It could be called the “DAIS N AID” Award, or the DAISY for short. If there is no such award there should be. It should be awarded annually to the politician or unelected high level bureaucrat who best exemplifies the “do as I say not as I do” principle.
The political elites have been known to condescendingly dictating what their inferiors should and shouldn’t do while they blatantly do the opposite. They feel entitled to break the rules because they are in essence above the rules they set for others.
But in 2020, after the COVID-19 lockdowns and other restrictions came into being, “do as I say not as I do” reached a whole new level. There needs to be an award for the elite who went above and beyond simply saying one thing and doing another.
Rod Phillips, the former finance minister of Ontario with the emphasis on “former”
The clear winner of the 2020 DAISY is Rod Phillips, the former finance minister of Ontario with the emphasis on “former.” Despite stiff competition from Justin Trudeau, Nancy Pelosi, Bill de Blasio, Gavin Newsom and scores of others, our boy Rod takes the cake even though he at least didn’t tell others not to take the cake.
Although Phillips was first elected in 2018 he has an extensive background in politics, government and business. The PC Party, out of power between 2003 and 2018, had a lot of rookies first elected to the legislature and as far as all government MPPs are concerned, Phillips was an extremely promising cabinet minister. But in December he became the poster boy for “Do as I say not as I do.”
On Dec. 10, the Ontario Legislature began their two-month winter break despite the government constantly telling us COVID-19 is the greatest crisis ever to hit mankind (apologies to Justin Trudeau for the language). Three days later, the multi-millionaire Phillips and his wife flew to St. Barts for a luxurious Caribbean holiday. Now unlike restaurants providing sit down meals or hairdressers and barbers working on customers’ hair, travel outside of Canada is not prohibited. But Phillips is part of the Ford government that tells their inferiors to stay home and not engage in non-essential travel and blames them for the increase in the meaningless numbers of positive cases when they don’t do as they are told.
So how is Doug Ford battling this “pandemic?” Well, like the good Trudeau-loving liberal he obviously is, he simply throws money at the problem. Now despite the COVID crisis and despite being the finance minister, Phillips saw nothing wrong with jetting off to St. Barts. Not only that, Phillips didn’t even think it worth mentioning his actions during this crisis to the boss. Ford only found out he was in St. Barts after Ford phoned him and was told where he was.
Ford did absolutely nothing about Phillips' unnecessary travel
Ford did absolutely nothing about Phillips' unnecessary travel. That was until Dec. 29 when Newstalk 1010 made Phillips' actions public. Ford then feigned anger and ordered Phillips to come back immediately. Soon after returning from his aborted vacation, Ford resigned him. (CBC, Dec. 31, 2020)
Now what these elites constantly tell us is to refrain from engaging in “non-essential” travel. Like governments often do they came up with and use the term “non-essential” frequently without ever defining it. Some members of the travelling elite road show could have argued their travel was essential. Reasons given for being out of the country after lecturing others were to deal with property transactions or dead or dying relatives. In any event, Phillips had less of an excuse for leaving the country than many of the politicians and highly-paid bureaucrats did. But that is not the reason the former finance minister deserves the “Do as I say not as I do” award for 2020.
There are two reasons Phillips went above and beyond merely doing the opposite of what his government tells everyone else to do. The first is the work he put into deceiving Ontarians into thinking he was still in Canada. On Dec. 15, he tweeted out a picture of him in his riding with some of his colleagues. Dec. 15 was two days after he jetted off to St. Barts. Dec. 15 was also the same day that Ontario’s Minister of Health told everyone to say home as much as possible. But Phillips wanted to fool the people into thinking he was still here.
More problematic was the video he posted on Twitter on Christmas Eve and in the video he says it is Christmas Eve. Phillips talked about how difficult these times are, not being able to be with friends and family while he’s enjoying the Caribbean sun. In the video he’s wearing blue jeans, a sweater and sitting in front of a fireplace. He gave the impression he wanted to give; he was home in Ontario on Christmas Eve when of course he wasn’t.
When the picture and the video were pointed out to him, he denied he was trying to deceive anyone arguing these pictures and videos are often not posted as soon as what they depict occurs. While this is true, in the video he seemed to go to great lengths to show he was a home on Christmas Eve.
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As has been said many times since Watergate, the cover up is often worse than the crime
As has been said many times since Watergate, the cover up is often worse than the crime. The extensive cover up Phillips engaged in to fool everyone including his boss while denying there was a cover up is one reason he is qualified to win the Daisy Award, 2020.
But there is another one. While holding an extremely important position in a government in full crisis mode and giving a priority to basking in the sun, Phillips educated us on the character of two other prominent Canadian politicians.
The first is Doug Ford. As indicated above, Ford knew his FinMin was out of the country but failed to say anything until Phillips' whereabouts became public. Then he feigned anger and “ordered” the minister back to Canada. It was all an act; Phillips' main sin is he made Ford look bad. Ford was more concerned about how he looked than he was about any virus.
Phillips' actions also brought out the clearest example of exactly how the elite view themselves. Toronto Mayor John Tory has taken a hard stance against rule breakers he considers beneath him. Like pretending to be a competent leader he has pretended to be judge, jury and execution calling for some who break the rules to receive the maximum punishment. So what did he say about Phillips?
Why Phillips is an elite. He’s a friend of Tory’s. He’s a hard worker. He made a mistake. Once he said he was sorry nothing else should have happened. This is proof positive the elites like Tory and like Phillips and like countless other so-called pillars of the community think their kind can simply say “sorry” and be on their way. That’s what Tory did when he visited a park after hearing people were breaking the rules and broke the rules when he got there. No fine of course for him; he said “sorry” and that was it. (Toronto Sun, Dec. 30, 2020)
So we learned a lot about Phillips in terms of his extensive cover up and from Phillips’ actions as how the elites really think
'STAND BY MY FRIENDS': Toronto's mayor dismisses Rod Phillips' Caribbean vacation as 'mistake'After months of scolding Torontonians for not following COVID-19 public health measures, Toronto’s mayor says he stands by his friends.
So we learned a lot about Phillips in terms of his extensive cover up and from Phillips’ actions as how the elites really think. The former provincial cabinet minister really does deserve the “Do as I say not as I do” Award for 2020.
Perhaps Phillips should get a prize for his conduct. Maybe a GoFundMe page could be set up and buy him a ticket to St. Barts. One way of course.
