01.15.2013 10:21 AM

About that Star column on Harinder

I’m not going to link to it.  But one of the central criticisms in the piece, to my understanding, is flat-out wrong.

I know for a fact that Harinder Takhar came to Canada in 1974 – and, yes, he did live with his uncle.  But he earned only the princely sum of $1.85 an hour, working at Consumers Distributing.  And, with that money, he paid room and board.  And he saved up to pay for his CMA courses, and he saved for his family’s future.  Any suggestion otherwise is wrong and unfair to the man.

Meanwhile, his campaigner manager is Omar Khan, who is one of the most honest and decent kids I’ve ever met in politics.  In all my dealings with Omar, his central preoccupation has always been decision-making (usually concerning justice matters) in which ethics and probity are paramount.  He loves the law, and he has a dim view of those who stray from it.

I don’t know where the Star piece came from.  But any campaign pushing that kind of stuff – and I think I know which one it is – is doing itself, and the party, no favours.

17 Comments

  1. Michael S says:

    Wait, they’re giving him a hard time for doing what people in my (white) immigrant community did in the 1960’s, and what other immigrant communities did right back to Sir John A? Does the Star realize that people like me worked in campaigns because we were fluent in Ukrainian and were masters of the bubbie old folks home circuit in places like Winnipeg, and that’s what delivered the goods for people from Ed Schreyer to David Orlikow, let alone Thornhill in Toronto? Don’t they realize that much of the success for the Liberal party in the past is that it should have had a third official language of Italian? Does Joe Volpe get a pass because he’s white? Why?

  2. Ed says:

    So he’s a deceitful villain because a family member offered him shelter (which he paid for) when he came to Canada? The guy had a few bucks to his name. Did Regg Cohn want him to sleep on the streets so the story met his standard for “Immigrant Achieves Canadian Dream” narrative? Think what you want of Takhar, but the guy busted his ass to get where he is. This article reads like it was written by the Blatch.

  3. Cromwell says:

    The facts originate in a family feud rather than anything more nefarious, but Cohn’s motivations are certainly suspect.

  4. K says:

    (Comment was defamatory.)

  5. Sean says:

    When someone like you reports something like this it carries more weight. Yes, when you had a vested interest in supporting the OLP via SUN articles, no reader playing with a full deck, would expect you to be disloyal to your political association. But that was then.

    We desperately need something such as Fact-Check. org, a web site which will develop credibility and a go-to site to identify media pro panda and spin.

    PLease give this idea some serious consideration, Warren. We need it, we want it, and will follow it.

    Sean

  6. christine says:

    oh dear – politics and spin is never boring eh?

  7. christine says:

    oh dear – politics and spin are never boring eh?

  8. Margret Jacz says:

    I don’t disagree that the Cohn article was hard hitting and unfair. But where does all the paranoia come from? Why is it a given that Martin was “encouraged” to write it by one particular OLP candidate. Maybe, just maybe it was his own idea.

  9. Sean says:

    If you decide to create a fact-check site, in order to “set the record” straight, I would gladly volunteer my time as a researcher. Do you remember Nader’s Raiders? Like him or not Ralph Nader’s activism did a lot of good. So why not latch on to media spin doctors, covert propagandists, like a testosterone driven truth-seeker from hell?

    Kinsella’s Fellas has a nice ring, except that it’s sexist.
    The Scorn of Warren ? 🙁

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