Posts Tagged ‘stephen harper’

Tony Cement demos a new Twitter app

While politics isn’t a huge part of my business life (unlike my compatriot Mark Blevis, for example), I am an armchair political quarterback of the first water. So this post by Maclean’s magazine parliamentary correspondent and blogger Aaron Wherry really caught my eye.

Minister of Industry Tony Clement is possibly the most passionate user of Twitter within Canada’s federal cabinet (although there are others.) And he should be given credit for not cutting and running despite being in charge of some controversial files, including changes to Canada’s census, an attempted takeover of Potash Corporation by Australian firm BHP Billiton, and most recently the government’s awarding of $300 million to Pratt & Whitney Canada to assist the company in carrying out research & development on new aircraft engines.

The announcement of this funding led to some stiff media criticism, and last night, as Wherry illustrates, Minister Clement took to his Twitter account to joust with several people, including journalist Andrew Coyne and economist Stephen Gordon (who had been intensely critical of Clement’s decision to discontinue the mandatory long-form census).

Clement puts on the gloves Twitter-style

The exchange lasted about two hours and ended at about midnight. I think it’s remarkable (in a good way) that Clement is doing this. But it makes me wonder about a couple of things. The Stephen Harper government has been painted as exceedingly locked-down in terms of communication, and there has been a long history of clashes between journalists and the government. But here’s a senior cabinet minister slugging it out with a journalist and others in the public twitterverse.

So I tip my hat to Minister Clement. I think it’s great that he’s doing this. And now, some tips that I think his tweeting can teach us all:

1. Use the tool that you are comfortable with. It could be argued that a blog might be a better tool for Clement. But for whatever reason or reasons, Clement likes Twitter. So he’s using Twitter. You can’t force a minister to do stuff. But I don’t think anyone’s twisting Clement’s arm to do this. He’s engaged. So work with that.
2. Don’t cut and run when things get tough. Clement has gone through some bruiser battles on Twitter. But he’s still there, and while he may end a given exchange, he doesn’t go to ground when critics appear. You have to brace yourself for the critics and be ready to respond.
3. Remember that you control your message, no matter the medium. In the exchange from last night, Andrew Coyne presses hard for Clement to disclose departmental research. Note that Clement doesn’t say “no.” He ignores the request. He could provide it at a later time, or he might not. Or Coyne could do an Access to Information request to obtain the research.
4. Choose a medium you can communicate in. Clement appears to be a tech savvy guy; he also appears to like cut and thrust. That makes Twitter useful for him. Furthermore, he uses the shorthand and conventions of the medium to his own advantage. He shortens words, uses hashtags, etc.
5. Choose a medium that matches your urgency and frequency needs. I mentioned in tip 1 that a blog might be better for Clement in terms of putting out fleshed-out arguments. But the conversationality wouldn’t be there, and the need to polish the writing would be higher. A podcast would require some sort of equipment (even Audioboo would require a mobile device), and it doesn’t have the immediacy of a tweet.

I hope these tips are useful. If you have any more to add, please leave them in the comments.

There are certain stories that you can guarantee will get covered each year. Each February in Canada, RSP season brings stories about the lack of preparedness for retirement we Canadians are demonstrating. Each Canada Day, the Dominion Institute releases a poll that shows we Canadians don’t know our own history very well.

Every time Apple releases a new product you’ll see stories about the lineups and pictures of Steve Jobs in his turtleneck and jeans.

And at the end of March, Ontario media cover the Sunshine List. Not to be confused with the Sunshine GIRL (an exercise in a different sort of transparency), the Sunshine list was the result of a law passed in the mid-1990s by the provincial government . Pretty simple as laws go: anyone on the public payroll in the province — provincial public servants, employees of universities, colleges, towns, cities, hospitals — who makes over $100,000 gets put on the list and the employers are responsible for making the  list public by the end of March.

Back then, the Mike Harris government was in power in Ontario, and they loved the idea of populism, being in solidarity with the “little guy”, Joe Sixpack. So this sort of vague public shaming — providing a list of people who you could tsk tsk or wag a finger at — worked for them, quite nicely.

So every year, talk-radio hosts fulminate, columnists critique (Christina Blizzard: “There are 63,761 people on the provincial list this year. That’s up 10,000 over last year…April Fool’s? I guess the joke’s on us.”) and journalists write about how the ranks of the $100K earners area swelling. This Brantford Expositor editorial notes:

Five years ago, The Expositor published a local “Sunshine List” with 78 names. The list published in Saturday’s Expositor has grown to 349 names.

Here’s what I say. The Sunshine list has some serious flaws. First, $100K in 1995 is not the same as $100K today. In fact, just on inflation, it’s more like $133K. Assuming pay raises followed Canada’s inflation rate, someone making $77K in 1995 would be above $100K today just from cost-of-living. And freaking out because the list grows every year makes as much sense as freaking out because prices go up every year; that is to say, none.

Second, it doesn’t expose “fat cats” – there are all sorts of people who are normal working people who end up on this list. Police officers, firemen, bus drivers, nurses — they’re all there, mostly because they’ve worked enough overtime to hit the magic number.

Third, it doesn’t measure VALUE. The top public servant on the list is the head of Ontario Power Generation, who makes $2.5 million, apparently. What does that number tell us? Damned if I know. It’s a lot of money. Is it well spent? Does he make more than others in similar jobs? Does he outperform his compatriots?

Fourth, it reinforces our sometimes-perverse attitudes toward public-sector compensation. We pay our Prime Minister about $300,000 to run a G8 country. We pay the president of the Bruyere Continuing Care Centre $30,000 more than the PM to run an organization with 753 beds and 1,000 employees. The minimum salary for an NHL player is $450K. Formula 1 Driver Kimi Raikonnen made $45,000,000 last year (US!). Nortel‘s CEO made more than seven times as much as the PM last year.

So until we compensate people more in line with the VALUE they add to society, I humbly suggest that we kill the Sunshine list. As an exercise in effective communication about  compensation and the contribution to society, it is an utter failure.

Photo credit: Dru! on Flickr, creative-commons licensed.