Questions about Frank Graves

There’s a bit of chatter about today’s Ekos poll, but a lot of it has been about its pollster Frank Graves. As with anything in politics, there’s a problem when the messenger becomes the story rather than the message they are delivering.

A few press gallery flacks were all a-twitter at a new meme they perceived to be emerging from the Liberal benches during Question Period: “The Conservative Culture of Deceit”. Obviously more of a play on Stephen Harper’s “Culture of Defeat” remark about Atlantic Canada than the Justice Gomery’s remarks of a Liberal “Culture of Entitlement”.

The “Culture of Defeat” written for Harper in 2001 posed problems for the Conservative brand in Atlantic Canada and what made it particularly damaging was a bit of history on uncouth remarks about the region by another member of one of the Conservative’s legacy parties, the Canadian Alliance.

Back in 2000, Alliance pollster John Mykytyshyn went adrift in some turbulent seas when he remarked “[Atlantic Canadians] don’t want to do like our ancestors did and work for a living and go where the jobs are. Probably, the Alliance won’t go over as well there.”

Indeed, after these comments, the Alliance did not “go over” well in Atlantic Canada and it has taken years to climb back from these words.

Mykytyshyn told me, “as an unpaid volunteer, I was subjected to 13 days of media coverage on this based on an offhand comment that I apologized for, and the CBC did a 10 minute special on the incident.”

Fast forward to today, where we learn that the CBC’s EKOS pollster is also advising the Liberal Party of Canada giving the party strategic direction on the sentiment of the electorate.

Among Graves’ advice?

“I told them that they should invoke a culture war. Cosmopolitanism versus parochialism, secularism versus moralism, Obama versus Palin, tolerance versus racism and homophobia, democracy versus autocracy. If the cranky old men in Alberta don’t like it, too bad. Go south and vote for Palin.”

Start a culture war? I remember years and years of Liberal criticism about Conservatives dividing Canadians, “pitting region against region”. The Liberal Party branded itself as the party that “unites” Canadians rather than divides. The only thing the Liberal Party is not known to divide these days are leadership debts and the cheque at Carmello’s — someone else will pick it up.

But the CBC’s attachment to Graves is particularly conflicted since it erupted when Mykytyshyn made those unfortunate and divisive remarks, driving it home to every east-coaster watching or listening to Canada’s state-funded broadcaster. And now? Our tax dollars pad Graves’ bottom line as he advises the Liberals on how to “stop worrying about the West” as Lawrence Martin reports him saying. Further, the CBC is using him to provide objective, research-driven advice on party politics yet he is giving advice to one party.

Division does work in politics. But when the Conservatives own the right side of the entitled vs. ordinary split what’s left? Demonization of entire constituencies, provinces and regions of people is the politics of desperation. It always fails.

UPDATE: Kory Teneycke unloads on Graves on CBC’s Power & Politics. Teneycke pointed out Graves’ donation record to the Liberal Party. The Sun points out donations totaling $11,042.72 to the Liberal Party including the leadership campaigns of Ignatieff and Rae with just $449.04 going to a Tory candidate in Ottawa-Vanier.

I emailed Richard Stursberg, the executive VP of CBC/Radio Canada about this:

Here is the CBC’s reply,

And my reply to Jeff,

and the subsequent reply,

The Sun story includes comment from Paul Adams, executive director of EKOS:

“EKOS has never polled for any political party or been retained as a client by any political party,” he said in an e-mail Thursday night.

“Mr. Graves did give an interview to Lawrence Martin, the Globe columnist, in which he offered the Liberals hypothetical advice, just as he might to any other political party in the course of an interview.

“To the extent that the Globe article may have implied that Mr. Graves had previously proffered this advice directly to the Liberal Party, it was a mistaken implication.”

From EKOS’ website, we learn about Paul Adams:

Prior to joining EKOS, Mr. Adams had a distinguished career as a journalist. He covered mainly political stories as a correspondent for CBC television’s The National and later as Parliamentary Bureau Chief for CBC Radio. In 1999, he joined the Globe and Mail as senior parliamentary correspondent and later served as the newspaper’s Middle East correspondent.

Small world.

UPDATE 4/23: Graves has apologizes for his remarks and wants to set the record straight:

Liberal reaction full of holes

Too illustrative, too offensive? The Liberal comms strategy on this IS full of holes I’m sorry to say.

Yesterday, I went on Evan Soloman’s Power & Politics show to talk Photoshop faux-pas and the illustration that was put on the Liberal Party website showing the PM in a Liberal partisan “assassination fantasy”. I mentioned that ad hominem always fails in communications; personal attacks such as the Liberal photoshop failed and the Conservative poopin’ puffin failed too.

Soloman mentioned another illustration (which was not available at airtime) of “bullet holes” around Stephane Dion’s head that appeared on the Conservative Party website.

Here is the is the illustration in question, held up by Kinsella on P&P yesterday and today on CTV’s Canada AM:

One of the tools in a web designer’s toolbox is the stock photo. For a buck or two, a designer can grab a professional illustration or photo to accent a base illustration or photo. In this case, a Conservative web designer grabbed a stock photo of
“holes” from a website called iStockphoto (a website I highly recommend, btw).

Here is the image from iStockphoto:

and the name of the file on the iStockphoto website? Not “Bullet Holes” but “Paper Holes“:

Holes in Dion’s plan, holes in Dion’s platform?

Why do the Liberals only see death?

Let’s consider the process of the Liberal apology:
1) An apology from “The Web Team” at Liberal.ca if the assassination photoshop may have offended some people.
2) An apology from Ralph Goodale suggesting that social media does not allow for editorial control. This is so absolutely wrong and misleading. The Liberal.ca photoshop contest had a screening process (ie. “editorial control”)
3) An accusation from Warren Kinsella that the other guys are just as bad so let’s all just forget the Liberal transgression.

When the poopin puffin was released, the Prime Minister apologized to Stephane Dion. When will Michael Ignatieff apologize to Stephen Harper for a mock assassination photo that appeared on the Liberal leader’s website?

CBC Board member is Iggy’s newest recruit

Joseph Handley, who is still listed on the CBC website as a member of that crown corporation’s board of directors was named today as Michael Ignatieff’s newest candidate for the next election.

Handley was also a former cabinet minister in the Northwest Territories.

The embarrassing thing? This Conservative government appointed him to the Ceeb’s board, a board whose bias against Conservatives I’ve written about in the past.

That’s the same CBC that took a shot against the Prime Minister for partisan patronage “hypocrisy” during the last election.

To my friends over at Canadian Heritage and PMO: you get a free pass on the partisanship of your next “patronage” appointment at the CBC to replace Handley. Nobody who has a serious voice will blame you for it. And frankly, it’s time to make more partisan appointments to the public service. Yes, today we also learned that Iggy was courting former Clerk Himmelfarb to be his Chief of Staff.

Some would argue that Prime Minister Harper should stay away from politicizing the bureaucracy and making the civil service more “partisan”. Those people would be the same that don’t differentiate between “Liberal” and “non-partisan status quo”. Indeed, a change can only be made to the right. Conservatives, your opponents will either criticize you or undermine you — critics are more easily identified and deflected.