Have we all lost it?

WITH CORRECTIONS & AN APOLOGY

Dear Readers: I got a couple of things wrong when I wrote this yesterday. I said that those who were on the receiving end of the treatment made the complaint to the law society. I was wrong about this: someone else brought the complaint. And those involved were compelled to appear at the hearing. And so I want to apologize for those errors. I’ve edited this below to reflect these corrections. I very much appreciate those who brought them to my attention. I’ll try to be more careful in the future. Lisa

Ever since the day opposition leader Danielle Smith led a fair chunk of the Wild Rose caucus across the floor to join the government, I’ve harboured a suspicion that Alberta politics is actually just a Truman-esque simulation, or a poorly written dramatic series designed for someone’s entertainment. The Globe’s Gary Mason seems to be coming around to this view too.

And so, like many of you, I contemplated this week’s entertainment sponsored by the Law Society of Alberta as a sort of a flashback episode, maybe with a bit of character development thrown in.

But as I’ve followed the coverage, I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with the whole undertaking. Because this isn’t entertainment or sport. It’s real life.

There’s no question that Minister Shandro’s behaviour back in 2020 was problematic. The arguments offered by Profs Thomas, Voth and Bratt at the time that the Minister should resign or be removed from Cabinet were sound. And their assertion that it was particularly problematic to have a Health Minister under this cloud as the province faced a global pandemic has aged well.

But Kenney didn’t demand Shandro’s resignation.

Three years later, the Law Society is holding a public hearing to investigate allegations that Shandro’s actions broke the code of conduct for lawyers in the province.

Following the coverage feels almost voyeuristic, like sneaking in to an HR hearing. If the hearing were closed, perhaps the question of whether the Minister was in tears at the foot of the driveway wouldn’t be a point of dispute; under those circumstances he might point to his tears as evidence of the stress he was experiencing. His lawyer’s efforts to dispute the tears, on the day the national telecom company has decided we should be mindful of mental health, underlines how very problematic it is to have a professional association publicly investigating the conduct of one of its members while that member still holds public office.

No one comes out of this looking good. As a Minister of the Crown, Shandro should have behaved differently. As a politician, he should have understood and expected that there would be outrage and controversy after he tore up the agreement with physicians. Reading about his phone calls to critics leaves me thinking he didn’t really understand how angry physicians were; he wanted to try to bring them around. This was naive, but probably not an abuse of authority.

The hearings have offered some insight into the harassment the Minister’s spouse experienced, as some Albertans apparently felt that their anger with the UCP government justified attacking the Minister’s spouse for what they had decided was a conflict of interest.

Even before the stresses of the pandemic tested us, it seems that some of us had lost our grip on basic boundaries and norms of behaviour. And things haven’t improved in the interim. In a democracy, we are all free to express our views. Loudly. But that doesn’t extend to harassing and intimidating politicians and their families, no matter how wrong we think their position is. And, even on the worst day, politicians have to rise above it all and set a better example.

I have no magic solution to offer to the state of our political community. But I do think, on this one issue, that the Law Society should think carefully about whether the public interest was served by whatever processes led to this hearing. If professional associations become a venue to litigate the actions of politicians, we risk discouraging members of regulated professions from entering politics. At the end of the day, judgement on politicians’ behaviour belongs to the voters.