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Sara MacIntyre brings Harper-style media-repression tactics to Premier Christy Clark's office
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In her time at the CTF, MacIntyre helped coordinate a precedent-setting class action lawsuit against the striking BC Teachers Federation (BCTF), calling upon parents to express their outrage over educator walk-outs. 150 disgruntled parents took the BCTF to court, in a move mirroring earlier lawsuit against the hospital employees' union, also under MacIntyre's watch.
“Anyone that has witnessed the power of public sector unions in this province can genuinely appreciate the courage that these individuals have to say enough and to sign on with this class action,” MacIntyre said in an October 17, 2005 press release.
“The BCTF's illegal actions are sending a terrible message to kids--which they purportedly care about---that it's okay to break the rules in order to get what you want,” she said at the time. “I'd like to see them try to enforce order in their classroom if students followed their example.”
On her Facebook wall, MacIntyre expressed admiration for a fellow Canadian Taxpayers Federation staffer-turned-media handler – the spokesperson for Toronto mayor Rob Ford's winning campaign, Adrienne Batra, who had previously worked at the CTF's Manitoba office.
Describing Batra as “my good friend and fierce force,” MacIntyre congratulated the former Ford staffer on her hiring as comment page editor at the ultra-conservative Toronto Sun newspaper, operated by the same media chain Sun News Network – which itself is headed by Kory Teneycke, Harper's press secretary from 2008-2009.
In her time with the successful Ford campaign, Batra became “known for her caustic wit and her fierce, relentless protectiveness towards Mr. Ford,” wrote the National Post – attributes which are strikingly similar to MacIntyre's inaugural media management effort at the Globe trade show this week in Vancouver.
At this point, little else is known about MacIntyre. According to her Facebook posts, she loves Bikram's hot yoga and traveled throughout Latin America last August. When she moved to Calgary for her Masters degree, after graduating with honours in political science from the University of Western Ontario, she reportedly “complained bitterly” in a Calgary Herald editorial that a preferred local beer was not served on tap at the university (the editorial was cited in an official university press clippings page).
In the Sept. 16, 2002 Herald editorial, titled, “Beer, beer, everywhere, but not a draft to drink,” MacIntyre lamented that the student union had ceased serving Calgary-brewed Big Rock ale in its bars, criticizing procurement policies. But early political engagement of the self-proclaimed “libertarian” “agnostic” (according to her Facebook profile) is elusive.
On May 4, after Harper's Tory government's majority win in the 2011 elections - now-controversial after alleged fraudulent calls to non-Conservative voters - MacIntyre's expressed pithy, but capitalized, jubilation on Facebook: “MAJORITY!!!!!”
In her farewell Facebook note to Ottawa, MacIntyre praised Prime Minister Harper as the best in history.
“It has been an incredible, challenging and rewarding two and half years serving the best Prime Minister our beautiful country has known,” MacIntyre said on her Facebook wall. “But as they say, all good things come to an end.” She promised that she “will continue to fight the good fight and serve with humility.”
For British Columbia, it's just beginning.
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