Toews, Axworthy deserved slap

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/10/2010 (5465 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I was walking my pooch early Sunday evening when my neighbour, looking curiously happy for someone who was toting the garbage to the foot of her driveway, flagged me down.

She had been to the University of of Winnipeg fall convocation, she explained, where her daughter had received her degree.

“Congratulations,” I said.

That explained her big smile.

Or so I thought.

Then she told me what she was really happy about.

“Did you hear what happened?”

I hadn’t.

But by Monday morning most of Canada had heard what happened.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who was awarded an honorary doctorate at the convocation, had also been given something else by valedictorian Erin Larson.

A resounding verbal slap in the chops.

And, by implication, so had U of W President Lloyd Axworthy, although she didn’t name either in her speech.

It wasn’t as if Larson hadn’t served warning of what she intended to do. In an interview Saturday, the 22-year-old Larson said she would be making reference to the 58-year-old politician’s views on gay rights, among other issues.

Views she shared with 40 to 50 placard-carrying students and former students who had gathered peacefully outside the Duckworth Centre to protest one of the Harper government’s most outspoken and controversial cabinet ministers.

Then Sunday afternoon, in a superbly argued opening to her address, the honours psychology grad explained why she wasn’t honoured to be sharing the stage with the 58-year-old Conservative MP for Provencher. And why she wouldn’t be donating money to the university, a place she suggested had jeopardized its integrity by honouring Toews.

Drawing a straight line between a university that is supposed to represent principles of inclusion and the construction a few kilometres away of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Larson said:

“The decision to give an honorary doctorate to someone who is best-known among my generation of students as a vocal opponent of the expansion to human rights is questionable at best.”

Over the years, Toews has been a outspoken critic of gay marriage and, for a time — like the Stephen Harper-led party — the inclusion of hate-crime protection to homosexuals in human rights legislation.

So why would an institution like the University of Winnipeg, led by a man who was a proponent of protecting human rights as a former Liberal foreign minister, be snuggling up to someone of Toews’ stripe.

The answer is obvious.

Politics and money can create odd couples.

Axworthy, who once doled it himself as Manitoba’s senior minister, needed — and still needs — money to complete his expansionist and infrastructure-hungry vision for the university.

Last year, for example, Toews, as Ottawa’s senior minister in the province, sat on the same stage with Axworthy when $18 million in federal funding was delivered for the university’s science complex.

Or to quote Axworthy himself, from a press release announcing Toews’ honorary doctorate:

“He has shown dedication and commitment to our university’s unique role in revitalizing Winnipeg’s downtown. He has also actively demonstrated support of our goal of providing access to education to traditionally under-represented students such as Aboriginal, new Canadian and inner-city youth.”

As long as they’re not gay and want to get married someday, presumably.

Vic Toews, who’s not known for not standing up for himself and what he believes in, made a quick side-door exit from the convocation on Sunday. His face might have been red from the stinging public rebuke, but his well-earned reputation hasn’t been damaged.

Sadly, Lloyd Axworthy’s has.

He, like the school he has led with such vision by reaching out to minorities, has sacrificed integrity to pay a political debt.

As for those who think Erin Larson didn’t have a right to make what some see as a political speech, in fact she had every right — as even Axworthy acknowledged later — and little choice.

Not if she wanted to retain her own integrity.

As I told my neighbour on Sunday, what Erin Larson did took guts.

But here’s the irony. It also took something that someone like Vic Toews should admire, no matter how much the words hurt.

Standing up for what she believes in.

How’s that for another odd couple?

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca