Brown finds way to dig deeper hole
In just three days, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown upset the progressive wing of his party and infuriated the conservative wing, razed his reputation for competence and possibly threw away a byelection win.
For more than a year, Brown had maintained carefully ambiguous views about the way the province’s schools now teach children about health, sex, consent and risky behaviours, caught between the vocal conservatives who are convinced it’s a plot to groom Ontario’s children for pedophiles and the extreme reasonableness of the actual material.
This can’t be said enough: The curriculum, in use now for a year, doesn’t teach sixyear-olds to say yes to sex, it doesn’t tell them that gender is nothing but a social construct, it’s not a how- to guide for anal sex. It says sex comes with risks and tells young people to be decent to each other, and goes into some age-appropriate detail. It’s clinical, not lewd.
Since he entered provincial politics, Brown has said a Tory government would “go back to the drawing board” with the curriculum. He’s spoken to anti- sex- ed protesters about “our collective concern for the wellbeing of our children and the importance of our families” and demanded school material that teaches “facts, not values.”
He did not say he would take the curriculum out of Ontario’s schools. Until smelling the possibility of victory in a byelection in suburban, heavily i mmigrant, Rob Ford- friendly Scarborough-Rouge River on Thursday, he sent an open letter last week saying that, “Upon being elected, a PC government would scrap the controversial changes to sexed introduced by Premier Kathleen Wynne.”
Or ... well, somebody sent it out. Maybe it wasn’t Brown, but somebody acting in his name. In a damage-controlling op- ed published in the Toronto Star on Mon- day night, Brown said his only problem with the curriculum was the Liberals’ consultations on it.
“The campaign in Scarborough-Rouge River wished to express these concerns and to assure voters that when it came time for the next round of updates, both experts and parents would be thoroughly consulted,” the op- ed said. “Much to my regret, it went too far when it said I’d ‘scrap’ the curriculum.
“I want to correct the record before the byelection on Thursday, whatever the political consequences. I do not want people voting in Scarborough- Rouge River thinking I will scrap sex education. I will not.”
To his extremely limited credit at this point, Brown has finally taken a clear position on the health-class material — and it’s the right one.
“It is important to have sex education to combat homophobia, and raise important issues like consent, mental health, bullying and gender i dentity. The world has changed and so should the curriculum,” his recantation said. “Consultation doesn’t mean opening the door to intolerance. I will never support removing LGBT sensitivity or combating homophob- ia from schools. I will always support consulting with parents and giving them a voice, but I will never support intolerance in our society.”
This is in keeping with how Brown has generally behaved as party leader. He had a social- conservative’s voting record as a federal MP but has explicitly disclaimed right- wing social policies for the provincial Tories. Record numbers of Progressive Conservative MPPs have marched in gay pride parades on his watch. The pledge to scrap the sex- education curriculum seemed odd, in that context. But it was also really clear.
How di d it happen? Brown’s weird formulation seems to blame the local campaign for candidate Raymond Cho, like a rogue staffer wrote and disseminated a letter with the polar opposite of Brown’s views in it, which was allowed to stand for days. After the first surprised reactions, Brown tweeted that actually the letter didn’t say anything different from what he’s said about sex-education in Ontario all along, though now he acknowledges it did.
Brown seeks credit for owning up to the “mistake” but if you want to be forgiven for something, you have to say what you did wrong. Brown hasn’t. He takes responsibility, which was inescapable because he’s the boss, but that’s where he stops. Mistakes were, you know, made.
Does Brown have incompetents working for him who don’t know what his views are but send out letters under his name anyway? That seems to be the official l i ne, though his spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond when asked whether he’d seen the I’ ll- scrap- it letter in advance.
Did he intend to base his education policy on fevered hallucinations but changed his mind? Or did he think it was a good idea to pretend publicly that he would and then betray social conservatives after he had their votes, either just in Scarborough on Thursday or provincewide in 2018?
Ah, right. These are the Ontario Tories we remember.