PAINFUL HONESTY

A SUCCESSFUL Nova Scotia businessman once told us that he always asked
prospective managers two questions.

Could they give an example of a time they had failed at something?

And what did they do after messing up?

His purpose, of course, was not to screen out imperfection or to nail people
for old mistakes.

What he hoped to do was to reveal strength of character. In other words, we
can take it for granted that we've all made a mess of something.

But overcoming defeat and crisis has a way of making survivors stronger,
wiser, more resilient and better able to understand and deal effectively
with the rest of imperfect humanity.

That conversation came to mind this week as a former colleague, Education
Minister Jane Purves, spoke publicly about a painful period in her early
adult life when she became addicted to hard drugs.

As a result of drug use in her late teens and 20s, Ms. Purves lost custody
of her child for a number of years, has a criminal record for possession of
marijuana and was found last year to have been infected by the hepatitis C
virus.

At a press conference Wednesday, the 50-year-old minister told reporters
that she beat the drug habit more than 20 years ago, with professional help
and the support of family and friends.

She regained custody of her son and rebuilt her life free of drugs. The
hepatitis virus has remained dormant, with no health effects.

To state our own potential bias in this case, we know the professional side
of Jane Purves's reconstructed life well. She worked for two decades at this
newspaper, eight of them as a capable and candid managing editor, before
turning to politics in last summer's election.

Now the ex-journalist has made herself the subject of a national story -
"Minister admits to past addiction" - because she rightly judged she had to
answer truthfully when asked about drug use.

She had already informed the PC party and leader John Hamm about her past
when she was asked to be a Tory candidate. She had also publicly confirmed
the possession record when asked during the campaign.

But she says she had expected to be asked about her addiction at some point,
and had determined "if and when this situation arose, I would confront it
openly and honestly." When a reporter did ask in an interview this week, she
answered truthfully and then held the press conference to inform the public
directly.

To put it mildly, a story like this can easily slide into cheap voyeurism
that has nothing to do with how the subject conducts his or her public duty.
So it's important to focus on the real public issue, here, which is that
Jane Purves has conducted herself in an ethical manner. She has understood,
and acted upon, the principle that being truthful is the bedrock of public
trust, even if there is personal cost in terms of loss of privacy.

As for public judgment of the minister's personal past, we would bet that
fair-minded people give the same weight to past problems that our
businessman applied in his interviewing. How someone overcomes a crisis, and
how they are transformed by it, is more important to the present than raking
over old history.

For a public office holder, this is particularly true when the past crisis
is a breakdown in one's personal life and doesn't involve some form of
venality - corruption, theft, breach of trust, abuse of authority - that
would make it virtually impossible for the person to retain public confidence.

Many people will also respect the courage and dignity of Ms. Purves's
performance Wednesday. She was candid and very human, but refused to go into
maudlin detail that "makes me look like a guest on the Phil Donahue show."
Knowing what she was addicted to, she said, is as irrelevant as knowing
whether a former alcoholic preferred "scotch or rum." A well-judged and
well-expressed sense of where to draw the line.

In short, John Hamm was right to conclude that Ms. Purves's past was not an
impediment to being education minister and was right again to stand by this
judgment, and her, this week. She has been painfully honest. That should be
perfection enough.