Same day, different results

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/03/2016 (3756 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What’s the difference between Wab Kinew and David Stone?

Right now, most of you are thinking, “David who?”

Don’t feel bad. I don’t know David Stone either.

But I do know Stone, a Winnipeg businessman, got it right Friday, in sharp contrast to Kinew, the NDP’s candidate in Fort Rouge.

Stone, the general manager at Portage Place, faced days of unrelenting media coverage after one of his security guards at the downtown mall asked Sayisi Dene elder Joseph Meconse to leave the food court for loitering in late January.

Treating an elder disrespectfully is not tolerated in the indigenous community, and the news quickly led to a protest-turned-round dance in the mall and plenty of online pressure.

Stone apologized swiftly at the time and made immediate changes to the mall’s loitering policy. On Friday, he went further. He hosted a ceremony fit for a chief and officially announced Meconse, 74, will be the mall’s new ambassador.

Stone also announced Bear Paw Security, an indigenous security firm, are now on the job alongside his security team. He made promises the mall will be more inclusive and culturally sensitive.

Stone didn’t walk this path alone. He had the Downtown Business Improvement Zone, the Manito Ahbee Festival and the Aboriginal Council of Winnipeg at the table, and no doubt many others working behind the scenes to make this right and make it meaningful.

In the end, as a business manager, he could have ignored the advice, but he chose not to. At 8:30 a.m. Friday, he reset the table.

Just five hours later, Kinew tried to reset his own table.

Haunted by social-media posts that have been interpreted as misogynist and homophobic, and calls from indigenous Liberal candidates that he step down, Kinew and Premier Greg Selinger held a news conference Friday afternoon.

It immediately started with a joke by Kinew that, “There were allegations being made, so I thought it was important to come here today and face the alligators.”

Compounded with some forced laughter from supporters behind him, it set an uncomfortable tone for a serious subject and immediately implied complaints about his tweets were unfounded and not serious.

Next, Kinew said he still loved his “friends at the Liberal party” even though they were “throwing shade.” In the very next breath, he threw some “shade” of his own and denounced his political opponents for their promises to cut corporate tax cuts and privatize liquor.

When most audiences can only remember three salient things from any address, everyone in the room already knew this faulty start was a great opportunity that had been lost.

It didn’t get a lot better, as the Fort Rouge candidate’s patience for apologizing waned under the hot lights until Selinger, at his side, had to whisper to him to cool down.

There was an opportunity to learn how to do this right, because Kinew was the MC at Stone’s event at Portage Place just a few hours earlier

The life of today’s younger politicians is going to be much harder than their predecessors. They grew up with and owned social-media tools long before they had common sense on how to use them, but they will still be held accountable

As well, the day-to-day operations of a business is under the microscope more so today, for two reasons. Communication tools are in the hands of everyone, and they will tell you and all their friends when you get it wrong. And on the heels of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, this is a community desperately trying to find a way to get it right, in this generation.

Assembly of First Nations Chief Perry Bellegarde, who was in Winnipeg Friday, said Stone’s apology was “reconciliation in action.”

To see more of that kind of action, we’re all going to learn a meaningful apology requires plenty of love for your opponents, but also courage, respect, wisdom, honesty, humility and truth.

Shirley Muir is president of the PRHouse and a Wichihewaywin Award recipient.