In this tense global environment, people around the world look to Canada as a country where people have learned to celebrate their differences, not revile them. 

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on June 30, 2025.

OTTAWA—It’s hard to believe that this Canada Day marks a quarter century since the millennium.

It is even more incredible that our country’s population has more than tripled since I was born 72 years ago.

The face of the country has also changed dramatically, for the good.

Just last week, I attended the 60th anniversary of my Grade 9 class at Bishop Ryan High School in Hamilton, Ont.

The gathering was attended by more than 50 former students, some of whom I had not seen in almost 60 years.

My classmates represented the Canada we knew when I was growing up. Multicultural, yes. Multi-racial no.

The returnees were all Caucasians, but speaking many languages as they hailed from eastern and western Europe.

The new Canada we know today was missing in action.

In the latter years of high school, we welcomed two brothers from China, but this is about as far as it went for racial diversity in my time.

Compare that to today when, on any given street in major metropolitan centres, there are citizens whose families come from every corner of the globe.

With all of the economic and political stresses facing the country, some are now questioning our willingness to welcome refugees and immigrants enjoying multiple religions, languages, and races.

United States President Donald Trump has used race as a successful wedge issue to promote MAGA as a watchword for progress.

That notion invokes turning the clock back to the way things were because it was so good.

But was it?

Speaking as a person born in the 1950s, it wasn’t all that great.

Girls were taught from a very early age that it was our job to support men, nurture children, and generally keep house and keep quiet.

Even our high school sports teams faced discrimination. My first organized strike was picketing the principal’s office to get court time for girls’ basketball practice.

The junior boys were already out of the playoffs, but we were still in contention. Nonetheless, the gym teacher who controlled court bookings refused to award female practice time in advance of crucial playoff games.

This may not seem like much, but it sent the message that girls’ sports were simply not as valuable as boys.

Our principal saw the light and made sure we got practice time, so progress was being made.

Girls were also expected to dress modestly and stay away from all forms of contact with boys until we were ready to get married. That, too, happened at a very young age.

Today’s Canada is a far more open and inviting place for girls than it ever was during my childhood.

Diversity means that we can be exposed to the world’s cultures without leaving our own communities.

According to multiple studies, immigrants are less likely to end up on social assistance, and more likely to create their own job than Canadian-born citizens.

They are not drains on the economy; they are actually contributing to the growth that makes this country an attractive destination for newcomers.

If the olden days were tough for women, imagine what it was like to be an Indigenous person.

I lived 30 kilometres from the largest Indigenous territory in Canada, Six Nations, and there wasn’t a single word about their story in any history book.

The modern move to reconciliation has only just started. But it does mean that Indigenous People are finally getting the recognition they deserve.

In the 1950s and 1960s, religious fights were rampant between Catholics and Protestants. I would get beaten up regularly on my way to school by Protestants who referred to us as “cat-lickers” while we shouted back at them that they were “proddy-dogs.”

In today’s world, those religious differences have been mostly buried, especially in Canada. Some new Canadians are clinging to religious battles that should have been left behind in their home countries. But that will take time.

But in this tense global environment, people around the world look to Canada as a country where people have learned to celebrate their differences, not revile them.

That modern embrace of Canadian cultural diversity is what makes our country great.

Canadians need to resist the temptation to blame all the country’s problems on new arrivals.

Instead, we should recognize that the country we are celebrating this week has learned how to incorporate religious, racial and linguistic differences into the common thread of a great country. We can be a model for the whole world.

Happy Canada Day!

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

As well as preparing for his own future in an Alberta byelection, Pierre Poilievre will be using the season to reinforce his level of support among the rank and file in preparation for a review vote at the party’s national convention next January in Calgary. It’s going to be a long, hot summer.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on June 23, 2025.

OTTAWA—The summer barbecue circuit will take on new meaning for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre this year.

As well as preparing for his own future in an Alberta byelection, Poilievre will be using the season to reinforce his level of support among the rank and file in preparation for a review vote at the party’s national convention next January in Calgary.

On the surface, it appears as though Poilievre’s survival should be a no-brainer. In the last election, his party increased popular support and elected more members, which is usually the measure of any leader’s success.

But in this instance, the lead held by the Conservatives had been so large for so long that most party members were expecting to be celebrating their return to government.

The dramatic drop in support during the campaign, in addition to the leader’s loss of the riding he had held for two decades, put Poilievre in double jeopardy.

Battle River-Crowfoot MP Damien Kurek resigned last week to pave the way for the re-entry of Poilievre into Parliament. The MP had to be installed for a minimum of 30 days before he could resign.

After a member’s resignation, the Speaker must inform the country’s chief electoral officer about the vacancy. Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised to move quickly to call a byelection. But the chief electoral officer must wait 11 days before any move can be made.

If the prime minister moves quickly, Poilievre could be facing an August byelection.

Meanwhile, Poilievre remains in the Stornoway digs that were offered up by Conservative House Leader Andrew Scheer.

Some senior Conservatives privately questioned why the leader didn’t simply move out for a few months to avoid the controversy of remaining in Stornoway without status as official opposition leader.

Instead Poilievre was offered the house after he appointed Scheer to take over as official opposition leader. There appears to be no prohibition in Scheer’s decision to offer the official opposition residence to Poilievre and his family. If the offer were made in return for Scheer’s nomination as the interim official opposition leader, that could definitely be a problem.

Neither the outgoing Alberta MP Kurek nor Scheer can be offered anything from Poilievre in return for their sacrifices.

Likewise, Poilievre has been facing more negative polling numbers in the weeks following the election.

That is to be expected as the Carney government has been enjoying the usual honeymoon period.

But the sharp 10-point drop in numbers has left some Tories speechless.

In a scrum following a Tory caucus meeting, Scheer ran away from a CTV News reporter, claiming an urgent phone call.

As for phones, Poilievre has been working them himself to shore up support, particularly reaching out to social media influencers who were actively promoting the Conservatives during the election.

Members of Parliament have rallied around Poilievre, but they have not had much time to process the negative post-election numbers facing the party leader.

Back home to their ridings this week, they will be getting lots of feedback from constituents about the party’s future.

Hardcore Conservatives are still staunchly behind Poilievre, but those who are more progressive will be telling the party to move toward the centre if they have any hope of defeating the Liberals in an election that could potentially happen within the next two years.

A deeper dive into those numbers will also remind people that Poilievre himself is less popular than his party, which could create further pressure on his survival.

When the party votes on the leader next January, people will be looking at the margin of victory.

In past reviews by the Progressive Conservatives, the leader was expected to get more than two-thirds of the vote or resign. In 1983, former prime minister Joe Clark got two-thirds of party support at a second leadership review. The number was virtually identical to a previous vote two years earlier, but Clark felt the mandate was not strong enough and he launched a leadership race.

The race he provoked, ended up costing his job, with Brian Mulroney defeating him at a party convention Clark called later that year.

Poilievre won’t be making that mistake. But there will definitely be some backroom players making the case for change.

The party’s poor showing in Atlantic Canada and Quebec haunts Poilievre. Quebecers hate to lose, so expect local organizers to drum up anti-Poilievre sentiment.

It will be a long, hot summer for the Conservative leader, campaigning across the country for his survival.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

The world needs to be seized of the emergency at hand. With thousands of hectares of our own country burning, we need to reignite global interest in finding an energy solution. 

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on June 16, 2025.

OTTAWA—While the world fiddles, Canada is burning.

Air quality report IQAir reported that, as of June 10, smoke was descending to lower European altitudes and impacting air quality across the continent.

The impact ranged from “unhealthy to sensitive groups” in some cities to “very unhealthy” in parts of France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy.

Lyon was listed as the third most polluted city in the world while Munich was ninth. It was reported that a plume of smoke crossed the Mediterranean reaching Greece on May 18 and 19, while another plume arrived in northwestern Europe on June 1. All thanks to our country’s summer fires.

Canadians were feeling the effects directly, with air advisory warnings in most eastern communities. It was reported at one point that Montreal was suffering the worst air quality in the world.

In the midst of massive evacuations of Indigenous communities and other northerly settlements, it almost seems as though fire season is the new harbinger for summer.

Everyone is expecting more and earlier fire eruptions. But our political focus has moved from climate change to the financial havoc being wreaked by United States President Donald Trump on the world economy.

The lack of focus on climate action has environmentalists frustrated. They are trying to figure out how to get the issue of global warming back on the global agenda.

Some of them have gone elsewhere.

The other big news last week was that renowned Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was arrested by the Israeli military for entering a no-go zone in an attempt to bring food and medical supplies to Gaza.

Thunberg and 11 others were sailing on the Madleen in an effort to get supplies to Palestinians. The Israeli government reported that the group had few supplies on board, and this was instead a “selfie yacht of celebrities” carrying out “Instagram activism.”

Gazans who have been reporting massive food and medicine shortages would have appreciated the efforts of the sailors who were part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.

As it stands, Thunberg was deported and, as a result, will be prevented from returning to Israel or Gaza.

But the strange twist to this story is that Thunberg used to be the voice for global warming.

As a teenager back in 2019, Thunberg got the attention of world leaders, calling them out at climate gatherings for the “Blah, blah, blah” approach of talking while doing nothing.

Now she seems to have moved on to other issues, with her ongoing focus on the politics of the Middle East.

COVID forced the world into small personal bubbles, but it also meant a slowdown of global warming because house confinement prompted a world drop in fossil fuel consumption.

The pandemic resulted in an immediate decrease in greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution literally within a few weeks of the shutdown.

It also changed some habits forever, permitting employees to work at home more frequently, thereby reducing their environmental footprint permanently.

But the gains made by the pandemic and the former public interest in environmental changes appear to be lagging badly.

Thunberg doesn’t seem engaged.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first political action was to cancel the cost of carbon pricing to consumers. It had been effectively labelled by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as a carbon tax, and was seen to be politically toxic on the eve of an election.

Carney definitely took the wind out of Poilievre’s sails, and he is now speaking about Canada’s capacity to be an energy and environmental powerhouse globally.

The prime minister has experience marrying the two. In his previous life at Brookfield, his company focused on sustainable practices with a view to creating current and future value for investors.

He was part of an international group promoting solutions for global warming, which he hopes to apply to Canadian government environmental policies.

The call for a major national energy corridor has certainly impressed Canadians, especially Albertans, who seem to have taken a new shine to the prime minister.

His promise to achieve it with full Indigenous and provincial consensus is more than ambitious.

Meanwhile the environmental interest that we experienced before the pandemic has disappeared. Even the sale of electric cars has stalled, in part as a backlash to Trump adviser Elon Musk. But time is running out.

The world needs to be seized of the emergency at hand. With thousands of hectares of our own country burning, we need to reignite global interest in finding an energy solution.

Otherwise, Canada will keep on burning.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

Target three things you want to achieve for your riding, and three things you want to achieve for the country. And make sure all your work in committees and in Parliament is focused on moving to achieve those objectives.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on June 9, 2025.

OTTAWA—First day on the Hill. For most Members of Parliament, it is even more exciting than your first day at school.

But there are many parallels.

You are a newbie in a world that you don’t completely understand. You may even be in a new city for the first time.

Not all MPs have even stepped foot in Ottawa before being elected.

Your first visit brings shivers up the spine. I still remember my first day on the Hill.

I walked from an apartment I had sublet a few streets away from Centre Block.

When I arrived at the foot of the Hill, I stood in front of the Centennial Flame and looked up to the Peace Tower in awe.

I could see my Centre Block office from there and I spent a moment just marvelling that I would be working in this place.

That first day for me was followed by 21 years. But the first day was the most innocent, the most frightening, and also the most uplifting.

Fright and hope seem to be contradictory.

Every Member of Parliament starts off wanting to do good for their riding and their country. They are also a little scared about whether they will fit in to this huge institution, with thousands of employees in the bureaucracy and literally more than 300 other colleagues in the House of Commons.

These days, members are onboarded, with information and a few hours of guidance about what to expect as an MP.

But none of what is in the documents or briefings can prepare you for how to use your time wisely. In most instances, you are coming to Parliament with no previous experience and very little direction.

In the current Parliament, because the same party was re-elected to government, there is an opportunity for mentorship among the members.

It is even tougher for new ministers, because even though former ministers may still be in caucus, they might be fairly upset about being dropped from cabinet. So they are not the most likely to step in and help new colleagues.

Other caucus members are hoping that if someone in cabinet does not perform well, they will be in line as a replacement. So they are not necessarily rooting for ministers either.

I had lunch in the Parliamentary Dining Room with an MP last week.

It was my first time in the new venue, even though it opened in 2019.

It was great to see some of the same staff still serving more than 20 years since I left Parliament. They came over to say hello, and it felt like “old home week.”

The food was much better than I remember, but the site was smaller, as it is only designed to house parliamentarians while Centre Block is under renovation.

I saw some senior members, former ministers meeting with staff and colleagues. And I also observed some young new members, their brand new shiny parliamentary pins giving away their brief tenure as elected members.

All were smiling, and enjoying this first real week of work as the business of the House of Commons began in earnest.

Some will make their mark, and others will fade into the background. At one point, the average shelf life of a Member of Parliament was six years, so they have to work quickly to achieve their goals in politics.

If I were to offer some free advice, it is a political mantra that has passed the test of time. KISS, or keep it simple, stupid. That is not to say voters are stupid, but the message of politics must be understood by people.

Target three things you want to achieve for your riding, and three things you want to achieve for the country.

And make sure all your work in committees and in Parliament is focused on moving to achieve those objectives.

Enlist allies, and not just in your own party. Be good to the bureaucracy. They can help you achieve your objectives or they can make your life miserable.

Work your committees. Committees are one place where you can make your mark on policy, and make an impression on your team. It is also the best place to get local issues brought to the forefront.

As for Question Period, that is full-throttle theatre. And you should treat it accordingly. Practice your questions in front of the mirror and, for heaven’s sake, do not read from a printed answer.

Much to learn. And the work starts now.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

Pierre Poilievre’s decision to select Andrew Scheer as the interim opposition leader shows that he does not want any competition in the temporary job that he would like to fill permanently following an Alberta byelection.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on June 2, 2025.

OTTAWA—Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman did not look very happy when she rose to applaud her new opposition leader Andrew Scheer last week.

Who can blame her? She has done a lot of the heavy lifting as Pierre Poilievre’s deputy leader. Instead of rewarding her with the opposition leader appointment, he chose a failed former leader.

The decision certainly reinforced the image of the Conservative party as an old boys’ club. The choice is in keeping with the party’s demographic in the House of Commons.

The Tories didn’t even reach 20 per cent mark when it came to the success of women in the election. The 26 women in the caucus represent less than 19 per cent of the total team.

The choice of Lantsman would have sent a message that women play an important role in the party.

Instead, the selection of Scheer shows that Poilievre does not want any competition in the temporary job that he would like to fill permanently following an Alberta byelection.

Scheer has already been replaced as leader in a previous time, so is not likely to present any danger to the status of Poilievre as head honcho.

That status is not so solid as some would have us believe. The Conservative caucus is the only group to vote in favour of a proposed system proposed by MP Michael Chong where a majority of members can kick a leader out without the bother of having to go to a party convention.

In an effort to shore up support, Poilievre named a shadow cabinet that was three times larger than the government cabinet.

In that instance, he also ignored the principle of gender parity that was embraced by Prime Minister Mark Carney in the formation of his new cabinet.

Poilievre’s shadow cabinet includes 21 per cent women in a 74-person roster of official party critics.

A notable star that was not included in the group was Jamil Jivani. Jivani was billed as one of Poilievre’s personal choices when Jivani ran to replace Erin O’Toole in a byelection.

Jivani has previously advised Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and is well-connected to the United States administration via his former university friend, American Vice-President JD Vance.

On the night of the election, Jivani emerged from defeat to attack Ford and blame the Ontario Conservatives for the federal loss.

That didn’t sit well with colleagues who felt that the knives should not be pointed inward.

Jivani’s absence from the 74-person shadow cabinet raised some eyebrows, as did his decision to table a private member’s bill banning all temporary foreign workers from entering Canada.

Jivani has also launched a petition, which could be a tool to identify future leadership supporters.

Chances are that we will be seeing Jivani’s name on a future Conservative leadership ballot.

When Poilievre opted for Scheer instead of Lantsman as Opposition leader in the House, he opened the door to her defection, as well. His caucus now holds his future in their hands.

The process to replace a leader is entitled the Reform Act, and empowers the majority of caucus to remove a leader by a secret-ballot vote.

Each party must vote on whether to employ the act at the beginning of every new Parliament.

The Liberals declined to adopt the process at their caucus meeting last week, preferring to solve challenges in private through internal discussion.

A caucus vote would likely have seen then-prime minister Justin Trudeau leave much sooner than he did, but it also means that the party membership has no say in what happens.

In Britain, the system has led to a leadership revolving door for successive governments.

Poilievre will now be subject to constant internal caucus review. The leader’s survival until the next federal election is not guaranteed.

Meanwhile, Jivani is working hard to build his own political identity.

Lantsman may not follow in Jivani’s footsteps, but she could view Scheer’s appointment as enough of a snub to nurture her own future leadership ambitions.

She has proven her capacity both in the House of Commons, and on the campaign trail.

Poilievre is definitely riding a Conservative popularity wave today, but six months is a lifetime in politics.

Poilievre may not be leading the Conservatives into the next election.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on May 26, 2025.

OTTAWA—Long live the King. Maybe.

When it comes to Canada, there are few more controversial issues than whether we should continue with the monarchy.

French-Canadians and the Irish, in particular, are not happy to have a head of state which reminds them of past travails.

In the case of Quebecers, the defeat by the English on the Plains of Abraham is seen as the beginning of the end of a sovereign French nation.

As for the Irish, those who come from the south have already split from the United Kingdom and see no reason to pledge fealty to the same monarchy that they rejected in their own country.

Battle-scarred opponents of the monarchy are more vocal than those who support the institution. When Queen Elizabeth II was nearing the end of her life, Canadian pundits were suggesting that she would be our last monarch.

King Charles III would never make it to the throne because most people respected his mother and did not have the same feeling toward him.

Then the King took over in 2022, and has spent the last several months showing people exactly why he is the right person for the times.

Divorced—an unheard-of marital state in the last century, but pretty common with commoners in this century. So he is a little bit like all of us.

He also has a sense of humour and is totally prepared to laugh at himself, something that was not in the character of the Queen.

The King is prepared to participate in the quirky and the bizarre.

Just last month, he was filmed playing a carrot—yes, a carrot—with the London Vegetable Orchestra. One cannot imagine the Queen putting her lips around the top of a taproot to make music.

But King Charles was always the quirky one. He was interested in organic food long before it became popular with the general public.

When he visited Canada in 1996, he got what was described as a “rock star welcome” in my hometown of Hamilton, Ont. We spent the visit together, and I was able to personally observe the depth and breadth of his interests. He visited an Indigenous school in Manitoba, and was given the honorific title of “Leading Star.”

Long before the public was engaged, the King soaked up knowledge about Indigenous challenges and spent much time reflecting on how to improve things.

During this week’s visit, a group of Indigenous leaders has asked to meet with him to discuss the issue of a separation threat by some citizens in Alberta.

Just as Prime Minister Mark Carney wants the King to stay out of American politics, so do the Indigenous leaders want the King to wade into Alberta politics.

Indigenous leaders have told Premier Danielle Smith that they oppose the province’s decision to simplify the rules for a separation referendum.

Smith is of the view that Indigenous leaders’ votes will be counted in any referendum, but the chiefs believe their territory’s integrity cannot be impacted by any provincial referendum.

As their treaties have been with the Crown, the King is obviously in a position to support their claims.

But he also has to be cautious when getting involved in domestic politics.

Reading the Speech from the Throne is an exception because the sovereign will only be repeating a message already approved by the prime minister and his office.

And taking a position in favour of one commonwealth country may cause problems in another.

Take King Charles’ second invitation to United States president Donald Trump to visit the United Kingdom.

Carney was very unhappy with the invitation and, in a surprising move, he made it known publicly. In an interview with British Sky News, about the invitation, Carney said Canadians were not impressed by that gesture “given the circumstance. It was a time when we were being quite clear, some of us were being quite clear, about the issues around sovereignty.”

The King’s invitation was delivered by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was in the midst of negotiating a free trade agreement with the U.S.

In supporting British political objectives, the monarch was forced to bypass Canadian interests.

Such is the challenge of a king. In the same vein, the Canadian prime minister has to be cautious about King Charles’ trip to Canada. It could provide fodder for Quebec separatists who see the crown as a symbol of everything they do not want in a country.

Carney wants to send an international message of strength. But that message could be double-edged.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on May 19, 2025.

OTTAWA—Pierre Poilievre’s people say they want him to soften his edges.

It doesn’t seem like he is listening.

In his press conference following the appointment of the new cabinet last week, Poilievre said a few nice words in the beginning, but then he could not refrain from individually attacking almost everything about the new Liberal cabinet.

His attacks were all very personal. He went so far as to accuse new Justice Minister Sean Fraser of being responsible for the housing crisis.

Poilievre despises Chrystia Freeland, and was positively vitriolic when referencing her contributions to the previous government.

Poilievre still hasn’t figured out that the best way to succeed in politics is to be hard on issues and soft on people.

He needs to understand why women, in particular, do not support him.

His style of politics—using nasty, personal vitriol mixed in with simple sloganeering—does not sit well with women.

Some men like the vitriol. They are up for a good fight. Poilievre got a roar from the crowd when his presence was announced at the Montreal Ultimate Fighting Championship last week.

But the crowd was mostly the same group who are already part of his core voting supporters. If he wants to grow, he has to reach out beyond them and try for the softer side.

The audience at the Bell Centre was mostly young men, and even though there was a women’s bout, not many were visible in the audience.

Why? Because most women don’t like fighting. And the nasty personal nature of the Poilievre attacks during the election did not win him many female supporters.

Some might argue I am being too harsh. When former prime minister Justin Trudeau participated in a boxing match, his victory was hailed as a political stroke of genius. But Trudeau was trying to reverse his image as a softy drama teacher. When he did manage to beat down Senator Patrick Brazeau, everyone was shocked at how easily it happened.

Then he moved on.

In Poilievre’s case, he seems stuck in fighting mode, even when the times dictate a change in tone.

Canadians awarded a near-majority mandate to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s team, and, like it or not, Poilievre is going to have to at least pretend that he wants to work with the government.

Instead, conspiracy theories about how he lost his seat are being used as fundraising tools for his party.

Contrary to the rumour mill, the redistribution that happens every decade is carried out by the non-partisan Federal Election Boundaries Commission. The chair of the commission in each province is named by the chief justice of each province, and other members are named by the Speaker of the House of Commons, who is also chosen by an all-party vote.

Poilievre actually gained more Conservatives in his new riding after redistribution.

But he lost by more than 4,000 votes because people were upset about how he backed the anti-vaxxer occupiers who took over the streets of Ottawa for almost a month in 2022.

Poilievre picked his side, bringing donuts and coffee to people who blasted truck horns 24 hours a day in residential communities. As for his constituents, they were on the other side.

And his Liberal opponent Bruce Fanjoy spent two years knocking on every door in the riding.

Now Poilievre is being shuffled off to Alberta to run in what is arguably one of the safest Conservative seats in the country.

He will be confronted with separatists who have already begun their campaign to take Alberta out of the country. Premier Danielle Smith has loosened the rules to get a referendum on the ballot by lowering the threshold and allowing businesses to fund referenda efforts.

Not sure why a business should have a say in a vote on the future of the country, but Smith has admitted publicly the changes were allowed in an effort to keep her United Conservative Party from splitting into two factions, and opening the door to the election of Alberta New Democratic Party Leader Naheed Nenshi.

Poilievre will not be able to avoid that fight, and the whole country will be watching him.

If he does plan to win the next election, Poilievre needs to focus on the real fight ahead.

The country is in a tariff war with United States President Donald Trump, and we need all hands deck to save Canadian jobs and industries. If he insists on continuing the election fight against the Liberals, Poilievre is never going to increase his base or get women back.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith signalled early that she would be following the Quebec separatist path of obfuscating the facts and promising what she cannot deliver. 

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on May 12, 2025.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith wants a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada.

Sound confusing? It is.

But confusion is the only way separatists can make their case to leave Canada. The last time the country faced a referendum was when the Parti Québécois asked Quebecers to endorse the negotiation of a better deal with Canada, and if that failed, to separate. They told Quebecers that under separation they would still be able to negotiate the use of Canadian money, border access, and military support, all of which were patently false.

Truth doesn’t matter when you are trying to break up a country.

Smith signalled early that she would be following the Quebec separatist path of obfuscating the facts and promising what she cannot deliver.

The premier said it was a sheer coincidence that she launched her new referendum rules the day after Canadians decide to elect a Liberal government under the leadership of Albertan Mark Carney.

Opponents bristled when Carney self-identified as an Albertan, even though the vast majority of his youth was spent in Edmonton.

His background is similar to that of Pierre Poilievre, who also spent his youth in Alberta and only moved to Ottawa to work in politics.

Now that Poilievre has been defeated in his own riding, he is being welcomed back to Alberta as a native son. Somehow the same open arms don’t apply to Carney.

Former Reform Party leader Preston Manning set the stage for the Smith referendum launch when he threatened during the election that a vote for the Liberals would prompt a separatist movement in the West.

Alberta separatists keep referring to the West, but they are hard-pressed to defend that case as Liberals managed to garner the largest popular vote in British Columbia.

The West, like the rest of the country, is not a homogeneous mass. Alberta is not a homogeneous mass. Depending on which pollster runs the survey, between 70 and 80 per cent of Albertans do not want to leave Canada.

But the 20 to 30 per cent who do are largely followers of the party that Smith is leading. And while her government is mired in an RCMP investigation into the awarding of health contracts, a referendum debate takes attention away from internal governance problems.

Smith has already lost one cabinet minister to the health-care contracts scandal. Peter Guthrie resigned from cabinet after claims that a member of the premier’s staff interfered in the awarding of health privatization contracts.

Since his resignation, Guthrie has been turfed from the United Conservative Party of Alberta. Alberta’s current justice minister has also been linked to the scandal as news reports revealed last week that Minister Mickey Amery is related to the health investor under investigation.

Amery is also the deputy House leader, and told The Globe and Mail that he was related by marriage to investor Sam Mraiche, who is being sued and is the subject of multiple investigations, including by the provincial auditor general.

Guthrie released an open letter last month, accusing the premier of both ruining electoral chances for federal Conservatives, and fudging her position on separation.

Smith reverted back to the trope that she believes in a sovereign Alberta in a united Canada.

Now that Poilievre will soon be running for a seat in Alberta, it will be interesting to see how he navigates the separation question.

The FU crowd following him from rally to rally are likely the major supporters of a move to leave Canada and join the United States.

By expressing his strong support for Canada, Poilievre risks losing their support. The anti-vaxxers are already unhappy because they feel that Poilievre did not attack the courts for hearing the cases against occupation organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber.

During the federal election campaign, Lich was critical of Poilievre, claiming he withdrew his support. However, Poilievre’s disastrous 4,000 vote loss in his long-held riding of Carleton, Ont., was largely prompted by his earlier decision to promote occupiers at the expense of his own constituents. That choice, and the indefatigable work of Liberal candidate Bruce Fanjoy over the past two years, led to the shocking loss of a seat that Poilievre had held for two decades.

In the upcoming Alberta byelection, Poilievre will have to navigate the separation roadmap laid out by Smith.

The premier continually claims to believe in Canada, but she moved recently to lower the bar for referendums, and permit referendum funding by unions and corporations.

Poilievre will have to be clear in his support for Canada.

No sovereignty-association allowed.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston did not confirm a leadership bid in his CTV interview, but did respond ‘in French’ that he was studying the language, a sure sign of national interest. Two million views of Houston’s video have Conservatives across the country talking.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on May 5, 2025.

OTTAWA—”Many shades of blue” is how Nova Scotian Premier Tim Houston characterized Conservatives in an interview with CTV News in the aftermath of last week’s federal election.

Houston said the federal party needs to do some soul-searching after four consecutive losses to the Liberals.

The Progressive Conservative premier also stated that Pierre Poilievre’s team is very good at pushing people away, but not very good at bringing people in.

The premier confirmed details of a Globe and Mail article which stated that senior Poilievre official Jenni Byrne sent multiple texts threatening the premier after he distanced himself from the federal Conservatives during the last provincial election.

Poilievre did not set foot in the province for six months following the spat, but arranged a major rally hosted by Conservatives Peter MacKay and his father, Elmer, in Central Nova during the dying days of the federal campaign.

Houston did not attend the rally. Instead, he concurrently sent out a two-and-a-half-minute video introducing himself to the rest of the country. The pitch was widely seen as the launch of a potential future leadership bid.

Both Peter and Elmer MacKay have long histories in the party as national Progressive Conservative ministers. Peter was the final leader of the Progressive Conservatives. He merged the party with the more right-wing Canadian Alliance. That merger resulted in the elimination of the word “Progressive” in the official party name. It also prompted the departure of high-profile Red Tories like Nova Scotians Scott Brison and Bill Casey to the Liberals.

The split may have been one reason why Conservatives won only one seat there on April 28.

Houston did not confirm a leadership bid in his CTV interview, but did respond “in French” that he was studying the language, a sure sign of national interest.

Two million views of Houston’s video have Conservatives across the country talking.

“To promote Nova Scotia” was the premier’s explanation for releasing his video.

The premier also admitted he did not have a relationship with the Conservative federal leader. That was a surprising admission given Poilievre has been campaigning for the past three years for the top political job in the country. One would think that meeting Conservative premiers would be top of mind for Team Poilievre.

Apparently not: Ontario Premier Doug Ford also revealed that he had not even met with Poilievre in the several years leading up to the campaign.

Internal tensions were obvious when re-elected federal Conservative Member of Parliament Jamil Jivani unloaded on Ford during an interview on CBC the evening of the Tories’ defeat.

Jivani blamed the Ontario premier for sabotaging the Conservatives’ march to victory in the election and attacked the provincial government’s plans for education and health care.

He also insisted that during the provincial election, the federal Conservatives kept their mouths shut, and expected provincial leaders to return the favour.

Jivani was no doubt expressing the view held by many Ontario Conservatives. They did not appreciate public interventions in the middle of the campaign by Kory Teneycke, blaming Poilievre for refusing to pivot from his tax message to address the Canadian fear of Trump’s annexation threats.

Teneycke was Ford’s campaign manager, and when the premier was asked about his comments, Ford doubled down with a confirmation, saying “sometimes, the truth hurts.”

But by airing his grievances on the national news, Jivani simply ensured the animosity would continue. And after Poilievre lost the election and even failed to win his own seat, he doesn’t need surrogates to pick fights with provincial premiers.

Poilievre needs all hands on deck, including public expressions of support from successful provincial premiers.

He gets kudos from Alberta premier Danielle Smith, but her first action after the election was to introduce simplified rules for a provincial referendum on exiting from Canada.

Smith described the timing as coincidental, but that did not ring true. In the middle of the campaign, she and former Reform Party leader Preston Manning both threatened a referendum if the Liberals were to win.

Manning was instrumental in the death of the Progressive Conservative party. Houston and Ford both achieved political success in parties that are still Progressive Conservative.

Houston’s message may fall on deaf ears when it comes to the Poilievre team’s inner circle. The major question is whether the rest of the party is feeling the same pain. Poilievre will have to go into listening mode and should fire campaign manager Byrne.

Otherwise, many shades of blue in the Conservative Party could make that decision for him.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

Had Donald Trump not weighed in with his threat to annex Canada, and had Justin Trudeau decided to remain and fight this election, the outcome would definitely be quite different.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on April 28, 2025.

OTTAWA—They used to say that six months is a lifetime in politics.

Two months is a lifetime in Canadian politics these days.

Two months ago, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was headed to a majority government.

Liberals had been languishing 20 points behind in the polls, and incumbents were voting with their feet.

Cabinet ministers were leaving politics (for family reasons), and Liberal party organizers were scrambling to simply fill the nominations across the country.

Because it looked as though the Liberals were potentially headed for third-party status, nobody wanted to step up and offer themselves as sacrificial lambs at the altar of a Poilievre government.

Organizers muttered privately that nothing could avert impending disaster, and Members of Parliament should batten down the hatches and just kept working their ridings in the hopes they might survive the oncoming storm.

Then the impossible happened. Less than two months ago, the Liberals elected Mark Carney in a landslide.

Even though Carney had been serving as economic adviser to then-prime minister Justin Trudeau for some time, he was seen as an agent of change, a political newcomer who actually had experience fighting the international shock waves that American President Donald Trump was sending around the world.

He was also fiscally conservative enough to focus his election promises on operational changes. Where the previous prime minister had increased operational spending by nine per cent annually, Carney has committed to a two per cent increase.

Former Conservative deputy leader Lisa Raitt characterized it this way on CTV last week, “They like the Conservative policies, but they want Mark Carney to implement them.” That was her conclusion after canvassing in Ontario and Cape Breton, N.S., where she reinforced the notion that people just don’t like Poilievre.

She is right on that count. The gender and age gap in voting preferences is startling, with women supporting Carney by a margin of 20 per cent. The so-called Boomer generation is also largely supportive of the Liberals.

To counter that message, the Conservatives used the last week of the campaign to run an ad of two older men on a golf course chatting about how they had to get rid of the Liberals. They also trotted out a very sombre ad of former prime minister Stephen Harper intoning on his reasons for supporting Poilievre.

In the first instance, if the Conservatives are trying to appeal to women voters, the last thing they need to see is two men on a golf course. The tone-deaf nature of that ad was equivalent to a late-campaign corporate endorsement for Poilievre led by Fairfax Financial CEO Prem Watsa and entitled, “Friends of Free Enterprise in Canada.” The group ran full-page ads in newspapers across the country the weekend before before the first leaders debate.

Again the message bombed. Among the 33 leaders who signed on, 32 were men. Any woman reading the advertisement would simply ask “if the Tory leader had that little support among women, why would I bother voting for him?”

So Carney moved enough to the right to convince lifelong Tories to vote for him, and his ‘Elbows Up’ approach to Trump convinced many New Democrats to park their vote with the Liberals.

Just this week, I was chatting with a former labour leader and lifelong New Democrat who was celebrating his 100th birthday.

On the call, he confessed to me that he had voted Liberal for the first time in his life, and he convinced a couple of friends to do the same.

So even though Poilievre had enough resources to throw lots of money at late-campaign advertising, even that effort struck the wrong note, and merely reinforced the decision of many people who were leaning towards Carney.

At the end of the day, the Liberals also need to send a thank-you note to Donald Trump, whose insulting behaviour to Trudeau in particular and the country in general prompted a complete redrawing of the Canadian political map.

Had Trump not weighed in with his threat to annex Canada, and had Trudeau decided to remain and fight this election, the outcome would definitely be quite different.

As it is, the Poilievre anti-Trudeau/carbon tax campaign did not survive the test of time. He could not or would not pivot his message, and as a result, he will probably have to pivot right out of politics after this election.

Raitt underscored Poilievre’s personal unpopularity as one of the reasons the party was failing badly.

What a difference two months makes.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.