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Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 20, 2015

Employment minister Pierre Poilievre won’t say sorry for ‘vanity videos’

Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre won’t apologize for using taxpayer dollars to produce YouTube videos of himself promoting the universal child care benefit.

Poilievre insisted Friday he’s simply using innovative ways to inform Canadians about the newly enriched and expanded child benefit.

But opposition MPs denounced the “vanity videos” as a new low for a government that has a penchant for producing partisan advertising on the public dime.

And the Canadian Taxpayers Federation agreed.

“The bottom line is that taxpayers should not be forced to pay for partisan advertising masquerading as information-based government advertising,” said Aaron Wudrick, the federation’s federal director.

The latest examples “highlight the need for an independent third party” to vet all government advertising, he added.

One of the videos shows Poilievre explaining the child benefit to shoppers at a children’s consignment clothing sale in his Ottawa riding. It was filmed on a Sunday by two members of the Employment department’s in-house creative production team, which has an annual operating budget of about $50,000.

A departmental spokesman said the Sunday shoot took two hours, which was paid overtime for the two videographers involved. Editing was done in-house during regular work hours. (Source: Toronto Star)

Published in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, National Newswatch, The Regina Leader-Post, NUPGE drawing conclusions, and The Woodstock Sentinel Review

 

Tuesday October 9, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Tuesday October 9, 2012

Gerry Ritz, XL Foods failed consumers badly

BETWEEN a mediocre federal agriculture minister and a fumbling food giant, Canadians have been exceptionally ill-served during the current outbreak of E. coli that originated in a mega-meat-processing plant in Alberta.

So far, the consequences of government and corporate mismanagement of the situation have not been fatal. Although 11 Canadians in various provinces have taken ill, we are a far cry from the Listeria outbreak of 2008 when tainted luncheon meat from an Ontario factory killed 22 consumers and sickened 35 others.

Two things were widely remarked upon during that crisis. First were the earnest efforts by Maple Leaf Foods and its CEO, Michael McCain, to behave like responsible — and responsive — corporate citizens. Second was the disastrous leadership of Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz who got caught cracking jokes about the outbreak in a conference call with scientists.

This time around, we are still stuck with Mr. Ritz, who should have been shuffled out of cabinet years ago. Worse yet, the corporate entity involved, XL Foods, has failed to seize the bull by the horns, à la Maple Leaf. Instead of being proactive in word and deed, XL Foods has engaged in foot-dragging and wagon-circling. Its idea of crisis management is to record a platitude about taking “full responsibility” on its answering machine, instead of putting an engaged executive front and centre.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, under Mr. Ritz’s watch, allowed the mega-facility to keep churning out products for three weeks after the E. coli red flag was first raised, despite the fact the company was barely co-operative in providing information and not even following its own protocols. (Source: Halifax Chronicle-Herald)