Judge not Paul Chiang, and you will not be judged

Prime Minister Mark Carney channels Luke the Evangelist

Whatever else the quickie 2025 federal election campaign might bring, one droll highlight will be Prime Minister Mark Carney’s invocation of the phrase “teachable moment” when referring to the scandal surrounding Liberal MP Paul Chiang.

It may not rank up there with John Crosbie’s quote from an old Country song: “Pass the tequila, Sheila, lay down and love me again.” Or Brian Mulroney’s “You had an option, sir, to say no!” during the 1984 debate. And nothing can compare to Pierre Trudeau’s “Just watch me” as the 1970 FLQ Crisis took hold.

Still — it’s pretty awesome work for a Newbie.

When news broke that Chiang recently suggested that someone could get a HK$1 million bounty if they’d only grab Conservative candidate Joe Tay by the scruff of the neck and drag him to the nearest Chinese Communist Party (CCP) safehouse, I didn’t actually think that Mr. Carney would cut Mr. Chiang loose.

Call me cynical, perceptive, or maybe – as pressure continues to mount on them both – “not yet wrong.”

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past decade, and we can’t forget that it’s still the same backroom folks pulling the strings as under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the federal Liberals will never offer up a true sacrifice. They might dump someone in a riding they weren’t ever going to win, such as Calgary’s Thomas Keeper, but to walk away from a key GTA incumbent seat when you’re trying to stitch together a Majority government – well, that might actually hurt.

What’s worse, doing so would remind voters just how much the Liberal Party has tolerated on behalf of CCP interests, as many witnesses outlined before the recent Hogue Commission into foreign interference.

By explaining away Mr. Chiang’s “deeply offensive” behaviour as a mere “lapse in judgment” that will serve as a “teachable moment” for us all, Mr. Carney may be showing that Christian values can drive key decisions on-the-fly. And why shouldn’t a politician be guided by the wisdom of Luke, who taught us to “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven?”

For those who want to apply a crass political lens, I accept that Mr. Carney’s refusal to demonize Mr. Chiang is in keeping with Party tradition.

Exhibit A, of course, was the revelation during the 2019 election campaign that Trudeau had worn black and brown face so many times that he couldn’t remember. Ontario Liberal Mitzie Hunter helpfully tweeted at the time that: “This is a teachable moment for all of us.” For his part, Liberal MP Greg Fergus, now Speaker of the House of Commons, agreed: "I think this is one of those occasions that's a teachable moment."

Sound familiar?

Canadian politicians aren’t the only ones to command the phrase, as U.S. Representative Darin LaHood, a Republican, dismissed the recent accidental leak of U.S. war plans to a journalist at The Atlantic as a “teachable moment.”

Redemption isn’t assured, however, as a Nova Scotia Provincial Liberal candidate by the name of Robyn Ingraham discovered in 2021. A former OnlyFans model, Ms. Ingraham says she warned her Party of her “boudoir photos.” In the wake of being dropped as a candidate, she told the media they’d missed their chance for “a teachable moment for the community and province.”

Consistency is important for any politician, and we should give Mr. Carney credit for being no less forgiving of Mr. Chiang than he is of others in his orbit. Take former CBC News anchor Evan Solomon, now a Grit candidate in Toronto Centre, who was fired for not disclosing that he made commissions on art sales to his contacts, including Carney while he was Bank of Canada Governor. Or Mark Wiseman, who was just added to Carney’s council on Canada-U.S. relations; Mr. Wiseman was terminated by global money manager Blackrock in 2019 for “failing to disclose a relationship” with a subordinate female employee.

“Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

On the bright side, if both Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Carney are going to take this “teachable moment” cum forgiveness thing mainstream, I can think of a long list of people who would love to get “uncancelled” in this suddenly forgiving environment.

Take Kevin Spacey, for example. He was unceremoniously dropped from the highly popular House of Cards series following accusations of date rape and various sexual harassments. Courts in both New York and London, UK failed to convict him, while all other charges appear to have been dropped. Or former Bachelor host Chris Harrison, who was fired by ABC for defending a contestant’s “racist behaviour.” Seinfeld fans may wonder if two decades is enough penance for Michael Richards to be forgiven for his sins.

Closer to home, Sir John A. Macdonald’s Queen’s Park statue remains boarded-up, which seems incredibly unfair as known Colonizer Queen Victoria continues to enjoy an unfettered view of the precinct surroundings a few hundred yards away. Does Don Cherry’s family have to wait for his passing before that former Icon can show his face in public again? Was there nothing “teachable” in that emotional cauldron of Remembrance?

And who decides that Mr. Chiang’s so-called lapse warrants being overlooked, and not that of former Stephen Harper speechwriter Owen Lippert, who was hounded from his role for being a bit too “overzealous in copying segments of another world leader’s speech?” Then-Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion actually called for Mr. Harper “to be expelled from the House of Commons” over the allegations.

Luke would not have been impressed.

The most elated of all must be the good students of Harvard College. In the event they miss ten citations in an essay next semester and find themselves accused of academic “plagiarism,” they should feel free to refer to any “overlapping language” as an important “teachable moment” for the entire class.

I’m sure they can count on Mark Carney, a former member of the Harvard University Board of Overseers, to pen a note in defence of their “lapse in judgment.”

MRM

(this post, like all blogs, is an Opinion Piece)

(photo credit: Horseshoer, New York, 1951, by Irving Penn)