VERITAS: FUMBLE, RECOVERY - MCGUINTY SHELVES SEX-ED REFORM

This week's perspective from Bob Reid:

“Flip-flop.” “Back-pedal.” Climb-down.” Ah, just a few of the inevitable descriptors which get thrown around any time a politician reverses gears. Having worked in the corner office at Queen’s Park for many years myself, I can empathize with the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t nature of the game. Stay your course amid vocal opposition and you’re a “steamroller” who “rams through” your agenda. Bend or back off from something and you “lack leadership” and are “caving in.” Premier Dalton McGuinty found himself betwixt and between this week, one day defending and then quickly afterward shelving plans to revamp Ontario’s school curriculum with respect to sex education. It’s a political potato of the hottest type, so I give points to McGuinty for quickly dropping it altogether – not burying the plan altogether, but noting that “it’s become pretty obvious to all of us that we should give this a serious re-think.” Shelving an initiative you were championing just hours previously is an extreme move, but like quickly ripping off a band-aid, the short-term sting in a communications crisis like this is preferable to the drawn-out agony of having to fight an organized vocal opposition (read: evangelists) on an issue which tends to immediately polarize the broader public. So points for the recovery, but the other communications lesson here is the Fumble in the first place: contentious ideas have to be very carefully rolled-out to an audience, especially when there are highly motivated opponents who will not hesitate to seize control of – and define the terms of – the debate first. McGuinty and his folks should have known better.