In July of last year Defense Minister Peter "Pinocchio" MacKay was enjoying a spot of R&R out in Newfoundland, salmon fishing at a private fly-in camp. I feel for the guy. Not that I've had that much experience at your exclusive fly-in fishing camps, but I appreciate the draw of throwing a line in the water and waiting for that magical moment. But MacKay had a problem. Had to be in Ontario for a photo-op the next day, two thousand miles away.
Photo-ops have strategic priority when you're the Minister of Defense. You don't want to miss out on too many opportunities for self-aggrandizement. Who knows, maybe next time round you'll want to take a run at the Supreme Leader job. So by all means, make it to the photo-op.
"By all means" in this case meant sending a Coast Guard Search and Rescue helicopter to fetch Lyin' Pete. None of this would have ever made it into the public domain except that a few folks in the Canadian media are onto Pinocchio and have taken to using Access to Information laws to get at the real story behind whatever story MacKay spins at the time.
The story MacKay spun at the time was that this SAR helicopter "rescue" was a long planned event intended to showcase Canada's search and rescue capabilities to the Minister. Here's the relevant piece of the story out of today's National Post;
“When the guy who’s fishing at the fishing hole next to the minister sees the big yellow helicopter arrive and decides to use his cellphone to video the minister getting on board and post it on YouTube,” Col. Bruce Ploughman of 1 Canadian Air Division Headquarters wrote on July 6, 2010, “who will be answering the mail on that one?
So even the flunkies many management layers removed from MacKay saw they had a problem. Mackay's solution? Make up a story.
Anything goes when you've got to make the next photo-op.
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