Face of Nation : Toronto-raised actor-musician Kiefer Sutherland says it wasn’t his intention to stir the political pot with a recent tweet directed at Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
In early June, the Golden Globe-winning 24 and Designated Survivor star put out a post on his verified Twitter account asking Ford to stop using his late grandfather Tommy Douglas’s name as part of his “political agenda.”
Sutherland was reacting to a tweet from Ford that linked to an op-ed by cabinet minister Lisa MacLeod, in which she compared the fiscal policies of the Conservative government to that of Douglas, who was Saskatchewan premier from 1944 to 1961.
“I’m not as familiar with social media as maybe I should be, and I didn’t mean for it to become the thing it did,” Sutherland said Friday, in a phone interview while on tour for his new album, Reckless & Me, which will see him perform in several Canadian cities starting July 4 in Winnipeg.
“My comment was not about policy.… He has every right to have his policies, and he’s elected because a majority of the people agreed with those policies. What I didn’t like and what I took objection to was that his policies do not reflect my grandfather’s political ideology, and his legacy is very important to me and to my family.”
Douglas was also known as the founder of universal health care and the father of Sutherland’s mother, Canadian actress Shirley Douglas, who was once married to actor Donald Sutherland.
In his tweet, Ford wrote: “It’s time to make government work for the people again — not the other way around. I think Tommy Douglas would approve.”
Kiefer Sutherland’s tweet response, addressed to “Mr. Ford,” said he found the comparison of their policies “offensive.”
