Insanity and paranoia reign in the Harper camp

Reporter says she was barred from Stephen Harper campaign event

In a departure from how campaign events involving prime ministers before Stephen Harper have been conducted, Conservative party handlers refused a journalist admission to one of his campaign events this week because the RCMP and its search dogs weren’t available to search her.
Full disclosure: that journalist was me.

Let’s think about this, rationally and reasonably.

The Conservative party apparently thinks members of the Fourth Estate are so dangerous that protocol at the PM’s election campaign events is to have them searched by RCMP dogs if they are anywhere near Stephen Harper physically.

Here’s the background. On Tuesday morning, when I arrived 20 minutes early for Mr. Harper’s 10:30 campaign event in Toronto, I was met by a campaign aide who said I was “too late” to come into the event.

There was a security process, he said, including an RCMP search with dogs, and there were no RCMP officers around, so I couldn’t come in. The media were required to be there an hour early to “register” and be searched and I was past that deadline — even though there was 20 minutes left until the event started.

Other reporters had been let in after the deadline, he said … but no, I couldn’t come in. It was too late.

When I protested, he checked with those higher up the campaign’s public relations food chain and came back with the same answer: no, I would not be allowed in. I asked his name but he refused to give it — although another campaign aide asked for mine (which I happily gave) and they were registering the name of every journalist there.

Let’s be clear: searching reporters with sniffer dogs is a major departure from the way campaign events have been handled with previous prime ministers. As a matter of fact, in my 25-plus years of covering federal and provincial elections — which includes events too numerous to count with sitting prime ministers — I’ve never come across any protocol like that at a campaign event … except with the current Conservative party.

My journalist colleagues on Parliament Hill, trying to do their jobs in this kind of paranoid environment, have all my sympathy.

READ MORE: http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/06/reporter-says-she-was-barred-from-stephen-harper-campaign-event/