‘TEFLON’ TOM LUKIWSKI
MP has survived controversy before
It was like a scene from an old reality show. Let’s call it Political Survivor.
It’s a grainy video image of Tom Lukiwski, with permed hair and a pencil-thin moustache, giving a rambling, nasty soliloquy about “homosexual faggots with dirt under their fingernails that transmit disease.”
It was on a 17-year-old VHS tape that emerged in early 2008. Many politics-watchers wondered if the career of Lukiwski, Conservative MP from Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre, was kaput. Protesters regularly assembled in front of his northwest Regina storefront office and letter writers poured scorn on him.
But in the federal election mere months later, he’d increased his margin of victory to 51.08 per cent — then won again in 2011 and 2015.
So as Canadians ponder what might be a new gaffe — or a simple misunderstanding fanned by an ugly lynch-mob mentality — about a word he used on election night, it’s clear you can’t count out this political survivorman. He’s been scorched, but never badly burned.
And because of these past controversies, “I think he’s got a bit of Teflon on him,” said the JohnsonShoyama Institute’s Ken Rasmussen.
Rasmussen noted there’s “a bit of ambiguity” over precisely what Lukiwski said — and his party is in opposition, not government. The MP’s party leader hasn’t made a big issue of it and the next federal election is four years away, said Rasmussen, who figures the matter will have only “marginal impact”.
University of Regina political scientist Jim Farney adds that discussion on Twitter “breaks” according to peoples’ politics.
“If you’re tilt left, it’s very clear which word he used — and if you tilt right, it’s very clear what word he used. There’s really nobody in the middle. I think that ultimately will be his ‘out.’”
It lets the veteran MP say that perceptions are in the ear — and the politics — of the beholder.
Lukiwski came to public attention in the late 1980s as executive director of the provincial Progressive Conservative Party, defeated in the 1991 and 1995 elections.
Later in 1995, he was fending off complaints from angry PC party members that he was organizing a replacement organization — the Saskatchewan Party — even as the PC Party was still alive, if not well. Lukiwski responded that the PC Party executive had endorsed creating the new party and thus OK’d staff involvement.
As the first general manager of the Saskatchewan Party, he handled controversies over election rules, donations and denying Grant Devine-era MLA Grant Schmidt the right to run for the new party.
In early 2004, Lukiwski sought the federal Conservative nomination in Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre, where the party’s sitting MP, Larry Spencer, had been denied the right to run as a Conservative because of comments deemed hostile to homosexuals.
When recounts and appeals finished, Lukiwski’s margin of victory was only 122 votes.
Among his first moves was a controversial motion seeking “civil unions” for gay and lesbians couples — depending on your perspective, either sensible middle ground or shabby tokenism that gave gays much less than straight couples.
In 2005, he issued a news release that “Saskatchewan needs a new deal that would allow the province to keep 100 per cent of its revenues from non-renewable resources.”
His government declined to move on this issue, but opponents gleefully repeated it. He also faced (and settled) a libel suit brought by a Manitoba Liberal MP angry at Lukiwski’s allegations around the Canadian Wheat Board.
But Lukiwski moved upward in the Conservative federal hierarchy, named its Saskatchewan caucus chairman then, in 2007, Parliamentary secretary to the government house leader. Was a cabinet post on the way?
Instead, an NDP MLA rose in the legislature in early 2008 to state her colleagues had found the 1991 video tape of three Progressive Conservative Party workers: aide Brad Wall, communication staffer Kathy Young and Lukiwski. On it, Wall spoke with a Ukrainian accent and Lukiwski made disparaging remarks about gays.
Wall apologized and used it as a teaching moment. Lukiwski apologized several times, saying, “I’m ashamed for the comments. If I could take those comments back, I would … They do not reflect the type of person that I am.”
The prime minister accepted his apology and voters endorsed it. Lukiwski was re-elected in 2008 and 2011 with ever-increasing majorities. For the 2015 vote, he ran in the new Moose Jaw-Lake CentreLanigan seat — facing a controversy over whether the constituency association’s board of directors was properly constituted. The party OK’d him and he got 55.5 per cent of the votes on election night.
“He dances close to the line,” said Farney. “I think that if he survived his earlier comments and video, he’s going to survive this one.”