Underdog (20 page)

I could have predicted the election result a summer earlier, during my six-month sojourn at Queen's Park, when I could see that the party's focus was single-mindedly on the economy and jobs. Of course, the economy is important and the fact that the Liberals had racked up an eleven-billion-dollar deficit with no plan in place to reduce it is beyond scary. But unlike me, most Ontarians' eyes glaze over when confronted with numbers, even big debt and deficit numbers. Far too many voters, particularly pampered Torontonians, are wilfully ignorant, if not witless, and don't want to hear the stark realities. The message has to be distilled into very simple talking points such as Rob Ford's successful “Stop the Gravy Train” message in his 2010 municipal campaign. I told PC insiders that Mr. Hudak needed to focus more on bread-and-butter issues. If voters were not prepared to absorb the deficit, debt, and job messages, I advised, then speak to them where it really hurts – by condensing key health care, education, or energy issues into concise sound bites. Wait times for home care, cuts to physiotherapy, the quota system for cataract surgery, the smart meter disaster, and the reopening of teachers' union agreements to buy labour peace: there was certainly no shortage of areas where the Liberals were vulnerable. In frustration over the opposition's inability to articulate these basic concerns, I set about doing it myself on the health care front, interpreting for my readers how many nurses, home care visits, hospital stays, and physiotherapy sessions the $1.1 billion wasted on moving two gas plants would have bought. I also tackled transportation, taking a hard look at how many kilometres of subway the billions
of dollars squandered on eHealth, Ornge, and the Pan Am Games could have built. How many of us in the GTA haven't been trapped in gridlock or crammed into a bursting at the seams subway car? How many of us in Toronto and throughout the province don't have a health care horror story or two to tell? These are places where the Hudak Tories completely missed the boat.

When Mr. Hudak's jobs platform came out at the start of the June 2014 election campaign, I just knew he was throwing gas on a fire. I was impressed with his decision not to sugar-coat the true state of Ontario's economy or make costly promises he could not keep simply to buy votes as the Liberals did. But his platform of reducing a hundred thousand jobs in the broader public service quickly got derailed because he didn't and couldn't articulate properly that this would be done through attrition – by not replacing the 5 per cent of civil servants who retire annually – and by getting rid of useless agencies with too many middle managers, like Drive Clean and the Local Health Integration Networks. He should have been reiterating day after day that no one on the front lines would lose their jobs, and that his ideas were directly out of Liberal consultant Don Drummond's well-articulated 2012 report. He should have been saying over and over again, until we got tired of hearing it, that he intended to build a responsive and responsible Ontario without the waste and mismanagement. Why didn't he back the unions into a corner by stating right out of the gate that, for the good of Ontario's fiscal health, already well-paid teachers, OPP officers, and other public sector workers could afford wage freezes in their next three-year contract? He should have published their salaries and embarrassed them. Why didn't he compare the
great divide between private and public sector wages – study after study has shown that public sector wages are on average 14 per cent higher – and keep hammering home the idea that the private sector can't keep propping up the lavish public sector contracts? All of these were missed opportunities. I grew increasingly frustrated as I watched the entitled unions take control of the message because the Hudak Tories let them. Surely to goodness the Ontario PCs had to have known there would be pushback from the union-controlled Working Families Coalition as there had been in the last three provincial elections. Surely they had to have anticipated that the unions were prepared to spend millions of dollars on attack ads to indoctrinate low-information voters. The Hudak Tories just sat back and let it happen. I grew so frustrated with the misleading messaging from a long list of unions – and with Mr. Hudak's inability to clearly state his intentions – that I tried to expose the unions, their incestuous ties to the Liberals, and the money they spent on attack ads in the last week of the campaign. Judging by how well my stories resonated, I suspect that had the Tories been able to confront them head-on sooner instead of losing complete control of the message, the outcome of the June 2014 election might have been different.

SADLY, I CALLED IT
in September 2013 when I said before and after that policy conference in London, Ontario, that Mr. Hudak needed to step down for the good of the party. Many party insiders agreed with me, but Mr. Hudak and his inner circle made sure all dissenters – especially Mr. Shurman – were sidelined. My voice got drowned out by those in the party – like former party president Ken Zeise – who felt Mr. Hudak
needed to have a second chance, even though he'd already badly blown the 2011 election. I lost count of how many times Mr. Zeise blathered on about process and party protocol as the excuse for allowing the ineffectual leadership to continue. It was as if they had a death wish and didn't much care that they did. Mr. Hudak and his inner circle – and the party insiders who refused to see the writing on the wall – cost this province four more years of corruption and fiscal torture. When Mr. Hudak indicated his intentions to resign as leader the night of the June 2014 election, all I could think was that he was one election too late. I knew then, and am convinced to this day, that while the Liberals will do anything to win at all costs, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario doesn't have the slightest clue what it takes to win.

Within hours of my “Coming Out” column in the
Toronto Sun
on Pride Day 2007, my inbox filled up with e-mails of support. One of the first came from then Ontario Progressive Conservative leader and now Toronto mayor John Tory, a good friend (until I dared to criticize his record as mayor). Written in the wee hours of that Sunday morning (when Mr. Tory is known to start his day), his words about my courage and my setting of an example were truly genuine and are ones I still remember. If I was the slightest bit shaky about what I'd done, that quickly disappeared over the next few days when the e-mails, calls, and words of encouragement from readers,
Sun
colleagues, right-wing politicians, bureaucrats from City Hall, and even gays still in the closet kept coming and coming. Nearly 99 per cent of the feedback was positive, heartfelt, and uplifting.

Readers who admitted to growing up in homophobic families wrote me tales of learning as adults that some of
their dear friends were gay. They thanked me for presenting a positive role model. Others, who had no clue I was a lesbian until I wrote that column, told me they didn't care whether I was gay or straight, black or white – they just loved reading my tell-it-like-it-is columns. I'd come out so publicly not only to set the record “straight” but to challenge stereotypes. I wanted to educate my readers that gay people can come from every walk of life. They can even be outspoken Jewish, right-wing, fiscal conservatives. I wasn't looking for praise or pity. I wanted to make the point that the left doesn't own the gay agenda.

As the days went by, there was silence from left-wing councillors, and especially from Mayor David Miller. Not that I expected everyone to acknowledge my coming out, and obviously I understood that I was not the left's cup of tea, but even council's gay advocate, and my councillor at the time, Kyle Rae, acted like it never happened. That silence was broken when in the City Hall cafeteria I ran into Paula Fletcher a few days after my column appeared. Taking in the stylish leather jacket I happened to be sporting that day, she asked me if I was dressed in my “dyke suit.” By then, I'd watched Ms. Fletcher and her fellow leftist councillors long enough to know that what they lacked in class, they made up for in nastiness. Perhaps the behaviour was payback for my refusal to fawn over Mayor Miller – like the rest of the media – and for generally being a pain in the ass on behalf of my readers. But I thought, I guess rather naively, that when it came to something so deeply personal, they'd put our political differences aside to embrace someone who might help further such an important cause. I remember calling the comment classless and Ms. Fletcher subsequently pretending it was simply a lighthearted joke.

She was hardly the only person from City Hall who mocked my very public coming out. A few months later, I learned from a councillor that when he tried to suggest to Kyle Rae, the Grand Poobah of All That Is Gay, that it was great what I had done so very publicly, Mr. Rae apparently retorted that while I may be a lesbian, I'm a “bad” lesbian. If being a bad lesbian constitutes calling the likes of Kyle Rae out on his expenditures as a councillor, or daring to ask him tough questions about whether he's pushing through deals for developers that were well beyond city density and planning rules, then yes, I'm a bad lesbian. To be a “good” lesbian in the eyes of Mr. Rae, I'm guessing one had to bend and scrape, fawn over him, be malleable, and turn a blind eye to his tight ties with developers. Mr. Rae was the epitome of the “do as I say, not as I do” liberal thinker. I'd regularly see him heave himself out of his council seat to express mock hysteria at some alleged slight, or homophobic remark, by one or more of his supposedly intolerant council colleagues. He didn't see the irony, or hypocrisy, in his puerile cheap shots and hissy fits at alleged “bad” lesbians, such as myself.

City's Hall Lib-left didn't evolve much in the two years between my public coming out and my marriage to Denise. When my colleagues in the City Hall press gallery kindly threw me a party a few days before I left to get married, neither the mayor nor one left-of-centre councillor, except for Shelley Carroll, were gracious enough to come down from their second-floor offices to wish me well. Even Mike Del Grande, who as a devout Catholic doesn't condone same-sex marriage, made sure to drop by with a card and a gift. I also wrote a column to run the day Denise and I got married, lauding the NDP for fighting to give gay people in Canada the right to marry. Again I received many wonderful e-mails – one of
the most memorable coming from an Orthodox rabbi. He said that while same-sex marriage wasn't recognized by religious Jews like himself, he wanted us to know that he was thrilled that Denise and I were building a loving Jewish home together and that we weren't missing out on being married by a rabbi under a chuppah. In stark contrast, there was almost no reaction to that column from the left at City Hall or my left-wing critics. I certainly did not lose any sleep over the left's silence, and again, I'm not so presumptuous as to take real offence to it, but I was starting to feel like a Canadian version of Condoleezza Rice, whose appointment as the first black female secretary of state in U.S. history received almost no reaction from the left. Truth be told, all of this is sadly predictable. It says a lot about the character, or lack thereof, of the liberals. It wasn't just that they actually believed themselves well within their rights to behave with such small-mindedness because I'd been “mean” to them in print – to reiterate, I had held their feet to the fire – or had been an alleged “bad” lesbian for having the balls to do my job. It was also because I challenged their clearly narrow-minded view of the world.

Who said one cannot be a fiscal conservative or support a right-of-centre political stance and be openly gay? Well, in fact, it's the narrow of mind, those who should be ashamed of themselves for trying to pigeonhole a group into a singular stereotype. I've actually had people on Twitter – which is dominated mostly by the Lib-left – claim that right-of-centre gays are for the most part self-loathing. Really? A story told to me not too long ago by a friend of mine, Harvey Brownstone, who also happened to be the first openly gay man appointed to a judgeship in Toronto, proved how firmly held the stereotype can be. The family court judge, who also
presides at some criminal hearings, was having dinner with a group of Toronto lesbians, self-identifying leftists as it turns out, and he happened to mention that he and I had grown up together in Hamilton and had recently reconnected. He also mentioned, seemingly to their horror, that I was out and very public about it. They argued with him, saying I couldn't be out and right-wing too. He invited them to read the columns in which I talk very publicly about being married to Denise. To this day, I'm guessing they have not taken a look at what I wrote about coming out or getting married, or at the very least would never admit they were wrong. The point is that it's as if the two ideas are mutually exclusive. But the bottom line is that I always have and always will agree that gays can be conservatives, or even Scientologists for that matter.

The Lib-leftists have convinced themselves they are tolerant, inclusive champions of diversity, advocates for the downtrodden and the poor, and paragons of open-mindedness. The truth is, at least in my experience, they are close-minded, intolerant, petulant, and prone to stereotyping. If they are challenged with facts, they will invariably go on the offence, often resorting to cheap, personal attacks. All too many Lib-leftists I've encountered and written about see absolutely no irony in the fact that while they purport to want to champion the downtrodden, and forever make a great show of supposedly doing so, leftist politicians, do-gooders, and assorted poverty industry activists are not only the first to line up at the public trough but have spent years sucking it dry. They're masters at recycling: if they do a terrible job, or get their hands caught in the cookie jar at one non-profit organization, they always seem to land unscathed at another. Keiko Nakamura, who allowed spending abuses to occur under her watch at
Toronto Community Housing Corporation and was eventually pushed out with a $320,000 severance for her incompetence, found a soft landing at Goodwill Industries, making initially $215,000 a year and then $230,000 in 2014. In early 2016, she managed to run that organization into the ground too. It defies logic. Yet most of them don't like the idea of their comfortably thin view of the world being upset, and heaven forbid one should go after the entitlements of those working in the social housing and poverty industries or for non-profit organizations, or should try to untangle their stranglehold on our public sector institutions and agencies. I liken them to a bunch of cockroaches, as they have tremendous staying power. Far too many of the Lib-leftists are adept at organizing, bullying, and knifing anyone in the back or front who dares stand in their way.

Those on the Lib-left are very selectively tolerant, selective in their inclusiveness, and, as I discovered when I came out, selective about those toward whom they direct any generosity of spirit. People who march to their political drum beat – muttering all the phony rhetoric they expect to hear – are tolerated, even set on a pedestal, despite their obvious flaws and very public blunders. Openly gay former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister George Smitherman is a perfect example of someone who has constantly received special treatment by the media and his fellow politicians. After allowing the eHealth nightmare to unfold under his watch, turning a blind eye to the spending abuses by the CEO of Ornge, appearing to mock seniors who suffer from incontinence by proposing a photo opportunity in adult diapers, and selling Ontario's energy future down the road by secretly inking a deal with Samsung (to create a multi-billion-dollar
wind turbine facility), Mr. Smitherman actually thought he had what it took to be mayor of Toronto in 2010. And why not? The Lib-left sheep, led by their mouthpiece the
Toronto Star,
saw nothing wrong with the fact that he was a bad politician, had a whole closet full of baggage, and, in my estimation, was not known for being a particularly kind human being. In fact, he earned himself the nickname “Furious George.”

I can only imagine, if I'd called him a “bad” gay man or pressed the case that Mr. Smitherman had been addicted to party drugs before running for politics – in the same way the media obsessed about Rob Ford's drinking and crack cocaine use – how his apologists would have squealed in self-righteous indignation. True, he has shown the courage to be true to himself by being out. But let's face it, like far too many politicians, Mr. Smitherman is a narcissist. He had already proven during his time at Queen's Park that he didn't give a hoot about providing services to those truly in need. If he had, he wouldn't have allowed billions of dollars that could have been used on health care for an aging demographic to be squandered on eHealth and other government fiascos, without giving it a second thought. If Mr. Smitherman had had the slightest bit of remorse over his failings as a provincial politician, he would have never thought himself worthy of running for Toronto mayor, or more accurately, worthy of rescuing Toronto from the fiscal morass left behind by David Miller, another narcissist.

But without the slightest bit of guilt and more than a touch of brazenness, this guy thought he was the man to put Toronto back on a solid footing. That fact alone was disturbing enough to me and many others. It was even more shocking to me how throughout 2010 the Lib-leftists and even a
gaggle of Red Tories circled the wagons. Reinventing history, they painted this guy as a saint, as someone who was open-minded, had a heart, and should be given nothing short of a medal for his desire to turn the city around post–Mr. Miller. What about all the money he'd squandered in his succession of cabinet posts, helping to leave Ontario mired in debt, and the fact that he was part of a Liberal government that saw no issue with nickeling and diming seniors and the vulnerable to cut costs? These “minor details” were conveniently swept under the rug. Rob Ford, as sweaty and socially awkward as he was, truly wanted to get the city's debt under control so there would be more services for the people who most needed them. Unlike Mr. Smitherman, he walked the talk, never taking trips at the taxpayer's expense or using his office budget, and he made it his mission to get Toronto back on a solid financial footing while still finding ways to save tax money. Though Mr. Ford came across as bumbling, inarticulate, and extremely rough around the edges, his heart was in the right place. He wanted to undo the fiscal damage foisted on taxpayers by his predecessor, who seemed to care only about the image he saw in the mirror. Joining forces in a desperate attempt to fend off Rob Ford's growing popularity in the polls and to win at all costs in 2010, the Lib-left were persistent about painting Mr. Smitherman's opponent as homophobic, inarticulate, heartless, mean-spirited, and just plain bad for the city. And that was on a good day.

Led by the
Toronto Star,
the Keep Rob Ford Away From the Mayor's Chair forces were feverish in their efforts. In my many years of covering provincial and municipal elections, I'd never seen anything like it (that is, until the 2014 provincial election). Kathleen Wynne, then a cabinet minister,
joined in the fray, using her taxpayer-funded office resources to try to indoctrinate her constituents with a nasty back-to-school e-mail about Mr. Ford in the fall of 2010. While claiming that Mr. Smitherman, a fellow gay, has the “heart, the experience and the energy” to represent her constituents well at City Hall, Ms. Wynne said that Toronto would not “grow and prosper” nor did Rob Ford have the best interests of the city at heart, or compassion for the people who live in it. A conservative would not have “compassion” for the people who live in it. I always love those overused lines because they are like maple syrup for the masses and Ms. Wynne has used them very well. The words were so sickeningly mind-numbing, she and her Liberal pals hoped they would lull voters into a peaceful slumber. The Lib-left has a lock on compassion and the conservatives are heartless. We hear it at every level of government.