fine viewing: tom lukiwski

All of the Canadian national news providers were headlining tonight with the story of Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski’s 1991 video containing an anti-gay slur. In case you didn’t catch it, it goes like this:

TOM LUKIWSKI: Well, as we say in tour, I may be old, but I’m fucking A, eh.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And who is this A person?
TOM LUKIWSKI: Well, let me put it to you this way. There’s A’s and there’s B’s. The A’s are guys like me, the B’s are homosexual f**gots with dirt on their fingernails that transmit diseases.

Wait, it’s even better on tape! In addition to his silky smooth demeanor complemented by a sporty moustache, as Jodie so aptly observed, he delivers these lines with the unmistakable panache of Will Ferrell’s character in Anchor Man. Oh, and don’t miss the rampant sexism and racist remarks of now Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall. The NDPers who stumbled across this video in the old PC office found a real gem.

It’s pretty clear that Lukiwski’s comments are offensive in 2008. Kind of sickening, really. If any public official were to spout off something like that today, his/her head would roll unequivocally. But the real question that people are asking is: it was 1991, so is it enough that Lukiwski apologizes and assures us that the person in the video is not the person he is today?

For sure, it’s important to consider that a lot has happened since then. It wasn’t until 1995 that sexual orientation became prohibited grounds for discrimination under Section 15 of the Charter (Egan v. Canada), and up until 1998, it was fair game in Alberta to be fired from your job due to your sexual orientation (Vriend v. Alberta). More recently, Parliament amended the Criminal Code in Bill C-250 to include sexual orientation as an “identifiable group” with respect to hate propaganda, which received assent in 2004. And, of course, same-sex marriage became law at a federal level in 2005. Indeed, much of Canada’s progressive legal record on gay rights is concentrated in the last decade and my trail of anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that attitudes have changed in tune.

It was 1991, so I can forgive Lukiwski’s moustache, but I’m not sure I’m satisfied with just a 1-minute apology outside the House of Commons Chamber. If it came from someone else, I might accept that an individual spewing such gut-wrenchingly hateful dialogue has since come around to a more accepting viewpoint. The Globe’s Adam Radwanski most generously presents this argument. I’m not feeling so generous. As a man associated with public office at the time of the video — he was a campaign official for the provincial PCs — and now a Member of Parliament sitting for the Government of Canada, he’s more than some drunk asshole talking shit about homos to his buddies at a party. Pssst, Lukiwski, you’re talking to the rest of the country, you’re talking to me, and we can all hear you!