The Old Adventures Of New Christine

In a couple of days, the Protest to Stop or Revise Ontario SEX ED curriculum will make its presence felt on the lawn of Queen's Park. I'm told it's going to be a big day for parent advocacy, and parents are going to be fired up. 

But you probably knew all that already. I want to talk today about something more important: Unless what I'm being told proves untrue, Christine Elliott will be in attendance at this rally. 

As you know, I have not been a fan of CJE as of late. Specifically because her talk about listening to the grassroots is just that: talk. She and her coterie of advisors, the same advisors who engineered four straight election losses, know that they have to make sympathetic noises in order to attract votes before May.

Christine's crew would just love to tell the parents involved in Tuesday's protest to go take a walk, because they believe that far-right stances like opposing the sex-ed curriculum killed the party. They like using this excuse because they don't like having to take a firm stance of their own, or come up with a actual plan that would give voters confidence in their ability to run the province instead of a list of talking points.  

But since the protest organizers are calling for the head of PC Education Critic Garfield Dunlop for speaking in favour of the curriculum, Christine has been dispatched to the rally to pre-empt this threat to her leadership. At this rally she will say things she doesn't believe, that the parents don't believe, and that lots of her own people who want the party cleansed of wacky so-cons don't believe.

Now I may not be voting for Christine under any circumstances, and as such her organizers have no obligation to pay attention to me. But I would caution them to to remember that waffling on the gas plants was what gave the Liberals the ability to say, "The PC's would have cancelled the plants too", and that yelling about the HST for years without telling people what they'd do instead convinced absolutely no one.

If that doesn't rattle their bones, they might consider the embarrassing photo of her at this rally, standing beside Dr. Charles McVety or someone like that, appearing on a piece of Liberal literature with HIDDEN AGENDA?!?!?!??!?! in enormous letters underneath.

In short, there is no reason for her to bother with this silly pretense. There are two perfectly good PC Party leadership candidates with much better bona fides in attendance already, and Christine would be a far more credible candidate if she spoke truth to power. Everyone could go home happy.

It could be so easy if everyone concerned would just stay in their lanes and forget about the political oneupsmanship, for the sake of the children.

UPDATE: Credit is always given where credit is due, and Christine did indeed back off. Now all she has to do is avoid all the other pitfalls in a similar fashion and she might not lose a general election!