media? I'm pretty sure a majority would pick the latter.

FVerhoeven

But I do think that sourstud is right: The people slagging it are only ticked that Iggy didn't think of it first.

Harper, bring your message to the people directly!

http://intensedebate.com/people/tobyornotoby tobyornotoby

I'd settle for actually answering a question in the House of Commons.

burlivespipe

Hah! Might as welll wish for a pony for christmas, too. But we'll have to settle for all-of-the-credit for sunshine and lollipops for Harper…