Wednesday, October 05, 2005

A Sordid Municipal Affair

If Toronto licensing chief Pam Coburn isn't fired for screwing around with a younger married man whom she promoted through the ranks in just months, it will be evidence of a double standard favouring women who let themselves be used as the company inkwell.

If she and her lover had been in each other's roles, and he'd gone before the TV cameras to talk about he just happened to fall in love with the woman whose rapid promotions were based on her merits, and to lighten up because office flings happen all the time, he'd have been fired before the end of the press conference.

Burton Front makes particular note that we haven't heard about the wronged wife.

Did Pam Coburn ever give a moment's thought to the consequences of her actions for herself, her lover, and their respective families? Or did she think that as a civic manager, she wouldn't get fired even if she were caught?

How could she expect her lover's rapid rise through the ranks to go unnoticed and not become the topic of water cooler gossip by her employees and more serious speculation by city council?

Surely she realized that the affair could have been used for blackmail by certain unscrupulous businessmen who could have used it as leverage to get licences or prevent them from being pulled.

One wonders if one of the brothel keepers who were operating under city licences as holistic health centres knew about the affair and got a licence out of it as a result.

If nothing else, Coburn should be fired for letting her hormones get in the way of her professional judgment.

No comments: