Dalton McGuinty’s abrupt spin-a-rama on sex-ed leaves ministers flapping, April 25, 2010

2010-04-25  Dalton McGuinty abrupt spin-a-rama on sex-ed leaves ministers flapping - Google Search

It turns out Rahim Jaffer mightn’t be the only person in Canada thinking he was hung out to dry last week.  The abrupt spin-a-rama by Premier Dalton McGuinty on his government’s proposed new sex-ed curriculum left a few of his ministers and staff flapping in the breeze.

The premier himself spent Tuesday explaining why the initiative — which would have introduced Grade 1 pupils to the correct terminology for genitalia and Grade 3 students to lessons on homosexuality — was the right thing to do. 

On Wednesday, his Education Minister, Leona Dombrowsky, spoke at length on the merits of the move. Not least of the points she made was how thorough the consultation process had been.  “We began work in 2007. We have consulted extensively with all partners, certainly including parents. We have received some 2,400 responses to the curriculum document.

“This document is not one that was devised totally in ministry offices,” she said. “We received a lot of input from people. We have listened to them.”

There may be those opposed to the plan — “the extent of consultation notwithstanding,” she said — but “I have the responsibility of talking about why it’s important to change” a curriculum that’s a dozen years old and has been overtaken by revolutionary change in media and society.

On Thursday, while the premier was in London, cabinet minister Sandra Pupatello firmly carried the same message in the Legislature.  “Tell me you are not in the Dark Ages,” she scolded PC critics.

Former education minister Kathleen Wynne, the first openly lesbian cabinet minister in Ontario history, called the PCs “despicable.”  “You’re aligning yourself with homophobes,” she shouted.

At noon on Thursday, all seemed on course, a McGuinty staffer distributing a letter from the Ottawa Catholic School Board saying it “was not opposed to the new curriculum.”

Just a few hours later, McGuinty announced his conversion on the road to southwestern Ontario.

The new curriculum was being withdrawn, he said, to be given “a serious rethink.”

It’s easy to see the politics at play.

McGuinty already has trouble looming with the implementation July 1 of the new Harmonized Sales Tax. He’s in the midst of a war with pharmacists in the province. The last thing he needed was a third front opening on the incendiary battleground of schools, sex and religion.

Politicians are always loath to reverse themselves. The same opposition critics who demand a change will immediately denounce a government as weak and vacillating the minute it does so.

McGuinty can, as he has, portray it as a simple matter of having listened to the public and responded.

The trouble is that the reasons he gave for doing so rendered laughable the words his ministers were uttering just hours before.

It would be entirely understandable for Dombrowsky, Pupatello and Wynne — three of his strongest women ministers — to feel embarrassed by McGuinty.

Dombrowsky talked about extensive consultation. McGuinty said it was inadequate.

Pupatello said opponents were in the Dark Ages. If so, her boss apparently needs a flashlight too.

Wynne accused opponents of siding with homophobes. Within hours, McGuinty aligned himself with them, not her.

It would hardly be unreasonable if ministers so burned found themselves less eager to sell the next bright idea the boss puts on their plate.

The premier might have rid himself of a political hot potato.

But he’s probably got some steamed colleagues on his hands.

Jim Coyle's provincial affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.