Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them (33 page)

On top of its penchant for catchy labels on bills, the Conservatives would organize the legislative schedule around themed debate weeks: democratic reform week, jobs week or focusing-on-the-economy week. This was pure communications, said Yaroslav Baran, who worked as an adviser behind the scenes in the Conservative House Leader’s office. “The thinking was that there is so much noise on Parliament Hill, whether it’s breaking stories, the day’s Question Period headlines, scandals of the day and so on, that the only way you can possibly use your legislative program to any communications benefit is to hammer the same theme repeatedly,” he explained. “If one day you debate a budget bill, next day you do park boundaries, third day you do modernization of law enforcement techniques, and the next day is a supply day, then it all gets scattered and diluted.”

Red, Blue and Green

Conservatives would constantly present the government’s actions as consumer-friendly. Like a constant drumbeat in the background, the Conservative government also regularly issued bulletins to proclaim the various ways in which Canadian consumers could be assured that their concerns were top of mind in Ottawa. These missives were usually issued from the offices of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, and with each year in power, the list of consumer-friendly boasts got a little longer. When the government intervened in the Air Canada labour disputes of late 2011 and early 2012, ordering striking employees back to work, it argued it was acting on behalf of Canadian consumers. Conservatives brought in a raft of measures to tighten up rules over credit cards, for instance—though not on high interest rates, as the New Democrats were demanding. Even the public service, which was already awash in talk of “clients” in the late 1990s, was talking the shopping language more and more with a marketing-sensitive prime minister in power. One government-commissioned study, called “Citizen Compass,” was rolled out in early 2013 with a clear directive to public servants: “The research revealed that mobile devices, social media and other technology innovations are changing citizens’ expectations and governments must raise their game to match the customer experience of banks and retailers.”

Significantly, the Conservatives also rolled out a “taxpayers’ bill of rights” with much fanfare in 2007, to warm the hearts of all those consumer-citizens who believed that government was something they purchased with their tax dollars. The fifteen rights were basically good-service promises. “You have the right to receive entitlements and to pay no more and no less than what is required by law,” the bill said. “You have the right to privacy and confidentiality.” A “taxpayers’ ombudsman” was added to government in 2008 to handle citizens’ complaints about the service they were getting from Revenue Canada.

Meanwhile, the word “taxpayers” steadily marched into more common usage in official government communication as the years wore on with the Conservatives in power. In 2007, for instance, it appeared just five times in press releases or background papers on the Government of Canada website. By 2012, a search for the word “taxpayer” on the site would yield hundreds of results—not just from Revenue Canada, but from cultural institutions, too. “The Museum takes very seriously the need to control spending and manage taxpayer dollars effectively,” proclaimed a corporate plan from the Museum of Nature.

When a marketing-oriented government is in power, everything becomes a transaction. And no detail is too small, or insignificant, when you’re trying to seal the deal on those transactions. Even the colour palette of the government got a marketing makeover, for instance, from Liberal red to Tory blue. Dr. Ken Cosgrove, a US political marketing expert, has noticed that Canadian politicos appear far more attentive to party colours than Americans are. Though red and blue are also the colours, respectively, of the Republicans and Democrats in the United States, it is possible for a Democrat to show up in a red tie at a party event, and vice versa. In Canada, says Cosgrove, partisans are far more attached to their colours: Liberals, red, New Democrats, orange, and Conservatives, blue.

By 2013 most of the government’s websites were a sea of Conservative blue—a result, the government insisted, of consumer preference rather than political persuasion. Government web specialists, according to Treasury Board documents, had conducted “usability” studies and reviewed government websites in Canadian provinces, Britain, the United States and Australia, finding that blue or green was the primary colour in 75 percent of them. “Blue was chosen to complement the red maple leaf and provide sufficient contrast,” Treasury Board officials explained in a summary of the rationale for the web overhaul (provided to the author on request). What’s more, Conservative MP Andrew Saxton delightedly told the Commons in 2013 that blue was a favourite colour of marketers. Quoting from the website
www.about.com
, Saxton said, “Blue is a favourite colour of both men and women of all ages. It may be the calming effect of the colour blue that makes it a popular colour for both men and women or it could be the association of some shades of blue with authority figures, intelligence and stability.”

In the first years of Conservative power, the Government of Canada website started to feature bold splashes of blue, eventually giving way to blue as the main colour, and yes, even as the Conservative government was branding itself as “new.” On Canada Day 2007, blue was the primary colour of the stage on Parliament Hill, and in subsequent years the politics of colour would continue to play out in the national capital. At Christmas 2011, roughly six months after the election that reduced the Liberals to third-party status, the lights on the bushes in front of Parliament were festooned in Conservative blue and New Democratic orange—not a Liberal-red bulb in sight. The spectacle prompted a Rick Mercer comedy sketch featuring a hapless customer trying unsuccessfully to buy faulty, flickering red “Liblites” at his local hardware outlet. “We have seven thousand strings of the blue ones if you want. They’re very popular,” the clerk advises Mercer.

Patrick Muttart and Doug Finley made no apologies for keeping the Conservative government on a constant war footing against the Liberals during the first two minority governments. If Canada could be plunged into an election at any moment, it was crucial to show Liberals that the Conservatives were ready to do battle at a moment’s notice. Battle-readiness, in fact, was a large metaphor in the Conservatives’ marketing efforts, evidenced not just in the government’s increasing financial support of the military, but in Harper’s constant appearances in military venues. Very deliberately, his first foreign trip was to Afghanistan, to show support for the Canadian soldiers embroiled in that war effort. In 2012, the thirtieth anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was marked with a terse statement, but the Conservatives spent $28 million that year to mark the two hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812. Inside the political offices of the government, wearing red on Friday to support the troops was very popular, encouraged even. So attached were Conservatives to the military that it began to feel like every day in Ottawa was Remembrance Day.

But no battle consumed as much attention as the battle against Liberals. In this way, Canadian politics was introduced to the “permanent campaign.” Although other parties in Canada had dabbled occasionally in advertising outside election campaigns, it was the Harper Conservatives who made attack ads a constant on the political airwaves—election or no election.

Not long after Stéphane Dion became the new leader of the Liberal party in late 2006, Muttart placed a call to the New Democrats’ then chief of communications, Brad Lavigne. He wanted to meet him for coffee. Lavigne was one of the young, new faces of the NDP backroom, a former activist for the Canadian Federation of Students who had risen through the party ranks in BC politics. He was typical of the kind of people that Layton had attracted to his inner circle: pragmatists, not ideologues, focused on winning. That inner circle had what it called “the project,” an ambitious plan to move the NDP into the mainstream of Canadian politics and eventually to power. Lavigne had always liked Muttart and admired his political smarts; they were very similar, in fact, in outlook and age. So he happily agreed and the two strategists met. It turned out that Muttart had something he wanted to hand over to Lavigne: a DVD. That night, when he got home, Lavigne popped it into his TV system and settled back to watch. His jaw dropped: on the screen was the attack ad the Conservatives were intending to release in early 2007, mocking Dion’s fitness to be a leader. Lavigne realized that Canada was about to enter a whole new chapter in political marketing, with the advent of attack ads in a non-election period, and particularly harsh ones to boot.

The Conservatives had lifted segments from the Liberal leadership debates in the fall of 2006, particularly one in which Dion, in a slightly pleading voice, asks aloud, “Do you think it’s easy to make priorities?” The quote had come in reply to a challenge from his Liberal rival Michael Ignatieff about why the party “didn’t get it done” on meeting environmental targets.

Jason Kenney, then secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity, unveiled the ads to the media in late January 2007, just before they were unleashed on viewers of that year’s Super Bowl—a highly expensive ad slot for any company, let alone a political party. Kenney didn’t reveal the price the Conservatives were paying, but estimates ranged anywhere between $100,000 and $1 million. All Conservatives were doing with these ads, Kenney said, was allowing Canadians to judge the Liberals by the stark evidence in front of them. “His own words—and those of his colleagues—demonstrate that he is a weak leader,” Kenney told reporters.

Though the ads were deemed an outrage by many in the political world, they weren’t aimed at the cognoscenti. It was just like the howls of protest over the labels on legislation; the government shrugged off the views of “elites.” True to Muttart’s marketing wisdom of the 2005–06 campaign, the permanent, blunt-edged offensive against the Liberals was created with checked-out voters in mind: those who didn’t get their political knowledge from the traditional news media or pundit class. Using the powerful weapon of emotion, and casting Dion in negative emotional terms, the Conservatives were setting out to make sure that no one was tempted to view the Liberals in a positive light. Awash in cash, the Conservatives could afford to place the ads in whatever TV spots they wished—favouring sports broadcasts or any other shows that were favourites of Tim Hortons Canadians.

And from that first Super Bowl ad onward, every couple of months through Dion’s leadership, the Conservatives would release more ads against the Liberal leader, who was looking increasingly beleaguered no matter how loudly the party was saying that sticks and stones wouldn’t hurt them. In the fifth volley, in late 2007, Dion was pictured on one side of a cash register, as the enemy of consumers because he would allegedly roll back the cuts the Conservatives had made to the GST. “That’s right—you’ll pay more GST for his lack of priorities,’’ the ad proclaimed. “Stéphane Dion. Not a leader. Not worth the risk.’’

When the election finally came in 2008, then, the anti-Dion ground had already been well tilled in the population at large. Still, the Conservatives were quick off the mark with another wave of attack ads against Dion. The opening barrage played on a gambling theme, showing craps games, slots and a “scratch ’n lose” card imprinted with Dion’s face. The wording was directly aimed at voters’ consumer concerns. “Can you afford to take a gamble on Stéphane Dion? Because with Dion, you always lose. Can you afford a hike in the GST? You lose. Can you afford to lose the $1,200 child-care benefit? You lose again. Can you afford a permanent new carbon tax that will drive up the cost of everything? You lose again, big time! You’ve got too much at stake. Don’t lose it all on Stéphane Dion.” Jennifer Wells of the
Globe and Mail
tracked down one of the operatives in the Conservative war room, who explained (anonymously) the need for such a swift advertising assault: “You’ve only got thirty-seven days to make the sale.” What that sales metaphor omitted, however, was all the advance advertising that had been carried out for eighteen months beforehand.

Remember that old memo that Allister Grosart wrote to Conservatives back in 1953, about why political ads weren’t like product ads? Political ads, the Tory ad executive had advised, didn’t have the luxury of time to work their persuasion with the public. Now, however, in the “permanent campaign” mode of Canadian politics, Conservatives had all the time they needed to “get their message out” to voters. The formal election period itself was just the final flourish on an advertising battle that had been conducted for the better part of two years beforehand. Nobody seemed to like this, least of all the Liberals of course, but nobody seemed to know what to do about it, either.

During the 2008 election, Advertising Standards Canada took the unusual step of issuing a public notice about political ads, even though the private-sector body has no authority over the political parties. Pointedly, ASC issued an advisory that reminded Canadians that the politicians had more leeway to do negative advertising than the commercial sector did: “While ASC hears from members of the public throughout the year, public interest in advertising clearly peaks during the course of federal and provincial elections. At these times, ASC receives numerous complaints expressing concerns about election advertising. In their complaints, members of the public tell ASC that they find advertising by political parties is often misleading, and that it unfairly disparages and denigrates individual candidates or party leaders.”

Just to underline the difference between the public and private worlds of advertising, the ASC advisory included some clauses from its code of conduct to assist citizens in being more educated consumers of the political ads they were seeing. These “pertinent” clauses included: