By Greg Locke
PETTY HARBOUR, Newfoundland – On a fish plant wharf in a small fishing village on the east coast of Newfoundland, a campaign stop by Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre went mostly unnoticed in the blur of national election campaign news coverage. But it was eventful in that the Conservative Party’s organization and attitude towards the news media was on full display. Party staffers ordered reporters and local residents around to the point where tempers flared.
The day started with Poilievre landing in St John’s and giving a closed news conference in a nearby construction company warehouse. There were more reporters and staffers than the few candidates and employees they rounded up to act as a backdrop for the cameras. They were late. Poilievre gave a long, awkward, stumbling speech, first in French and repeated in English. And then they were running very late.
When they arrived in Petty Harbour a staffer they had hired had already pissed off a number of reporters who arrived early, by telling them to sit in their cars until they were called. That didn’t go over very well and set the tone for the next hour.
The location was on a public wharf for the arrival, and then inside the local fisherman’s co-op fish plant for the speech.
When the staffers had the six young No Place For Hate protesters kicked off the wharf with threats, they ordered the media present inside the fish plant before Poilievre’s bus arrived. All declined the staffer’s commands. The staff got very aggressive, and insisted reporters do as they said, presumably so reporters could not photograph or record the arrival. It’s obvious that Poilievre’s people only want the media to record the speech for TV, not get anything else, and leave.
One local photographer met some old Petty Harbour friends who were looking on, and was catching up with them when another Conservative Party staffer in a Conservative Party tour jacket and radio head pieces interrupted their private conversation and told the photographer to get inside the fish plant. The photographer replied firmly that the young man should mind his own business and go away.
He took the hint and went down the wharf organizing what seemed to be 30 people brought in for the event into a line to greet Poilievre before he went inside to make his speech. The few bystanders who were not a part of that group were kept out of this designated area.
This was all before Poilievre’s bus arrived.
The bus arrived and reporters were told to go stand on a doorstep 50 feet away. When they refused a staffer attempted to block their way, to the point he raised his arms and pushed one photographer back. He was about to grab the photographer when others intervened. One witness said it looked like he was about to throw the photographer on the ground.
Beside the assault and aggression, what is happening here is a carefully contrived and controlled scene in a public space, stage-managed for the party photographer and video crew to get content for their ad campaigns. They don’t want any real media present to ask questions or record anything off-script. This is also why the Conservative Party does not allow news media to travel with them on their plane or buses. They don’t want to answer questions from journalists or have any photos or video made that they cannot control or manipulate. NOTE: The Liberal Party and the NDP do allow journalists to travel with them, and the news agencies pay their share of the expenses.
Yes, all political parties do this, try to control the scene and the environment. But most are not physically aggressive or threatening. After many years of covering election campaigns in Canada, USA and Europe, the Conservative Party of Canada is the most outwardly aggressive and uncivilized that I’ve witnessed. It’s on par with Viktor Orbán in Hungary and the Republican Party in the USA.
This behaviour by the Conservatives is not new for this election. In Canada, it started with Stephen Harper. I remember on this same wharf in the 2006 election campaign where Harper had a staffer threaten reporters with arrest when they were shut out of the local hall where Harper was giving a speech. Harper won that election and it was the beginning of the Conservative Party’s animosity towards the news media. Especially the CBC.
Which was denied their questions at Poilievre’s stops in St John’s and Petty Harbour.
Outside of a few seconds on local TV, Canadians will not see the spectacle from the wharf in Petty Harbour. Complaints will be filed. Nothing will be done. All “inside baseball,” people will say.
It is my wish that Canadians could see what reporters and photographers really see on a daily basis. The Behind-The-Scenes. The stuff that doesn’t make it to the two-minute hit on the national news of the carefully manipulated events and machinations of political operators.
I wish they could see the ignorance and incivility of the people who work for the political parties.
If they did, they might get a better idea of how a party leader, their party staff and supporters act during an election. Because if they act like that when they need to make people like them, then we can easily predict how they will act if they are elected to power.
What a politician says is meaningless, but how they act and run their shop says everything.
