Unless you are a member of the Conservative Party of sa国际传媒, Harper鈥檚 team apparently didn鈥檛 want you around.
On Thursday evening, the leader was at an event in Black Creek at 6 p.m. The news release announcing his appearance went out at 3:59 p.m. For reporters or anyone else in Victoria who might have wanted to attend, Black Creek is 246 kilometres away.
On Friday morning, he was making an announcement at Elk Falls Provincial Park near Campbell River at 9:45 a.m. The news release on that was issued at 6:45 a.m. Assuming that you leapt immediately into your car, it is still 268 kilometres from Victoria to the park.
The only people who have a chance of getting to these events are party members, the national reporters who are travelling with the PM or locals who somehow hear about them in time. But don鈥檛 fret, because when it comes to rallies like the one in Black Creek, you can鈥檛 get in anyway, unless you have media credentials or a bar-coded admission ticket with your name on it, issued by the party.
The Conservatives say the prime minister still mingles with non-party members when he drops in to grocery stores or malls. Of course, you would have no way of knowing in advance that he鈥檚 going to be in your local shopping centre, until he suddenly leans over to kiss your baby.
Harper is not the only leader who prefers to be surrounded by faithful supporters at announcements and other events; his opponents do similar things. But the Conservatives seem to be taking the mania for control to extremes.
Until last week, those bar-coded tickets included a gag order that said if you were lucky enough to get into a campaign gathering, you could not transmit 鈥渁ny description, account, picture or reproduction of the event.鈥�
The party relented on that one. Perhaps the strategists realized that publicizing the candidate is one of the purposes of an election campaign.
