Attorney general of Ontario needs to speak up
Daughter of former PM silent on Ford’s controversial move
On Feb. 2, 2006, then prime minister Stephen Harper appointed Michael Chong minister of intergovernmental affairs, president of the Privy Council and minister of state for sport. At 35 years old, Chong had made it into the first cabinet of the new Conservative government.
The portfolio was junior, but so was Chong; he had been elected only two years before. Now he was a rising star in national politics.
On Nov. 27, 2006, nine months later, Chong resigned from cabinet. He opposed his government’s motion in Parliament recognizing “the Québécois as a nation within a united Canada.” To Chong, it was a repudiation of a deep-seated view of the country. “I believe in one nation, undivided, called Canada,” he said.
He left, not out of ineptitude or embarrassment, as those who are fired, he resigned out of honour. Imagine that: he left the salary, the chauffeur and the soapbox on a point of principle.
For Chong — we are friends of several years — there has been a cost. The Conservatives remained in power for almost a decade but he never returned to cabinet. When he ran for the party leadership in 2017, Chong won only nine per cent. Principle had a price. Had he spent nine years as a cabinet minister, rather than a backbencher, things might have been different.
On June 29, 2018, Ontario Premier Doug Ford appointed Caroline Mulroney attorney general of Ontario. At 44 years old, having never held any elected office, she had made it into the new Conservative cabinet. The portfolio was senior, but Mulroney was not. Still, she had name, looks, smarts and money, a rising star in provincial politics.
Or, she was, until Sept. 10, when Ford announced he was invoking the notwithstanding clause. Mulroney was not at Ford’s news conference, suggesting she was informed of the decision, rather than consulted. Ever since, Mulroney has been pilloried for her refusal, as a moderate, to oppose this affront to democracy.
Given her pedigree and her politics, which tilted progressive as a leadership candidate (she was for sex education and a carbon tax, but has abandoned both positions), it was reasonable to expect that she would oppose the notwithstanding clause, too. It is, after all, an extraordinary force majeure condemned by her father, the former prime minister, as well as one of its authors, the former Ontario attorney general, Roy McMurtry.
Good soldier that she is, she is now with the premier, as she is on the carbon tax and sex education. Her views, we learn, are flexible. What seems to matter most is keeping her job.
It’s hard to believe her defence amid the reality of Ford’s bold stroke: It was done in haste; it was done without public consultation; it was done during a municipal election campaign; it was done with no political mandate because it was never an explicit campaign promise.
Had Ford pledged to halve the seats of Toronto City Council, would he have triumphed in Toronto? Maybe. And if so, bless him and let him legislate, with care. But he didn’t have a mandate here because he was afraid to ask for one.
(The saddest sophistry on this comes from the perfervid Ginny Roth, a jumped-up Tory apparatchik who argued on CBC-TV the other day that Ford could proceed because he promised smaller government. She was challenged on the panel by Dan Moulton, her wiser colleague at Crestview Strategy. Why the CBC put two representatives of the same firm on its panel is mystifying but a coup for Chad Rogers, Crestview’s congenial founding partner, who could have acted here as referee.)
Caroline Mulroney seems unpersuaded by any of these arguments, including how shrinking council will not save any real money while giving Torontonians fewer civic representatives, per capita, than any major city in Ontario.
If Mulroney does not know that, if she does and it doesn’t bother her, then she is not as bright or progressive as we thought. In that case, resignation is not on her radar.
Now we know she is not Roy McMurtry. She is not Brian Mulroney. And she is certainly not Michael Chong.