Bureaucrats posed for citizenship ceremony in Sun TV stunt

Bureaucrats working in Jason Kenney’s department posed as immigrants to pull off an elaborate stunt for Sun TV News, according to documents obtained by CP’s Jennifer Ditchburn. (Wait. What? How is this real?)

According to Ditchburn, what happened was this: Sun TV was supposed to film a citizenship reaffirmation ceremony in their studios, but the department could only find three people willing to participate. Instead of cancelling the stunt, they had federal employees, presumably on the federal clock, stand in for the rest of the crowd.

Sun TV News claims they knew nothing about the ruse. Kenney’s office, in an admirable display of ministerial responsibility, says the bureaucrats acted on their own.

That of course doesn’t explain why government employees were spending public time creating a TV gimmick for a private network in the first place. Nor do we know why a Sun employee apparently suggested faking the whole thing at one point. (From the story: “Let’s do it. We can fake the Oath,” reads an email from a sunmedia.ca email address.”

At this point, few would be surprised if it were revealed that Sun TV News itself is actually an elaborate performance art installation completed in partial fulfillment of a degree at the Alberta College of Art and Design.

Canadian Press