In the long history of underwhelming political apologies, Burnaby MLA Harry Bloy's "error in judgment" earlier this year certainly ranks among them.
As in so many political scandals of late, this one involves an email. In this case, the missive was a media request made by a reporter at The Province with the Ministry of Advanced Education (not, for the record, Bloy's post at the time) regarding student complaints about the Eminata Group, a for-profit education company. The email somehow landed in Bloy's hands and, from there, made its way back to Eminata. The reporter who initially put in the request spotted it, in printed form, in the hands of an Eminata representative during an in-person interview.
Bloy offered a written statement to the paper, saying he had made an "error in judgement" and apologized.
Truth be told, he'd probably have done well to leave it at that - but instead, he decided to give a little insight into the decision-making process. In an email to the NOW, he wrote: "I was concerned when I learned of the issues raised by students about private career training. I wanted to know the background on the issues, so I shared the media request."
Not the most contrite-sounding explanation ever offered from a politician.
Still, it's more of an explanation than we've yet heard over the hospital email mess, considering he was chair of that community consultation committee that got itself in hot water when email communications were revealed.
There's a lesson to be learned in all of this for people everywhere: stop sending, printing, sharing, forwarding and otherwise mis-using emails. Better yet, just delete that Hotmail account altogether.
