ONE of the most delicate balancing acts of political leadership comes when a crisis erupts, whether in the economy, the health-care system or the public security system.
If a political leader becomes too visible, he or she runs the risk of being accused of trying to gain political advantage from trouble. No one wants to imagine health minister Anne McLellan micro-managing the public health response to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. If a political leader is too invisible, there is the risk of being accused of not caring.
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So how have the politicians performed this delicate balance as the country comes to grips with the discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Alberta?
By most measures, governments did well in the early days. Politicians allowed the scientists and veterinarians at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to hold centre stage but they also made it clear they were engaged.
Within hours of hearing the news, agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief flew back to Canada from England and on a stage in Edmonton with Alberta agriculture minister Shirley McClellan to announce the case and to proclaim their faith in the Canadian food safety regulatory system.
The optics of the news conference were chaotic when sometimes-testy politicians butted heads with reporters demanding better answers, but at least the ministers got their “one cow” message out early and often.
Back in Ottawa, prime minister Jean Chrétien was his usual inarticulate self but he said Canada was working to reopen closed foreign markets and Canadians had no reason to fear that their beef is unsafe.
To make the point, he ate a noon-hour steak. It was a cheesy (or beefy) photo op but if he had done nothing, he would have been accused of insensitivity.
“I think the government’s handling of the risk communication side of this has been quite good,” says University of Guelph professor Doug Powell, who has studied the risk communication issue.
OK, so governments didn’t entirely mess up the political communications side of things, balancing a calming message to the consuming public with supportive words to farmers. The same cannot be said of the Canadian Alliance, the political party that represents almost all the western farmers affected by the crisis.
One of the main roles of an opposition party is to set the agenda of national issues that catch attention.
True, opposition leader Stephen Harper used his first question when Parliament resumed May 26 to raise BSE. Agriculture critic Howard Hilstrom was going to pitch for an emergency debate on the issue. Conservative leader Joe Clark beat him to the punch.
But the real opportunity for the Alliance to keep the public policy spotlight on the issue was missed.
On May 26 the Alliance set the topic for the day’s parliamentary debate. Instead of highlighting the potential devastation that was visiting their constituents, the party went ahead with an earlier plan to debate a SARS-related issue, giving Taiwan observer status at the World Health Organization.
From a political communications vantage point, it was unbelievable.
