Fake Sun TV segment mocks our democracy

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney (left) is seen with Judge Aris Babikian at a Mississauga event on Oct. 30, 2009. Babikian said he played no role in selecting the participants for a Sun News citizenship event that had immigration department officials posing as new Canadians.

Heather Mallick, Opinion, The Toronto Star:

When Stephen Harper’s government wants a happy clap-clap Canadian moment on Sun News, it goes the Full North Korean.

Yes, six of the “new Canadians” attending a “reaffirmation” ceremony for Citizenship Week in the Sun studios last fall turn out not to have been recently minted citizens after all. As The Canadian Press’ Jennifer Ditchburn has reported, they were actually federal bureaucrats told to smile and wave the damn flag like they meant it.

The thing looked like a school play with grown-ups. Sad frightened grown-ups.

According to CP, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s office had asked Sun News to do a soft news segment, at the network’s studio, on new citizens taking the oath. It does sound as though the Tories and Sun News are joined at the hip. I have never worked anywhere in journalism where the government phoned and asked you to do anything. Oh yeah, when an 8-year-old designs a Christmas stamp, we’ll be there.

But journalists and government never get together and fake stuff. That would be a firing offence, presumably on both sides. How times have changed.

According to CP, Immigration started calling around for new Canadians to reaffirm, but they were all too busy working. Immigration didn’t have the manpower to hunt them down. So they found eight adults — six of them civil servants — and two small children (unemployed). Two of the government workers were given T-shirts with slogans that I can’t definitively make out but are possibly: “Canada greatest country in the world. All other countries are run by little girls. Canada number one exporter of potassium. Other countries have inferior potassium.”

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