MLA Tanya Fir reportedly receives messages from constituents who express their displeasure that the UCP ended the Teachers’ Strike with the Notwithstanding Clause.
Apparently while Fir was replying to callers, on one call she left a voice mail message and failed to properly hang up. Fir’s overheard on that message saying “Alright, go to this next motherfucker”.
CTV reports on the incident, interviewing the “next motherfucker”, Doug Firby, who described how the recording “sounded like a tone of contempt.”
I didn’t get the tone of contempt. I got MLA leaving voice mail messages, and got caught expressing herself freely when the mics are off. But oh, I did it because my UCP bulldozed the human rights of teachers, and I was getting bad voice mail messages.
It was definitely unacceptable language. But I have to note:
a) she was actually calling people back. Pretty gutsy considering she knew a lot of people were calling in anger.
b) when confronted, she made a sincere apology, no ducking and dodging, no PR team to ‘manage’ the damage.
c) the person who got the call felt the apology was sincere and forgave her
The whole thing is unusual because its an example of a politician f’ing up and then making good and actually facing up to it. Should be the end of the story.
I don’t believe Fir is described as issuing a sincere apology with no ducking. Rather, she’s described as initially denying the incident. She was confronted with the recording, and at that point she issues what could be an apology.
As Jim Groom and Rob Breakenridge point out, this plays into the larger scene which the UCP is taking a lot of heat for its latest choices, and there’s a strong suspicion that the UCP simply treat any opposition to its policies with contempt.
Relevant part of the video is 1 minute in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XCfMnX43M8
Ah, thats fair, I missed that initial duck. She loses some points. I gotta at least give her half credit for owning up and actually apologizing, in the political world thats extremely rare.