Beyond The Commons

 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

'Strategic brand building'

by Aaron Wherry on Thursday, January 6, 2011 9:30am - 17 Comments

The Canadian Press details the struggle to sell the stimulus.

The Economic Action Plan website, touting the Conservative’s big-spending budget of January 2009, was criticized from the outset for its highly partisan appearance. Despite earlier vehement denials by the Prime Minister’s Office, the nature of the exercise was explained this week as “strategic brand building” by Mr. Harper’s freshly departed former chief of staff …

Documents obtained under Access to Information show the Privy Council Office – the bureaucratic arm that serves the Prime Minister’s Office – spent four months in 2009 trying to convince Treasury Board to give it numerous exemptions to the new rules. But it never succeeded in convincing the gatekeepers of the online standards of its case.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Bookmark and Share
  • tobyornotoby

    It's maddening to see that the PMO is now justifying the need for an exemption from common look rules for its EAP! site because of the "interactive elements" to wit that frustratingly stupid map that they forced us to use in place of a coherent list of projects, their locations and the amounts funded.

  • dobermann

    does anyone know if there is a list of contractors who 'won' 'bids' for the eap projects – it seems to me that wherever you find one of steve's eap signs, you'll find a buttcon sign

  • gottabesaid

    Ok, wait now here, I'm baffled. I had the understanding that, unlike the (spit) Liberals, the Conservatives had respect for Canadians' tax dollars. The Conservatives would know better than to spend OUR money and try to spin it to seem like they were showering the land with their munificence… they'd certainly know better than to try to bend the rules in order for that spinning to take place. Using government resources for partisan gain? I mean, how Liberal can you get? I think CP must have their wires crossed on this one. No Conservative government would take part in this chicanery. No sirree.

    • leroy

      Well this is consistent with the "I make the rules" statement from a few months ago.

      • Holly Stick

        Remember Russell Ullyatt who leaked the finance committee reports? He had a political mail order business. He says he ran it out of his garage, but there are reports of slats of mailouts sitteing outside MP Kelly Block's office.

        Could he possibly have mailed out all those thousands of Conservative ten-percenters that our tax money paid for, when the Conservative Party should have used its own funds since they were partisan crap? Sure seems possible:
        http://creekside1.blogspot.com/2010/11/con-leakag… http://creekside1.blogspot.com/2010/12/inside-pro… http://creekside1.blogspot.com/2010/12/adventures…

        • Myth Buster

          Actually ten-percenters are printed and paid for by the House of Commons, so why would MPs spend money out of their budgets to pay some other guy to do it? Nice conspiracy theory pal, but it doesn't add up.

          • Holly Stick

            Do you imagine the House of Commons is a print shop? Do you imagine that MPs spend all their time printing out and mailing their own ten percenters? No wonder they don't get any legislation passed!

            Here, educate yourself a bit:
            http://www2.macleans.ca/tag/ten-percenters/

  • Emily

    Didn't do Cons much good.

    'Except that, for all the money spent on communications, 41 per cent of Canadians (57 per cent of Quebeckers) had never heard of the Economic Action Plan. More than half of those over 60 – the ones we’re told pay more attention to news and vote more frequently than young people – hadn’t heard of the plan. And among those who’d heard of the plan, most didn’t really know what it was about. These results emerged from an Environics poll conducted last April for the Department of Finance.'
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opin…

    • A_logician

      Then there are those, such as Andrew Coyne (and me), who have heard about the action plan, know that past history shows that government stimulus spending is inevitably too little, too late, and a barrel of pork, and are unimpressed by a government that implements such a plan (and by the opposition parties that encourage it).

      • madeyoulook

        Too little? Ah, if only…

  • Tceh

    How many tax dollars were wasted on these signs?? They are everywhere announcing projects that pre-dated the stimulus package.

    I also wonder why these signs were painted by a US company?
    http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2…

    Not much stimulus value in that, at least for Canada.

    • BCer in Mtl

      "They are everywhere announcing projects that pre-dated the stimulus package."

      I will look forward to seeing airbrushed pics of the hammering of the last spike with an EAP sign prominently displayed!

  • Fido

    Deafening silence from the usual Harper and Co. defenders. Any rationalization they offer is sure to entertain, even amuse. Emily, do you have any idea how often Tory-negative versus Liberal-negative stories appear on front or home pages of papers like the Globe, Star and National Post? Sadly I don't have your ability to keep track.

  • Mike T.

    For a party that said they'd be more accountable than Chretien (a pretty low bar) they've managed to do worse quite quickly!

  • madeyoulook

    Go ahead, everyone. Let's have the howls of shock, outrage and surprise over this INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCE of rushed government mega-hurling of our present and future wealth.

    You mean it was all a pathetic attempt at partisan gain? Wow! Quelle freaking surprise!

  • Fido

    I took the time to read Kady O'Malley's blog entry on this topic, after reading the CP story. This whole episode is VERY reminiscent of — wait for it — ADSCAM ! Crooks and liars — they're all crooks and liars.

  • Holly Stick

    Ha, the Liberals say the Conservatives owe Canadian taxpayers $45 million for those partisan ads:
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tori…

    Sounds good to me.

Previous

Next

From Macleans