Jennifer Lynch, and Conservative buyer's remorse

It's hard to believe that Jennifer Lynch, the woman who presides over the corruption of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, was appointed by the Conservative government. Her ethical hallmarks are very Liberal Party, circa Adscam.

The culture of the CHRC is pure Chretien 1990s: get away with whatever you can, just bluff it out. As I've mentioned before, they don't even have a code of ethics at the CHRC. Perfect! They can't violate their ethics code if they don't have one!

Lynch's commission has been hit with scandal after scandal this year, including an RCMP investigation after the CHRC hacked into a private citizen's Internet account. The Privacy Commissioner is investigating the CHRC, too. If she was a cabinet minister, she'd have been sacked by now, so it's curious how she has survived.

Lynch's appointment was made in haste. Conservatives are good at things like trade and commerce, and so top talent abounds in the party for such appointments. Illiberal human rights censors? Not so much. So it's not surprising that the appointment went to a second-rater -- Lynch was Joe Clark's former chief of staff.

I'm all for a big tent Conservative Party. In a country as large and diverse as Canada, a Conservative MP in Nunavut or Prince Edward Island is going to have a different world view than, say, a Conservative like Alberta's Myron Thompson. If the Conservatives want to form a government, there has to be room for both red and blue Tories. But Joe Clark's former chief of staff? That's not even a red Tory -- Clark himself still refuses to acknowledge the merger between the old Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance. What constituency was appeased by picking Lynch?

I have been doing research into Lynch's background. Take this little gem that I found.

It's a story about Lynch back when she was a feminist activist within the old Progressive Conservative Party.

It seems that when Kim Campbell was briefly prime minister, she was introduced by Wayne Taylor of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce as Canada's "first lady". That, of course, is the term of art used for the wife of the U.S. president, though it might have been just a generic phrase that popped into Taylor's head, like "first citizen". It sounds more like a verbal stumble than a pre-meditated insult, the kind of thing that grown-up politicians quietly wince at, but quickly move on from.

Then lawyer Larry Carr apparently told a joke about Campbell's mother being a "free spirited feminist" who ran away with her boyfriend when Kim was 12. That's an embarrassing anecdote, of course, though it's true.

So what's the point of all that? That, at a chamber of commerce event, a couple of the old boys club made ham-fisted remarks? Fair enough. The "first lady" comment might be stretched to be sexist; the story about her mom was just inappropriate. A grown-up -- say, a prime minister -- would laugh it off.

But not Jennifer Lynch. This was her moment! She was a feminist, and she was going to pounce!

But Lynch didn't pounce on Taylor or Carr. She didn't criticize those two men, however petty their offences may have been, and however petty it would have made Lynch (and Campbell, by extension) look for doing so.

No, Lynch smeared the entire province of Alberta. Here are her quotes, from the Toronto Star.

"This movement away from sexism doesn't suddenly lift like a fog off of the country," she said. "What happens is, it lifts in certain areas faster than some others, and one area it hasn't lifted from is Alberta -- and I've heard that often."

"I just wonder why would somebody think that something like that was acceptable, and it has to be because things are not as quick to catch on in Alberta."

So Lynch condemns stereotyping by engaging in stereotyping.

So instead of criticizing two men -- for verbal misdemeanours -- she lashes out at an entire province.

Albertans in general are sexist, she says. Her proof? She's "heard that often." Maybe from Joe Clark.

We're not just sexist bigots in Alberta. We're stupid. "Things are not as quick to catch on" here.

Really?

Who's the bigot now?

Had Lynch actually studied Alberta feminism before smearing the entire province as a bunch of sexists, she would know that in fact Alberta produced Emily Murphy, the first female magistrate in the entire British Empire, and it was Murphy and the rest of the Alberta "Famous Five" who led the Persons Case, all the way up to the British House of Lords, which declared women to be persons in 1929.

Alberta isn't slow to catch on to equal rights for women. It was the first in the country -- first in the entire British Empire. It was Alberta suffragettes that cleared the way for women throughout the country -- for Campbell herself.

If Albertans were Lynch-like in their pettiness, they might have argued that Lynch herself was "spreading hatred and contempt" against Albertans. She'd be hit with a human rights complaint for hate speech. But Albertans are bigger than that. We don't need the approval of a second-rate political hack, the apex of whose career was working for Joe Clark. We know that Lynch's anger, her lashing out againt an entire province was probably just a manifestation of her own insecurities -- her own knowledge that she herself was likely a political token, and that Kim Campbell would soon be crushed at the polls. We'd let her go, but we'd remember her name.

But we didn't. Jennifer Lynch, ignoramus, smearer of an entire province, was actually appointed by a government rooted in Alberta to head the CHRC.

How perfect: a bigot in charge of rooting out bigotry.

An insecure token in charge of enforcing tokenism.

A second-rate political hack in charge of a second-rate bureaucracy.

Is it any wonder that the CHRC is in the mess it's in?

Fire. Them. All. Starting with Lynch.