Diane Francis: Jody Wilson-Raybould assumed her male colleagues would respect her decision. Then the Boys club side-stepped her
In 2006, the Tories enacted an eye-glazer called the Federal Accountability Act, which created the independent director of public prosecutions. The legislation was a campaign promise made by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and was designed to stop the type of political interference in the justice system that the Liberals had indulged in for years.
This Act is what the current scandal in Ottawa is all about. But the underlying issue is really about gender. Put simply, the Ottawa Old Boys club exerted its authority inappropriately — a maneouvre still commonplace even as females move onto cabinets, boards, managements and politics. Clearly, the targets of the barrage were all female from the attorney general to her female chief of staff, her female deputy minister and, indirectly, the female director of public prosecutions. When it was all over, the attorney general and her chief of staff lost their jobs.
There are a few lessons to draw from all this. For starters, thank goodness for the Act, or “Harper’s law,” as Wilson-Raybould said Butts disdainfully labelled it. Secondly, Canada’s current cabinet may have equal gender representation, but the Boys club is in charge.
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