Jason Kenney’s departure was unexpected as he had gathered together a group of key supporters for what was expected to be a victory celebration.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on May 23, 2022.

OTTAWA—Internal party warfare can be fatal.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney eked out a bare majority in a party vote on his leadership, only to be forced out by advisers’ pressure.

Kenney’s departure was unexpected as he had gathered together a group of key supporters for what was expected to be a victory celebration.

Days before the United Conservative Party mail-in vote was announced, Kenney claimed that he would stay on if he secured a single-vote majority.

A large gathering of supporters was expecting to see Kenney continue in the job, but instead, he dropped a bombshell last Wednesday night.

In the end, the pressure inside his own party was just too great, so Kenney decided to step down after 48.6 per cent of UCP review voters said they wanted him out.

Meanwhile, the internal fight in the federal Conservative party gets more bitter by the day. Last week, saw candidate slagging candidate, and supporters’ slagging each other.

The climate got so difficult that former finance minister Ed Fast felt compelled to quit his job as Conservative caucus finance critic in opposition to Pierre Poilievre’s promise to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada.

Claims of party-based racism and sleazy politics were traded as candidate Patrick Brown accused Poilievre of aligning with racists in his support of the trucker occupation on Parliament Hill.

Brown supporter, Michelle Rempel-Garner weighed in on the racism theme, accusing Poilievre of being too slow to condemn the race-based slaughter south of the border in Buffalo.

Brown also attacked Poilievre supporters for allegedly criticizing his campaign’s push to sell memberships to racialized minorities.

The past week in the Conservative party has seen the temperature increase as the end of the membership sale period looms.

The federal party Twitter feed was vitriolic, with candidates lining up to accuse each other of stoking the flames of racism. In a media interview, Poilievre promoted his use of “Anglo-Saxon” language, a lift from white supremacists’ vocabulary.

Compare federal Tory accusations to the civilized official Ontario election debate last week. Hosted by TVO’s Steve Paikin and Althia Raj of The Toronto Star, the debate was positively benign in comparison.

Candidates respected rules and time limits. They were careful to attack their opponents on policies, not personalities.

New Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath delivered a surprisingly listless performance, absent her usual excellent communication skills.

Later in the week, she joined Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner with a diagnosis of COVID. Both were forced into virtual campaigns in the final stretch of the election.

While the NDP leader flagged, the Green leader shone in the debate. Schreiner was personable, articulate and knowledgeable, particularly on climate change issues.

Premier Doug Ford carried out his usual, aw shucks schtick, claiming friendship with everyone on the podium and defending government policies.

The most controversial was the Conservative promise of a $10-billion investment to build a highway which is not supported by any other leader.

In the last campaign, Ford promised a buck a beer in an attempt to reach out to the blue-collar cohort that was key to his victory.

This time, Ontario Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca promised a buck a bus ticket, vowing to take thousands of cars off the road by making public transit more affordable.

The Grit leader also promised to divert Ford’s $10-billion proposed road investment into education, repairing and building schools and cutting class sizes.

Horwath pitched an increase in the minimum wage, in direct contrast to Ford’s decision to abolish planned increases early in his term in office.

The NDP leader primarily focused on her base. But she took a direct hit when the premier claimed that unions were moving away from their traditional support for her party in favour of his re-election.

Ford’s strategy worked, with NDP support slipping after the debate.

That was good news for the Liberals because many anti-Ford voters want to rally behind the party that has the best chance to defeat the current government.

The latest six-point difference keeps Ford in the lead with just two weeks to go before voting day. But the 10-point difference between the Liberals and the New Democrats really favours a potential momentum shift to Del Duca.

As for internal Conservative struggles, on the federal level it is difficult to see how the angry differences among leadership camps of Poilievre, Charest and Brown can be healed in a post-campaign show of unity.

Centrist Conservatives may not elect a party leader.

But they hold the key to 24 Sussex.

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 December 3, 2018.

OTTAWA—Premier Doug Ford’s French-language smack down has just begun.

And if he thinks his problem is going to go away any time soon, he does not understand the deep roots and the strength of the francophone community in Ontario.

The last time the provincial government moved to reduce services was when the government of Mike Harris vowed to shut down the only full-service francophone hospital in the province.

That decision spawned SOS Montfort, which is one of the legendary stories of survival in a community that had to fight tooth and nail for every right it achieved in the past century.

Ten thousand francophones and their supporters took to the streets of the nation’s capital, led by a diminutive dynamo Gisele Lalonde. Key organizers included the late Mauril Bélanger and journalist Michel Gratton.

Coincidentally, Gratton was also a close friend of prime minister Brian Mulroney who was a strong supporter of minority rights, having grown up as an anglophone in northern Quebec.

Most francophones thought we were past that. With Ontario Progressive Conservative Minister Caroline Mulroney as attorney general and minister of francophone affairs, observers were assuaged about the possibility of a potential attack on francophone rights.

The SOS Montfort movement also spawned a tightening up of the conditions where the Government of Canada sends transfers for minority language services to the provinces.

The federal government tops up the cost of minority language education and ancillary services through an agreement, known as the Canada-Ontario Agreement on Minority-Language Education and Second Official-Language Instruction, renewable every five years. The funding is based on the principle that offering services in a second language, including school board and curriculum development, is more expensive to deliver, based on economies of scale.

The theory behind the second-language action plan transfers is that the federal government assists in supporting development of minority language services vis-à-vis the action plan that is negotiated in the transfer package.

In some instances, that means expansion of the university system. The federal government has already announced its support for the south-western Ontario French language university, a project that has been in the making for more than two decades.

The other element that Premier Ford failed to understand in his hasty decision to cut French language services is that the francophone demographic has changed drastically since SOS Montfort.

The original supporters were primarily old-stock French Canadians, who fought for services even as their numbers dwindled as a result of intermarriage, decreasing birthrate and anglicization.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pictured with NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, Official Languages Minister Mélanie Joly, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May in his Centre Block office on Nov. 28, 2018, to discuss francophones in Ontario. Image courtesy of Twitter

That core has been buttressed in the last two decades by waves of immigrants from French-speaking countries who have made Ontario their home.

They live and work in French, and the Association des Canadiens Francais de l’Ontario has built strong links with the newcomer community.

ACFO has worked to integrate francophone newcomers into the support system of schools and hospitals, with the hope that dwindling local populations would be buttressed by an influx of immigrants.

Ford is now dealing with a monster of his own making. The francophone presence is felt in some 40 ridings across the province and they organized a Resistance rally in all of them Saturday to let the Conservatives know that they are hopping mad.

The only francophone in the Tory caucus, articulate, 29-year-old newcomer Amanda Simard, quit last week as a result of the cuts. That will put pressure on more to follow.

Ontario New Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath has mustered her troops to fight the decision and enlisted the support of her federal cousin NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who is calling on the federal government to do more.

In that regard, Singh is right. Canada’s federal Minister Responsible for La Francophonie, Mélanie Joly, needs to send a clear message to Queen’s Park that this decision is not without financial consequences.

It is not just a question of prioritizing the university. The most egregious mistake by the new Ford government was the decision to eliminate the Office of the French Language Services Commissioner.

The position of commissioner sends an important signal, not only to government ministries but also to the whole province. If minority rights are not respected in the delivery of language services, there will be consequences.

Folding that office into the ambit of the ombudsman is an absolute slap in the face to those who have spend decades fighting for minority rights.

Joly and Prime Minister Justin Justin Trudeau need to let the premier know that cutting back on minority language services will cost him dearly, and not just at the polls.

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 28, 2018.

OTTAWA—Politics is the only profession where the more experience you get, the more people want to get rid of you.

People have great respect for journalists who practise their craft for decades, and business people who achieve gravitas with age.

Bay Street is sprinkled with eminences grises who are called on to offer the benefit of their wisdom on big issues facing the market and the country.

But on the campaign front, Premier Kathleen Wynne is bearing the brunt of the change theme that plagues all incumbent politicians.

Wynne’s unpopularity is palpable, whether deserved or not. In reality, she has done a pretty decent job as a leader. But her enemies have been very successful in casting her as the source of all that is evil in Ontario.

Voters are in a cranky mood. They are certainly not happy with the status quo but they are almost equally flummoxed about the alternatives.

The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario proved, once again, that it could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when it chose a leader who provokes more questions than answers.

A couple of weeks ago, the Conservative candidate in my riding knocked on my door to say hello, and I wished her well, commenting that Doug Ford did not make her job any easier.

She sighed in agreement, confiding that she had actually been backing his opponent Christine Elliott in the nomination battle. We both agreed that the choice of Jim Flaherty’s widow would likely have clinched a Tory victory in the province.

Instead, the party went with a strident, scary right-winger who has members of his own party refusing to vote for him.

He is a lot more like previous Conservative leader Tim Hudak, who appeared headed for victory in the last Ontario election until he happily announced his major campaign plank was to fire 100,000 people. Hudak’s mistake permitted Kathleen Wynne to change the channel on the change agenda.

But she has not been so successful this time. Her campaign strategy, to target Ford as the Trump of the North, has had some success.

Ford’s numbers, while initially stable, have been faltering, and the uncertainty around his leadership is as profound as that of Wynne’s.

The Trump-Ford comparison has stuck. And with good reason. But the Liberals have not been the beneficiary of anti-Ford sentiment.

Instead, New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath has surged in the last weeks of the campaign.

Horwath, who holds the seat that I occupied back in the eighties, is an able campaigner, and a solid, likeable person. She speaks well and gives the impression of a politician who really cares about the people. Kind of like a Kathleen Wynne without the warts.

As the leader of a third party, Horwath has not been subject to the same level of scrutiny that the premier and Ford have been subjected to.

That changed last week when multiple polls showed the New Democrats closing the gap with the Tories. Some even had her neck and neck with Ford in vying for the premier’s seat.

But that momentum comes with a lot more public attention.

Her editorial roundtable with The Globe and Mail last week led to some big questions about the New Democratic platform.

The most glaring hole was Horwath’s suggestion that all Ontario hospitals should admit patients without asking them to produce proof of health insurance.

She is tackling a real problem of non-coverage that affects some refugees. But her solution is to kill a fly with a sledgehammer.

A health-care system that does not ask patients to provide proof of residence would result in a flood of unintended consequences, including displacing other patients in an already crowded system.

What would prevent any border town from being inundated by American visitors who want to take advantage of our free hospital care without even providing proof of residence?

The health-care promise was designed to underpin an NDP pledge to turn Ontario into a sanctuary province, reminiscent of the role churches have played in providing a safe haven for the persecuted.

Given Ontario’s welcoming record for existing refugees, that NDP promise will generate more questions than answers.

It is one thing to support a third party leader with a conscience. It is another turn the reins of government over to New Democrats.

Bay Street will buck back. That is not necessarily fatal, as more people from Main Street will be voting.

It does mean that this volatile election is not over.

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