Harold Albrecht, my Canadian MP, made it back to parliament, along with his Conservative government. He continues to waste the resources of Canada Post by assailing me with propaganda. MP’s don’t pay for mail sent to their constituents.
On the end portion of the propaganda is a circle that says “Voice Your Choice”. Out of that circle comes three arrows. The first arrow goes to the right where it says “Who’s on the right track to help keep Canadians safe?”
The second arrow points below this question,but also to the right. There are four boxes there, listing the 4 major parties. Specifically, the 2nd arrow points to The Conservatives box as an answer to that question. Isn’t that extremely leading and obnoxious?
The third arrow points downward to a code you can scan with your smartphone to take you to a survey, more on that later.
Firstly, about the question of keeping Canadians safe. Conservatives claim that their policies will keep Canadians safer. While at the same time trying to abolish the long gun registry, something that police departments across Canada have wanted – to keep Canada safer. So obviously ‘pointing out the answer’ is bad spin by Conservative marketers.
As to the smartphone survey, it is easiest to do if you own a smartphone. But don’t worry, a website is given so computer users can also answer the survey. It’s a bit more difficult to do it this way. And Canada Post will return a hand filled in survey. But they don’t tell you that the Internet respondents are told they must include their name, address, postal code and email. If this is the requirement for everybody, many of the mailed in responses won’t count on the survey.
So the survey will skew toward the opinions of the wealthy. And toward the small population that read this piece of spin and propaganda far enough to get to this backside of the pamphlet.
Obviously any such survey is going to have many problems. I think the Conservatives are interested in ‘spun’ surveys like this.
So much so that they have started making other statistics like the census less hard facts and more spin. Why else would this party make anything as important as a census a matter of voluntary participation?
If the Conservatives and Harold Albrecht have their way, the field of political science will have to have a name change to ‘political art’ since there would be no science left.
But don’t fear, dear reader. Harold also sent a second piece of propaganda to me this week. It invites me to sign up for “Harold’s electronic newsletter”. I’m signing up – just for the bonus opportunity of more blog fodder.
A little bird told me that during the last election campaign, Harold’s hair mysteriously darkened. Has he found the fountain of youth and is he saving it for his elite friends? Maybe his newsletter will tell me.
