Failure to communicate serves only to alienate

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/12/2022 (631 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s a reason Strother Martin’s most famous line from “Cool Hand Luke” has endured for so long.

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”

Most people aren’t saying it like Martin’s character did, to justify the beating of a prisoner under his watch, but we’d bet most people have seen an example of a frustrating communications breakdown at some point in their life.

In 2022, the Sun has seen a frustrating failure to communicate from government and government-run entities.

Yesterday’s editorial argued that Parks Canada has failed to communicate in the saga of Wesley Bone, who was prevented from returning to his camp in Riding Mountain National Park after occupying a space near Lake Audy for years.

The federal parks agency refused to provide us and the public with any information about Bone’s charges stemming from his occupation of a public place, though attempted to secretly confide in some nearby landowners in a Facebook briefing session.

Unfortunately, they weren’t the only group trying to sweep details about criminal activities under the rug.

Last month, a prisoner being held at Brandon Correctional Centre allegedly assaulted the three officers tasked with supervising him at the Brandon Regional Health Centre and escaped in a stolen car before being recaptured a short time later.

More than a day after the incident occurred, Manitoba Corrections had not divulged any information about this case to the public, even though the prisoner who escaped was initially being held on second-degree murder charges.

In the ranks of our provincial government, there were multiple instances of the governing Progressive Conservatives refusing comment supposedly because of byelection-related communications blackout rules.

In March, the Tories cited those rules to justify Health Minister Audrey Gordon denying comment on her department’s work to clear Manitoba’s surgical backlog, yet still allowed Premier Heather Stefanson to appear at a press conference touting WestJet’s post-COVID summer schedule of flights.

Then, in October, Municipal Relations Minister Eileen Clarke refused to comment on criticism levelled at her government by then-Carberry mayor Stuart Olmstead about the province giving $5.5 million for a Grey Cup hosting bid while his community’s health centre sat without needed upgrades.

Clarke’s press secretary initially cited non-existent blackout rules for municipal elections, followed by Clarke admitting there were no such rules and she was making a choice not to appear to be interfering in the subsequent week’s election.

At the municipal level, the Sun ran multiple articles talking about off the record, informal Brandon City Council meetings that appeared to have no justification for preventing the public from participating or attending.

On that front, at least some members of council appeared to have listened to public concerns.

The special council meeting on growth held by council earlier this month that the public and media were finally allowed to attend is a decent start toward improving transparency, and we hope it continues.

As we wrote in June when the Sun uncovered emails that revealed a now-settled squabble between the city and the Brandon School Division that hadn’t previously made the light of day, public participation in a democracy like ours is a feature, not a bug.

But from our perspective, it looks like at most levels of government, the public and the public interest is a burden to be ignored rather than served.

It feels as if some public servants want nothing more than to be left to their own devices instead of acting in the best interest of the people who pay their salaries.

Whenever there’s an election, we look at low voter turnout and wonder why there aren’t more people casting ballots.

Part of the answer is public institutions are alienating the populace through indifference, hostility and lack of engagement.

Every denial of information for something in the public interest worsens the situation by breeding apathy.

If institutions want to improve buy-in and governments want to bring out more voters, they should make a New Year’s resolution to treat the public with respect or at the very least, talk to them truthfully, more than they currently do.

Otherwise, it will look like the reason they’re keeping quiet is because they’re worried the public will be upset by something they’ve done.