When Stephen Harper went into his Bubble Boy routine in Saanich last week, most of the media just grumbled and rolled their eyes at the Conservatives' control-freak tactics.
Not Deddeda Stemler. The Victoria-based news photographer fired off letters of complaint to the Prime Minister's Office, the Conservative party and the RCMP.
She was angry that she was physically blocked from leaving the backyard in which the Conservatives held a carefully scripted media appearance with a local family. Stemler wanted to take photos of Harper with the neighbours -pictures not stage-managed by the party.
No way, she was told. Security. To her it looked more like message control. The street was crawling with neighbours (not to mention Harper's personal cameramen) taking the images the professionals were denied.
Stemler hadn't been confined like this before, was appalled. "I've never had this happen to me, where I felt like I wasn't able to do my job."
Her tale would be just another anecdote about media manipulation (and gosh, not even the media like to hear the media whine about that) were it not one of a series of complaints, going back to the 2008 campaign, about the Conservatives exploiting Harper's security detail for political purposes, the apparatchiks treating the Mounties like an extension of the party machine.
This week, after allegations that RCMP members helped the Conservatives bounce politically unpalatable people from Harper rallies, the police force issued a quick -and pointedly public -reminder to officers that their only job is to protect leaders.
"This mandate does not include managing the access of persons attending private events," said Sgt. Julie Gagnon in a phone message from Ottawa.
The RCMP protective services section was also quick to investigate Stemler's letter, sending her a detailed report Wednesday that concluded there were valid security reasons for not allowing her out of the Saanich backyard to photograph Harper's arrival.
The Mounties also said they think it was two Conservative staffers who later physically prevented her from photographing the prime minister's departure, though Stemler still believes the big guys in dark sunglasses with earpiece cords disappearing down their collars were police. "I wasn't upset at the RCMP," she adds. "I'm sure they were following orders from someone else."
Whether that's true or not, the lines can blur, politicians using the limits demanded by personal protection to also limit the media image.
I have known Stemler for years. She is pure sunshine, would rather be surfing or paragliding than playing politics. She is getting married soon, has better things to do than go to war with The Man. But she has photographed prime ministers, Harper included, on many occasions (in 2004, Paul Martin made a display of gallantly trying to help her down from the Courtenay coffee shop chair on which she was standing) without being so tightly boxed in, and finds it troubling.
OK, political functionaries often try to control the media (in 2007, when Harper visited the lighthouse at Race Rocks, an aide told photographers they couldn't take pictures of the prime minister stepping out of a boat, presumably because he might take a header in embarrassing fashion) but it's getting silly.
Journalists covering this election grouse that Harper answers precisely five questions a day. (When asked why, he refused to answer.) His movements are kept secret. Those hoping to see him at campaign functions must be registered.
It's smart, if cynical, politics. You won't hear Harper forced into a gaffe, or see a photo of him fumbling the football, as Tory leader Robert Stanfield did in a game-changing moment in the 1974 campaign. You won't see him mingling with random ordinary people, only to be called an "asshole," as reportedly (and, c'mon, hilariously) happened to Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff in a Winnipeg diner last week. You won't see him bursting his own bubble.
It wasn't always so. Back in the Trudeau era, Victoria's Tom Barry was a member of the RCMP detail when the prime minister stopped in Vancouver en route to Hawaii with bride Margaret.
Barry recalls Trudeau wanting to shoo away his minders, but the inspector in charge shutting the prime minister down. "Your job is running the country," the inspector informed Trudeau. "My job is security. Nobody tells me what to do."
It's a message Harper's handlers need to hear.
