When I was a bureaucrat working for the Harris government and, later, a Liberal staffer working in the McGuinty government, there were lines you didn’t cross.

In government news releases you never called it the “Harris” government or the “Ontario Liberal” government. Releases are handled by Ontario Public Service employees — paid by the taxpayer. Both the Harris/Eves Conservatives and the McGuinty/Wynne Liberals knew it was unacceptable to get political in a government news release.

Occasionally, some overzealous junior political staffer tried to push the envelope. The public service would politely tell them to pound sand. The government — as bureaucrats and staffers all agreed — belongs to the people. An Ontario government news release is owned by the taxpayers who paid for it, not a political party. If you had a partisan axe to grind, you did it on party letterhead on party time using party resources.

Period.

That rule — for longer than the 20 years that I’ve been working around Ontario politics — also extended to the web and social media. Premier’s Office videos, the Twitter handles owned by premiers and ministers, the premier’s website were kept clear of political language, criticism of the opposition or anything else with a partisan whiff.

That’s because politicians respected taxpayer dollars.

But that’s changed.

Now, the premier’s Twitter handle isn’t “Premier Ford” or “Doug Ford,” it’s “Fordnation.” A handle like that wouldn’t have flown before because — not only is it political branding — it diminishes the office of premier. The premier represents all Ontarians, of all backgrounds and beliefs — something he should be prouder of than representing the narrow, made-up political constituency of “Fordnation.”

The Ford government also created a faux news network called “Ontario News Now,” where, a former broadcaster turned Ford staffer spins political stories. The videos are produced and uploaded using taxpayer dollars and posted by MPPs offices to Facebook.

This is unprecedented. Governments from Harris to Wynne relied on private enterprise — the media — to broadcast the news. And while they took their lumps doing it, it would have never occurred to them to do an end-run around the media on the public dime.

And finally — at the top of every government-issued and taxpayer-funded news release there’s the campaign tag line “Ontario’s Government for the People.” Not only is that ham-fisted line redundant (every government is the “government of the people”) it’s also dripping with irony.

Ontario bureaucrats and their political bosses didn’t politicize news releases because they all believed government belongs to the people, not to a political party’s partisan agenda.

Another irony is that a government elected to “protect taxpayer dollars” is spending millions of those dollars selling itself back to the people.

But it’s what’s going on behind the scenes that should concern everyone — especially Tories.

Bureaucrats, lawyers, and possibly the auditor, would have advised the Ford government that these practices contravene convention, and probably the Government Advertising Act of 2004, too.

But they’ve done it anyway.

Which means that the system is broken. The checks and balances — where public servants warn political staff when they cross a line — are being ignored.

That’s scary.

Ignoring the advice of the public service leads to things like Walkerton, or Ipperwash, or gas plants. It’s already led to lawsuits and expensive court battles.

Public servants no doubt advised the Ford government that it would lose in court on the cap-and-trade cancellation — and it did, to Tesla. They would have also warned the government about using the notwithstanding clause.

Again, ignored.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

But this reckless politicization isn’t just bad government — it’s also bad politics.

Public servants aren’t the enemy of the government — they’re there to protect governments from themselves. They’re your friend at the bar warning you when you’ve had one too many. You need friends like that, even if you don’t want to hear what they have to say.

As a government, it’s easy to get drunk on power, and you need people around you with sober second thoughts. Because — ultimately — if you crash the province, the voters will make you pay.

Lloyd Rang is a communications consultant and worked at Queen’s Park from 1999-2018

Read more about: