OTTAWA — Even before it hits bookstore shelves on Friday, former MP Garth Turner’s tell-all about getting bounced from the Conservative party caucus has already stirred the threat of legal action.
But the first to take formal offence to Sheeple: Caucus Confidential in Stephen Harper’s Ottawa is not one of the Tories who sat with him on the government benches, but a news agency that covered the outspoken MP.
Turner’s publisher, Key Porter Books, received a letter last week from the Canadian Press objecting to a passage in Sheeple about the wire service’s reporting of a Conservative caucus meeting.
Key Porter said Thursday it has reached an agreement with CP to settle the complaint. The publisher said it has sent out “notification stickers” to booksellers to be placed inside the front cover of the book. The books are not to be sold until the correction stickers are affixed, the company said.
Turner was suspended from Harper’s caucus in 2006 for alleged violations of caucus confidentiality on his Internet blog.
In a section of the book that discusses other breaches of confidentiality, Turner refers to a caucus meeting in which the prime minister was reported to have received a standing ovation for his decision to keep flags on Parliament Hill flying at full mast when Canadian soldiers are killed in Afghanistan.
The Canadian Press story on the meeting, Turner writes, was “a crock. There was no ovation, standing or otherwise.” The story was made up by the Prime Minister’s Office and leaked, Turner claims.
Turner goes on to allege that CP’s Ottawa bureau chief confirmed the next day that “information of this kind is never verified, never confirmed, because of the inherent difficulty in doing so.”
Jennifer Fox, a publicist for Key Porter, said that the passage in the book was not meant to be critical of CP’s reporting.
“Garth didn’t have any intention to suggest Canadian Press did not check its stories,” she said. Rather, the anecdote was meant to illustrate the lack of caucus secrecy.
Fox said the book would be released Friday, as scheduled.
CP editor-in-chief Scott White said he was unable to comment Thursday but would be able to speak about the matter Friday.
Turner told Canwest News Service he didn’t think most people would notice the offending section.
“Unless you were absolutely engaged in the arcaneness of it, I don’t think you’d really see it,” he said. “But in any case, they had an issue and we’ve come to a resolution.”
Review copies of Sheeple were circulated to the media over the past week.
Once a cabinet minister in Kim Campbell’s short-lived government, Turner returned to Parliament as the MP for the southern Ontario riding of Halton in 2006.
After he was kicked out of caucus and the Conservative party, Turner sat as an Independent, then joined the Liberal caucus in 2007. He ran as a Liberal in last year’s federal election, losing to Conservative Lisa Raitt, now the minister of natural resources.
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
My life may be unconventional, but my beliefs are simple, traditional.
My country matters a great deal, as do freedom and democracy. Twice I have felt the awe of walking onto the floor of the House of Commons.
Those steps came eighteen years apart. Between them, I learned much. Elected again in 2006, I returned to Ottawa as an MP no longer filled with ambition to run the country, but with a restless populism. Two decisions came easily: This time I would give my allegiance first to the people, then to a party. Second, I would use new media – blogging, webcasting – to open up the political process.
Both of those brought me into instant and intense conflict with the prime minister. Within a week of returning to Ottawa I was ordered to go offline. I refused. Ten difficult months later I watched myself on TV being thrown out of my job, on Stephen Harper’s instruction. His was a government which did not value either populism or transparency. I was a man who believed liberty is not possible without both.
No longer in politics, I decided to flesh this story out. Not to exact revenge on the prime minister, since anyone who achieves such an office deserves respect. Rather, it’s a tale about democracy slipping away. Never have fewer of us voted than in the election of six months ago. We are more cynical, disengaged and distant from our leaders than ever.
And why not? When was the last time your MP knocked on your door, or wrote a daily blog allowing you to comment and question? Has he or she ever asked to you vote online before a tally was taken in the Commons? Sent you a personal email? Shot and posted a vid on an emerging issue, and asked for feedback?
In a few days my new book, “Sheeple: Caucus confidential in Stephen Harper’s Ottawa” will be published. Undoubtedly, it will cause a ruckus. It takes Canadians where they haven’t been before – inside the PMO, into the caucus room, into the prime minister’s home. It traces the ascent to power of a group of people I came to see were more a cult than a party, and a government insisting MPs be a silent, pliant flock.
As I conclude in it: “The story that follows is not a successful one. There’s no way to polish it. I became a polarizing figure in Canadian politics after taking a key decision in the days following the election of 2006. Stephen Harper made a demand I could not accept, and the consequences flowed.
Some people thought I was an heroic figure for choosing the path I did. Lots more believed I was an idiot or, worse, dangerous. Entire web sites were dedicated to my demise and, as an opposition backbencher, I received far more attention from political operatives and the mainstream media than I deserved. Those people in my riding who voted for a Conservative, and ended up with a Liberal, hated my guts and ultimately were revenged. Those across the nation who supported Stephen Harper, himself a polarizer, piled on.
Not a day passed during time on Parliament Hill that was not bathed in controversy and criticism. The contrast with my first tour of duty as an MP under Mulroney and Campbell was stark. None of this, the failure nor the influence, would have occurred without a blog.
The decision to become a web-based MP, to turn my time in Ottawa into an open discussion board, to poll and engage and reveal, and to see if digital democracy could improve a system that was losing relevance, is central to this story. The decision, one would also conclude, was fated. Parties and leaders do not want what a growing legion of citizens ask. A blogger with a foot in both worlds was a dead man walking.”
This is my first book about politics. And my last. Do not assume though, my fight for freedom and democracy has ended.
Should you wish an advance copy, go here.
Courtesy: The Wingnuterer
