Ministers in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s newly shuffled cabinet are being armed with “enemy” lists of people and bureaucratic interests to avoid, according to a PMO email obtained by the Star.
On the “Transition Binder Check List” are 10 items, such as: “What to expect soon” and “Who to appoint,” as well as “Who to engage or avoid: friend and enemy stakeholders” and “What to avoid: pet bureaucratic projects.”
Former staff members in Harper’s government, reached on Monday about the email, said it was unusual, if not provocative, for Harper’s office to put such instructions in writing.
“It sounds like a very closed camp. Now it’s about enemies and friends, not people who have different opinions. And that’s really what they’re saying: if you have a different opinion, you are the enemy,” Mr. Corbett said Tuesday.
Comparisons with the Nixon administration and Watergate are being raised following revelations the Harper government ordered “enemy” lists compiled in advance of this week’s cabinet shuffle.
The Prime Minister’s Office sent an email to Conservative ministerial aides on July 4 asking to develop lists of troublesome bureaucrats as well as “friend and enemy stakeholders” for incoming ministers and their staff.
Conservative Peter Kent (world renowned journalist) said "friend and enemy” language is not only “juvenile,” but harkens to former U.S. president Richard Nixon’s so-called “Enemies List,” the existence of which was revealed during the Watergate scandal. His (Nixons)political horizon was divided very starkly into friends and enemies. The use of the word ‘enemies list,’ for those of us of a certain generation, it evokes nothing less than thoughts of Nixon and Watergate.”
Independent MP Brent Rathgeber, who resigned from the Conservative caucus in June, described the existence of such lists as “inappropriate” and contributing to the “dysfunctional workplace” that Ottawa has become.
However, he said he was not surprised the order was issued given the “very young, very hyper-partisan individuals” in the PMO “who see the world in black and white.”
“Just the language I think is very, very troubling,” Rathgeber said. “We can have respectful discussions and disagree with each other without resorting to name-calling or vilification by referring to somebody as an ‘enemy.’ ”
The Harper government was also outed for trying to distribute documents to media in secret about paid speeches Liberal leader Justin Trudeau made before he was elected to Parliament, and........ reportedly deployed phoney protesters to disrupt a Trudeau news conference on Parliament Hill last month.
“Stop Mulcair” signs were also distributed to cabinet ministers in what some saw as an amateurish stunt designed to poke fun at NDP leader Tom Mulcair after he failed to stop his vehicle for Parliament Hill security.
But observers and critics say the creation of “enemy” lists is more troubling as it vilifies those whose opinions differ from the Tories, and they say contributes to the us-versus-them attitude that has stymied dialogue and debate since the Harper government came to power.
In the Harper world, you’re either with him or against him. It’s something you saw in the United States with Nixon. … It’s kind of the paranoid black-and-white world that I think is anathema to a modern democracy.
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