Kristin Raworth: The Liberals need to stop using "Sexism!" and "Racism!" as a shield
Kristin Raworth: The Liberals need to stop using "Sexism!" and "Racism!" as a shield
Getting asked a question you don't want to answer isn't sexist.
By: Kristin Raworth
For the past month, the top news story in Canada has been the allegations of Chinese interference in both the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. These allegations have now also extended to cover at least one Ontario MPP, Vincent Ke, who last week resigned from the Progressive Conservative caucus following allegations he is also connected to Chinese electoral interference, and, just this week, to interference in Vancouver and Montreal municipal politics, as well as Quebec provincial politics. This is a complicated, and growing, story.
You wouldn’t necessarily guess that this was an issue of great concern over the last week if you looked at the statements and social media feeds of the Liberal and NDP MPs who sit on the parliamentary committee studying allegations of Chinese interference. They seemed to only want to talk about one thing: Edmonton-St. Albert MP Michael Cooper.
Cooper, who has been an MP since 2015, has developed a reputation for his often combative style in committee and question period, and what seems at times to be awful political judgment. This includes an incident in 2019 when then leader Andrew Scheer removed Cooper from the Justice Committee after he told Faisal Khan Suri, the president of the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council, he should “be ashamed” of himself for linking conservative commentators to Quebec mosque shooter Alexandre Bissonnette and the terror attacks in New Zealand. He also then went on to read aloud the 74-page manifesto of the New Zealand mass shooter, including using his name.
So yeah. Not great.
Fast forward to last week, when Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly came before the Procedure and House Affairs Committee (PROC) to discuss Chinese interference. Cooper, after a particularly heated exchange said, “You've talked tough. You've talked tough with your Beijing counterpart, so you say. You even stared into his eyes. I'm sure he was very intimidated.” Immediately the response from both NDP MP Rachel Blaney and Liberal MP Jennifer O'Connell was to decry the comment as sexist, with O’Connell demanding an apology from Cooper. But here is the problem with that.
In advance of the committee meeting, Joly had spoken about her meeting with her counterpart, Qin Gang. In part of her comments she specifically says “I looked at him in the eyes and said to him 'first we will never tolerate any form of foreign interference.’” So Cooper’s comments in committee were simply repeating back her words to her and then implying that the Liberal government is weak on China.
When Cooper responded to the criticism, he did so saying that he would have said the exact same thing had she been a man. Not only does his own record bear that out (for better or worse!), but that is also consistent with his party’s position. The Liberals' record on China has been a Conservative Party of Canada talking point since Andrew Scheer was leader.
To imply that these comments made to Joly were sexist because of her gender is frankly an insult to Mélanie Joly and to the other women in the Trudeau cabinet. Cabinet ministers should and do handle tough lines of questioning at committees and in Question Period all the time. They shouldn’t be shielded from a specific commonly used talking point because of gender. The CPC, probably rightly, sees Liberal weakness on this file as a serious vulnerability and as a result they won’t stop hammering that point. The prime minister and his foreign affairs minister should be expecting that by now and when the implication is frequently lobbed at them both I am not sure how one example is sexist and the other isn’t.
This goes to a broader issue with the Liberal party: when facing legitimate criticisms during their time in government, they use accusations of sexism and racism as the ultimate tool of distraction. This isn’t to say that the CPC hasn’t been a helpful participant in that at times, including Poilievre’s recent bungling of story when three of his MPs met with a far-right European politician, but more often than not these incidents always seem to conveniently come along when the Liberals are in trouble.
There are serious issues of sexism faced by female MPs, from across all parties. You only need to look at the vitriol Catherine McKenna and Michelle Rempel-Garner face to see that. This is exactly why it is even more important to not misapply the term simply because you are being asked something you don’t want to answer. If everything is sexist, then nothing is — the word starts to lose its meaning. That makes it even more difficult to have the necessary conversations that need to happen on this issue. All parties would hopefully agree that would be a very bad thing. It’s time for our feminist government to lead by example, and improve its own behaviour.
Kristin Raworth is a victim’s advocate and executive assistant to a city councillor in Edmonton.
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