If you don't like the political script, why not do a rewrite?

When people say they don’t think Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is up to the job of being PM—that he’s a lightweight or gaffe-prone, for example—I always think about how, even if they have formed this opinion on their own, it feeds into and is shaped by the Conservative party’s preferred narrative. Running the country is about competency, it goes, and Stephen Harper, whatever his other faults, is surely more competent than Justin Trudeau.

Competency is a tough narrative to compete with, especially considering that Canadians are a particular risk-adverse people. But you could reframe the question, “Who would be the best prime minister?” as something like, “Who has the best vision for the country?” Skills can be learned, attracted, appointed, bought or rented; vision, not so much. If Justin Trudeau were able to articulate a cohesive and attractive vision for Canada, Canadians might have confidence that he could call in the right people to make it happen. What does our future look like? Who are we in the world? Can we rise above pure politics to bring the country together? Of course, you can't just ask these questions to articulate a vision, you have to provide some sort of answer to them.

That’s why the Liberal support of Bill C-51, known as the Anti-Terrorism Act, seems particular odd and self-sabotaging. On a spectrum from “Protect Civil Liberties” to “Maximize Security,” the bill leans toward the latter, at least in public perception. And that direction seems to contradict the Liberal values of a country built on trust and reason rather than fear. Trudeau’s explanation of his support for the bill was sharply devoid of any philosophizing or even any real emotion.

“We are hopeful that the government is serious about reaching across the aisle to keep Canadians safe, while protecting our rights and our values. There are concerns with this bill, and we hear them. But we need to do what we can to keep Canadians safe. And I believe that many of the concerns with this bill will be addressed through Parliamentary oversight,” he said in his February remarks. “There are gaps in this bill, including on oversight and mandatory reviews. And we in the Liberal Party will offer amendments to address these gaps.”

Gaps, oversight, review, amendments? These words are absolutely beholding to the Conservative’s competency narrative. Trudeau is claiming the Liberals can be more fussy that the Conservatives if you give them a chance; the devil is in the details; civil liberty is important, but then again, so is security. His words, and even his way of defining the issue, neither build on the established Liberal brand at its best (the country we want, not the best political compromise we can manage) nor offer a new manifestation of the Liberal brand under Trudeau.

There might narratives other than vision that Justin Trudeau will use to get people to stop comparing his level-headedness to Harper’s. But Trudeau has so far failed to present one, so busy is he following the Conservatives script.

My response to Sky Gilbert's critique of my IN Toronto piece on celebrities coming out

It's always flattering when someone you admire takes issue with something you said, since, at the very least, you were worth responding to. 

So I'm glad Sky Gilbert took umbrage with my piece in this month's IN Toronto magazine, which asks the bratty question "Does coming out even matter anymore?"

Sky's critique is here.

I responded to Sky directly and wanted to share my response here, for the record.
---

Hi Sky,

I appreciate your thoughtful essay and feel delighted and honoured that you took the time to respond to what I wrote.

My piece was meant to be a playful riff on a series of ideas around coming out. (It all started when a friend of mine complained that there were too many out actors and not enough out scientists, which was a weird notion I wanted to unpack.)

It might have been hard to figure out what I was saying in the piece because I was deliberately trying to be non-prescriptive--evasive even. I didn't want to tell anybody what to think or do with their lives, nor give a thumbs up or thumbs down to different celebrities. Rather, I was throwing some ideas and stereotypes into the air to see them crash into each other, hopefully provoking readers into examine their own feelings about famous people coming out. I purposely eschewed answering the headline's question so readers could answer it themselves. And you've done so yourself quite forcefully and I'm glad of that.

But I hope I was clear, especially when I write about the "enduring value of coming out"--that's the bit near the end where I laid my cards on the table--that, despite my cavalier approach and the provocative headline, I still think coming out is very important. Perhaps I buried the lead.

I just think coming out publicly has a very different social meaning than it did a decade or 20 years ago. That's progress, though not the end of our labours.

Rob Ford's substance abuse problem

People love to quibble over "addiction." It's a term that suggests a medical condition with specific symptoms (for example, you start to shake if the substance is withdrawn) and specific treatments (methadone, AA meetings).

That's why I much prefer talking about drug and alcohol problems. A problem is something an outsider can determine without knowing the biochemistry, thoughts and feelings of the person in question. A problem doesn't presume to know what's going on inside a person, only how the person is doing in the world.

Toronto mayor Rob Ford has said again and again that he's not an addict--it's something he's entitled to say. It could be true. But his addiction or non-addiction is irrelevant. That's why councillors need to focus on his drug and alcohol problem--Ford undeniably has one.

Ford might not crave a drink or a fix. Ford might use only occasionally. But if drugs or alcohol (or drugs and alcohol, as seems to be the case) harms his work and personal relationships, it's a problem. It may not be a problem for Ford himself--I've known some users who have had a great time drunk or high--but it is is for the people around him who have to respond to his doped up behaviour. Those who are affected decide if there's a problem, not the user.

It's a problem if someone's missing time at work. It's a problem if it hurts performance. It's a problem if someone become belligerent and abusive. It's a problem if the lies needed to continue using drugs and alcohol create headaches and heartaches for the people around the user. Falling asleep on the job, spending chunks of the workday meeting up with  an alleged drug dealer friend, showing up at public events drunk--all problems, regardless of whether Rob Ford is an addict or alcoholic or not.

The salacious drama of the crack video--the video! the video! the video!--has distracted people from the central issue. Yes, it's shocking that the mayor of Toronto has smoked crack, that he was in such a drunken stupor that his memories of the experience are vague. I'm sure the video, if we ever get to see it, will be both hilarious and troubling.

But I'm more interested in the problems created by what Rob Ford did in that seedy room. Where should he have been? Conducting city business? Spending time with his kids? How did he get home afterwards? What actions did he take, if any, to obtain and/or destroy the video or punish its owners? How much trouble has six months of his lying about the video caused for his friends, family, co-workers and the citizens of Toronto? How much trust has been destroyed?

It doesn't really matter if it was crack or meth or pot or tobacco in Rob Ford's pipe if troublesome things came of his smoking it.

Ford's opponents like to throw everything they don't like about Ford into a big bag, shake it and offer it up as evidence toward removing him from office. That includes his policies (the man ripped up bike lanes!), his sleazy populist tactics, his slovenly appearance, his crassness, his violation of council rules, his negative attitudes toward LGBT people and other minorities, as well as his substance abuse problem. For these opponents, the crack video is just another embarrassing, frustrating thing, like the "subways, subways, subways" mantra.

This "He's awful and needs to go" generalization confuses the issue. It distracts as much as Rob Ford's own "I am not an addict" shtick.

No matter what you think about the direction Rob Ford has taken the city in, his competence in doing so or his personal style, these are things for voters to decide. We are allowed to vote for incompetent people, even addicts, for that matter. But it is clear from all kinds of evidence, not just the video and the expansive police files, that the man has a substance abuse problem that needs to be addressed. And it needs to be addressed by the people around him who are most affected. His family, his staff and, on behalf of the citizens of Toronto, his fellow councillors.

Toronto councillors can't force Rob Ford into treatment, but they can refuse to stop cleaning up his mess.

That didn't take long

Called it. Now it's serious.

If we want Rob Ford to deal with the crack cocaine allegations, the place to start asking questions is not City Hall, but the high school where he coaches football

If Toronto had a normal mayor, we might be able to write a script of what will happen now that Gawker and the Toronto Star have reported seeing a video of someone who looks like Rob Ford smoking something that looks like crack cocaine.

If the allegations are false, Ford would offer evidence—or at least an argument—why what the reporters thought they saw isn’t what they saw; he’d quickly correct these incorrect perceptions. If the allegations are true, Hollywood has prepared us to expect a remorseful resignation and a stint in rehab.

But Toronto does not have a normal mayor and, based on past experience, it seems entirely possible that Rob Ford’s simple “ridiculous” dismissal  (What’s ridiculous? The allegations? His crack use? That people care? The fundraising campaign to buy the video? The fact that, accused of calling Liberal leader Justin Trudeau a "fag," he was going to take refuge in a ceremony commemorating the International Day Against Homophobia?) might be his last word on the subject. His critics at Toronto City Council has not yet found the wherewithal to leverage Ford’s private shenanigans in the political sphere—even Rob Ford’s legal/judicial shenanigans have done little to erode his voter base. There’s no reason to think his opponents—and even his more nervous supporters—will be more capable this time.

But what about Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School, where Ford coaches football? Just because city councillors should be expected to work with a colleague who might have a substance abuse problem doesn’t mean the parents of high school students should tolerate their kids being exposed to such a controversial figure. Adults working with minors should always be held to a higher standard.

And so I predict that Don Bosco is where Rob Ford’s epically bizarre mayoral rule might start to unravel. Can the high school principal leave these allegations uninvestigated—that its football coach might be using illegal drugs and, while doing so, might be belittling the team’s players? I don’t think so. Even if city council has learned to work around Rob Ford’s erratic behaviour, a high school principal should not. While there may never be enough evidence against Rob Ford for criminal charges based on the alleged video, there might already be enough evidence to ask him to resign as football coach. No matter how great a coach he is, the toxicity of the allegations—and his failure to address them—are much too damning. Any serious educator knows exactly what has to happen next.

Is this a side note to a larger political scandal? Considering how much time Ford spends on the football field—and considering the footballers he surrounds himself with at City Hall—the loss of his position as football coach might be a far bigger reality check than anything that could happen to him in his role of mayor.

If Toronto wants Ford to seriously deal with the allegations in the Gawker and Toronto Star stories, the issue will have to be raised in the principal’s office, not the council chambers.

Built Ford Tough

Progressive Torontonians are freaking out about the election of Rob Ford as mayor, not just because they're worried about what he'll do to the city. They're also disturbed by how many of their fellow citizens voted for a man with track record of bigoted speech about gay and lesbian people and Canadian newcomers--or just about anybody else who is not a car-driving, home-owning middle-class straight married person. Is this what my neighbours/people in the 'burbs think of me? they wonder.

It's true that these attitudes are part of the Ford package. But I think other less worrisome (though no less desirable) factors played a part in Ford's election.

The biggest factor is star power. Torontonians love to vote for a strong, sharply defined character. Exhibit A, Mel Lastman. Rob Ford ran as himself, a classic love-em-or-hate-em character, right out of The Family Guy. Even David Miller, with his stylish hair and upright appearance, had a Soccer Dad/Dudley Doright persona that was immediately understandable on an emotional level. Ford's main rival, George Smitherman, had been a "character" in the past, but ran a campaign where he tried to quash his established persona of Furious George and failed to adopt a new persona along the lines of "gay dad." Voters wondered who Smitherman was and, ergo, if he was hiding something. Torontonians will vote for a big, authentic personality, no matter what policy it's offering them.

As well, David Miller's mishandling of the 2009 garbage strike meant that even moderate voters were keen to punish anyone who seemed gutless in seeking efficiency and, especially, seeking efficiency from the unions. They wanted guts. Pantalone was too closely associated Miller--and too pro-labour--to answer this need. Smitherman, bizarrely, considering his past track record, wasn't able to position himself as someone who could be a tough bargainer. The one thing you know about a loose cannon like Ford is that he won't back down (even when he should). Will it he be effective? I doubt it. But voters wanted someone who acknowledges the problem and will try to solve it.

For better or, more precisely, for worse, it's shallow perceptions, not what runs underneath them that will win or lose you an election in this city. Ford ran a great one-note campaign that capitalized on voter frustration: stop the gravy train, stop the gravy train, stop the gravy train. Ford's specifics--tearing up the streetcar lines or defunding Pride celebrations--were not, I think, a big part of why people voted for him.

Fingers crossed.

What Adam Giambrone needs to do next

Take a break from electoral politics, Adam. You've worn your heart on your sleeve about your political aspirations for a long time and it's not too late to still become prime minister (or perennial NDP leader as the case may be). At 32, you have plenty of time to pursue this goal, and maybe even become premier of Ontario along the way.

But now is the perfect time to catch your breath. Resign as TTC head and don't bother running for councillor in the next election. In your ward, you are not the most popular person right now (for pesky issues, I know, like the Queen Triangle debacle, the narrowing of Lansdowne, for parking on Dundas, but these are issues dear to the hearts of voters). Losing the next election would add insult to injury. Step away from the ballot box.

Your early fresh-faced entry into electoral politics proves the maxim about power corrupting.

(Disclaimer: I don't think a promiscuous person is a corrupted person. My qualm is cultivating the public image that you're single and available (how else was Now able to mistakenly presume you're gay?), then parading a quasi-wife figure when you announce your candidacy for mayor--as if that's even necessary in this day and age--then, when confronted with the facts of a sexual relationship with somebody other than your quasi-wife, lying about it. Toronto could have easily handled--perhaps even celebrated--a swinging single mayor. It's the role the women were cast in that's off-putting. If, with the support of your quasi-wife, you could have replied to The Toronto Star allegations with a confident "So what?" you wouldn't be hiding out in Italy this week.)

So here's what to do. Spend the next three to five years doing something else. Something that will make a difference but is somewhat under the radar. Run the United Way. Get involved in some green-energy company. Do an academic fellowship for some kind of centre for innovation. Show that you're not just a smarmy politico but someone who has the smarts to solve real problems and deliver real tangible results. We can debate forever whether the TTC would have been better off or worse without you; it was a major mess and remains a major mess. Grab hold of a project that will show success within five years, something manageable enough that the success will show your signature. Pick something close to your heart that shows you really care about the work, not the public attention it gets you. If you're out of the headlines for a few years, so much the better.

After people have all but forgotten your time as city councillor, run for provincial or federal politics with a campaign that demonstrates how much you've learned from your time in the private/not-for-profit sector. Tap into that newfound wisdom for political problem-solving strategies.

Hey, it worked for former Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray (who admittedly wasn't trying to leave behind any taint other than being non-Ontarian) who just became an MPP at Queen's Park. His time as president and CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute was not wasted. Yours won't be either.

Bright young thing

I have also been doing work lately for Yonge Street Media, a weekly online magazine that spotlights innovation and creativity in Toronto. Having focussed so much on theatre lately, I often feel like I'm applying arts-style coverage to business and community-building projects, which is kinda fun.

Link to 'This' article

When out came out in the fall, my piece on queer politics was paper-only, but, ever slow to catch up, I just realized it's now online.

A clever balance

The uproar over how Prime Minister Stephen Harper has prorogued Parliament has focussed mostly on how it helps him escape the controversy over the allegations that Afghan detainees under the care of Canadian troops were handed over to be tortured.

But the strategy is also effective for a minority PM who has struggled with not looking too scary to moderate Canadians. People talk about how legislation dying on the order paper must be a disappointment to him. But perhaps some of it--copyright, the end of conditional sentencing and the overhaul of the national sex offender registry--was introduced to keep his core right-wing supporters happy without Harper caring if the laws ever passed. You introduce legislation to please the core and kill the legislation to please the moderates. The result is that nobody hates you and you can wield the powers of a Canadian prime minister, powers that are much grander than the lowly enacting of legislation.

And the fury over the proroguing? Name me somebody who lost an election due to the abuse of Parliamentary procedure.

Hardly surprising

Strange how it's not legal to discriminate in law but in cash, well, the Tories run a slightly more segregated ship. Can anybody say "sponsorship scandal"? The key difference seems to be that the Liberals showed preferential treatment to certain Quebec ridings while the Conservatives show contempt for LGBT Canadians.

Or perhaps it's just that my sense of smell has deteriorated

When the Toronto garbage strike started, I told my housemate, who is relatively new to Canada, that the last one in 2002 went on forever and that the city was a total disaster.

"How long?" he asked.

"Oh, it must have been six weeks, eight weeks."

The 2002 strike, in fact, lasted 14 days. My memory, festooned with torn plastic bags and coffee-cup lids, had stretched with time.

Now we're 30 days into this strike and I realize that, in my estimation anyway, the city is just approaching the state of disrepair we achieved in 14 days last time. I think the green bin program and the expanded recycling program has made it easier--garbage is only picked up every second week, even when things are working correctly.

Also, although the union has really been calling the shots--why doesn't this issue erupt in January when a layer of ice can protect us and there's no tourists to scare away?--I think the city's doing a better job of handling things this time around. Touristy areas are being targeted by private cleanup crews. Overflowing bins are being cleaned up. The use of parks as temporary dumps--as horrifying as it is for the neighbours--was implemented in a quick and efficient way. There has been less illegal dumping.

In the seven years between the two strikes, we've learned something about garbage. Mostly that it ain't going to take care of itself.

Further to the Post & Pride

This looks like a story but smells like a correction.

Who speaks for Pride?

I was mildly distressed when I read this piece in the Jewish Tribune in which a lawyer equates the critique of Israel's treatment of Palestinians as "Anti-Israel" and "Anti-Semitic." But the fact that he describes Pride's traditional freedom-of-expression stance--a stance that should come as no surprise since it comes from a group that has been silenced for centuries and has been labelled obscene and offensive too many times to count--as having "very eerie parallels to Nazi Germany" struck me as so outlandish to be laughable. Who could take this complaint seriously?

Well, the National Post could, headlining its story "Toronto Pride organizers ban anti-Zionist group." The story freaked me out because it goes against so much of what Pride is all about.

I would be the first to say I don't like a Pride parade to be a series of political and commercial messages. Entrants should concentrate on being fabulous and celebrating their sexuality. But the overlap between sexual politics and all kinds of other politics is tremendous. Politicians, the most political and partisan species known to earth, clamour to be in the thing. Queer vegans shout their message. So do queer pagans. Some political causes may seem like a stretch, but I don't think anybody has any right to start drawing a line. Pride restricts groups that participate in hate speech and discriminatory behaviour, but that, traditionally, has to be clear on the face of it. If it's a matter of debate--and you'd have to be deluded to think that the relationship of Israel and the Palestinian people is not a valid debate--Pride should step back and let it happen.

(And, with Israel's boasting about its LGBT track record, it is inviting criticism from queers on other aspects of its domestic policy. There's no obligation for gay and lesbian people to shut up and play the part of window-dressing when there are other serious issues to address.)

No individual or group "speaks" for Pride in the parade or outside of it. There are occasions when I don't think Pride organizers themselves actually "speak" for Pride. Pride is a spirit or, if that's too flaky for you, a social movement that manifests itself in a formal organization, but it is not a formal organization itself. The organization creates a platform for "Pride" but it is the participants who mount it, creating the content upon that platform. There is no finely tuned message that comes out of it. Lawyerly niggling about liability and not-for-profit tax status misses the point. Take away the sponsorships and the street closure permits and there will still be Pride.

Pride organizers have struggled with this role. I remember in 2004 the Raelians being told to cover up signs that said nasty things about the Pope--"Official sponsor of AIDS... The homophobic religion that kills!"--but they were not kicked out of the parade. (B'nai Brith Canada take note.) Organizers have not always performed as valiantly as they could, for example, not kicking up a stink when police arrested a small group of men for going naked in the parade in 2002. But they have mostly stuck up for the anarchy of voices that are at the heart of Pride.

Anyway, I found the Post story a little troubling. This morning, I was interviewing Pride executive director Tracey Sandilands for a feature story about Pride for the Toronto Star. I couldn't resist asking her about the Post story. She did not claim the Post misquoted her--thank goodness or we'd be veering close to boy-who-cried-wolf territory--but said the story was wrong.

"We have never said we weren't allowing political viewpoints," Sandilands told me. She said the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid has not been banned from this year's parade. Or at least, not yet because they have not yet applied to be in the parade. When and if they apply, it's the declared message and intent that would be evaluated for possible hate speech and discrimination that would see their application denied. Otherwise, they would be welcome.

"There so much pressure on us to take a side," Sandilands told me. "But it's not our mandate or our purpose. We don't intend to be bullied into taking a side....We are not going to take a stand on any rights or causes other than global queer rights."

If hate speech occurs in the parade without warning, Sandilands says it's up to the police to deal with it.

"We won't make that determination," she says.

I'm sure some people will find any participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid uncomfortable and provocative. But those two words should be considered synonymous with any bone fide Pride parade.

The politics of cleaning the bathroom

I suspect that the care workers hired by Canada's most glamorous MP, Ruby Dhalla, and/or her family were underpaid for the hours of work they put in, which is of ethical and perhaps legal concern. People should get a fair hourly wage. But I have a problem with the class warfare spin on the story. Newspaper readers are supposed to be shocked by revelations that the two women hired to care for Dhalla's mother were expected to shovel snow and clean the bathroom. And they had to live in the basement! Can you imagine!

Well, lots of Canadians clean bathrooms for a living and lots live in basement apartments. This may not be their dream situation, but I don't think we should assume its a horrific freak show of a life either. I once had a part-time job as a residential care worker in a house occupied by two mentally challenged people. I got paid about $20 an hour. I did have to clean the bathroom and kitchen each shift and I will say that I would have needed a lot more than $20 an hour if those two activities made up the bulk of my work. But most of the time I just hung out, drank coffee, watched television and made sure small problems--meat past its expiry date, undone laundry--didn't turn into big ones. Averaging the unpleasant tasks with the pleasant tasks, I don't think $20 an hour was a bad wage. How do you take care of someone if you're not willing to do the the everday things that person is unable or, in the case of someone with behavioural problems, unwilling to do. Exploitation is about not properly compensating someone for their labour. It is not about expecting someone to do labour that middle-class newspaper readers find distasteful.

Tamil mania

When Toronto's Tamil community shut down Toronto's University Avenue to protest at the American consulate, I thought, oh please, you silly people. Not only were the Americans unlikely to do anything but waving the flag of the Tamil Tigers, considered to be terrorists by the Americans, seemed to be an invitation for them to view their pleases in a negative light. Then they marched on the Gardiner Expressway and I thought, now the commuters will hold them in contempt, too.

I forgot the cardinal rule: Any publicity is good publicity. Through their peaceful yet annoying protests, the Tamils have everybody in Toronto talking about them. Some of it's negative, sure, but that doesn't affect the long game: getting people who didn't even know where Sri Lanka was to have a sense of the violence that's going on there. It may not translate into immediate political action--I'm not really sure what Canada or the U.S. could do anyway--but it has planted seeds that may bloom at a time when we might want to be more involved in the country. Smart!

Muldoon's tears

Although I wish Canada could leave the 1980s in the distant past, I have to say I am in awe of former prime minister Brian Mulroney's mendacity. It's not just the theatrics, which are fantastic. It's how invested he is in them. I think he totally believes that it was okay to not admit during questioning in 1996 that he got money from German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber. Well, he got money, of course, but it wasn't Airbus money and the questioning was about Airbus so he wasn't really asked. That hairsplitting helped him earn $2.1 million of taxpayer money in his lawsuit over an RCMP leak that implicated him in shady dealings. Sure, there were shady deals, but not the shady dealings they were talking about. Rock on, Brian! Rock on! You could have taught Bill Clinton a thing or two.

Michelle: 2016

A legacy waiting to happen.

I never thought I'd ever come to the defence of George W. Bush and, really, the whole shoe-throwing incident gives me great delight. But what do people think he should have done? Declare a fatwa? Abandon Iraq? Ducking and shrugging it off was the best response anybody could have made. If it was how world leaders typically handled insult, we'd be living in a much more peaceful world now.