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Jul. 28th, 2015
The death Sunday of veteran Canadian politician Flora MacDonald got plenty of attention. She was a prominent politician who established precedents for women in politics.
MacDonald began her career working at Progressive Conservative headquarters from 1956 to 1965, serving as executive secretary for half a decade. After being elected as a Member of Parliament in 1972, she became the party's critic for aboriginal affairs and northern development.
Four years after being first elected on the national scene, she threw her name into the ring of contenders for the party's leadership only to see Joe Clark win the nomination and eventually become prime minister.
Under Clark, MacDonald was named secretary of state for external affairs. She was the first woman to hold this post in Canada and became one of the first few female foreign leaders worldwide at the time.
A few years later in September 1984, she became the minister of employment and immigration under then-prime minister Brian Mulroney. MacDonald later became Mulroney's communications minister in 1986.
In November 1988, MacDonald lost her seat and cabinet position after spending 16 years in the House of Commons, prompting her exit from federal politics. She decided to dedicate her time toward humanitarian efforts but also managed to host a television program, author a book and serve as chair of an international development research centre.
Kelly McParland in the National Post notes that the failure of Justin Trudeau to secure for Eve Adams, a former Conservative junior minister who defected, a mid-Toronto nomination speaks much about his judgement.
Despite campaigning hard for the nod, Adams was decisively defeated, losing by about 800 votes out of 3,000 cast, after being urged to withdraw by a heckler.
Why such a stupendous gaffe wasn’t evident to the Liberal brain trust remains a mystery. Trudeau would have been better to fire whatever adviser suggested it was a good idea and enlist Colle in his place.
Instead, Colle went to bat for Adams’s rival, Marco Mendicino, a local prosecutor and adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall law school. Adams, he declared, would succeed “over my dead body.” Mendicino has an impressive background, including prosecution of the “Toronto 18” terror group, which gives him excellent credentials to put up against the law-and-order Tories. He also has an extensive record in local community groups. Adams is a career politician who doesn’t live in the riding and only became a Liberal after being rejected by the Tories. She’s engaged to a former Harper strategist who is also on the outs with the party.
Mendicino had the support of former Liberal leader Bob Rae. Adams was parachuted in by Trudeau, despite his pledge of open nomination contests. It didn’t need a rocket scientist to spot the better candidate, yet Trudeau not only turned up for a photo op with Adams, but praised her “commitment to public service.”
The whole unhappy affair underlines the serious doubts that continue to plague Trudeau’s leadership skills, and the judgment of the advisers around him. A political novice could have seen the dangers involved in embracing Adams, which not only contradicted Trudeau’s pledge of open nominations but offended local party officials and opened the door for Trudeau to be criticized by opposition parties as just another cynical opportunistic despite his pledge to practice a new, more honourable form of leadership.
Earlier this month, Peter Watts wrote interestingly about the terrible pragmatism of the ethics of Spock, perhaps of all Vulcan.
Much more at the author's site.
When I first wrote these words, the Internet was alive with the death of Leonard Nimoy. I couldn’t post them here, because Nowa Fantastyka got them first (or at least, an abridged version thereof), and there were exclusivity windows to consider. As I revisit these words, though, Nimoy remains dead, and the implications of his legacy haven’t gone anywhere. So this is still as good a time as any to argue— in English, this time— that any truly ethical society will inevitably endorse the killing of innocent people.
Bear with me.
As you know, Bob, Nimoy’s defining role was that of Star Trek‘s Mr. Spock, the logical Vulcan who would never let emotion interfere with the making of hard choices. This tended to get him into trouble with Leonard McCoy, Trek‘s resident humanist. “If killing five saves ten it’s a bargain,” the doctor sneered once, in the face of Spock’s dispassionate suggestion that hundreds of colonists might have to be sacrificed to prevent the spread of a galaxy-threatening neuroparasite. “Is that your simple logic?”
The logic was simple, and unassailable, but we were obviously supposed to reject it anyway. (Sure enough, that brutal tradeoff had been avoided by the end of the episode, in deference to a TV audience with no stomach for downbeat endings.) Apparently, though, it was easier to swallow 16 years later, when The Wrath of Kahn rephrased it as “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. That time it really caught on, went from catch-phrase to cliché in under a week. It’s the second-most-famous Spock quote ever. It’s so comforting, this paean to the Greater Good. Of course, it hardly ever happens— here in the real world, the needs of the few almost universally prevail over those of the many— but who doesn’t at least pay lip-service to the principle?
Much more at the author's site.