OLIVER SHOULDN’T HAVE CAVED ON HIS CLUBMATES
Attention to Twitter and his disloyalty to friends reflect badly on him
I am a member of only one place that could be remotely described as a club, the Jewish Community Centre near my house in downtown Toronto.
I like it because there are lots of members at least as old as I am and because, as a shiksa, I imagine that I may appear exotic, at least to the nearly blind. I belonged to the JCC when I was a young and impoverished student and I’ve belonged as an adult for at least a decade, even though I rarely go, because usually I run outdoors.
I regard my monthly dues as my contribution to the local Jewish community and, perversely, as a gesture of support for the state of Israel.
In any case, I’d like to think I have more loyalty to the JCC than Conservative Finance Minister Joe Oliver this week showed for his equivalent, the Cambridge Club, a posh leather-and-oak private men’s club.
Apparently, Oliver has been a member since the club opened in 1973, which is about the same time I was a JCC member for the first time.
And according to a story written by my Post colleague Sarah Boesveld, only last summer, when he was appointed as Canada’s finance minister, did Oliver receive the considerable honour of having his photograph go up on a wall of the place.
He was scheduled to speak at the club Wednesday but, after Oliver and the event were widely criticized on social media early in the day — the former for agreeing to speak to a private group instead of speaking to all Canadians, the latter for being a men-only joint — the finance minister abruptly cancelled. His campaign team responded to questions about why the no-show with the usual blahblah-blah: Oliver speaks to many groups and organizations, he will continue to knock on doors, etc., etc.
They might as well have said nothing.
It was plain that this was a political decision made by a party perceived to be unfriendly to women and women’s issues and which, at this mid-campaign moment if no other, wanted desperately not to add fuel to that particular fire.
It failed to douse the flames in any case.
Chrystia Freeland, the Liberal candidate in the new federal riding of University-Rosedale (a sprawling old one, Trinity-Spadina, was divided in two), showed up, members of the press in tow, to confront Oliver.
In the lobby of the club, watched by reporters, staff and members (one particularly fetching fellow in a bathrobe), she accused the absent Oliver of sexism and elitism. When asked by club managers to take the party out of an area meant for members only, Freeland reportedly trilled, “Is it because I’m a woman?”
Tragically, it appears no one replied, “No, it’s because you’re a twit.”
Alas, as soldiers are condemned to fight the next war with the tools used in the last one, so it seems are women.
If ever this was a battle worth the candle, and that’s dubious, it seems to me that over the years men and women have come to a civilized and equitable arrangement: Men can have their clubs, like the Cambridge, and women can have theirs, like the Curves chain and other women-only workout joints, and when management decides otherwise, as for special events such as a finance minister’s speech, the restriction will be waived.
(Olivia Chow, the once and perennial NDP candidate in Trinity-Spadina, appeared at a mayoralty event held at the Cambridge Club. And women are allowed in the club’s dining room as members’ guests.)
Still, despite Freeland’s bizarre old-school performance, the person to emerge the worst out of the shemozzle, and properly so, was Oliver.
Firstly, allowing social media, in this case Twitter, to guide your conduct means you’d spend your life ping-ponging and flip-flopping from one position to another (in other words, you’d be a Liberal). Everyone and everything is criticized on Twitter; that’s part of its ghastly charm and fun. But surely no one sensible makes actual decisions based on what Twitter says, or what’s trending.
Second, whatever happened to stick-with-them-who-brung-ya? Apparently, the prime minister’s throwing of Nigel Wright under the bus wasn’t a one-off for Conservatives.
Joe Oliver must like the Cambridge Club, else why would he have joined and stayed for more than four decades? He must have friends there. Friends almost certainly would have been in the audience. They hung his freaking picture on the wall, for God’s sakes.
How about a little quid pro quo? How about Oliver give the speech, answer the questions and critics afterwards, and say, “Look, I like the darned place,” or, to Freeland, “Blow it out your bum.” How about act like a normal person who believes in something, even if it’s just guys in towels?
There was one bit of wildly amusing loveliness to emerge from all this.
It was when Clive Caldwell, chief executive of the Cambridge Group of Clubs, met Freeland et al in the lobby.
One of the things he told Boesveld of the Post was this: “We’re proud of what we are and I don’t think it has anything to do with Minister Oliver’s unfortunate inability to come.”
Amen, brother; that is unfortunate.