They couldn’t just take one for the team
It was a bit of a shock when Jane Philpott suddenly quit her cabinet job, partly because the collection of notecards taped to the bookcase beside my bed includes this one: “What would Jane Philpott do?” Every morning I say to myself, “I bet Jane Philpott would get out of bed” and to my mind, the two of us were up and off to the races.
“Jane Philpott would quit her job?” I said. What?
Her decision was wrenching. She was, and will remain, on my list of most admired humans, so perhaps I should follow her path and “step away from” writing and “cut ties with” my very fine national editor.
I have already quit two jobs on a point of principle. The first time was a tiny editor who said he would hire me if I slept with him, and I briskly left the building. The point of principle was “Eeeww.”
The second time I quit a job on the principle that no selfrespecting journalist could hit 40 and stay at the Toronto Sun.
The third time, a pale older male op-ed editor said on my first day, “I already have one woman … and she is quite enough.” I stuck it out. He retired shortly after. I win.
Those were easy decisions for this feminist to make. But Philpott, Treasury Board president and minister of digital government, and Jody WilsonRaybould, justice minister and attorney general, made strange feminist decisions in a feminist government with a genderequal cabinet.
They gave up two of the most powerful jobs in the country. Extraordinary.
The feminist dream was to have women in those positions. These two said “I shun power” and pushed it away with both hands. What if the result gives us Andrew Scheer?
Both women are individuals, entitled to make decisions that are personally right for them. Philpott’s life has had crushing sorrows. She has earned the right to decide what is right and wrong by her ethical standards.
But if a Liberal government aiming to improve the lives of women and Indigenous people did not suit them, what government would? Why are they still in the Liberal caucus?
I’m sure Scheer has an opendoor policy for anyone wishing to join him in widening the gender pay gap or enhancing Indigenous boil-water advisories.
For those saying it is refreshing to see women not doing things by Old Boy Network rules, they are indeed not doing them. Because they quit their jobs. I fail to see how their absence is a feminist success.
I am an idealist but only to a point. As the late, deplorable U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia said of Justice Clarence Thomas, who was spinning out into the Constitution’s wild blue yonder, “I am an originalist but I am not a nut.”
We women tend to be realists, not wasting time on philosophical discussions, but knuckling down and doing the hard work that helps Canadians and builds the middle class. Wil- son-Raybould could have offered help to hurting people as minister of Indigenous services (she said no) or in veterans affairs (she said no).
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is busy, his priorities being climate change, employment, assisted-death rules, Trump terrorism, pharmacare, cyberterrorism, gun control, Indigenous issues, CPP repair, defence, immigration, etc. But he said Wilson-Raybould could have come to him directly to tell him her thoughts, noholds-barred.
She did not. There was an “erosion of trust” that both of them could have repaired, but it didn’t happen. The prime minister says it was a valuable lesson.
He didn’t want a toadying cabinet like Trump’s, nor a rigidly obedient one like Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s. He likes things open and sometimes fractious. Maybe that doesn’t work.
I remain puzzled by the manic behaviour of the ever-traditionalist Ottawa press corps. At Trudeau’s morning statement, men were openly belligerent, perhaps fancying themselves as northern Jim Acostas.
Perhaps they wanted a political drama as twisted and freakish as the Trump administration staffed with offal, as who would not? They ended up with fine-tuning the question of splitting the role of attorney general and justice minister, a stupefying issue that busy Canadians will find insultingly out of touch.
Normal people do not wish to lose jobs, any jobs. Being laid off is a household catastrophe with pain spreading far into families and communities. But unionized journalists and tenured academics railing against Trudeau feel immune. Most of those fired at SNCLavalin “would rather easily find new jobs in that sector,” wrote one naïve university professor. Really? Good to know.
Some male journalists are electric with dislike of Trudeau personally. I imagine it is his youth, warmth and alleged good looks (I don’t see it. He looks OK) that sets them burning inside. I call it PM Envy.
As for Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s reference to Philpott and Wilson-Raybould being friends, I imagine they are.
Has feminist politics advanced so far that we can safely call our female friends “cronies,” just like men?
In the week of International Women’s Day, how wonderful.