Friends crapped on my head from a great height
An interview with Warren Kinsella

 by Angelo Persichilli
THE HILL TIMES

He's considered one of the most aggressive and, depending on who you talk to, effective strategists on the Canadian political scene. Just ask Stockwell Day who still bares the scars from the last federal election campaign.

However, in the last few weeks Warren Kinsella, a.ka. The Prince of Darkness, was for the first time on the other end of the stick. How did he react? Will the events of last month have an impact on his decisions about future involvement in federal politics? Mr. Kinsella speaks out. Mr. Kinsella, a 41-year-old, Toronto lawyer, grew up in Calgary and has a bachelor of journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa and a bachelor of law from the University of Calgary. A former reporter at the Calgary Herald and The Ottawa Citizen, Mr. Kinsella is married to Suzanne Amos, herself a former Brian Mulroney PMO staffer. The couple has four children. Mr. Kinsella is also the author of three books: Unholy Alliances, Web of Hate, and more recently Kicking Ass.

Mr. Kinsella is deeply committed to human rights and is a well-known advocate against racism. This indirectly led him into a controversy within the Liberal Party last month. Questioning the validity of some changes proposed for the recruitment of new members for the Liberal Party, Mr. Kinsella mentioned “ethnic profiling” which went over like a bombshell in the caucus. Many Liberal caucus members judged Mr. Kinsella’s statements as part of the stealth leadership race for the succession of Jean Chrétien (Saint-Maurice, Que.). Mr. Kinsella, who is a staunch supporter of the Prime Minister, and a strategist for Allan Rock (Etobicoke Centre, Ont.), apologized for his comments, but he's been keeping a lower profile recently. Last week, however, he spoke with The Hill Times about his own battle scars and the lessons he's learned for his own political future.

Mr. Kinsella, how are you feeling these days?
Back in Calgary, they have a saying: 'Rode hard and put away wet.' I feel like I've been ridden hard and put away wet.

Has it been hard, being the target of a lot of criticism?
Around the Kinsella ranch, it's been the demi-annus horribilus, to appropriate Her Majesty's phrase. I had a little bitty tumour removed in August. Our two-year-old almost drowned in September. In October, I got sacked from my column in The Ottawa Citizen — by voice mail, no less. In the same month, my book publisher insisted that I have lunch with Jan Wong. In November, my new book was received with the critical acclaim that greeted the Anschluss. In December, Jan Wong wrote that I had tried to use the near-death of our son to sell the same book. In January, the Globe refused admit that Wong had gotten it wrong. And, in February...well, pretty much everyone knows what happened in February.

Things can’t be that bad!
I'm an Irish Catholic, I tend to look for the dark cloud in every silver lining. But you're right. The tumour was benign, our son is safe, and we were blessed with a healthy new boy in September. The Globe has — after much prodding — admitted that Jan Wong got it wrong. And I have the most tolerant spouse in Christendom. That's pretty good, on balance.

Let’s elaborate on the events of the last few weeks. Did you go too far in your comments about the Liberal membership rules?
Yes I did. Firstly, I became the issue, which enabled spinners on the other side to divert attention away from the real issue — which is whether they had rendered the Liberal Party less democratic. Secondly, I let my heart get the best of my head. I've been writing about, and organizing against, racism for nearly two decades. I care a lot about bias-related issues. I've gotten personally involved in anti-racism, to the point where I've had rifles jammed in my chest. Put my name in an internet search engine, for example, and you'll see plenty of evidence of how much Ernst Zundel, David Irving and other bigots hate my guts. So when I saw people in my own party making some statements — statements that suggested that some people would be more equal than others — well, I went tilt. I continue to believe that, in a functioning democracy, a truly democratic party should be making it easier, not harder, for everyone to join up. But I was inflammatory in my language, and I regret that very, very much. As I told John McKay, I had diminished myself, and the cause I believe in. [Pause.] The fact that the controversy erupted during a week when our four-month-old had been diagnosed with pneumonia didn't help much, I think.

What did you think about the reaction to what you said and did?
I didn't pay attention to a lot of it. But some of the stuff I saw was maybe just as over-the-top as I had been. One MP said I should be kicked or something like that. Another one called me an asshole. A riding president called me a "jerk-off" — I've never seen the word jerk-off in a major daily newspaper before, much less in reference to me. And the Post's editorial board called me "Canada's Al Sharpton."

I see you laughing at that. Why is that funny?
Well, the National Post's editorial board are the same people — the very same ones — who called my work on anti-Semitism and white supremacy "scholarly," in an editorial they published about three years ago. Now I'm Al Sharpton. Go figure.

Despite your "tough guy" image, I've been told some of things said about you did hurt you.
I guess so. One person, a pollster who has been a friend for years, joined the pile-on. That didn't feel too good, to be honest. There were one or two other examples like that, where friends crapped on my head from a great height. Being insulted by a political adversary, inside or outside your chosen political party, sometimes just means you are being effective. But getting some stainless steel planted in your back always hurts more than getting it in the front. It was a nice surprise, however, to get phone calls from people in all of the parties — and all of the different camps — to say, 'Hang in there,' and that kind of thing.

Why did it all happen? How is it that the comments of a private citizen, a lawyer in Toronto, can become such big news?
Good question. Politics is mainly about symbols, in my opinion. Like you say: who really gives a rat's ass what Warren Kinsella has to say, right? But I'm devoted to Jean Chrétien — I'd walk through walls for him and Mrs. Chrétien. So it was a symbolic way to get at him, maybe, without doing it directly. Same with Allan Rock. He's my friend, and people who were mad at him could perhaps symbolically express it by getting mad at me. A lot of the press gallery — people like Allan Fotheringham, for example, who I criticized in my book — saw it as a way, symbolically, to get some pay back. And so on. Maybe 20 per cent of it was personal. The rest of it was business.

Will you get back into the fray?
 Not a chance…for now. I'm a Chrétien Grit, but this latest round in the leadership stuff has the potential to wreck the party, and I no longer have a desire to purchase a rink-side seat. I have a wife who is fed up, and I have four kids to feed. They're more important. Someone else can get a bloody nose, next time.

Will there be a next time?
Of course. This is the Liberal Party's cold sore. It's unwanted, it's unsightly, and it can lay dormant for a long time. But it will eventually come back.

Are you finished with politics?
The irony is that I have been a lot more involved with the Ontario political scene for a couple years now. Dalton McGuinty is someone I really believe in, and I think we really have a shot at government. And all of us — no matter what federal leadership camp we come from — are working together, side-by-side, like we should. I think Ernie Eves is going to wish he stayed in his tower on Bay Street. But as to the federal stuff, I'm taking a long holiday.

But aren't you the guy who wrote a book called Kicking Ass? Why get so discouraged when yours is kicked?
Hey, look, I'm an advocate of tough politics. I can hardly complain when someone gets tough with me, right? But in politics, you have to be a realist, too. And I'm realistic enough to know that, sometimes, the best way to stop a pack of wild dogs from chasing you is to stop running. So I've done that. Go chase someone else. Man, this is starting to sound like Richard Nixon's 'Checkers' speech.

Maria Minna says you want her seat. Any final comments on that?
Maria Minna is a great MP, but she should have phoned me before she wrote her letter. I would have put my wife on the line, and Maria would have been disabused of that theory pretty damn quick. I have a mortgage and four kids under the age of six! If I ran, my wife would murder me...and after hearing all the facts, no jury would convict her!