public affairs bureau politicization 2

7/29/2019 Public Affairs Bureau Politicization 2

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Premier controls information with iron fist:

Public affairs bureau serves gov't first, criticssayEdmonton JournalSat May 15 2004Page: A1 / FRONTSection: NewsByline: Charles RusnellDateline: EDMONTONSource: The Edmonton Journal

MINISTRY OF TRUTH

Premier Ralph Klein often boasts that his government is open andtransparent. But is it?

In a special report today, The Journal looks at how the Klein governmentcontrols the flow of public information, restricts access to its records andlimits political input into policy.

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EDMONTON - Alberta's public affairs bureau is often referred to as theMinistry of Truth.

Although the public knows little about the taxpayer-funded bureau, it hasplayed a crucial role in implementing the policies of Premier Ralph Klein'sgovernment over the last decade.

With 130 employees and a budget of more than $10 million, politicalobservers say its job is not to provide the public with impartial informationbut to ensure the promotion of the government's political agenda.

"Pretty clearly, the public affairs bureau is a propaganda arm of thegovernment designed to support the political actions of the Alberta premierand his cabinet," said Queen's University political scientist Jonathan Rose,an expert in political advertising and marketing.

"I think the big question is whether it's appropriate for a public affairsbureau spokesman, who is after all a civil servant, to sell the Conservative


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party at taxpayers' expense. From everything I have read and seen, thebureau is a pretty thinly veiled agent of the Tory party in Alberta."

Rose said the bureau has been crucial to the Klein government's policyand communications agenda.

"I don't believe its importance can be overstated in the government'scommunications arsenal," he said. "The bureau serves as the informationfilter for the government and it makes it very difficult for any othercompeting messages to get out, and it also makes informed publicdialogue difficult because everything is vetted through the bureau."

Gordon Turtle, the bureau's managing director, insists he and thecommunications officers in the bureau are non-partisan civil servants.

"They provide factual information about government programs and

policies," he said. "Sometimes they're asked to provide the government'sviews, or the minister's position, on issues of the day and they will do thatto the best of their ability."

Opposition critics refute Turtle's claim of non-partisanship. Before Turtlebecame the bureau's director, he was the premier's director ofcommunications, a job critics say is strictly a partisan position.

According to former members of the bureau, it was created in the 1970s tomore effectively co-ordinate impartial government communications. Itassumed responsibility for producing a wide range of information materialsthrough the Queen's printer and for providing information to Albertansthrough a toll-free phone line. The bureau still administers both of thoseservices.

Columnist Don Martin traces the politicization of the bureau to RalphKlein's swearing-in as the province's 12th premier. Klein, a formertelevision reporter, immediately shifted control of the bureau directly to himand to his office.

In his 2002 book, King Ralph, Martin said Klein took "a scattered,

fragmented collection of underutilized flacks reporting to the Public Worksminister and constructed a hierarchical organization of advancedcommunications expertise," with Klein at "the apex of the pyramid on itsorganizational chart."

Before he became Opposition Liberal leader, Kevin Taft wrote Shreddingthe Public Interest, a chapter of which is devoted to the public affairsbureau. To understand the power and influence of the bureau, Taft said


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one must first understand how it operates.

Every government department, such as health and education, has acabinet minister who is an elected Tory MLA. These ministers areresponsible for deciding government policies and programs. Deputy

ministers, who are civil servants, are responsible for implementing thosepolicies and programs, and every employee of the department is ultimatelyresponsible to the deputy minister.

"The Public Affairs Bureau is different," Taft wrote. "Select members ofits staff occupy special positions in government. These people -- holdingthe positions of Director of Communications, or the lesser Public AffairsOfficer -- are trained and experienced specialists in public relations, themedia, and political marketing. In other times they would be calledpropagandists."

These communications specialists are assigned as members of the seniormanagement teams of all major government departments, Taft says. At thepolitical level, each works closely with each department's cabinet minister.But they also participate in the top administrative meetings of departments.They often have offices near the deputy ministers, but their first line ofaccountability is not to the deputy ministers running the departments.Instead, they report through their own separate public affairs bureauchannels, independent of government departments.

According to recent testimony by Turtle at the public accounts committee,

of the bureau's 130 employees, 75 are assigned to governmentdepartments.

Martin observed that "what previously had been an arm's-length, quasi-neutral function was replaced with directors who were as close to theirministers and as partisan to their party as their executive assistants."

There are many information officers and others within the bureau who arenot partisan and, as best as they can, provide objective, unbiasedinformation when called upon by reporters and the public.

As both Martin and Taft noted, when Klein put himself in charge of thepublic affairs bureau, he became the head of a vast political network thatreached into every government department but worked parallel to it.

"This increased the ability of his office to control the government andinfluence the media and the public," Taft wrote. "While the Public AffairsBureau retains its own managing director, in practice it is run from the


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Premier's Office."

Taft said the bureau directors also influence policy by "layering politicalconcerns over top of policy issues. This reduces impartiality of the civilservice and makes it more politically partisan, for everyone with whom the

Public Affairs staff work knows the special place they occupy."

This imposition of political partisanship on the bureaucracy is sometimesblatant. During the 1997 election, Alberta Treasurer Jim Dinning had TrishFilevich, the bureau's communications director for Treasury, order thedepartment's civil servants to cost out Liberal campaign promises. Dinningpassed the information to Rod Love, Klein's executive director, and toPeter Elzinga, the Tory party's executive director.

It was then distributed to reporters following a leaders' debate.

In a more recent case, Rose said Albertans experienced first-hand howpartisan politics trumped impartial policy communications during thefractious debates over Bill 11 and the Kyoto accord. The public affairsbureau spent millions of dollars on information campaigns designed topromote what Rose, opposition politicians and others viewed as partisanpolitical propaganda.

"It was amazing that it was not factual," Rose said of the bureau'scampaign in support of the Klein government's Kyoto Accord position.

"It was not balanced, it was extremely partisan, it only marketed andreinforced the Conservative government's position."

When opposition politicians complained, Klein responded that hisgovernment was forced to spend the money to counter "misinformation."

Turtle was asked if the information in the government's media advertisingcampaign was political.

"I don't know. What does that mean?" Turtle said, adding that thegovernment's advertising campaign, for the most part, was simply

conducted "to inform Albertans about the government's position on animportant public policy issue and the reasons for that position."

And who decides what is misinformation and what is truth?

"Well, the government decides that," Turtle said. "Elected officials."

Rose said the Klein government's contention that it had to counter


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misinformation "is a common excuse for government propaganda and thepublic affairs bureau is at the apex of that propaganda campaign. It's theconduit through which the government gets its message out."

Turtle maintains it is the bureau's job to convey to the public whatever

information the democratically elected government wishes.

"We're serving Albertans and the expression of Albertans' wishes isthrough the ballot box," Turtle said. "All policy is decided by electedofficials, and the entire job of the civil service, whether it's the publicaffairs bureau or the people who runs the seniors programs, is toimplement that policy."

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public affairs bureau politicization 2

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