Battlefords-Lloydminster MP Gerry Ritz may have resigned his Commons seat, but that has not stopped him from getting in trouble one last time.
More particularly, it was his Twitter feed that landed Ritz him in hot water, as Ritz ended up apologizing for calling federal Liberal Environment minister Catherine McKenna “climate Barbie” on Twitter.
“Has anyone told our climate Barbie,” Ritz posted on Twitter, which was in response to a couple of other Twitter posts.
That response prompted a firestorm of outraged responses on social media. McKenna herself responded on Twitter by denouncing Ritz’s comment.
“Do you use that sexist language about your daughter, mother, sister? We need more women in politics. Your sexist comments won’t stop us.”
By Tuesday night, Ritz sent out another tweet stating: “I apologize for the use of Barbie, it is not reflective of the role the Minister plays.” His original offending post was deleted.
The next day, the Twitter incident was brought up in Question Period in the House of Commons as Liberal Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr demanded Conservative leader Andrew Scheer apologize for Ritz’s offending remark.
“Mr. Speaker, all week, Conservatives pretended to stand up for business women. But I can tell you members on this side were deeply disappointed by comments made by the Conservative member for Battlefords-Lloydminster about the minister of Environment and Climate Change,” Carr said.
“We can all agree that sexist comments should not be part of the public debate or part of any conversation, anywhere, period. So I ask the leader of the opposition: will he stand here today, do the right thing, and denounce his member’s comments and ask him to issue a full apology to this House?”
Instead of denouncing Ritz, Scheer resumed his Question Period attack, which was aimed at the small business tax changes the government had proposed.
“How disappointing,” Carr responded. “It’s very disappointing that the leader of the Opposition will not denounce these statements and not show that the leader of this entire caucus understands how inappropriate those comments were and ask the member to apologize to all members of this House and all Canadians today.”
Afterwards, Carr sent out a Tweet of his own, stating: “I was proud to stand up for @cathmckenna & all women in politics in #QP today. @AndrewScheer must denounce @GerryRitzMP’s sexist comments.”
