HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2007-04-19, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2007. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
The rules on whether Ontario cabinet
ministers who slip up can be forced to
resign are almost as elastic as Spandex
athletic pants and often can be shaped to
whatever best fits a government.
The Opposition parties are finding this out
after calling for weeks for the departure of the
Liberal minister responsible for lotteries,
David Caplan, whose ministry failed to
get to grips quickly enough with the huge
issue of ticket retailers defrauding ticket
buyers.
Precedents show ministers under fire are
more likely to resign when their failings fall
within easily defined, clear-cut categories. The
most common in recent years has been
making public, information that broke privacy
laws.
Under former Progressive Conservative
premier Mike Harris, Bob Runciman was
solicitor-general when his ministry
contributed information toward a throne
speech that identified a young offender and,
although he did not divulge the information
personally, he briefly stepped down.
One of health minister Jim Wilson’s aides
told a reporter a doctor who had criticized
government policies on billings was a
particularly high biller, although divulging
individual doctors’ billings is forbidden.
Everyone involved said Wilson never knew
about it, but he similarly left his job for awhile.
In the preceding New Democrat
government, health minister Evelyn Gigantes
blurted out under questioning the identity of a
drug addict and was quickly gone. However
another minister, Shelley Martel, who
threatened she had seen incriminating
evidence about a doctor in his confidential file,
changed her story and the government ignored
many demands she be fired.
Ministers clearly have to go when they are
charged with offences. Will Ferguson resigned
as NDP energy minister after police charged
him with helping a teenager escape from a
girls’ training school, while he was a student
social worker, in return for sex. A
court cleared him, but he never got back in
cabinet.
Ken Keyes, a solicitor-general under Liberal
premier David Peterson, took foreign guests
on a police launch where they were served
alcohol, when the law allowed drinking only
in residences or licensed premises, and was
cast adrift.
Greg Sorbara, the current Liberal finance
minister, had to step down merely because
police were investigating a company with
which he had been involved. The wealthy,
entrepreneurial Sorbara has been involved
with more companies than Conrad Black, but
a judge said his integrity should never have
been questioned and he resumed as finance
minister.
Ministers have been dropped for interfering
or seeming to interfere with legal processes.
Conservative solicitor-general George Kerr
had to resign because he phoned an
assistant crown attorney hinting a constituent
on a driving charge should not be sent to
jail.
A worker in the constituency office of NDP
solicitor-general Mike Farnan wrote on his
letterhead to a justice of the peace
complaining a resident was given a parking
ticket by mistake. Although Farnan had not
authorized the letter, he had to take
responsibility and resign.
Opponents have argued Caplan should
follow the same course as his mother, Elinor,
who resigned as chairman of management
board of cabinet in the 1980s, when it was
revealed her husband was a business
consultant for a company that obtained
financing from the province.
She said she was unaware of her husband’s
involvement with the company and was
respected enough that many believed her.
However it put her in a conflict of interest.
David Caplan is not accused of having a
conflict, which often can be clear-cut, but of
failing to do his job adequately, which is more
open to interpretation.
Whether a minister being criticized resigns
also depends a lot on how much a premier is
prepared to support him and Premier Dalton
McGuinty has clung to troubled ministers
more than most premiers.
McGuinty refused to drop Harinder Takhar,
who failed to sever himself fully from his
former business, despite being attacked on it
almost daily for a year.
He seems determined to hang tough again
and opponents have few weapons to convince
him otherwise.
Venus and Mars
For today’s topic I have chosen urinals,
sub-section: men’s. I appreciate that
some readers may accuse me of setting
the bar a little too low with this choice. To
such readers I respond with a “Pish!”
Do such readers realize that our civilization
has progressed to the point where it is now
possible for a man to pee into a $10,000
porcelain urinal sculpted as a Jack-in-the-
Pulpit?
Do they understand that Fountain, a
sculpture by Marcel Duchamp, is the most
important work of art of our time?
Well, not ‘sculpture’ so much as a plain
ordinary urinal, previously ripped from some
bathroom wall and submitted by Duchamp to
the Society of Independent Artists Exhibition
at the Grand Central Palace in New York, back
in1917.
The exhibit was deemed indecent by the
judges and turned down. Eighty-seven years
later, in December 2004, 500 of the most
influential people in the British Art World
proclaimed Fountain to be the most significant
piece of art produced in the 20th century.
Yes, folks. We’re talking about a urinal.
As for the 10 grand Jack-in-the-Pulpit
pissoir, you’ll find that beauty among the
collected works of Clark Sorensen, a San
Francisco artist who has also created one-of-a-
kind urinals modeled on the Pitcher Plant, the
Calla Lily and the California Poppy as well as
Red and Orange Hibiscus.
And they truly are beautiful works of art.
Check them out for yourself at
www.urinal.net/naturescall
They’re stunning. Seems a shame that their
entire raison d’etre is to be peed on.
But that is the earthly destiny of the lowly
urinal. Not that the inundated devices can’t
score impressive victories within the harsh
parameters of their mundane calling.
This whacky old world can offer levitating
urinals, women’s urinals and even talking
urinals.
Levitating urinals? British Columbia’s
capital city has ‘em – or will have soon, if
some city councillors get their way. The
devices – called ‘Urilifts’– are two-meter high
stainless steel cylinders that rise hydraulically
from under the pavement at dusk and remain
in place until the first rays of dawn. Sort of like
vampires.
Urilifts are designed to relieve the city of a
burgeoning problem: boozed-up louts who
find themselves with full bladders after the
bars close and don’t much care where they
empty them.
Urilifts are already doing duty in Europe,
but it looks like Victoria may be the first place
on this side of the Atlantic to give them a test
drive.
Will Urilifts be a success? There are no sure
things in world of urinal innovation. Take, for
instance, women’s urinals. They’ve been
around since the 1950s, but they’ve never
really taken off.
It’s not hard to figure out why. Thanks to
their anatomy, men don’t have to get up close
and personal with a urinal. (Restroom
attendants say we don’t get close enough).
Women, on the other hand…well, vive la
difference and all that, but there is, shall we
say, a design problem that so far has eluded
both technical boffins and arbiters of style.
But when it comes to talking toilets – we’re
all over that. If those lager louts who make
downtown Victoria a smelly and slippery
minefield after last call each night were to find
themselves magically re-located in downtown
Rio Rancho, New Mexico, they’d be in for an
experience they wouldn’t soon forget.
The restrooms in Rio Rancho restaurants
and bars are open later, for starters. And
they’re much friendlier. A boozy fella could
mosey up to a Rio Rancho urinal, make the
necessary adjustments and…that’s when he
would hear a sultry woman’s voice saying:
“Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks? Think
you had one too many? Then it’s time to call a
cab or a sober friend for a ride home.”
Yep, it’s a talking urinal. Well, a talking
urinal deodorant puck, to be precise. The New
Mexico Department of Transportation has
installed more than 500 of them in urinals
throughout the state in an effort to reduce
drunken driving.
A State spokesman figures the washroom is
the perfect place to get the message across.
“(In a restroom) guys don’t chitchat with other
guys”, he says. “It’s all business.”
He’s got that right – concerning the chitchat
I mean. I remember the story about Winston
Churchill entering the men’s room of the
British House of Commons only to find his
political opponent, Clement Atlee, already
engaged.
Churchill marched to the opposite end of the
bank of urinals and took up his stance.
“Feeling standoffish today, are we,
Winston?” asked Atlee.
“Indeed,” replied Churchill. “Every time
your party sees something substantial you try
to nationalize it.”
Arthur
Black
McGuinty clings to troubled ministers
When John Gray’s book Men Are
From Mars, Women Are From
Venus , was published in May 1992,
it, like many self-help tomes, did not arrive
without controversy.
Feminists hated it, seeing it as a patronizing
and misogynistic attempt to suggest women
adapt to men’s ways of communication, rather
than the two genders co-operate.
While I may not have gone so far as to burn
my bra when the 1960’s revolution began
(which, for the record, I don’t believe any
woman actually did) I’m all for male-female
equality. Yet, I have never seen any threat in
recognizing that men and women do not think
the same, do not respond to stress the same and
most certainly do not communicate the same.
Contrary to what Gray’s detractors say, I
think that embracing the differences does not
mean adapting as much as it does co-
operating. You have to know what you’re
working with in order to work with it.
(And as an aside one need only read Arthur
Black’s column this week to recognize that the
two sexes generally approach the world a little
differently.)
I have lived co-operatively with my
‘Martian’ for a good part of my life now. I
adore him, I admire and respect him and I
believe the feeling is mutual. He’s hung
around too long for it to be otherwise.
But there are things about him I don’t expect
to ever understand. And having spoken to other
women, I know they seem to be traits common
to the beast.
For instance, how does the male animal turn
off the world’s worries to fall asleep instantly
each night? Why does he respond to stress by
hiding out in the garage, rather than talking it
out? Why has he become so attached to the
remote control?
And why doesn’t he ever worry for one
minute about how he looks.
Now that’s certainly not usually the case
with the female of the species. As a stylist at a
recent women’s event noted there’s a feminine
battle cry before women step out to face the
world, whether for work or play.
“What am I going to wear?”
As heads bobbed and sheepish grins broke
out around the room at this, it was nice to see
I was in good company. I’ve been known to
agonize for hours about my wardrobe, pulling
item after item out of drawers and closets,
flinging rejected pieces aside after scrutinizing
the effect in my mirror. When I finally settle, a
result more often of tiring and giving up than
of satisfaction, it’s on to hair and makeup and
more time.
It was gratifying, therefore, to hear the
stylist say that appearance is important;
apparently only seven per cent of a first
impression is based on what you say.
That said as I spend hours primping and
preening, working to achieve at least a
presentable first impression, I can’t help
noticing that the action from the other planet in
the Gropp universe is different.
It’s only after the exhausting effort of
finding the right outfit to wear and getting my
‘do’ done, only as my attention turns to my
face, that my guy steps into the shower. By the
time I am finally finished he has towelled off
and is putting on the first thing he grabs from
the closet. I slide on my shoes, he runs his
fingers through his hair and we are good to go.
And perhaps the most significant point of
this? He has no feelings one way or the other
about how he looks. And I on the other hand
sadly acknowledge that even after my
painstaking ministrations I still don’t feel
much like a Venus.
Other Views Look me up when urinetown
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
The reward of a thing well done, is to have
done it.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Final Thought