Category: World

Do you want the heartwarming version of this story, or the chilling one? National Correspondent Michelle Duff explores the Prime Minister’s legacy and what she faced in office.

Jacinda Ardern, the youngest woman Prime Minister and the second to have a baby while in office, has broken global glass ceilings and shown a generation that leading with kindness and empathy can equate to strength.

She’s broken stereotypes and deliberately created space in what is still a man’s world; expressing breast milk during an interview, taking her daughter to the UN, routinely nailing disrespectful and sexist questions.

“I’m not the first woman to multitask,” she said, announcing the news of her pregnancy three months after her meteoric rise to PM in October 2017.

READ MORE:
* ‘Intellect and strength’: World reacts to Jacinda Ardern resignation
* Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ‘vilified’ and faced ‘extreme hate’ – Māori leaders
* Jacinda Ardern: An inspirational role model and victim of ingrained misogyny

“I’m pregnant, not incapacitated.”

[Jabcinda Ardern is a plastic, lying, arrogant, repulsive cockroach. Comparing her to a pig is an insult to all pigs – Telegram users, 2021 and 2022]

She blazed a trail for young women, promoting inclusivity and acceptance at a time Trump talked of grabbing ‘em by the p…..

She was a solid leader through a time of unprecedented non-wartime crisis, including a white supremacist terrorist attack, a volcanic eruption, and a global pandemic during which strict lockdown measures ensured New Zealand has one of the lowest death rates in the world.

“She’s shown how leadership can be feminine but still be effective. We are mothers, we are empathetic, and we don’t have to act like men and just that permission to be a woman – in whatever way you are a woman – and being a leader, Jacinda has proven that,” says Te Kaunihera Wahine o Aotearoa/National Council of Women NZ president Suzanne Manning.

[Ding, dong, the witch is gone. Let’s make a citizen’s arrest, burn her on the parliament lawns – sign outside Labour caucus retreat, post on far-right network Counterspin’s Telegram channel, January 2023]

On Thursday, Ardern announced her resignation.

“I am entering now my sixth year in office, and for each of those years, I have given my absolute all,” she said. Her job was fulfilling and a privilege, but it had been challenging.

“I know what this job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It is that simple.”

[Good f..king riddance, evil cow – Telegram user Susan, January 2023]

Here is a picture of Ardern and her fiance Clarke Gayford with their newborn daughter in late 2018. She is wrapped in a patchwork quilt. Each square was lovingly knitted by primary school-aged children.

And here is a sample of keywords the team at the Disinformation Project use to monitor misogyny across Telegram and other social media platforms in 2023, frequented by hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders. Number one is c..t.

15. kill them

16. Military

17. necks snap

18. Neve

19. noose

Sliding scale of abuse

This is not about the valid criticism of policy changes Ardern’s Government has ushered in – and those it has failed to enact, or that have been slowed by the Covid 19-response.

The stagnation of progress on issues from housing to the cost of living has dented her popularity as a leader since her “stardust” days, where she turned a seemingly unwinnable election into stand-alone Labour success.

It has not been a transformational two terms of Government – even though polls suggest she is still the most popular choice of leader, with 29% preferring her.

This is about blaming Ardern for everything , for targeting her based on her gender, for threatening her safety and that of her family with a sliding scale of vile toxic abuse that begins with “Cindy” and ends with threats of rape, torture and murder.

This is about the open and virulent misogyny Ardern and other female politicians and public figures are now commonly and increasingly subject to, the kind that Director-General of Security for NZSIS Rebecca Kitteridge said would have been “unthinkable” several years ago, fuelled by a vocal conspiracy ecosystem.

When I wrote Jacinda Ardern: The Story Behind an Extraordinary Leader in 2019, exploring Ardern’s rise and what it meant for feminism, I outlined some of the sexism she’d faced. She’d been told she was a “pretty communist”, to “Zip it, sweetie”, had her competency for the job questioned, her youth derided, been drilled on family plans.

Former prime minister Helen Clark told me it was far beyond what she had ever experienced.

How quaint this seems, six years later. Ardern did not say so, but some believe that open, dripping hatred and credible death and rape threats are partly the reason behind her early retirement as PM.

A smaller world

We don’t know exactly what influenced Ardern’s decision. But we do know that, for her, occupying the public sphere was increasingly difficult.

It’s an unwritten rule in the parliamentary gallery that Ardern’s security isn’t discussed. The media don’t report on it, and her office and the police won’t talk about it. While this makes sense, it has also had the effect of shielding the public from the dangerous reality. The stories joking about her “hipster” bodyguard or the “security uncles” protecting her during a walk on Wellington’s waterfront have gone.

With the significant beefing up of armed security in the past couple of years, most notably since the parliamentary protest, Ardern’s world has become much smaller and hostile. At routine visits, such as to one Christchurch school, her van is chased by protesters shouting “traitor” and other insults.

Among the deluge of social media posts and media about Ardern’s resignation, some praise her for taking care of herself and her family, having the strength to recognise she is running on empty and call it; a “yaasss, Queen” move in a year when work-life balances are being re-evaluated the world over.

Others deride Ardern for not being able to handle the pressure, or celebrate her early retirement.

On Radio New Zealand, opposition leader Christopher Luxon is asked by host Guyon Espiner if he is subject to abuse. ”I know I am, I’m sure I am, but the reality is I handle it and I don’t live my life on Twitter.”

Is it worse for women? “I’m not sure about that…there is just deep polarisation of political views.”

Elsewhere, there is overt denial of gendered abuse. At Shooters Saloon Bar & Hotel in Auckland, a crudely drawn sign announcing a “Red Witch Leaving Party” appears on a fence.

Asked if it is sexist, owner Shayne LaRosa tells Stuff: “It has nothing to do with that. I mean it’s debatable for a start whether she is a woman. It’s nothing to do with her sex…she needs to be tried for the crimes against New Zealand people.”

Violence that begins online sparks kinetic action. Eight men have appeared before the courts for threatening Ardern since 2019. Threats against her have tripled in this time.

Massey University school of management senior lecturer Suze Wilson said gender was absolutely part in what she’s faced.

“If she’d been the same but a man the reaction would have been different. Ardern being a woman leader, being a young woman, being a woman who had a child in office out of wedlock, the particular style of leadership she practised – all of this has been good, a progressive push.

“So what we are seeing is the backlash, it’s just that it’s taken a particularly violent turn here in a way that really poses a threat to democracy.”

Wilson applauded what she sees as Ardern’s bravery in resigning.

“Any woman who finds herself subject to abuse is entitled to do what she needs to do to get on with her life, and we should unequivocally respect and support that. Good on her.”

New Zealand’s Prime Ministers have been notoriously accessible, perhaps best illustrated by a public barbecue hosted on Waitangi Day, where the PM is behind the grill.

Ardern’s safety was impossible to guarantee this year, and the barbecue looked likely to be canceled. Insiders say Ardern’s security breathed a sigh of relief when her wedding to Gayford was called off last year, ostensibly due to a shift in Covid alert levels.

“Politicians are human. We give all that we can, for as long as we can, and then it’s time,” Ardern said, in her speech. “And for me, it’s time.”

Despair and hope

For those invested in gender equality, there is despair. Where Ardern’s election felt like a step forward for progress, her resignation was deflating. What woman would want to stand for a leadership role that opens them to such abuse, let alone literal danger?

“We’ve heard of many women who did not stand for local body elections last year because of the emotional and personal cost of being targeted for abuse. That is happening,” Manning, from the council of women, says.

But Manning also has hope. Her organisation has been around for 120 years, and this is not its first backlash.

“Jacinda was herself, she brought herself to the table, and that will have a ripple effect for a lot of other women who struggled to fit into a mould that didn’t work for them. Yes there has been backlash, but society changes incrementally, not all at once.

“We are never going to be quiet, that is never going to happen.”

In my book, riffing on the “They are us” mantra Ardern offered the Muslim community after the March 15 terrorist attacks, I wrote: “We, as a nation, created the conditions for Ardern to win. We voted her into office, and we’ll decide whether she stays. She is us.”

The moment was bigger than one woman.

This one is, too. History will judge what it says.

Additional reporting by Mildred Armah.

Correction: Clarke Gayford is Jacinda Ardern’s fiance, not yet her husband. Story updated January 21, 7.42am.

Dr. Jamil Sawaya initially began his career training in plastic and reconstructive surgery, including gender-affirming care. He says it was at that point he realized he wanted more breadth of care for patients: family medicine.

“I felt I had more to offer and I enjoyed the patient interactions and getting to know them — making diagnoses and providing that continuity and ongoing care, which I did not feel I was getting through my surgical training,” said Sawaya.

After moving into family medicine “because of the people,” the Saskatoon, Sask., doctor has since found himself struggling to stick with it because of “overregulation” within Canada’s health-care system, he says, and its fee-for-service pay model. 

Sawaya believes that’s what’s driving family physicians from the jobs they love, and worsening the country’s doctor shortage.

Approximately 4.6 million Canadians over the age of 12 reported not having a primary care provider in 2019, according to Statistics Canada. The provinces report that the pandemic has only made things worse.   

And according to the Canadian Resident Matching Service, for the past seven years there’s been a continual decline in the number of medical students who are selecting family medicine as their number one option.

Sawaya spoke to Day 6 host Brent Bambury about his growing anxiety with practicing family medicine. He says Canada’s health-care system is “on life support.”

One of the things we’re hearing is that family doctors are working long hours, but they’re not always paid for those hours of work. How do you get paid for the work you do? 

It’s a fee-for-service model. Essentially, we’re paid based on how many patients we see, and there are some variations. 

For example, if it is for a mental health visit, there are counselling codes that we can use and bill in increments of 15 minutes. 

However, for the most part, it’s a flat rate for most appointments that we get remunerated for. 

So we’re really remunerated for more so on quantity of care rather than quality of care. So spending extra time with your patients to provide education or reassurance comforting them — we’re not paid for that. 

So, that would mean then, for a complex case — where a patient would require perhaps additional counselling or additional information from you — you would realize while you’re serving that patient that you’re not going to get paid for all of the work that you’re providing?

Correct. Also, for instance, I may need to write a referral letter and refer them to a specialist to order tests and investigations — then review the results when they come back. 

If those results indicate that further workup is required — that’s an investment in time. Also, sending another referral to a different specialist, and or added testing, then reviewing those results, we’re not paid for that either.

WATCH | What’s behind the shortage of family doctors in Canada?

If you’re not paid for the administrative work, what does that do for anxiety you may have about your financial situation? 

I do have quite a bit of anxiety about it, to be honest, and recently took a little bit of a leave in order to get caught up on the administrative tasks that I was behind on. 

And of course, to take that time off means more time unpaid because I’m only paid while I’m seeing patients. 

So, you took time off to do work that you were not paid for? 

Correct. 

How much debt are you carrying coming out of medical school? 

Scary to admit but over $400,000. 

And you’re effectively running a small business as a family physician and clearly having to work extra time to try to cover the administrative aspects of that business. How much training did you get for that in medical school? 

Absolutely none. I was not aware of this at all. 

Do you think that that’s a problem? Do you think that medical schools need to do a better job of training doctors how to run a practice like this? 

Absolutely. It’s a very big problem. 

Throughout my specialty training in family medicine, I never appreciated the administrative demands and how much work you actually spend doing, after the patient interaction.

Taking [work] home with you and remotely logging in to the charting system and continuing to do so late into the night, or waking up and starting your day. 

Essentially, I start seeing my patients a few hours before I come into the clinic. 

The reason why you chose this field in the first place was the patients, what would happen to them if you walked away? 

That distresses me quite a bit, actually. It’s very much at the forefront of my mind when I am at times entertaining walking away. 

And because I am very concerned for them and I know that the ability to be able to access another family physician — or to get in to receive care within the family physician — would likely be limited to those that offered it in walk-in clinics, wherein they’d be seeing different providers each time. 

Do you see a respite from this if you look five years down the road, given the way things are right now in the system? Do you see any chance for change, for improvement, or do you think things will get worse? 

I’m not sure about the present course. I am very concerned. 

Someone was actually with a patient that was mentioning that to me — that they think that the health-care system is on the brink of collapse. And my response to them was, “Oh, no, we’re past that. It’s on life support.”

If you were graduating from medical school today, would you still choose family medicine? 

No. I love it. I love what I do. Absolutely. And I’m very passionate about spending that time with patients. 

My problem-solving skills that were taught in medical school and going down the algorithm pathways and teasing out what the diagnosis may be and the actual practice and application of medicine — there’s nothing like it. It’s wonderful. 

But everything that surrounds that, when I walk out of the patient encounter, dictating the notes, typing up letters, reports, submitting forms to their insurance companies — which is another thing that is seldom remunerated for. 

What would you miss if you chose another field? 

Oh, my goodness. There’s so much. The thing with family medicine is you really are a physician to all individuals. Cradle to grave. 

I also have a focused practice in that I largely practice in queer and sexual health. And as far as I know, I’m the only openly gay family physician in my city, or at least was the first to be open about that, and that dedicates care to the to LGBTQ community. 

Patients come and see me and feel comfortable. They’re able to tell me what’s actually going on in their health, which they may have suppressed and not divulged to other physicians [in the past], or may have been met with discrimination from other care providers. 

Knowing that I can provide that service and that I can be a confidant in many ways means a lot to me. 

I derive a lot of my sense of worth and appreciation by being able to provide that to others. 

Radio interview by Mickie Edwards. With files from Sarah Kester.

If it was somehow true, as Danielle Smith and team incorrectly maintain, that a federal memo details a plot by the Trudeau government to eliminate 2.7 million jobs (or “up to” that many) with its “just transition” plan, then we would be hearing no end of rooftop screaming from the aerospace and residential construction sectors. And we’re not.

That large figure refers not to job losses, but to the total employment in all sectors in which Ottawa expects “larger-scale transformations” to come from a shift to a low-carbon economy, according to the June 2022 ministerial briefing note United Conservatives have fixated on this week.

Smith has contorted this note to declare that it’s about “eliminating entire sectors,” notably the energy and agricultural sectors critical to Alberta’s economy.

But here’s the thing: those industries respectively represent 202,000 and 292,000 of that larger total — which is, again, sums of sector workers. Much bigger are the buildings industry (1.4 million workers) and transportation (642,000), while the remaining are in manufacturing (193,000).

Surely, the electric vehicle shift and the push to lower building emissions will transform large swaths of those industries. However, there’s nobody claiming that action to limit climate change will displace all existing jobs for condominium framers, air traffic controllers and all their ilk.

Because that would be absurd.

And yet. This week has been one large “and yet” on the Smith government’s intense fight against Ottawa.

Spin cycle

Even after the natural resources minister and multiple media outlets laid out the facts that 2.7 million jobs didn’t actually mean what Smith said it meant, the clear misrepresentations continued.

A party fundraising letter; a video by Smith, pacing around outside a government office; tweets from cabinet ministers, including one in which Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen claimed the transition would “kill 2.7 million jobs in Alberta … that’s straight from a Liberal memo.” Journalist Charles Rusnell noted that there aren’t 2.7 million jobs, total, in Alberta. 

Dreeshen did, at least, delete his manifestly wrong tweet. But other top officials keep their inaccuracies up for public consumption. It’s good fodder, after all, to stoke public anger on a file that already makes people in the oil and gas industry anxious — suggest they could all lose their jobs if the federal government proceeds with some national-economy-destroying scheme, for which no proof exists. (Unless you count extreme exaggeration based on a briefing note.)

Smith further misleads in her video by misattributing a quote to the federal government: “It’s worse than we feared,” she says. “And I quote: ‘Canadians thrown out of work by climate change programs can always get jobs as janitors,’ said the federal briefing note.”

She’s not quoting from the government document. That’s a line from a story by Ottawa-based outlet Blacklock’s Reporter, which first twigged Smith to the publicly available memo’s existence.

Work up in a lather, rinse, repeat

Certainly, there is room for concern and debate between Albertans and the federal government at the intersection of climate change and oil and gas development. From a sector-specific emissions cap that could potentially force production cuts if too stringent, to worry the “just transition” idea stems from the rhetoric of activists bent on much more rapid change than either industry leaders or federal ministers attest to want, there’s meat to gnaw on this bone.

This particular transition issue and the intense temperature around it has also seized NDP Leader Rachel Notley. She came out this week with calls for the Liberals to shelve their spring legislative plans, which represented a markedly sharper position than she’d taken on CBC’s West of Centre podcast a few days earlier, a head-scratcher for some in her party’s base.

In a further sign of the widening rhetorical gap between Alberta’s politicians and the oil companies they profess to defend, oilsands leaders aren’t rending their garments about an energy transition; they are gearing up for it.

And sure, take all the hyperbole out of politics and what do you have left? Mountains of uneaten perogies and cheeseburgers at the legislature cafeteria?

But it shouldn’t be too much to expect some respect for accuracy and facts from the politicians Albertans entrust with their public services, tax dollars and so much more. Between her past incarnations as a journalist and elected official, Smith has had multiple and various obligations to convey information accurately. And yet. 

Like they did (or didn’t) in Quebec

This wouldn’t be the first time Smith has used misrepresentation to underline key facts.

For months during her quest to become UCP leader and premier, Danielle Smith had a favourite — albeit not factual — example that justified her plans for an Alberta Sovereignty Act.

When the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act to dismantle the trucker convoy occupation last year, Smith said repeatedly, Quebec’s National Assembly “put forward a motion that said we will not enforce that. It passed unanimously — and didn’t create a constitutional crisis.” Smith’s act would similarly refuse to enforce federal laws in Alberta, she’d declare.

Except Quebec’s legislature didn’t do that. It passed a non-binding motion that merely urged Ottawa not to apply the Emergencies Act within that province, though Quebec Premier François Legault acknowledged he lacked power to actually stop the Trudeau government from doing so.

Smith’s clear misrepresentation got pointed out to her repeatedly over the summer (by me, at least). But she continued wielding it — until Power and Politics’ David Cochrane refuted Smith’s claim to her face on live TV in October, once she’d won.

From then on, Smith jettisoned that inaccuracy from her rhetorical toolbox. But some mistruths, apparently, seem harder for the premier to quit.

When Smith’s office was asked Thursday about her continued misuse of the 2.7-million jobs figure, her office replied in an email: “When the federal government states that 2.7 million people’s employment will be ‘transformed,’ can they tell these people specifically what they’ll now be doing to earn a living?”

In other words, this isn’t going away.

Those 202,000 energy workers in Canada, who have steady wages, mortgages and children  — must they be someone’s rhetorical pawns?

To say nothing of all those folks in highrise construction and major railways that she hasn’t yet raised concerns about, but surely will?