The Privy Council Office explains that there’s been no “formal directive” to rebrand everything the “Harper Government.”
“The distinction that needs to be made here is the word ‘directive’ — a directive, as opposed to, you know, in a particular case departments may have used the words ‘Harper Government,'” said Raymond Rivet, a PCO spokesman…
Civil servants from four departments told The Canadian Press last week they’ve recently been instructed to use the new terminology. “If a department has told you they’ve got direction from ‘the Centre’ to use a message or certain wording or do something, I mean, that would be normal, would it not?” Rivet said. “Part of the role of PCO and PMO in the communications sphere is to co-ordinate government communications, so I imagine they get direction on a variety of things. So that’s not in opposition to somebody telling you that there’s no formal directive.”