OTTAWA - It's like one of those little stray threads that Prime Minister Stephen Harper pays his stylist-valet to manage. Yank it the wrong way, and everything unravels.
After more than a year of wrestling the communications beast with grim-willed determination, the minority Conservative government spent the past two weeks ducking and deking and deliberately misleading in perhaps their worst fortnight since the 2006 federal election.
In doing so, the previously disciplined Tories broke some cardinal rules in crisis management: be proactive, be forthcoming, get your story straight, and stick to it.
Barry McLoughlin, a veteran Ottawa image consultant, has literally written the handbook, his aptly titled "Overcoming Panic and Fear: Risk and Crisis Communications.''
"In a crisis, issues mutate,'' McLoughlin said in an interview Friday, while stressing he was not discussing current political events.
"This was a little string that got pulled today, and that unravels another thing that pulls at tomorrow, which leads to another story the next day.''
The current Conservative woes arguably began with one of those small revelations that generates water-cooler talk even outside political circles: hockey-dad Harper, incongruously, employs a personal primper who travels with him around the world.
For a minority prime minister consumed with air-tight image management, make-up artist Michelle Muntean's role should not have come as a great surprise.
But the Prime Minister's Office stonewalled, refusing first to say how Muntean was paid, then stating her expenses were being picked up by the party, before finally being forced to concede she's working on the taxpayers' dime. A one-day curiousity turned into a three-day story and _ with the government still refusing to say how and how much she's paid _ promises more headlines down the road.
McLouglin's crisis rule No. 7? Get all the bad news out at once.
It was a wobbly Tory test-run for much more serious business that followed.
When the Globe and Mail revealed this week that up to 30 Afghan prisoners were alleging torture by local officials after being collared by Canadian troops, the story hit an already sensitive nerve.
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor had been forced to apologize in March after erroneously claiming for months that Red Cross officials were monitoring the welfare of Afghan detainees.
McLoughlin's crisis rule No. 6? If you know bad news is ahead, announce it yourself.
Confronted by the Globe story this week, the Conservatives cast doubt on the torture allegations and O'Connor stated that the Afghan Human Rights Commission was monitoring detainees.
O'Connor's claim was almost immediately proved false, while a government report surfaced that showed Canadian officials in Afghanistan had warned Ottawa about torture. The most damning warnings were inexplicably blacked out before the report was released under Access to Information law, but an complete version found its way to the Globe.
On Wednesday, O'Connor claimed a new deal to monitor detainees had just been completed, but the prime minister said Thursday the deal was under negotiation and Public Security Minister Stockwell Day claimed that Canadian justice officials were already visiting the prisoners. Those officials, in fact, had no access to the notorious Afghan security service's jail and were not tasked with checking on prisoner welfare.
McLoughlin's crisis rule No. 2: Designate a single spokesperson; "many brains, one mouth.''
In the midst of this mess, the government mistakenly faxed its long-awaited environment announcement to the opposition two days before the planned media roll-out.
Despite alerting Hill security, officials in the Prime Minister's Office initially claimed the faxed speech contained no newsworthy numbers and was simply a pre-announcement preamble. At least one broadcaster went to air with this blatant falsehood.
McLoughlin's rule No. 1? "Don't duck and run, face up to it.'' The corollary is rule No. 8: "Don't break into jail.''
Environment Minister John Baird subsequently apologized for the leak, but the government still went ahead with a meticulously choreographed media launch on Thursday in Toronto, involving multiple lockups that sealed environmental critics off from the reporters examining the new climate change measures.
Peter Donolo, a former Liberal communications director for Jean Chretien, said Friday the three incidents all share a similar theme.
"Everything's made more difficult by this control freakishness where the only person who knows what's going on is the prime minister,'' Donolo said from his office at the Strategic Council, a Toronto communications firm.
Even Tory sympathizers agree.
As one dryly put it Friday, there are lessons to be learned for the government in how information is dispersed among departments and ministerial offices.
