The man who brought us the \u201cbarbaric cultural practices\u201d hotline is running for mayor of Toronto. As of August 7, a Liaison Strategies poll puts his support at 10 percent.<\/p>\n
According to his website, Chris Alexander\u2014former Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan and Stephen Harper\u2019s last immigration minister\u2014wants to make Toronto better. He believes it\u2019s underperforming and has been \u201cstanding still for three years.\u201d Transit, he says, should be faster, more punctual, and safer, while \u201cbolder moves\u201d are needed to \u201cend traffic jams.\u201d Perhaps the only specific proposal is a \u201cwell-designed network of protected bike lanes elevated and separated by curbs from motor traffic and pedestrians.\u201d On Billy Bishop Airport, a subject of considerable debate in recent months, Alexander commits only to building a \u201cbroad-based consensus about its long-term future.\u201d On housing, he thinks it should be more accessible and that unhoused Torontonians should have greater stability. Neighbourhoods, meanwhile, need to be \u201cempowered to build on their strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is all hard to disagree with, but it\u2019s also an exceedingly thin platform for a potentially serious candidate hoping to govern Canada\u2019s largest city. His late entry has also scrambled what had looked like a two-person contest. Mayor Olivia Chow remains the frontrunner: the Liaison Strategies poll has her at 47 percent among decided and leaning voters, versus 40 percent for Toronto City Councillor Brad Bradford, her principal rival.<\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly, detractors came out swinging. The ink wasn\u2019t even dry on Alexander\u2019s nomination papers when right-wing commentary website The Hub began excavating a plot to bury his campaign. Columnist Stephen Staley dismissed his ideas as \u201cvacuous\u201d and said he has \u201cno obvious constituency beyond the man he meets while shaving.\u201d The problem, argues Staley, is that Alexander would split the right-wing vote in Toronto, handing Chow another four-year term, thus \u201csaddl[ing] Toronto with four more years of crime, chaos, and decline.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the Toronto Star, Warren Kinsella\u2014acting in his capacity as campaign adviser to Bradford\u2014called Alexander a \u201ckamikaze candidate\u201d on social media. Kinsella then deleted the post. Bradford added to the dogpile. Speaking from city hall, he said, \u201cI\u2019ve never seen him in my life. I don\u2019t think he\u2019s ever stepped foot in this building before. I\u2019ve never talked to him. I literally didn\u2019t know who he was.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s not alone: according to the Liaison Strategies poll, Alexander remains unfamiliar to most Torontonians. Given his checkered political past, anonymity may be his greatest asset.<\/p>\n
Even without a background in Toronto municipal politics, Alexander can claim some local pedigree. He was born there and represented the adjacent federal riding of Ajax\u2013Pickering from 2011 to 2015. He also comes from a political family: his grandfather was mayor of Huntsville, and his father was an assistant deputy minister for the Government of Ontario.<\/p>\n
Alexander\u2019s professional CV is objectively impressive. Prior to his political career, he had a long stint in Canada\u2019s foreign service, joining in 1991. He worked in the Canadian Embassy in Moscow through the turbulent 1990s and early 2000s\u2014which, broadly, covered the breakup of the Soviet Union, the collapse of Communism, the Russian economic crisis, and then the subsequent rise of Vladimir Putin\u2014before becoming Canada\u2019s first resident ambassador to Afghanistan in 2003. He served in this role for two years before then becoming one of two deputy special representatives of the secretary-general of the United Nations for Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
One might think this would make for a very good mayoral bid, especially for a city with an international reputation and multicultural population. But Alexander\u2019s time in government (as well as incidents since) raises questions about his suitability for the role. Bradford wasted no time highlighting the dubiousness of Alexander\u2019s political values, noting his unwillingness to stop supporters from chanting \u201clock her up\u201d (about former Alberta New Democratic Party premier Rachel Notley) during his campaign to become Conservative leader in December 2016.<\/p>\n
But what Bradford focused on, with good reason, was Alexander\u2019s role in the bill the Tories passed in 2015, just a few months before that year\u2019s federal election. Bill S-7\u2014also known as the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act\u2014criminalized early and forced marriages, including the removal of children from Canada for such purposes. It addressed \u201chonour killings\u201d by amending the Criminal Code to clarify that the defence of provocation could not be used to reduce murder to manslaughter merely because the victim\u2019s conduct was seen as bringing shame on the accused or their family.<\/p>\n
Protecting women and girls from coerced marriages, abusive relationships, or murder would be laudable if it wasn\u2019t for the fact that describing certain practices as \u201cbarbaric\u201d stigmatized the very immigrant and Muslim communities the Conservatives were proposing to help. What was clear to experts\u2014including the lawyers and social workers who had worked with the victims Bill S-7 hoped to protect\u2014is that everything it aimed to address was already a crime in Canada. Further, it was abundantly obvious the government hadn\u2019t consulted with the victims or the people who worked with the victims to get input on the legislation.<\/p>\n
But what really inflamed the controversy was the decision by Alexander\u2014and fellow Conservative Kellie Leitch\u2014to promote the idea of a \u201cbarbaric cultural practices\u201d tip line Canadians could use to warn police about crimes that might be prosecuted under Bill S-7. Critics called it a snitch line. Were this not all bad enough, the proposed snitch line had not been discussed with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, despite the fact they were to be responsible for it. Critics also pointed out that such a phone line already existed: it\u2019s called 911. The scheme quickly became toxic. Alexander wound up, as one Maclean\u2019s columnist put it, \u201cthe punching bag for the Conservatives, by his own choosing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about it during a recent press scrum at Toronto City Hall, Alexander said, \u201cI\u2019ve commented on that now many times; I do regret it, and I own the fact that we played that issue wrongly. It was a mistake in that election.\u201d Whether this constitutes an apology for an ill-conceived policy or the acknowledgement the policy likely cost the Conservatives the 2015 election is open to interpretation. Alexander went on to say, \u201cI do not disassociate myself from my convictions, my values, on this issue, which relate to the rights of women and girls.\u201d He then pivoted to Afghanistan, noting his first-hand experience there, and then pivoted again\u2014perhaps with an eye to his immediate audience\u2014arguing that journalism is effectively illegal under the Taliban. Good to know.<\/p>\n
Chris Alexander may be eager to pivot away from these episodes, but his federal record is harder to leave behind. As immigration minister, he was sharply criticized for Canada\u2019s failure to respond to the Syrian refugee crisis. Critics argued that Canada was accepting too few Syrians and processing them too slowly. The controversy intensified dramatically in September 2015 after the death of three-year-old Alan Kurdi; Alexander temporarily suspended his re-election campaign to address the crisis. Though he defended the government\u2019s record on refugees, critics pointed out that Canada had considerably greater capacity for refugees than was permitted, and that the Harper government prioritized persecuted religious minorities, such as Christians.<\/p>\n
Alexander was further criticized for cuts to refugee health care, with the Federal Court determining the government\u2019s treatment of refugees was \u201ccruel and unusual.\u201d Alexander responded to the criticism by saying he would vigorously defend \u201cthe interests of Canadian taxpayers\u201d by focusing on \u201cgenuine refugees.\u201d What constituted a bogus refugee was never articulated.<\/p>\n