ProComm MRP Presentation

Editor's Notes

• #2: Image: http://www.ausairpower.net/F-22A-Canada-A.jpg
• #3: The main objective behind Question Period is to ensure that the government is held accountable to the people. The public would be quite right to point out the lack of decorum, co-operation and the few discussions of substance that go on at QP.Rather than being a political accountability tool and a showcase of public discourse, these deliberations are most often displays of hostile, vitriolic political rhetoric.Eric Uslaner makes the observation that political discursive incivility stems from a lack of trust that pervades between political actors.According to Uslaner, rather than viewing the opposition as a group with an opposing world view, politicians today are distrustful of the opposition. This lack of trust Uslaner notes is not merely a political phenomenon but reflective of the contemporary social and cultural milieu. Slavoj Žižek suggests the lack of trust stems from the ‘culturalization of politics’.The ‘culturalization of politics’ can be understood as the communicative displacement of social, economic and political problems from their respective domains into the cultural domain. Once genuine political differences are sublimated into ‘cultural’ differences, they are transformed into obstinate qualities that are non-negotiable, but must merely be tolerated.Wendy Brown elaborates that, rhetorically, tolerance is communicated as a discursive strategy that enables one to cope with rather than accept difference. When tolerance is communicated as the acceptance of difference, it is a virtue; on the other hand when communicated as a coping strategy, it is a practice.In parliamentary discourse, the opposition’s point of view must not merely be tolerated by the executive in power; rather the opposition’s questions must be acknowledged and deliberated upon.Image: http://www.fennphotovideo.com/hotel-photographers-ottawa.aspx?display=galleryImage: http://uranowski.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/2008451-bin.jpgImage: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hendrikspeck/3886370685/sizes/o/in/photostream/Image: http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/news/Wendy-Brown.jpg
• #4: It is with Brown’s assertion in mind that I engage in a critical reading of MP Michael Chong’s motion. The ideological premise of Chong’s bill is that during QP the executive in power need only tolerate questions from an opposition who is by virtue of their conduct, the civil Other. In this way tolerance becomes sutured into the lack of trust and incivility continuum. Tolerance towards the political opposition (the civil Other) articulates itself first as assertion of superiority and second as the hatred Others who fail to adhere to this idea of tolerance.The call for civility is a ploy to deliberate in an institution where the political opposition (the civil Other) is tolerated by the executive in power to the extent that the opposition’s political position is not intrusive (to the workings of the executive in power), to the extent the political opposition (the civil Other) is not really an engaged political opposition.It is vitally important to parse the definitional terrain of civility to take into account the critique of domination and of freedom, inequality, indifference and alienated subjectivities; those dissonant subject positions where civility incapacitates one to affect power.I will be focusing my research on the ways in which incivil political discourse permeates the political mediascape with respect to one instance in Canadian plitics. I believe that incivility in the political discourse of Question Period must be understood within the mechanics of the contemporary public sphere. Image: http://img.allvoices.com/thumbs/image/609/609/61626820-civility-and-politics.jpgImage:http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/00889/Michael_Chong_ga_889781cl-8.jpgTo study the incivility in parliamentary discourse I will be focusing my discussion on the parliamentary deliberations that took place around the topic of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) acquisition in the third session of the 40th Parliament. Between May 27, 2010 and March 25, 2011 several opposition MPs raised the question in Question Period as to why was it that the Government did not go through a tendering process to acquire the F-35s. Opposition MPs mentioned how the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by the previous government with the JSF program did not translate into a carte blanche for the Government to acquire the F-35 JSF aircrafts. Another major point of contention was that opposition efforts at probing the Conservative government to reveal the criteria employed to determine why the F-35 JSF was chosen as the only aircraft that would meet the Canadian Forces bill of requirements were met by stonewalling tactics. I contend that incivility does not reside primarily in the text and talk of parliamentary discourse, rather incivility resides in the sprezzatura of mediatized performances of political discourse. The government officials evaded questions posed by the opposition pertaining to the true cost of acquisition of the aircrafts; they obfuscated how the data was presented using inventive strategies and misled the opposition on several occasions. For that reason, I will be analyzing the parliamentary deliberations and the ensuing media discussions, thus engaging in a textual analysis with a contextual inquiry. Image: http://magazine.lakeheadu.ca/2011/spring/images/elizabeth_pic.jpgImage: http://images.ctv.ca/archives/CTVNews/img2/20110114/800_cp_harper_mirabel_110114.jpg
• #5: By theorizing the role played by communication within the contemporary socio-technological milieu I hope to raise awareness of the prevailing social context such as: the public’s misgivings about bureaucracies, lack of confidence in public officials, and greater citizen apathy as well as technological factors such as: converging media carriers, platforms and technologies and changing patterns in media content creation, distribution and consumption which are possible contributing factors to the production of incivil political discourse.My pursuit will endeavour to accomplish the same analysis for the Canadian Parliamentary Discourse in Question Period – expose and learn from the failures and weaknesses of Question Period as it exists and thereby dwell upon the  possible changes that could flourish within the system.Image: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oIshh3P52YA/TasZ3D78eXI/AAAAAAAAGDs/8GZh5Su9c1s/s1600/web-harper-jet1_1243361artw.jpgImage: http://images.ctv.ca/archives/CTVNews/img2/20110223/800_cp_leblanc_110223.jpg
• #6: It would be a discursive disservice to hamstring the definition of civility as a kinder, gentler House of Commons where parliamentarians strive for basic human decency. In Rude Democracy, Susan Herbst defines civility as a,“Constructive engagement with others through argument, deliberation and discourse”. Herbst asserts that we understand the demanding nature of discourse and how argument and deliberation play a pivotal role in our conceptual understanding of civility. Herbst incorporates another indispensable constitutive element to her definition of civility, namely ‘emotional affirmation’.Herbst establishes two co-ordinate axes through which to plot and define civility, emotional affirmation on the one axis and intense immediate communication on the other. In other words civility can be defined as feeling good while communicating with others. Axiomatically we can say that when we are engaged in an uncomfortable interaction we are most likely to feel apprehensive. This idea becomes all the more relevant as we look at ideologically charged in-civil mediated political discourse. I will be reviewing political economy of the media scholarship to gather an appreciation of how the rhetorical idea of civility circulates within late capitalism. Communication and media studies scholarship will be reviewed to map out the ideological effects of communication and culture. Furthermore, literature about how contemporary communication models operate gain an understanding of its social and technological effects on of deliberative politics will be revieweIn order to participate as active citizens and to be engaged in the culture and politics of late capitalism, it would be advantageous to adopt Ronald Walter Greene’s suggestion that we take into account the neo-liberal logic that circumscribes politics, economics and discourse. In Greene’s opinion, the idea of the politician as rhetorical citizen no longer holds true. He supplants the idea of the rhetorical citizen with a materialist approach that posits three compelling concepts: “communicative labour, money/speech and neo-liberal governance” Image: http://www.courant.com/media/photo/2010-12/58375608.jpgImage: http://mragnedda.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/the-political-economy1.jpgImage: http://blogs.uclouvain.be/bspolink/files/2011/01/media-icon-set-300x268.jpg
• #7: The idea of communicative labour is paramount to our understanding of civility in Question Period. Communicative labour reveals the alienating process by which political discursive production becomes economic production. Rendered through this lens, the parliamentarian engaged in political debate performs two functions; (i) material labour, as he/she goes through the bureaucratic motions and (ii) Communicative labour, wherein he/she produces information which has use-value for the media system. In other words, the parliamentarian’s communicative labour goes into producing the informational content of the commodity, the commodity being the news-clip worthy sound bite, which is of use-value to the media institutions. Therefore, the politician’s communicative labour has reformatted him/her in terms of capitalist enterprise and theatrics.Image:http://nationalpostcomment.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/1008-baird.jpg?w=620Image: http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2008/12/03/wide-angry-harper-cp-593187.jpgImage: http://media.thestar.topscms.com/images/bd/1b/d78bff6342d29ae38e80921a7f93.jpegImage: http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/00314/QP___Clement_shr_314041cl-8.jpg
• #8: Politicians are aware that their electoral prowess depends on how the mediascape portrays them to public. This arrangement in and of itself is quite revelatory with respect to where the locus of power resides between these two social institutions: the parliament and the media institutions. It is possible that within late capitalism, media institutions are neither subservient nor equal to the political institution; the media institutions are by and large the true seat of political power in the nation.KarylnKohrs Campbell explains that with the ability to control what content the public are privy to, when the public have access to the content and whether an opposing point-of-view is broadcast is presented along with it as well, media institutions ipso facto have the power to influence who the next ruling political administration will be and the policies under which the public will be governed.Image: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4RGUlnODIFQ/Tb2CNK7JQvI/AAAAAAAABig/sWv7qpBX810/s1600/800_harper_election_tories_110403.jpgImage: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-w2uUiQkrhbQ/TcLVBfHkGiI/AAAAAAAABYQ/UG2Lmc9_wko/s1600/harper_kitten.jpgImage:http://www2.macleans.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/090107_harper.jpgImage: http://www.israellycool.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/stephen-harper-beer.jpg
• #9: Jodi Dean writes, “Politics has become a domain of financially mediated and professionalized practices centred on advertising, public relations and the means of mass communication... [T]he standards of finance- and consumption-driven entertainment culture set the very terms of democratic governance today.” Thereby Dean writes, communication has disavowed its political project and acknowledges freely and openly its unbridled support for the capitalist enterprise.Image: http://smlxtralarge.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/950840421_8f51e70401_b.jpg
• #10: KarlynKohrs Campbell employs Gresham’s Law, (the economic principle which states that bad money drives good money out of circulation) to explain how political discourse is mediatized. Campbell explains that since the political discourse that circulates in the mediascape about politicians and political issues includes those discourses that have been bankrolled by corporations, only those political discourses will be promoted by the media that abide by the logic of media economics and those political discourses that do not generate revenue for the establishment are cast-off from the mediascape. Campbell’s argument best explains how incivility is reinforced in today’s mediatized political discourses. Since incivil political discourse generates revenue for media institutions, the mediascape incessantly continues to produce incivil politically polarizing material. Image: http://nwcoin.com/images/Canada%201968%20Silver%20Ten%20Cents%20MS63.jpgImage: http://nwcoin.com/images/Canada%201968%20Nickel%20Ten%20Cents%20MS67.jpgImage:http://www.rcinet.ca/english/illustration/htmleditor/Sun%20TV.jpgImage: http://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/_lib/75th/_media/press-kit/CBC_Logo_75th.png
• #11: In order to analyze the political discourse emanating from Question Period it is essential to address the link between media texts and social action. As Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri write, “communication is the form of capitalist production in which capital has succeeded in submitting society entirely and globally to its regime, suppressing all alternative paths.”The operation of a contemporary democracy is dependent upon the techno-corporatist media machinery. The political communication agenda is mobilized only through television appearances, internet penetration, telephone campaigns, etc. The overdetermination of contemporary techno-culture, media culture and political culture suggests that the dialectic between audience (entertainment) and citizen (information) is no longer as distinct as one was the case.Image:http://www.visible.pt/novo/images/stories/call_center1.jpgImage: http://www.babylonisburning.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/empire.jpeg
• #12: Jeffery Jones notes that the result of this blurring of the entertainment-information dichotomy is that in the contemporary milieu, active citizenship is a textual engagement. The politically active members engage with each other and their elected political officials through the mediascape. Within the communicative capitalist regime the discursive practices of the politically engaged public can be articulated as the sum total of their selecting, processing and interacting with various political news media texts in the networked mediascape.Image: http://blogs.nature.com/from_the_lab_bench/communication.jpgImage: http://teatreecreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/open_media_2011.png
• #13: In order to theorize the ideological impact of the contemporary mediascape upon the public, the classical culture industry thesis as posited by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer must be upgraded. Horkheimer and Adorno’s concern that “the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is greatest” deserves further explanation.” As Jodi Dean remarks publicity forms the ideological bedrock of technoculture, performatively naturalizing communicative capitalism. Image: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_t1oFH0YrziE/TNrRpJXJ7uI/AAAAAAAAADg/8XlGI2Zd5Sk/s1600/ist2_2761968-3d-media-and-communication-icons-iso-series.jpg
• #14: The contemporary culture industry functions as a hotbed where free-market values and media technologies are wedded together. This arrangement makes way for the ‘active’ involvement and incorporation of audiences into the structures and products of the contemporary culture industry. As Susan Buck-Morss writes, “The machinery of modern power was not so much hidden behind the ideology of mass utopia as it was produced by it (Buck-Morss 220).” The upshot of which is the medium colonizes the message. In the case of media institutions, celebrity discourse is integrated into political news coverage thus creating infotainment; an amorphous expansion of the mediatized public sphere (Thussu). Paul Taylor describes this production and circulation of smug, shallow, redundant, hyperbolic content in the mediasphere as the trafficking of “explicitness without understanding” (Taylor). Contemporary politics when mediated through the infotainment format becomes politics sans politics: a venue where the politician can engage in banter and not be held accountable for public actions.Image: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_P6G5YMvob5A/TBp6uf3jDLI/AAAAAAAAEas/CJTzbE7x6uU/s1600/RickPMBedtime2.jpgImage: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ignatieff/3407165779/sizes/o/in/photostream/Image: http://www.cbc.ca/75/assets_c/2011/08/MercerLayton600-thumb-600x400-115969.jpg
• #15: As the issue of the F-35 aircraft acquisition began to be debated in the media. The primary agenda of the news media sources was informing the public of the industry opportunities, the high-paying jobs, economic gains that were at stake if the F-35 deal were to fall through. The government’s failure to supply opposition MPs with sufficient documentation about the estimated cost of the F-35 jets were only addressed after the contempt of parliament report had been filed.This confluence of societal change in cultural norms, communication technologies and media uptake, exerts a corresponding transformation in people’s social, psychological and behavioural constitution as well. The totalizing logic of late-capitalism is at work in this conceptualization, for information is deprived of its political potential and exists merely to serve the capitalist master. The cornucopia of media outlets and information sources presented the public with sound-bites from MPs who spoke about the economic benefits that would arise from the F-35 JSF aircraft acquisition. The opposition MP’s questions were misconstrued by the government as political bickering and the opposition MP’s request for information was disregarded. The Conservative government effectively communicated to the public the positive economic returns that would be arise from pursuing the F-35 military contract. Image:http://pm.gc.ca/grfx/media/1520_20110311_PM_f35_photo2.jpgImage:http://pm.gc.ca/grfx/media/1423_20110114_Photo_Album_PM_highlights_F-35_2.jpg
• #16: Theorizing the role of communication within this socio-technological context anticipates an acute awareness of the prevailing extrinsic social factors such as: the public’s misgivings about bureaucracies, lack of confidence in public officials, and greater citizen apathy as well as technological factors such as: converging media carriers, platforms and technologies and changing patterns in media content creation, distribution and consumption (Bennett and Iyengar).JurgenHabermas’ communication model of deliberative politics is constituted of two fundamental premises, “the maintenance of a self-regulating media system and of proper feedback between public sphere and civil society” (Habermas 411). However, as Jodi Dean explains contemporary politics is an overdetermined amalgam of finance, media, technology and culture. The public sphere as conceived by Habermas has ruptured. News media content is produced based on media-economic imperatives. Market segments are created to target consumer preferences including political news preferences.As market imperatives begin to dictate the flow of mediated political communication, Habermas notes the paralyzing effect of civil society’s capacity to champion the issues of relevance in public affairs. The Question Period discussions around the procurement of the F-35 JSF Jets were essentially about how the Conservative government had not engaged in an open and competitive tender process for a military hardware acquisition. The mediated political communication never picked up on this aspect of the deliberations suggesting how market imperatives such as the industrial benefits guided the media narrative. Image: http://mackaycartoons.blogdrive.com/images/060912f.jpgImage: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g4XZfDIvmfI/TdenILM0ejI/AAAAAAAAGhU/sDbCkdThnss/s1600/canadaf35cartoon.jpgImage: http://images.ctv.ca/archives/CTVNews/img2/20110127/800_cp_mackay_ottawa_110127.jpg
• #17: The CDA for this paper is focused around the political narrative and discourse surrounding the acquisition of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Lightning II aircrafts.The F-35 JSF acquisition process highlights the textured and layered nature of incivil political discourse. I engaged in this CDA by interrogating parliamentary deliberations and by looking at how ancillary texts such as news media coverage, think tank reports, press releases, and documentaries shape the political narrative. The CDA probed into how the government officials presented information with regard to the acquisition of the F-35 aircrafts to the opposition party members. Bytracing how the content produced within Question Period travels through the various communication channels and mediums, I gained an appreciation for the ideologies that were laden within these texts and how they were received by the public. And in the process attempt to triangulate where the incivility of parliamentary discourse lies.Image: http://www.freewebs.com/socialistcommonwealth/YES.gifImage:http://annettenaudin.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/discourse-analysis.jpg
• #18: On May 27, 2010 when Defence Minister Peter MacKay was posed the question by NDP Defence Critic MP Jack Harris during Question Period if the government had “already decided to purchase planes from the joint strike group fighter program?” Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s reply was that no such decision had been made.Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jackharris/5222136990/sizes/l/in/photostream/
• #19: Yet on July 16, 2010, at a press conference Defence Minister Peter MacKay, Industry Minister Tony Clement and Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose announced the government’s C$9 billion plan to buy sixty five F-35 JSF aircrafts. The most expensive military acquisition in Canadian military history to date was being announced and questions from the media in regards to the total cost of ownership of the fleet of F-35 jets were not addressed. The Defence Minister’s statement from Question Period had inferred a competitive bid was in the works, for example using words like ‘best value’, ‘best aircraft’, etc. But much to the chagrin of the opposition the F-35 JSF acquisition went through without much regard for customary checks and balances; the sole-sourcing process was being abused; and the contract negotiations were non-transparent and non-competitive.
• #20: Liberal opposition leader Michael Ignatieff referred to the process as a “secretive, unaccountable decision to proceed with this contract.” The decision by the Conservative Government to go ahead with Lockheed Martin as the sole-vendor for the procurement of the F-35 JSF aircrafts was the point of contention raised by the opposition. Liberal Defence Critic UjjalDosanjh pointed out that by not undertaking a competitive bidding process involving other potential bidders and procurement experts, the Canadian tax-payer could not be assured this procurement contract was the best deal available to the government (Garneau). Dosanjh contacted the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) and requested for a report to be prepared that would indicate the financial footprint of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter acquisition. The PBO unveiled the report on March 10, 2011.Image: http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/00376/Ignatieff_QP_376843artw.jpgImage:http://images.ctv.ca/archives/CTVNews/img2/20100423/600_cp_dosanjh_100423.jpg
• #21: On September 15, 2010 Rona Ambrose, Minister of Public Works and Government Services, stated before the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence (SCND), “[T]he procurement process does not drive the requirements; the requirements drive the procurement process” (SCND 2010). In light of the significant role played by the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada (AIAC) in influencing the government decision to opt for the single-sourced F-35 contract and the number of senior Department of National Defence (DND) personnel who have moved from government services to the private sector with little accountability or concern about the conflict of interest, Minister Ambrose’s statement was questionable (Harvey). Image: http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/01304/ambrose_jpg_1304888cl-8.jpgImage: http://www.boardoftrade.com/files/Images/SponsorLogos/A-D/AIAC72.jpgImage: http://media.defenseindustrydaily.com/images/GOV_Canada_DND_Crest.jpgImage: http://www.f35.com/images/footer/img-partner-ad-ca.jpg
• #23: John Siebert and Kenneth Epps of Project Ploughshares promptly pointed out to the erroneous nature of Minster Ambrose’s statement in his report. Project Ploughshares is a non-governmental organization affiliated with the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo. Siebert and Epps of Project Ploughshares made a presentation to the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence on September 15, 2010 questioning the government’s rationale to acquire the F-35 Jets (Siebert and Epps August 2010). Project Ploughshares posed three main questions to the government with regard to the purchase of the F-35 JSF Jets, namely, the suitability of these jets to address the security threats and concerns raised by ‘Canada First’, Canada’s national defence strategy, the affordability of these jets, given that a service and maintenance contract had not been signed, and lastly the direct benefits of the JSF program to the Canadian taxpayer. Seibert and Epps express concerns over the interoperability, affordability, economic benefits and opportunity costs of this military acquisition.
• #24: On September 20, 2010 once the Parliament had reconvened after the summer break, it was Liberal MP Siobhan Coady who raised the question regarding the Conservative Party’s in-adherence to the rules of military procurement. Minister Ambrose answered the query by saying that there was an international competition already in place and the government did not want to jeopardize the opportunities for the Canadian aerospace industry. This response was rather problematic because the international competition Minister Ambrose mentions here was the US Department of Defence competition that took place between the Lockheed Martin X-35 and the Boeing X-32 aircrafts to select the builder of next generation JSF (Jorgenson). The Pentagon selected the Lockheed Martin X-35 team comprised of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems for the engineering, development, manufacturing and production of the F-35 JSF Lightning II Jets (Nebinger; Aboulafia). Image: http://www.ldra.com/images/jsf/LDRA_JSF_Leaflet_2007.gif
• #25: Canada was not involved in this competition whatsoever. MP Coady’s question was in regards to the Canadian military procurement process and how the government decided to go ahead with the purchase of the F-35 JSF without opening up the process to competitive bidding. When Ms. Siobhan Coady asked the Defence Minister when the open competition that he had promised took place and who made the decision to go ahead with the procurement, she was not given an answer. Instead the Defence Minister read from the Chief of the Air Staff Lieutenant-General André Deschamps written statement on the benefits of the F-35 Lightning II (Deschamps). This is an instance where the Minister evaded answering a direct question and offered a canned response that included statements from a ‘Message Force Multiplier’ instead.Jodi Dean refers to Army Personnel who are used by the government to communicate messages of military significance as ‘Message Force Multipliers’ (Dean, Affective Networks 25). Lieutenant-General André Deschamps, the Chief of Air Staff performed this role, silencing critics of the government’s decision to acquire the F-35 JSF aircrafts through an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail (Clark). Deschamps extols the virtues of stealth technology and establishes the rationale why Canadian Forces must have this technology. He says, “If they [the Russians] can’t detect us and don’t know where we are, it dramatically changes their potential tactics. So it is a deterrent (Clark).”
• #26: Dr. Claude Lajeunesse, President & CEO of Aerospace Industries Association of Canada (AIAC) was very vocal in his lobbying efforts to pressure MPs to vote in favor of the F-35 JSF acquisition (Harvey, Aerospace Industry Leaders Affirm Support for F-35 Purchase). The Aerospace Industries Association of Canada (AIAC) press release states that the Canadian Aeronautics Industry employ approximately 80,000 people across 400 companies while generating C$22 billion of revenue annually (Walker). Dr. Claude Lajeunesse, former President of Concordia University and Ryerson University, functioned as a message force multiplier connecting the industry to academia as well. Concordia University’s Institute of Aerospace Design & Innovation (IADA) houses projects sponsored by Esterline CMC Electronics Project and Pratt & Whitney Canada, companies with subcontracts to manufacture parts and equipment for the Lockheed Martin F-35 JSF aircraft (Pole 12; German).
• #27: Tom Burbage, General Manager, F-35 Program, Lockheed Martin was also doing media interviews to get the message around the benefits of the F-35 acquisition to the Canadian Aerospace Industry and the high paying jobs that would flow from it. Burbage tells Taylor that Canadian aeronautical companies have secured contracts for approximately C$320 million on the F-35 aircraft already (CPAC Special). And Burbage also notes that as the F-35 JSF manufacturing processes mature, Canada’s aeronautical industry revenue stream will reach a steady-state of C$12 Billion. Image: http://gfx.dagbladet.no/pub/artikkel/5/53/533/533852/Tom2_1209378348.jpg
• #28: The Aerospace Industries Association of Canada (AIAC) media juggernaut included a panel presentation from Presidents and CEOs of Canadian Aviation Electronics CAE Inc., Esterline CMC Electronics and Avecorp as well (Harvey; Hudon; Matthews; Van Rooij). The Aerospace Industry titans from Héroux-Devtek, Aéro Montréal, Magellan Aerospace and Avecorp showered the government with illustrious praise on their decision to acquire the F-35 Jets. At the joint-media event hosted by AIAC, captains of the Canadian aerospace industry highlighted the high paying jobs, technology transfer, research and development opportunities, economic benefits that would come out of the government’s plan to acquire the F-35 JSF aircrafts (Harvey; Hudon; Matthews; Van Rooij). This media spectacle highlights how money/speech overdetermination operates within the mediascape. The AIAC’s communicative labour garnered media attention to highlight the economic benefits package that would come with the F-35 JSF military procurement and emphasize the importance of the aerospace industry to the Canadian peoples.
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