The big question people keeping asking me since it happened is this ” Was it really necessary to fire Ian Tootill for the comments in the caption above?”
In reflection and hindsight no it wasn’t and I goofed.
Read that again please: I goofed.
The media is relentless and I should have handled them better. I learned and I will next time.
What I should have said to all concerned was this: Ian was merely asking a question and the intent of that question was blown out of proportion. If you don’t like what he said ( I am not a fan of invoking the H word) then don’t vote for him.
Instead in the heat of the moment I canned him. Wrong decision. I let him down and the party.
He went through this whole period with class supporting the party all the way. He is a nice guy.
The next question to be asked of me was/is yes but you were pretty quick to fire the candidate who had the personal problem you know the one alleged to be drinking and driving.
Actually I was right to do that but not necessarily for the reason you think.
He was terminated not just for those allegations but because he never bothered to check in and tell me there was a problem. In fact,to this day I have never heard from him. He just disappeared.
So,I ask how can you tell the world that you are going to be a responsible government if one of your own candidates won’t even pick up the phone and tell you he screwed up? You can’t and he was done.
Next you fired Mischa Popoff didn’t you? Yes and he took no bull from that. He shouldn’t have either because I goofed there too!
The comments that he made, although I disagreed with what he said, were already fit to print in a Kelowna Daily newspaper. If they were good enough for that family newspaper to run than they should have been good enough for me.
Okay but you fired one more didn’t you, you know that guy that referred to the premier and the Madam Justice as a bitch.
I did and if that was all he said I could have dealt with it. But of course it wasn’t.
You see further down the list on the same Twitter account where those two things were said were some terribly nasty things that both invoked the “H’ word and made a mockery of the Picton case.
They were inexcusable and while I have no doubt not representative of the character of the person who said them, I could not stand behind them, nor could I allow the party too either.
So you were right on two and wrong on two, why bother with the explanation?
The answer would be two fold namely that Tootill and Popoff deserve an apology from the guy that led the campaign and fired them . This is my way of doing that.
Secondly and perhaps more importantly ( especially in Tootill’s case) their name needs to get cleaned up on the internet.
If my SEO works out than Ian Tootill is a nice guy will replace some of the crap about him getting fired.
He deserves as much!