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Liberal candidate Chrystia Freeland went to the club anyway to crash the speech Oliver wasn’t givingand was aggressively disdained in the lobby by some guy in a bathrobe and sneakers while snappily suited club president Clive Caldwell invited her to depart the premises immediately.  They literally glared down their literal noses at tiny Freeland for trespassing on their penile preserve. 

So at first glance, Brown’s choice of venue appears idiotic. 

Before lunch on Monday, the Liberals sent out a copy of an invitation to this upcoming Brown speech, on “Ontario’s Affordability Crisis.”  Attached were some thoughts from Indira Naidoo-Harris, Ontario’s minister for the status of women and an ex-journalist. 

“By choosing this men-only venue, Patrick Brown is excluding women.  Women make up half of Ontario’s workforce,” Naidoo-Harris’s statement said.  She cited some colourful tidbits from a National Post story about the Cambridge Club, including that it’s got nudie pictures — shot by Helmut Newton, so they’re art nudies — and that conversation features a “locker-room sense of humour,” which is a turn of phrase that didn’t sound great in 2015 but sounds much worse now. 

“The decision to attend an event at a private all-men’s club shows an appalling lack of judgment and insensitivity on Patrick Brown’s part.  Mr. Brown still has time to do the right thing and cancel this private event,” Naidoo-Harris complained. 

Yes, well, speaking of appalling lacks of judgment: The Cambridge Club is not where Brown is to speak.  He’s speaking at a restaurant attached to the Toronto Athletic Club, which is a different club, in a different building, with a different clientele.  It’s a corporate cousin to the Cambridge Club — it is part of the “Cambridge Group of Clubs” — but it is not the Cambridge Club.  And the restaurant, though affiliated with the club, is public.