Hiring of family shows that in politics, ethics are all relative – Toronto Star

Do you lend money to relatives?

Do you have them over for the holidays every single year?

Do you hire them?

The answer to all three is of course no. If it’s yes, the family octopus has you firmly in its tentacles. What once was emotional is now fiscal.

Liberal MP Yasmin Ratansi hired her sister, which is why she was booted out of the caucus faster than former Liberal MP Jody Wilson-Raybould — also stranded — and now they will sit together at the back of the class in a dark cobwebbed corner of the House of Commons reserved for Independents.

For there are some things you can’t do — secretly taping your coworkers is one — and asking your sister to invent an alias and hide in a back room when people come to the office is another.

The CBC reports that Ratansi’s sister worked in her Don Valley East constituency office for years. When Ratansi lost her seat and then won it back in 2015 — new rules in 2012 had banned hiring siblings — she hired her sister Zeenat Khatri in 2017 and told her to call herself “Jenny.”

The office staff told the CBC they were bullied by Ratansi, who yelled at and insulted them while mistreating constituents of certain ethnicities.

The staff were told to call Zeenat by her new name — I can understand why they had to go along with it. But why did Jenny?

If my sister hired me illegally, first of all my name would be “Vanessa.” I am a definite sort of person and have always thought my name should have an “n” in it.

And second, you are not the boss of me.

Third, if you hide me in a back office under an alias, I want a Peloton exercise bike, Poppin filing cabinets and walls painted the colour Yes Your Honour, a Fired Earth paint very hard to find on this continent.

Fourth, $89,700 a year is base salary. I deserve merit pay, just for being your sister.

Then my sister — who is in real life infinitely kind — would end the job interview. I’d stomp out saying “Fifth, nobody here likes you.” Which in Ratansi’s case was actually true.

It’s the little things that finish you, the bits that leave voters weirded out. Why did disgraced Conservative MP Tony Clement lurk online? Why did former Liberal senator Colin Kenny run an Ottawa tanning salon on the side? Why did Lynn Beyak, a toxic Conservative senator, donate to the Trump campaign?

Why did former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, back when he was Speaker of the House, hire his sister, Anne Marie Grabetz? When he was told he could no longer do that, he fired her. Was that popular at home?

After that, why did he hire his sister-in-law Erica Honoway for his Regina constituency office, firing her later?

The Globe reported that Honoway, who hired Scheer’s wife Jill in her Regina decorating business, went on to work for a senator pal of his, Denise Batters — same difference. Why did he bill the Conservative Party for private school for four of his children?

Obviously, they had a bad case of Stranger Danger and could only cope at work if family members were near. I can only cope at work if family members are far away, but to each his own.

It’s a phenomenon I call clumping: being so insecure that you surround yourself with people you grew up with, who are then in your debt. It’s hardly at a cousin-marriage-in-Arkansas level, but it still reeks of nepotism.

Scheer is such a strange man, and a bad Conservative hire. He has never really worked outside politics, and doesn’t understand normal people, office culture or wearing a mask — you know, the basics.

That’s why he plans to remain an MP even after being dumped as leader in favour of Erin O’Toole, now trying to be Canada’s Trump, as Star columnist Bob Hepburn has so eloquently written. When the Conservatives dump O’Toole, what if he doesn’t leave?

Do these dubious Ottawa types meet for a Christmas dinner that gets larger every year? Do they say “We’ll always have each other!” as they grimly raise their glasses to a better 2021?

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