FEDS DELIBERATELY EXCLUDED MINISTER FROM 100th BEAUMONT HAMEL CEREMONY

Don’t think for one moment that Chris Mitchelmore’s absence from the podium for the 100^th Anniversary Ceremony at Beaumont Hamel was anything but a deliberate snub by the Federal Department of Veterans Affairs, of a lowly Minister from “the boonies”.

Telegram reporter Barb Sweet reviewed 300 pages of materials obtained under access to information legislation for her story in the Saturday edition. They contain an indictment of a Federal Government all too willing to lie and to engage in cover-up.

The conversation described by the reporter between the local Honour 100 lead, Melanie Martin, and Peter Mills, project manager for overseas events at Veterans Affairs Canada, would have us believe the affair was an “oversight”. But the truth is something far different.

Mills, undoubtedly with senior officials in Veterans Affairs in the loop, dealt with provincial officials as if they were a group that had — to use the idiomatic expression — ‘fallen off the turnip truck’.

Said the Fed’s Martin to Mills:

“As discussed. An oversight.  We’re carving out 2.5 minutes for the Minister’s Speech… Unfortunately, this will not be reflected in the official program as it has been shipped to France already… leave it to me to do the dance on July 1?”

Peter Mills’ message to Melanie Martin, properly understood by those who know how large events are organized and official protocols at this level are conducted, will spot Mills’ officious deception in an instant. Mills played the locals for fools and persisted in the lie up to the time the Ceremony got under way.

The insights I have to offer on this matter, as a blogger, are inextricably linked to the eleven years I spent serving two Premiers, in the 70s and 80s. Part of that role included occasionally participating in preparations for official visits, and as a party to the numerous briefings which the Premier received when officials, including Her Majesty the Queen, came to town.

Such visits are always a challenge for organizers. Visits by Her Majesty and the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana, as one might expect, placed huge demands on the Protocol Office and commanded the participation of the Government’s, and the whole Province’s, best organizers over a two-year period.

The same can be said for an event like the 100^th Anniversary of Beaumont Hamel, except it would have been exponentially larger and the planning begun long before the Ball Government was elected.

A Protocol Office runs such events like a military operation.

The expertise and resources of the Federal Government make such operations seem easy, but only because those resources are vast. .

Nothing in a Protocol Office is ever left to chance. Every detail is checked and re-checked dozens of times. After all, the competence, sophistication, and pride of a Nation is exposed every time the world is asked to watch. The operation does not end until every last detail has been executed — that is, after the dais and the public area have been cleared.

The very idea that a Minister could be left off the Programme, given this Ceremony’s provincial, national, and international significance, and given the senior level of the dignitaries participating — which included the Prince of Wales and the Governor General of Canada — is simply preposterous.

Every dignitary participating in the Ceremony, the order and duration of their Address, and other details would have been accounted for almost with split second accuracy — months in advance. The Ceremony would have had the timing of an orchestra, headed not by a Conductor but by a Maestro.

In this context, can you imagine a Minister left off the Programme and it cannot be changed? Because it is already sent to France!

Peter Mills may be an incompetent but, more likely, he is disingenuous or dishonest — or both. He was clumsily covering for the Veterans Affairs Department.

Veterans Affairs' willingness to stand by the “lie” only deepens the deceit manifested by Mills. His assertion that “we’re carving out 2.5 minutes for the Minister’s Speech… leave it to me to do the dance on July 1” is so obviously false and contrary to the way major ceremonies are conceived, planned, and executed, that he could only have been referring to how he intended to kick up his feet in the nearest French bar when the event was over.

Even if Mr. Mills or one of his team was incompetent, the planning and review process of the event would have passed through so many hands, at a very high level, that no personage, however diminutive, would be left out of the Ceremony. It simply would not happen.

Simply put, the Minister was not on the dais because Veterans Affairs wanted him left off.

When Premier Dwight Ball advised that Chris Mitchelmore would be his stand-in, the jig was up. Officials in Veterans Affairs decided immediately that there was no way a lowly provincial Minister was stepping on the heels of the Prince of Wales — Newfoundland’s relevance to the Beaumont Hamel massacre be damned! 

Frank Sullivan, President, Royal Canadian Legion Newfoundland Command is quoted in the Telegram story stating “he saw Mitchelmore practicing his Speech in French prior to the ceremony”.  Sullivan confirms that Veterans Affairs permitted the ruse to continue to the very end.

Eight hundred members of the Newfoundland Regiment answered the roll call to face a barrage of German artillery. Only 68 answered the roll call the next morning. There were 324 killed or missing. Another 386 were wounded.   

Even with this history as a backdrop, Veterans Affairs could not muster the sensitivity to recognize how important it was to this Province, then a struggling self-governing Dominion, and even now a society still feeling its disproportionate and sad loss. They did not even have the good sense to understand our presence was a right inscribed by the blood loss of our own heroes. The reason is straightforward.

Ignorance rendered the petty incapable of rising above themselves.

Perhaps, to his credit, Chris Mitchelmore took the high road despite the obvious snub: The Telegram quoted him saying: “It was unfortunate that I was not able to speak on behalf of Newfoundland and Labrador, however there were a lot of measures taken to include Newfoundland and Labrador that may not have been as visible to those in attendance.”

But there is no honour, not a scintilla of respect, to be found in the transparent deceit exhibited, first by the Federal Government’s Department of Veterans Affairs, and then here at home by Premier Ball’s silence.

In particular, the Premier ought to have “called out” the Federal Government for its boorish behaviour. For its deceit. For its insult to the Minister, and to his Administration. For what was, ultimately, an offense to the people of this Province. 

Peter Mills is irrelevant in this province just as Veterans Affairs has proven in countenancing a lie it is unworthy to represent ours soldiers' or any brand of heroism. 

But Dwight Ball is not irrelevant. Among other things, he is charged with defending the Province’s honour and national pride. The guileless Premier never ceases to amaze in what he will subvert in the interest of political partisanship.