The Vancouver Province’s Michael Smyth has revealed some fascinating insights into the Liberal government’s concept of participatory government, having waded through the highlights of some of the 8,000 pages of secret documents that have been revealed in the wake of the BC Rail corruption trial.
Secret strategies cooked up by the Liberal insiders seems to suggest a less than dedicated effort to the goal of full accountability, especially when it comes to the topic of Question Period, which Liberal handlers advised their cabinet ministers to use some hard knuckle tactics in, should they find that they can’t provide a proper response to opposition queries…
It is interesting stuff, but not particularly surprising. The neocon playbook regarding the media has been played out before. Remember Campbell’s “bubble” during the last campaign. It’s also a safe topic for the Province. They could hardly ignore the 8000 pages of released documents, so they had to write about something. But in this case, spinning the media is something both major parties do to a certain extent. I think the Liberal version is particularly scripted.
I think what is really sad about this is that picking this topic allows them to say “we covered the released documents”, without covering the really serious levels of corruption that they also included. As Bill Tieleman points out in his coverage on the Tyee, the bidding process was badly corrupted and unfair. This from the party of “free competition”. The mainstream media hasn’t completely ignored the issue, but has badly undercovered it.
But hey, maybe the Daily News will pick up the slack?