Liberals play the race and misogyny card

There is one old tag, or proverb, that has long ago l ost whatever truth or wisdom it may have had: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”

Today we know names hurt. We do not abide genui nely contemptible l anguage directed at minorities, people of other races, shouting crude and nasty sexual remarks at women. People get fired over a nasty racial taunt, or shamed when they verbally abuse women — the Neanderthal taunt “FHITP” directed at female reporters recently brought down a rage of scorn on the taunters. Except when this fairly new sensitivity gets carried to PC excess, this is a good thing. A vile mouth can cause injury, and the fewer vile mouths we have the better.

There is another side to this coin. Because we have heightened our sensitivity on these matters, to be accused of racial insensitivity, or genuine contempt for women, is a very serious business. Racism is the mortal sin of secular times, misogyny is a close second. Great care must be taken with these labels.

In the House of Commons this week, Minister of Justice and Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould faced a motion calling for her to apologize for a $500-per-person fundraiser at a Toronto law firm, and to return the money raised. The minister claimed, rather implausibly, that she was at the law firm event in her “private capacity” as MP for Vancouver Granville, not as minister of justice. That didn’t wash with anyone. The opposition claimed it was, at the very least, an apparent conflict of interest. Indeed. The nation’s highest law officer should not be used as a star attraction at a fundraiser to benefit the Liberals.

To the defence of one minister came another, minister for Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef. The most powerful part of her response, and in fact the only part of it that had possible relevance — the rest was that the Conservatives were really awful in every way when they were in power — was this: “The motion is a vicious and unfounded attack on an i ndigenous leader, a woman who has and continues to serve her nation honourably.” Monsef bracketed her speech with this attack, reiterating near the end, “I have said this before and I will say it again. Today’s motion is a vicious and unfounded attack on an indigenous leader, an accomplished woman.”

Vicious? Hardly. There were no personal innuendoes, no references to the justice minister’s private life or domestic matters. There was no gutter language in the motion, emphatically no negative or demeaning references to her heritage — in fact no references to it at all. It was to her capacity as justice minister and attorney general — her parliamentary identity, not her ethnic or ab- original one — that the motion was directed, and questions raised.

The first and only reference to her personal identity came from Monsef herself, and then only to imply — slyly in my judgment — that the entirely reasonable questions were somehow an attack, and a “vicious,” one on the justice minister because she is an indigenous woman. I have read the entire exchange in Hansard, and in the opposition speeches there is not even an approach to race or background, except to deplore its being invoked by this minister.

Equally, there was nothing “sexist” in the motion. The motion wasn’t questioning that “a woman” went to the fundraiser. Even an “accomplished woman.” It was asking whether a justice minister, who was also an attorney general, should hold a partisan fundraiser with a particular law firm. Sherlock Holmes would struggle to find “sexism” in that.

What is severely out of tune here, and deplorable, is the quick and thoughtless recourse to the implicit slurs of “bias” and “bigotry.” One would expect from the front bench of the new Trudeau government, which has woven its appeal so closely to the ideals of tolerance and openness and ending divisions, something more honourable and honest than dragging race and ethnicity into debates where they are clearly and emphatically not present. We all agree that racism is a toxic and malignant force, and that racists are among the lowest of the low. Knowing that, we — and members of the House of Commons in particular — should be very cautious, judicious even, before hauling out the implication that a debate is racist and misogynist, or that those leading that debate proceed from a racist and misogynist bias.

The “tone” of Parliamentary debate Minister Monsef referenced so frequently in her speech is not improved by transparent attempts to distract from a legitimate inquiry into an event by implying that the debate is a screen for, or fired by, impulses of racism and misogyny. Nor should an excess of consciousness of one’s own progressive virtue and righteousness lead so easily to the presumption that others, with whom you disagree, can only be disagreeing because they’re sad little souls languishing in moral limbo. Or, what is the same thing obviously, because they are Conservatives.

BECAUSE WE HAVE HEIGHTENED OUR AWARENESS ON THESE MATTERS, TO BE ACCUSED OF RACIAL INSENSITIVITY, OR CONTEMPT FOR WOMEN, IS A SERIOUS BUSINESS.