Omission paints a different picture

In his article of Sept. 12, the editor of the Citizen paints a glowing picture of John Tory that seems simply too good to be true. That's largely because he managed to leave out the well-documented incident in which Tory brought Canadian electioneering to its lowest point ever.

It happened when, after years as a party back room boy, Tory was named campaign manager for Kim Campbell in the 1993 federal election.

In desperation, he decided to run a TV attack ad that was condemned not only by Liberals and NDPers, but by many Conservative MPs, too.

The ad featured a series of dramatic still shots of Liberal leader Jean Chrétien's face, focusing on a deformity caused by childhood Bell's palsy. The pictures were flashed between insulting comments from paid actors, probably needed because no real Canadians could be found to say them.

Good taste plummeted to a new low when the last actor, as the camera zoomed in on Chrétien's deformity, proclaimed: "I would be very embarrassed if he became Prime Minister of Canada."

Tory protested to no avail when Campbell, who said she had not seen the offensive commercials until they were telecast, demanded that they be pulled.

The commercials made a major difference to the campaign, but not the one Tory had planned because he was on a different planet from the Liberal leader when it came to electioneering know-how. Speaking in Nova Scotia, Chrétien said Tory's tactics reminded him of the taunting children of his childhood.

"When I was a kid people were laughing at me. But I accepted that because God gave me other qualities and I'm grateful," he said. Reporters wrote that there were tears in the eyes of many in the audience as Chrétien spoke.

Canadians were so repulsed by the ads that Campbell lost her own seat and the party took only two, causing a young Liberal campaign worker named Betsy Hall to quip: "That's not a party; that's a date."

Editor Pavilons's article says our MPP was taught by his parents to always do his best. I don't think his Chrétien attack was what they had in mind and I don't think you could find a 10-year-old in this riding who wouldn't know that ridiculing someone's deformities is not a thing nice people do.

Moreover, he certainly hasn't abandoned his devious ways. In the present campaign he has shown that he is willing to endanger the publicly funded school system that educates 97% of our children by taking $500 million away from it and giving to private religious schools.

Gerry Hall

Editorial consultant

Betsy Hall campaign

(Hall is a veteran Toronto newspaperman and the father of Liberal candidate Betsy Hall.)