Sexism blamed for criticism of Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s travel expenses

It took a while, but someone's finally played the sexism card in the long-running debate over Alberta Premier Alison Redford's expenses.

Calgary Herald columnist Karin Klassen flipped it over Monday, counter-attacking critics who've called out Redford over what's being considered profligate use of the government jet and top-shelf airline travel.

"This is precisely why women don't go into politics," Klassen fumes. "The attacks on Premier Alison Redford, over her supposedly egregious misuse of the government plane, couldn't be more about her gender if we'd hidden a cocktail napkin in her seat-back and told her women don't belong in the province's cockpit."

That, of course, refers to the flap last week over a handwritten note left by a WestJet passenger objecting to the female pilot commanding his flight.

That's right. Questioning Redford's travel tab is the same as some mouth-breather's ridiculous complaint about the presence of estrogen in the cockpit, according to Klassen.

[ Related: Alison Redford billed taxpayers for $9,200 Palm Springs flight ]

To refresh your memory, Redford has been under fire for weeks over several arguably inappropriate travel costs. The most serious is related to $45,000 spent flying to South Africa to attend the funeral of Nelson Mandela, whom she worked with when she was an international constitutional lawyer.

She's also been challenged for spending $9,200 on a flight back from a California vacation so she could attend Ralph Klein's memorial. And most recently, Redford decided to pay back about $3,200 for several trips where her young daughter and a young friend accompanied her on the government jet.

Redford apologized for the sloppy planning that led to the expensive South African trip (though she didn't reimburse the treasury), and also for comping her daughter's friend.

But Klassen is still leaping to her defence. Don't worry Premier, the sisterhood's got your back.

What critics see as sloppy planning by Redford and her staff, Klassen views as an attack on the premier's sex, possibly encouraged by members of the Conservative party old boy's club still bitter she beat them for the leadership in 2011.

Using the government jet and comfy business-class airline flights are efficient ways of maximizing the premier's valuable time, she writes. Who wants the leader of the province waiting at airports or jammed into steerage when she could be studying policy briefs.

Such travel arrangements wouldn't have been challenged if she'd been a man, Klassen contends.

"Like all the men who held her job before her, who have for whatever reason escaped this bizarre scrutiny, I would like her to take that time to relax and nap and read important documents and consider policy in all the portfolios she presides over, and even put Barbie polish on her daughter's nails if that's what calms her down and keeps her from telling the press to bug off," she wrote.

Globe and Mail columnist Sarah Hampson said Redford was guilty only of botching her justification for bringing her daughter and sometimes a playmate on government flights.

Redford told the legislature she was not only Alberta's first female premier, "I'm also the first premier who's a mom."

"I don’t know about you, but I cringed when she said that," Hampson wrote last week. "That’s no way to advance the cause.

"She brought an important issue to the foreground, but she missed the mark on communication. She should have played the parent card, not the mommy card."

[ Related: Premier Alison Redford's letter writers to cost $300K ]

Hampson initially mislabeled Redford as a single parent. She is, in fact, married to her second husband, Glen Jermyn, a federal lawyer based in Calgary and the father of their daughter, Sarah.

Her implication seemed to be that Redford raised the gender issue by identifying herself as a mom, rather than a parent, presumably to illicit sympathy.

"Double standards still exist," Hampson wrote. "Fathers with children in tow are admired whereas working mothers who include their children in their work are considered unorganized or conflicted about their responsibilities."

“We hear from a lot of elected women that they don’t want to play the I-am-a-woman card,” Nancy Peckford of Equal Voice, a group pushing for the election of more women to political office, told Hampson. “They want to do their jobs.”

But Klassen argued Redford was simply stating a fact: She's a mom.

Which is missing the point. The issue isn't Redford trying to carve out more quality time with her daughter – even if it is specifically against the rules in Alberta to have anyone other than your spouse on a government plane.

The issue is the apparently carefree way her trips were planned, a problem the premier herself acknowledged.

I'm pretty sure the first thing people thought when they heard about the $45,000 South African trip was not that Redford was some female flibbertigibbet. No one raised Bev Oda's gender in 2011 when the then-Conservative cabinet minister had to repay more than $1,000 in expenses from a trip to London that included the infamous $16 glass of orange juice.

Politicians who play fast and loose with taxpayer dollars should always be called out, regardless of their gender.