I guess it’s slightly to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s credit that he was able to get a last-second invitation to attend President Trump’s latest international triumph … we all know how Mr. Carney loves him a nice photo op. But it was almost unprecedented that he nipped over to Egypt without taking any of the usual flappers and fart-catchers of the Canadian media along with him:
X-post by former PMO chief of staff Norman Spector, who noticed something was up concerning how the Prime Minister’s team got its message out
Image and caption from The Rewrite by Peter Menzies
Last week, the Parliamentary Press Gallery (PPG) and I had something in common.
We were both dismayed.
They, because they weren’t invited to join Prime Minister Carney on his last-minute trip to Egypt for a photo opp; Me because most of them didn’t seem all that interested in looking into the circumstances of the PM’s hasty departure and instead allowed themselves to be played in the most appallingly obvious manner.
What got the PPG’s knickers twisted was that they weren’t invited to accompany Carney when he departed Ottawa in a rush to get to the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh, a popular spot on the Red Sea for the world’s glitterati. It took PPG President Mia Rabson a couple of days to issue a statement, but she made it clear the PPG disapproved:
The Parliamentary Press Gallery was not informed in advance of the Prime Minister’s trip to Egypt to participate in the Middle East Peace Ceremony on Oct. 12-13, […] The Gallery is disappointed and dismayed at the exclusion of Canadian media from the event and expresses in no uncertain terms that this must never happen again.
It is unprecedented that Canadian media be entirely excluded from a Canadian prime minister’s foreign trip.
The only reporting I could find on this was in Politico, where it was recorded that the PMO had posted this notice: “6:30 p.m. The Prime Minister will depart for Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to attend the signing of a Middle East peace plan. Closed to media.”
What first caused my jaw to drop and to become, like Rabin, disappointed and dismayed, were the stories left unpursued. On the morning of Oct. 12, Canada was not listed as among the countries invited to join in the “peace summit” associated with the ceasefire deal reached between Israel and Hamas. If it had been, the prime minister may not have had to charter a private jet because the usual Royal Canadian Air Force planes and crews were, as City News‘s Glen MacGregor reported, unavailable.
There are two lines of journalistic inquiry there, neither of which appears to have been of interest. The first is: how can Canada’s military be so poorly equipped that there isn’t at all times a fully-equipped aircraft and crew on standby and is this an issue that will be addressed in the future? The second is: how did we wind up getting invited to the peace summit? Comments by US President Donald Trump indicate that we weren’t initially considered important enough to be on site but phoned to ask if we could join the party. (The Line — which doesn’t accept government subsidies — noticed.)
Trump, in remarks to media said: “You have Canada. That’s so great to have, in fact. The president called and he wanted to know if it’s worth — well he knew exactly what it is. He knew the importance. Where’s Canada, by the way? Where are you? He knew the importance of this.”
What was pursued, at least in comments online by journalists, was Trump’s inability to identify Carney by his correct title. (In an exchange that followed, Carney sarcastically thanked Trump for elevating him and, in response, was told “at least I didn’t call you governor”. Ha ha.)
Everyone is free to make their own decisions, but if Canada had to call Trump to ask to be invited, Canadians need to know if that means we are in the president’s debt. Trump, after all, seems like the sort of guy who keeps score.
But it’s what followed that really got creepy. While Canadian reporters were not allowed to accompany the prime minister to Egypt, someone who says he or she was on the plane started phoning around to tell reporters what happened. And they went for it. The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Politico all reported unverified statements emanating from a single, unnamed source. The Globe‘s Robert Fife reported that “a senior government official” said that while Carney and others thought they were just in Egypt for a photo opp, during a four hour wait for Trump to arrive from Israel “Mr. Carney had back-and-forth conversations with a group of leaders”.
So, after a bit of ritual humiliation — par for the course with Trump and Carney — the PM got to have unstructured/unfocused chit-chat with other diplomatic rag-tag and bob-tail clinging to the President’s cape. Not a good look, but Canadians must be getting inured to their national leaders being treated as, at best, an afterthought.
