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A few days ago, I wrote a column – which the Hill Times published, but HuffPo refused to, because they didn’t want to do anything that might identify the sexual harasser – about why #MeToo hadn’t hit Ottawa yet.  Because, God knows, there’s plenty of wrongdoing taking place up there, too.

Well, last night – as Justin Trudeau was about to speak at his annual Christmas party – this hit:

A staff member in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office is on leave from his position as deputy director of operations and a third-party investigation has been launched after allegations of inappropriate behaviour were made against him.

TVA, a French-language television network, first reported that Claude-Éric Gagné, the deputy director of operations in the PMO, is being investigated for inappropriate behaviour and has been on forced leave since early November while the investigation takes place.

The PMO is refusing to identify the staffer involved or provide any details of the allegations being made against them but a source confirmed to CBC News that the allegations are against Gagné and involve inappropriate behaviour.

So, there you go: the highest office in the land has apparently got this problem, too.

If you read on in the story, a PMO spokesperson says an “independent investigator” is looking into this.

Forgive me for being a lawyer and all that, but (a) we don’t know who the investigator is (b) we don’t know his or her mandate (c) we don’t know who is paying him or her and (d) we don’t know what powers the independent investigator actually has.  We need to.

A principle of natural law is that you cannot investigate yourself. For this probe to be meaningful, the independent investigator needs to truly investigate – and truly be independent.  That is particularly the case when the office being investigated has virtually unlimited power.

P.S. There were two men referred to in my column. Many people seemed to figure out who the journalist was. But I only heard from one person who knew who the other guy was.

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WOOOOOOOT #AlabamaSenateElection

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The Newfoundland-Labrador one, no big surprise.  (But the NDP result? Ouch.)

The Ontario one, also no surprise. (But congrats to Ms. Yip – Arnold is smiling, today.)

The Saskatchewan one, no surprise.  (The slide in LPC vote, not so great, true.)

But the B.C. by-election? That was big, folks.  That was huge.  The Liberals – for the second time this Fall – have flipped a seat from blue to red.  (Congrats to Mr. Hogg, who I have had the pleasure to meet a few times, back in my B.C. Liberal days.)

It sure would be fun to be a fly on the wall at that federal Conservative caucus meeting, tomorrow morning, wouldn’t it?  Few will say it out loud, but I know they are thinking it:

Andrew Scheer was the wrong pick.  He is more than a dud – he’s a disaster.

And, if anyone is going to guarantee Justin Trudeau a second big majority win, it’s him.  (Oh, and followed closely by Jagmeet Singh, who has entered into a witness protection program.)

A good year, politically, for Liberals.  Not so much for the other guys.

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Hey! The good folks at the Star wrote about Recipe For Hate – thank you, Sarah Murdoch!  My punk rock credentials are estimable – which, my dictionary tells me, means “worthy of respect!”

Recipe For Hate, Warren Kinsella, Dundurn

Warren Kinsella is known mostly as a political operative and pundit, but he also has estimable punk-rock credentials (as punk historian and as bass player in SFH, which bills itself as Canada’s best-loved geriatric punk band). This YA novel is “loosely” based on real-life events, and concerns the murder of two teenagers in 1979 in Portland, Ore., then the epicentre of the punk scene. It will be of interest to anyone interested in punk culture — not just the music, but the fanzines, art and writing of the period. Bonus: The author has curated a Recipe For Hate online punk playlist for uneasy listening.

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It’s hit Hollywood.  It’s taken down big names in the media.  All over Capitol Hill in Washington, too.

So why hasn’t the #MeToo movement claimed any of the creeps crawling through Ottawa’s corridor of power?

Because, God knows, there’s plenty of dirty old (and young) men up there.  The stories are legion.  So, where is the #MeToo coming out of political Ottawa?  Where are the men of Parliament Hill, solemnly pledging #HowIWillChange?

We are in the midst (hopefully) of a profound transformation:  Matt Lauer; Harvey Weinstein; Al Franken; Kevin Spacey; Mark Halperin; Charlie Rose; Glenn Thrush; Louis C.K.; Roy Moore; Russell Simmons; Steven Segal; Dustin Hoffman.  And dozens more – accused of, and guilty of, everything from rape to inappropriate sexual remarks.

It is extraordinary, it is positive, and it is overdue.  As jarring and as unpleasant as the details may be, we seem to be on the cusp of an actual change in the culture.

Everywhere but in Ottawa, that is.

Here’s a tale, in which the names have been omitted to protect the victim.  It’s not by any means recent, but it is still relevant.

Way back when, when I was student council president, a friend at Carleton’s journalism school told me that a prominent broadcast journalist was sexually harassing her and threatening her.  He told her she would never work in journalism if she didn’t give him what he wanted. She was very upset; she was crying.  I believed her.

I called his boss to complain – and to say, as student council president, I didn’t want this man on campus.  I told him what my friend had told me.  I told him my friend would not make this up.  The boss told me someone at CBC would get back to me.

No one ever did.  Instead, I later ran into the prominent broadcaster at a political event I’d organized.  He looked at me, almost with delight.  “Ah, the famous Warren Kinsella,” he said.  That night, he and the CBC broadcast a venomous, one-sided hatchet job on my candidate, and me.

The broadcaster?  He stayed employed at CBC, and later got a plum political appointment.  He’s still on the Hill, too.  My friend? She never ended up fulfilling her dream of working as a broadcast journalist.

And me?  I learned a lesson: powerful men in Ottawa have power, and they know how to use it.  They know how to get what they want.

There are other such stories, much more current.  Not long ago, I was told of allegations made by some young people about a very, very powerful man in Ottawa.  I did not see the statements, so I do not know the specific allegations made therein, as the lawyers would say.

But these allegations – which were confirmed to exist, by multiple people who would know – describe a profound imbalance in power.  They describe how this very, very powerful man used his power to get what he wanted sexually.

There are many other such stories, involving elected men and male staffers in all of the political parties.  All of us who work on the Hill, or who have worked there, have come across these stories.  We have seen some of the evidence.  We have heard from the victims.

In my case, I tried.  I did what I could.  It didn’t work out.

But that doesn’t mean we should give up.  That doesn’t mean we should look the other way, either.

Young people occasionally come see me to get advice about how to get involved in campaigns, or how to work for a particular candidate.  I always tell them the same three things: one, work only for those who share your passion for an issue.  Two, work only for those who believe in something other than power.  Three, work only for those who treat their own families – and strangers – with the utmost respect.

Because, I tell them, if they treat their wives like dirt, they will treat you like you are less than dirt.

Personally, I have had the great fortune to work for three men who married their high school/university sweethearts – Jean Chretien, Dalton McGuinty and John Tory.  All three men always treated strangers, and their wives and their families, with respect.  All three have conducted themselves with decency and probity.  Always.

Such men still exist.  Not every man in Canadian political life is a scumbag.

But, in Ottawa nowadays, the silence is deafening.  It is impossible – impossible – that #MeToo stories can’t be found on Parliament Hill.

So why isn’t anyone telling them?

 

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We used to be friends, we had a falling out.  And: he has a very different style than my guy, the Shawinigan Strangler.  We were the undersell and overperform gang, you know?  We were more fiscally conservative, we didn’t bet the house on rookies, and (I think) we were a bit more adept on the international stage.

But – upon reading this David Akin report – I’ve never been more proud of Justin Trudeau, and never more happy that he is presently Prime Minister.  Why?  Well, as I get older, and as I get closer to the grave – and as I regularly tell friends and family – I find myself becoming far less partisan than I was in my youth.  These days, I tend to think the differences between the Canadian political parties is pretty negligible.  And, these days, I am a great admirer of pretty much everyone who dares enter public life.

As such, as I prepare to shuffle off to something else, my only partisanship is increasingly my first love, journalism.  I evaluate every politician’s worth, these days, through the prism of journalism.  If they promote a free and flourishing media (like the aforementioned Trudeau), I’m a fan.  If they don’t (like Donald Trump and Melanie Joly), I’m not.

In the Trump era, where political/governmental institutions are failing us, and the only people defending democracy seem to work at the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN, a free press has never been more important.  Democracy is literally at stake.

Ipso facto, here’s David Akin, who clearly was as impressed as I was.  To me, Trudeau’s words, below, should be inscribed on the wall of every journalism school in Canada.

On Prime Minister Justin Trudeau‘s last day of a week-long visit to China — a week in which he had done his best to be a gracious guest and not say anything remotely controversial about the dictatorship that was hosting him — Trudeau said something rather remarkable.

It may even be historic.

Speaking on Chinese soil, in the presence of several members of China’s obsequious state media, he said that reporters play an essential “challenge function.”

He told his Chinese hosts that “traditional media” — a traditional media which, in his own country, has been, at times, harsh, unfair, and ungenerous to him personally as well as to his own government — he said traditional media play “an essential role … in the success of the society.”

Journalists. Essential.

In the age of Trump and #FakeNews, this is heady stuff.

It is to Trudeau’s great credit that he said these things and said them in China!

He was not delivering prepared remarks on the value of journalism to grad students at a Canadian university.

He was speaking off the top of his head, from his heart, in response to a question put to him in the midst of a 45-minute press conference in a communist country where independent-minded journalists go to jail.

Trudeau was prompted to make these comments about the value of an independent and free press because a reporter had asked him if his Chinese hosts had intimated that criticism of China in the Canadian press was making it difficult for his government to advance talks on a Canada-China free trade deal.

If the Canadian media was a thorn in Trudeau’s side, he refused to say so. Instead, Trudeau clearly indicated that this was not only the price he was willing to pay, if that was, in fact, true, it was a price he was happy to pay.

“Allow me to take a moment to thank members of the media,” Trudeau began. “You play an essential role: a challenge function, an information function. It’s not easy at the best of times. These are not the best of times with the transitions and challenges undergoing traditional media right now and I really appreciate the work that you do.”

But he was not done. He acknowledged that the spin masters in any political operation from any party these days are set up precisely to make the job of an independent and free press harder.

“We make your job difficult,” he said, acknowledging his complicity, as a successful politician, in trying to manipulate journalists for his own political gain.

I want to underline, once again, that this acknowledgment came on Chinese soil, in a country where the government’s spin — the government’s propaganda — is the only thing one can read in a Chinese newspaper or see on a Chinese television broadcast.

“External factors make your job difficult,” Trudeau said. “But it’s an essential role that you play in the success of the society. That is my perspective. That is a perspective shared by many and it’s one that I am very happy to repeat today.”

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Liberal MP Sherry Romanado-Morgan was right to object when Conservative MP James Bezan made a sexual remark to her.

So who will speak up for this unnamed person who Sherry Romanado-Morgan fat-shamed?

No one, I bet.

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I don’t think so.  It’s been bumpy, to be sure.  But – at the end of the day – the Finance Minister is still standing.  And the government would still win as many seats today as they did in 2015.

Warren Kinsella, president of Daisy Consulting and a former Liberal strategist including to former prime minister Jean Chrétien during his time in opposition, said he thinks the Conservatives have misplayed their hand in calling for Mr. Morneau’s resignation last week.

“You don’t haul out your leader to demand a resignation unless you’ve got all the proof you need to justify that, because you can’t make that request twice,” he said. “Their evidence was kind of a lot of the same evidence that they’ve been rolling out for some weeks…where’s the smoking gun?”

 Mr. Kinsella said he thinks while Mr. Morneau has been “knocked around” by the opposition’s line of attack, he thinks calling for the minister’s resignation at this point “actually hurt Scheer.”

“They called for an investigation [by the ethics commissioner] and before it’s even complete they’re demanding the resignation,” he said.

The Conservatives for weeks have levelled criticism and questions over Mr. Morneau’s ethics disclosures, and now the sale of Morneau Shepell shares. Mr. Kinsella said he thinks the sustained, intense focus in part comes down to a lack of positive movement in polls.

“A new leader is supposed to have a honeymoon [in the polls]—Scheer didn’t get one,” he said. “They needed to take a swing.”

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‎Talk about life imitating art.

When this writer started typing up what would become the novel Recipe For Hate, several things were not anticipated. ‎Positive reviews, for example: not used to those. But then Publisher’s Weekly went and called it “riveting, an unflinching page-turner” – and Apple IBooks called it a “book of the month.”

‎Not expected, at all.

Also not expected: Donald Trump. When one is writing a novel about the clash between progressive punk rockers and dangerous white supremacists in positions of power, one does not expect an actual dangerous white supremacist to be elected President of the United States by Russia.  But it, you know, happened.  Was in all the papers.

Also completely unexpected: one of the book’s major characters getting named to the highest court in the land.

But that happened, too. Seriously.  Let me tell you all about it.

Last week, Justice Sheilah Martin was elevated by the Prime Minister to fill a coming vacancy on the Supreme Court‎ of Canada. The announcement was greeted with near-universal acclaim.

This writer greeted it with shock.

Here’s why: way back at the beginning of time – before Al Gore invented the Internet and President PissTape was still busy chasing coeds and going bankrupt a lot – this writer was a first-year law student at the University of Calgary‎. More hair, less waist, boundless horizons, etc.

Day One. In walks our contracts law prof: not too tall, youngish, actually quite beautiful. Nice. Name: Sheilah Martin.

She was born in Montreal (like this writer) and had ‎somehow ended up in Cowtown and loved it (ditto).

And: she was smart. As in, really, really smart. Scary smart. Genius smart. Take-your-breath-away smart.

She didn’t suffer fools gladly, and this writer was indisputably one. She gave me the worst mark I’d ever gotten, anywhere, ever – and it taught me a lesson I never forgot.

Another time: she eyeballed my split lip‎ one Monday – the product of a fight with a couple mountian-sized Armed Forces guys at a Calgary bar on Saturday night , both of whom later bought me a beer – and shook her head. “Don’t be an idiot, Kinsella,” she said. ‎”Grow up.” (Never did. Sorry, Prof. Martin).

I, like most of my classmates, tried to impress her. We worked harder. We paid attention. We persevered.

Did she change my life? No, she didn’t. But she changed the way I thought about things, which actually matters a lot more. When you think about it.

I graduated. Headed East, didn’t stay in touch. I heard she’d started to practice constitutional and criminal law. Heard she got elevated to the bench. She got to the Court of Queen’s Bench, even – moved up when Stephen Harper was PM. Was proud of her. Admired her, from afar.

Now, much has been made of the fact that Sheilah Martin was and is a feminist. Much has been made of her commitment to equal rights for all. In my experience, she was certainly all that, but she was also more.

She was this: she was one of those people you meet in your life who measurably changes you. Who makes you better. Who you remember, always, because she altered the course you took.

Thirty years later: the book. A novel, about some progressive punk rockers confronting neo-Nazis and white supremacists who ‎have insinuated their way into positions of power. There’s murder, and mayhem, and mystery.

There’s also Sheila Martin. She’s in there, and she’s a major character in Recipe For Hate. She’s one of the book’s few heroes, in fact.

Sheilah Martin isn’t hard to spot in the plot: she’s Sharon Martin, District Attorney. And she kicks ass.

I won’t be appearing before the Supremes anytime soon, so I doubt I will be able to thank her for changing me – for the better – in person.

So, the book will have to do.

Send a clerk over to Prospero Books on Bank Street, Madame Justice Martin, and you’re right there, starting at Chapter 35 and in the pages that follow.

Sharon Martin is described therein as brilliant, and ethical, and a kick-ass lawyer.

The real-life one is, too.

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Look, I get along well with Doug Ford. I shouldn’t, given that I am a Bolshevik, in comparative terms. But we get along.

So.

There’s this poll that mysteriously appeared tonight, dropped on a Sunday night for what is called “rip and read” – designed to secure lots of uncritical play on Monday morning.

I won’t get into the nitty-gritty of the “poll,” because life’s too short. But here’s some of the stuff it says:

• “When asked, if the election was held today who they would vote for Mayor, 38.66% of respondents support John Tory, compared to 32.91% for Doug Ford, 28.43% of voters are still undecided.”
• “With John Tory’s lead of 5.75 percentage points what is significant from this massive sample is that in 2014 Toronto mayoral election John Tory won with a 6.55 percentage points lead with 40.28%, to Doug  Ford’s 33.73% and Olivia Chow at 23.15%.”
• “With such narrow percentage difference between John Tory, Doug Ford and the undecided falling within the margin of error, the race to become the next Mayor of Toronto is up for grabs with less than one year before Election Day.”

Hmmm.

Along with being ungrammatical, and ridiculously self-promoting, here’s what is odd about this “poll.”

• The outfit who cooked this thing up calls itself “The Firm Digital.” Ever heard of them before? Neither has anybody else.
• Reputable firms always carefully describe their methodology. These guys don’t.
• They get some pretty basic stuff wrong. For example, with a sample of this size, their margin of error is actually 0.78 per cent, not 4.1 per cent.
• They claim to have done this gargantuan poll by telephone. But most Fortune 500 companies couldn’t afford to pay for a telephone survey with that many respondents. So who paid?
• They haven’t included any tables. Why not? Every reputable polling firm always includes tables. What are they hiding?
• Go to their website. It’s a splash page, basically. Nothing else. And if you Google Firm Digital, you see that the firm only started this year.
• Oh, and this: their “CEO,”‘ Ramona Benson, has appeared for months playing a “reporter” in the videos of the rabidly anti-Wynne group, Ontario Proud. Not exactly neutral behaviour for a “pollster.”
• Any reputable polling agency that my firm works with are registered with the MRIA – the Market Research and Intelligence Association. These guys aren’t.

Anyway: it doesn’t add up, folks. At all.

I’d say that something is rotten in Ford Nation, but you knew that already.

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