C12

Michael Staples
THE MILITARY

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Speak Up

Now that the federal election campaign has finally come to an end, perhaps we can get back to a situation where officials are willing to answer a few questions.

Enlarge Photo

Canadian Press

Speak no evil: A dress shop in Montreal uses cutouts of the five federal party leaders to spruce up its window Thursday. Columnist Mike Staples hopes that with the election behind us, the gag order that has been in effect during the campaign will be lifted and the military will be free to talk to the media. It had been forbidden to talk to journalists about anything during the campaign.

Last month the government put in place what was described by the media as an "unprecedented clamp on government business," meaning no one was allowed to talk publicly about anything.

It was all designed to keep people from saying something they should not during the election campaign.

Among the agencies or departments affected by the gargantuan gag order was Canada's military.

Regular force members were not allowed to talk or comment on any topic - nothing.

The gag order was ludicrous and did nothing to quell the image of a government tagged with having an obsession for information control.

In this area, both the order and the fear that went along with it were so far reaching that engineers at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown were not allowed to comment on work they were doing on the new Oromocto SPCA.

What secrets were they about to spill?

One of the engineers might have said: "We're trying to show that the military is, indeed, part of the community and this is what we're doing to prove it."

What else could they say?

They were working on an animal shelter as a means of honing their construction skills - not on a secret research facility designed to create a new generation of deadly weapons.

But who can blame them?

No one wants to be raked over the coals for talking to the dreaded media during such dire times.

On the reserve side of the equation, the commander of the First Battalion, The Royal New Brunswick Regiment (1RNBR) openly talked about his unit's plans to retire their old colours and take possession of new ones. It was a good news story for a regiment so rich in tradition and one that was proudly shared with the public through the power of the print medium.

There's being careful and there's something called paranoia.

We can only hope that with the election of a new government, the flow of information will quickly return to past levels and not just pre-election levels.

The last two years have been marked by a noted effort to control media access to military events and occurrences.

A paranoia crept in that cast a shadow over just about every effort related to the media - even the most mundane of stories.

Privately, soldiers expressed frustration over the new rules but admitted there was little they could do about them and were adamant that they were not about to challenge them, regardless of whether it was the right thing to do or not.

***

Feedback from my column two weeks ago on smoking within the military provided some interesting things to think about.

One reader sent an e-mail, entitled "food for thought."

"I would add one other dimension to your analysis which actually supports the higher rate, and perhaps tolerance, for smoking within the military - the availability of tax and duty free tobacco products. Soldiers, sailors and airmen and women participate in training, deployments and operations routinely outside Canadian territory or jurisdictions.

"These duty assignments expose them to readily available duty and tax free tobacco products. In fact, long deployments to operational theatres such as in Afghanistan provide significant inducements to indulge in smoking. I have actually overheard soldiers exclaiming "Look at this, a carton of cigarettes for only $7 (US)!"

"That price is so low I am going to have to start smoking again."

"If the Canadian Forces recognizes this as a serious health threat, then why do we subsidize the availability of these products by going through the expensive burden of delivering them to Afghanistan, and offering them to our soldiers at ridiculously low prices? We also cater to Afghan merchants at a once-weekly bazaar where local cigarette brands (of questionable manufacturing quality) are offered at even cheaper prices. We do not tolerate drinking of alcohol in this same theatre of operations, then why do we tolerate smoking?"

Michael Staples covers the military for The Daily Gleaner. He can be reached at staples.michael@dailygleaner.com