For the first time, a federal Finance Minister will join the hundreds of journalists in the budget lock-up next week.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will table his government’s second budget on Monday March 19 shortly after 4 pm Ottawa time. But around 2 p.m., Flaherty will take questions from journalists in the budget lock-up. This is a practice Flaherty would have been familiar with when he was Ontario’s finance minister. And it’s no coincidence that this innovation is happening as Richard Brennan takes over leadership of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. Brennan was president of the Queen’s Park Press Gallery for eight years and thought that the good idea they had in Toronto ought to work in Ottawa.
Brennan ran the idea by Dan Miles, Flaherty’s director of communications, and it was a quick and easy sell. Miles and Brennan go way back. Miles was at Queen’s Park with Flaherty and before he became a political staffer, Miles was a Queen’s Park reporter for the CTV station in Toronto.
Lock-ups in Ottawa happen all the time — for the Auditor General’s reports, for a major CRTC decision, for Bank of Canada interest rate announcements and so on. But the budget lock-up is the king of them all. Journalists can go into the lockup as early as 9:30 a.m. where they must stay — without cell phone, BlackBerry or any other way of communicating with the outside world — until Flaherty stands in the House of Commons at 4 p.m.
Food is available for purchase inside the lock-up although — if you’re going to be in one of these for the first time — you’re better off bringing your lunch. Prices last year were astronomical – a single oatmeal cookie was two dollars! — and the food on offer was pretty pedestrian. Finance officials have apparently promised that the food will be better this time — but there’s no free lunch. Journalists and all others in the lockup will have to pay for their meals.
This lock-up will be held at the Ottawa Congress Centre and there will be hundreds — including yours truly — inside.
You can look over all the lock-up details yourself at Finance Canada’s Web site.
I am happy to see that the PPG has come to their senses and will allow the Prime Minister of Canada to conduct “his” press conferences in the manner in which he wants. Besides the PPG is too taken with their own self importance because as an ordinary citizen watching the type of questions asked most questions are lame and not really substantive in the information provided. If the PMO agrees to the new plan the PPG should spend more time thinking of serious questions rather than the gotcha type like Julie Van Dusen of CBC is prone to do.