Beijing – It was, as one wag put it, the longest budget lockup in history.
The government jet ferrying Prime Minister Stephen Harper, his staff, and a gaggle of journalists from Ottawa to Beijing for trade and political talks had just taken off after refuelling in Anchorage, Alaska, when staff from the Prime Minister’s Office began handing out the government’s fourth report on the stimulus measures contained in the 2009-10 budget, though the government would much rather we called it the Economic Action Plan.
Previous quarterly reports – which the opposition Liberals had insisted on as a condition of support for the budget, and which the Conservatives happily turned into aren’t-we-doing-swell promotions – had been unveiled in such locales as Cambridge, Ont., and Saint John, N.B. This one was released over Siberia, during a nine-hour flight. Reporters agreed to respect an embargo on publication until Prime Minister Stephen Harper began his remarks on the report at his hotel, about two hours after we landed in Beijing. So call it more than 11 hours from distribution till we could hit “send.” That’s a record.
The update wasn’t really a budget lockup, of course; it contains no spending measures, nothing has to be passed by the House, markets would not be moved by premature disclosures. Still, it was an insouciant move. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s economic update of one year ago almost brought about a coalition of the opposing parties and the defeat of the government. Now, one year later, the Conservatives are tossing off another quarterly report en route to the Prime Minister’s latest overseas excursion. Chutzpah, my boy, chutzpah.
This unconventional rollout has several other advantages, from the government’s point of view. Not only was the release of the report bound to dominate the morning news back home, but opposition politicians were conveniently unavailable for comment, and the only non-government data available was whatever reporters had on their laptops.
As for the boys and girls at the back of the plane, at least we had plenty of time to write. And in regular lockups, they don’t come along regularly with glasses of chardonnay.
