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Dear Rob Ford:

We decided to have a meeting, and limit attendance to people who haven’t committed a number of major crimes.  Sorry.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Wynne and Norm Kelly

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Here.

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I have read Lenihan’s stuff, and I always try and listen to him speak.  I believe he’s one of the smartest guys around when it comes to making Canadian democracy better.  His latest essay, on National Newswatch, shows why that is so.

His newest adventure – chairing the Ontario government’s “Open Government” panel thingie – will not be without its challenges, however, and as the photo below makes abundantly clear.  (One anonymous Grit staffer had the best response to this unmitigated disaster, which everyone in the province has now seen:  “We’re shrinking government, one letter at a time.”)

Good luck, Mr. Lenihan, you’ll clearly need it.

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Right?

Don’t raise expectations you can’t exceed, Chretien used to tell us.  Some people should heed that advice, but they won’t.

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For those Gotcha Conservatives (hello, Andrew Harris!) who were impatiently bombarding me last night with emails and tweets, demanding my reaction to the gas plant schmozzle, I say this:

• I was on TV, co-hosting the Sun News Network’s excellent coverage of the Nova Scotia Liberals’ smashing victory, and therefore a little, you know, busy; and
• I don’t have any association whatsoever – zero, zippo, zilch – with the Ontario Liberals, so stop asking me to be their spokesperson.  Given who is running the show over there, I can assure you: I am an Ontario Liberal in Exile.

That said, I have penned a column about the gas plant schmozzle for this Sunday’s Sun.  I want you to buy the Sun, so here is a taste, but not the whole meal. You’re welcome.

**

…I’m from Calgary, and I’m a little slow, but I can tell you any oil patch boy or girl knows this much: the energy sector is like the stock market.  It is, in its essence, totally unpredictable.  And don’t just take my word for it.  The tall foreheads at Harvard University, for example, call it “predicting the unpredictable.”  Said one of them, in the august pages of the Harvard Business Review: energy prices and costs are “devilishly difficult to analyze, let alone predict.”

“Devilishly difficult.” I like that, because I’m a sucker for alliterations.  But also because it’s Harvard, and it’s true.  Predicting the unpredictable is bad, bad politics.

The Ontario Liberals’ mistake was that they were too helpful, and they tried to answer the question.  Had I been asked at the time – and I wasn’t – I would have said: “We promised to move those gas plants, and we’re making good on that promise.  Citizens didn’t want those gas plants, and we listened to them.  All of Ontario’s political parties favoured moving them, and all acknowledged there would be a cost.  We intend to do everything we can to keep the cost down.”

See? No numbers.  No predictions. No risk.

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He said he has some advice, free of charge.

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This time of year, more than previous years, is making me feel a bit nostalgic.  At the end of August, and at the start of September, Summer starts to wind down, the wasps seem to proliferate everywhere, and the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off.  Over the years, I never went to any of the film festival parties or anything, because I think it is disgusting how much actors get paid to play let’s-pretend in front of a camera.  (I’ll always be a punk rock snob, I suppose: I also generally hate any popular culture that gets too popular.)

Anyway, I digress. This time of year is the time when I would start heading over to the Liberal Party headquarters – federal and provincial – on St. Mary’s Street, off Yonge.  In 2003, in 2007 and 2011, we’d take up residence in that crummy old building, and spend hour after hour campaigning under the leadership of Dalton McGuinty and Don Guy.  In 2003 we won big, in 2007 we won big, and in 2011 we won almost as big – just one seat, a few hundred votes – shy of another majority.

Everyone knows, pretty much, what happened after Dalton resigned.  It happens whenever a long-serving leader leaves, and his or her successor scrambles to depict themselves as “brand-new” and “an agent of change.”  It rarely works.  You’re there for the good as well as the bad.  The moment the media and the Opposition see you trying to frantically distance yourself from what went before, they’ve got you.  Martin learned that the hard way, Wynne hopefully won’t.

But that’s not the point of my nostalgic post.  The point is this: the people I served with on those campaigns – Don Guy, Brendan McGuinty, Laura Miller, Chris Morley, Dave Gene, Aaron Lazarus, Christine McMillan, Gerald Butts and many others – were my political family.  They were, and are, some of the finest people I know.  I will stick by them and defend them, always.  Just like I did and do with Jean Chretien, Bruce Hartley, Randy McCauley, Jean Carle and a few others on the federal scene.

I do not think I am particularly intelligent, and nor do I think I have any special skills, in anything.  The main thing I am proud of, in my political life, is loyalty.  Not loyalty when times are good – that’s not loyalty: that’s easy.  Loyalty when times are tough, like they were for Chretien’s political family in 2004-2005, and like they are now for McGuinty’s political family.  That’s not so easy.

I’m not uncritical in my loyalty, of course.  One friend of some 30 years lied full-on to my face about something important, in the past year, and if I don’t ever see him again, it’ll be too soon.  Another one was never, ever there during some very tough times.  He voted with his feet, so I did too.  See ya.

But those McGuinty folks? They are good and decent people, and I don’t believe one scintilla of the bullshit being said about them by the media or their detractors, inside or outside the Liberal Party.  (Those kinds of people are just cowards: sucking up to those with power, making big bucks lobbying or whatever, and then disappearing when the going gets tough. I call it the Dominic LeBlanc Syndrome.)

You shouldn’t believe the bullshit, either.  And you should also believe me – if you are in a campaign, or if you are contemplating one – when I say this: in politics, all that counts is loyalty.  That is what matters most, more than winning or losing.

So, that’s what I’m thinking about, a bit wistfully, as I contemplate TIFF, the wasps, and some great times in that run-down old building on St. Mary’s Street.

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You have to read the whole story. It is really, really important. Quote:

“Abused, neglected, vulnerable — they should have been protected. Instead, they were deprived of that most precious commodity: A childhood.

This puts all of us to shame.

And it shames us all that our premier is leaving these women in their hellish nightmare, instead of simply saying we are sorry.”

Wynne, Gerretson, the system: all will deeply regret not dealing with this before now. An historic wrong. Mark my words.

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Circa 1977 at my Calgary Catholic high school, most of my friends ­— charter members of the drama/music/poetry/punk rock subculture — were gay.

So, even in arch-conservative Calgary, being gay wasn’t a big deal to us. We went to gay clubs like the Parkside Continental, and we wrote and sang songs that were sexually ambiguous. My band’s biggest hit, in fact, featured Yours Truly hollering about making “sweet passionate love” to another guy.

(That song is now covered by Britain’s hottest band, the Palma Violets, by the by. Their decision to do so has unleashed neither critical acclaim nor a torrent of homophobia.)

Arriving in supposedly progressive Ottawa to study journalism in 1980, then, was a bit of a shock. Nobody, in those days, was out of the closet. I had surmised that NDP MP Svend Robinson was in one, so I went to see him to do a story about being gay in public life.

It was 1982, and Robinson was plainly nervous when I met with him. He even brought along an assistant to tape record the exchange. I wasn’t interested in outing Robinson — he would do that all by himself not so long afterwards — but in understanding gayness and public life.

That was then, this is now. These days, being gay and a politician isn’t such a big deal anymore. New Democrats, then Liberals, came around to the view that gays and lesbians are (a) electable and (b) not qualitatively different than straight politicians.

So, Robinson blazed a proud trail for many others. Mario Silva, Libby Davies, Bill Siksay, Real Menard and Scott Brison got elected federally. Provincially, Kathleen Wynne is Canada’s first openly gay premier and no one has said they care (apart from Wynne’s leadership team, that is, who regarded every criticism as homophobia, but that’s a story for another day).

And municipally, there have been not a few openly gay mayors and councillors, too, mostly of the New Democrat and Liberal variety.

But what of Conservatives and conservatives? Well, I can verily attest to the fact that there are as many — if not more — gay folks nestled in the bosom of conservativism. Gay men, in particular, seem to be disproportionately inclined towards fiscal conservatism.

But a thin blue line of homophobia persists in conservative politics, at least in respect of social policy. Conservatives held out against gay marriage, gay adoption and gay pension rights longer than any other party. Gay and conservative isn’t as incompatible as it once was — but a tension remains, nonetheless.

Conservatives will point out at this point that Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has recently criticized the plainly gay-hating dictatorship of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But Baird doesn’t deserve credit for doing so — opposing bigotry should be part of his job description.

The reaction of Conservatives to Baird’s stance on Russian homophobia is telling. By hailing what Baird said in year 2013 AD, they are implicitly acknowledging their party still has a way to go.

They are headed in the right direction, but they need to go faster. When human rights are at issue, delay is almost as bad as denial.

And, to those Conservatives who worry they will alienate their base, I say worry not. If a bunch of Calgary misfits could openly celebrate gay causes in the 70s — and live — well, arch-conservatives can, too.

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It was a little thing, apparently. A tweet, a bit of digital detritus, something that comes and goes, with little or no attention paid. Happens all the time.

What made it significant was not its casual sexism, or even that the tweet’s author (a high-profile columnist) or its target (a former deputy chief of staff to former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty) are both female.

No, what made it most noteworthy was that, after the sexist tweet was tweeted, no one really said anything. No one really objected. Not even the government of the current Ontario premier, herself female.

The occasion was the appearance of senior Ontario Liberal Laura Miller before a political circus masquerading as a legislative committee. As Miller testified about the decision to cancel gas plants — an issue considered moot by voters in McGuinty’s Ottawa South constituency, where they recently enthusiastically elected a former McGuinty aide to replace him in the provincial legislature — the columnist tweeted: “[Miller] looks and talks like a Valley Girl. This woman was the second most powerful person in the Premier’s office? Sad statement.”

What was “sad” was that the columnist — who I won’t name, and who (like all of us) shouldn’t be offering anyone tips about their personal appearance or diction — didn’t think the tweet was a problem. Nor, apparently, did any of the small army of communications specialists within Kathleen Wynne’s government. They didn’t object at all. Not a peep.

Perhaps it was because they did not want to get on the wrong side of the arch-conservative columnist (unlikely). Perhaps they didn’t notice the tweet (unlikelier). Perhaps there is a growing divide between McGuinty-era Liberals, and the freshly minted Wynne ones (likeliest).

Whatever the reason, one thing was axiomatic: What was noteworthy wasn’t the rank sexism. In politics, women get hit with that all the time, pretty much. What was significant, instead, is that even progressive political voices remained mostly silent.

In a scrum, with a straight face, Ottawa Citizen reporter Glen McGregor asks Conservative MP Michelle Rempel what hair products she uses. No one objects. Before her re-election, B.C. Premier Christy Clark gets called a “MILF” by a radio host — that is, a “Mom I’d Like to (Expletive)” — and the ostensibly progressive B.C. NDP say nothing.

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath gets called “a whore” by a radio commentator, and the other political panellists on the show — labour leader Buzz Hargrove and business leader Catherine Swift — say nada.

The sexism is bad enough; The indifference of people who should know better makes it measurably worse.

It doesn’t always happen that way. Many years ago, I posted a picture of an Ontario Conservative MPP on my website, and suggested she would rather be “baking cookies” than standing on a stage with a far-right political candidate. I was roundly condemned for my stupidity, and many times, too. I deserved every bit of it, and more.

There are other infamous examples. Former Liberal cabinet minister Belinda Stronach gets called, variously, a dog, a whore, a bitch and a prostitute — and her critics (all Conservative politicians) are widely condemned. John Crosbie dismisses Sheila Copps as a baby, and ends up boosting her reputation, and diminishing his own.

Too often, however, these things pass without comment. Sexism directed at female politicos receives a collective shrug. It’s almost worse than the sexist remark that preceded it.

Oh, and Laura Miller? She’s no dummy. And she deserved a lot better than she got — not just from the columnist, but from erstwhile friends, too.

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