Premier controls information with iron fist: Public affairs bureau serves gov't first, critics say

Edmonton Journal Sat May 15 2004 Page: A1 / FRONT Section: News Byline: Charles Rusnell Dateline: EDMONTON Source: The Edmonton Journal

MINISTRY OF TRUTH Premier Ralph Klein often boasts that his government is open and transparent. But is it? In a special report today, The Journal looks at how the Klein government controls the flow of public information, restricts access to its records and limits political input into policy. --EDMONTON - Alberta's public affairs bureau is often referred to as the Ministry of Truth. Although the public knows little about the taxpayer-funded bureau, it has played a crucial role in implementing the policies of Premier Ralph Klein's government over the last decade. With 130 employees and a budget of more than $10 million, political observers say its job is not to provide the public with impartial information but to ensure the promotion of the government's political agenda. "Pretty clearly, the public affairs bureau is a propaganda arm of the government designed to support the political actions of the Alberta premier and 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 affairs bureau spokesman, who is after all a civil servant, to sell the Conservative

party at taxpayers' expense. From everything I have read and seen, the bureau is a pretty thinly veiled agent of the Tory party in Alberta." Rose said the bureau has been crucial to the Klein government's policy and communications agenda. "I don't believe its importance can be overstated in the government's communications arsenal," he said. "The bureau serves as the information filter for the government and it makes it very difficult for any other competing messages to get out, and it also makes informed public dialogue difficult because everything is vetted through the bureau." Gordon Turtle, the bureau's managing director, insists he and the communications 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's views, or the minister's position, on issues of the day and they will do that to the best of their ability." Opposition critics refute Turtle's claim of non-partisanship. Before Turtle became the bureau's director, he was the premier's director of communications, a job critics say is strictly a partisan position. According to former members of the bureau, it was created in the 1970s to more effectively co-ordinate impartial government communications. It assumed responsibility for producing a wide range of information materials through the Queen's printer and for providing information to Albertans through a toll-free phone line. The bureau still administers both of those services. Columnist Don Martin traces the politicization of the bureau to Ralph Klein's swearing-in as the province's 12th premier. Klein, a former television reporter, immediately shifted control of the bureau directly to him and to his office. In his 2002 book, King Ralph, Martin said Klein took "a scattered, fragmented collection of underutilized flacks reporting to the Public Works minister and constructed a hierarchical organization of advanced communications expertise," with Klein at "the apex of the pyramid on its organizational chart." Before he became Opposition Liberal leader, Kevin Taft wrote Shredding the Public Interest, a chapter of which is devoted to the public affairs bureau. To understand the power and influence of the bureau, Taft said

one must first understand how it operates. Every government department, such as health and education, has a cabinet minister who is an elected Tory MLA. These ministers are responsible for deciding government policies and programs. Deputy ministers, who are civil servants, are responsible for implementing those policies and programs, and every employee of the department is ultimately responsible to the deputy minister. "The Public Affairs Bureau is different," Taft wrote. "Select members of its staff occupy special positions in government. These people -- holding the positions of Director of Communications, or the lesser Public Affairs Officer -- are trained and experienced specialists in public relations, the media, and political marketing. In other times they would be called propagandists." These communications specialists are assigned as members of the senior management teams of all major government departments, Taft says. At the political 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 of accountability is not to the deputy ministers running the departments. Instead, they report through their own separate public affairs bureau channels, 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 government departments. Martin observed that "what previously had been an arm's-length, quasineutral function was replaced with directors who were as close to their ministers and as partisan to their party as their executive assistants." There are many information officers and others within the bureau who are not partisan and, as best as they can, provide objective, unbiased information when called upon by reporters and the public. As both Martin and Taft noted, when Klein put himself in charge of the public affairs bureau, he became the head of a vast political network that reached into every government department but worked parallel to it. "This increased the ability of his office to control the government and influence the media and the public," Taft wrote. "While the Public Affairs Bureau retains its own managing director, in practice it is run from the

Premier's Office." Taft said the bureau directors also influence policy by "layering political concerns over top of policy issues. This reduces impartiality of the civil service 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 sometimes blatant. During the 1997 election, Alberta Treasurer Jim Dinning had Trish Filevich, the bureau's communications director for Treasury, order the department's civil servants to cost out Liberal campaign promises. Dinning passed the information to Rod Love, Klein's executive director, and to Peter 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 how partisan politics trumped impartial policy communications during the fractious debates over Bill 11 and the Kyoto accord. The public affairs bureau spent millions of dollars on information campaigns designed to promote what Rose, opposition politicians and others viewed as partisan political propaganda. "It was amazing that it was not factual," Rose said of the bureau's campaign in support of the Klein government's Kyoto Accord position. "It was not balanced, it was extremely partisan, it only marketed and reinforced the Conservative government's position." When opposition politicians complained, Klein responded that his government was forced to spend the money to counter "misinformation." Turtle was asked if the information in the government's media advertising campaign was political. "I don't know. What does that mean?" Turtle said, adding that the government's advertising campaign, for the most part, was simply conducted "to inform Albertans about the government's position on an important 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

misinformation "is a common excuse for government propaganda and the public affairs bureau is at the apex of that propaganda campaign. It's the conduit 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 is through the ballot box," Turtle said. "All policy is decided by elected officials, and the entire job of the civil service, whether it's the public affairs bureau or the people who runs the seniors programs, is to implement that policy." crusnell@thejournal.canwest.com