“Tread lightly friend around a lady of a certain age.” You have been warned. Her fecund years behind her, she might be seeking the honours of her peers, the sisterhood, in new fields—and woe to the mere man who stands in her way.
And prime minister Justin Trudeau tells us he is a feminist? A feminist has empathy and understanding. A male feminist seeks to empower women and helps raise their sights.
And now, may we introduce the newsmaker of the year for 2019, as chosen by news editors across Canada, Jody Wilson-Raybould. If you had told her where she would be at now, this time last year, she would not have believed it.
She is a former liberal, a former cabinet minister and now an independent member of parliament. There is no power or prestige to her lonely seat in the far corner of the temporary house of commons. Will she find it adequate? Not for long.
Just wait until the house starts to debate fixing her signature bill on the right to dying. In 2018, she helped former health minister Jane Philpott steer the original and faulty bill C14 through the house of commons, when they were both liberal cabinet ministers. The original bill was in the nature of a compromise and, of course, nobody liked it, least of all the courts. Jane Philpott has left the house. The bill still has to be fixed.
But there is no committee appointment scheduled for an independent MP and no time allotted for speeches in the house. She brought down a senior official in the prime minister’s office, she brought down the country’s senior civil servant and she almost brought down the prime minister. Maybe, he has learned to quietly walk around her.
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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
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