Alberta Premier Rachel Notley was in town last week, passing by on a visit that surprised a lot of people.
She stopped in Athabasca on the pretense of announcing mental health funding for students at Athabasca University. There, she spoke to funding going to students across the province, shook hands with constituents, and literally held a baby.
During a three-person media scrum – a traditional event where reporters in a group question politicians, usually at an event – she also took a little jab at me after I asked apparently too much.
“Do you guys ever get any questions?” she said to laughs, looking at Advocate reporter Jessica Caparini and Boom 94.1’s Victor Kaisar.
“If we hit the points then we’re OK,” Kaisar said after the chuckles died down.
A tactic among high-level politicians in media scrums is to make jokes with reporters to engage with them in a positive way. It’s even better if you can make a joke at the expense of another journalist, as it deflects their questions. I suppose I can now add Notley to the list of politicians I’ve seen use the tactic, a list that includes former City of Toronto mayoral candidate Doug Ford.
The premier had a luncheon meeting with community stakeholders, as well. The media was not invited to this gathering. True, politicians are human beings that deserve privacy and need to eat like the rest of us, but there were other members of the community there interacting with her. Just not us.
We were certainly allowed to see her at the Pleasant Valley Lodge, visiting and interacting with seniors.
The thing that really raised my eyebrows was the fact that I was not allowed to be at the meeting between Notley and the Keepers of the Athabasca. I showed up at the door of the Athabasca Train Station and was promptly escorted back through it. I told the premier’s assistant that I wanted to grab photos of Notley at the meeting. I was told that I should have enough photos from Notley’s university announcement and her stop at the Pleasant Valley Lodge.
Although it could be said this was about creating a safe space to share opinions and views with the premier, as a journalist I can’t help thinking this was more about the message – and the control of it. The Keepers of the Athabasca is a political organization, and there are many reasons why a premier would want her conversations with them to be out of the public’s eye.
The premier is the leader of this province. I believe that if she stops here on official business, the people have a right to know why she is here and what she is doing.
Notley isn’t the first premier I have interviewed, and I’ve scrummed with people at all levels of politics from our local councillors to Canada’s bigwig Justin Trudeau himself.
Despite the “grassroots” nature of the Alberta NDP’s win in the last election, from my brief interaction with her, I found Notley to be a politician just like many others – wary of the media, and only showing them that which she wished the public to see.
