It is also worth spending some money explaining to Canadians just what is involved in the fight on climate change. 

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on March 25, 2024.

OTTAWA–The World Meteorological Organization had grim news for the globe last week.

In every climate indicator, temperatures were the highest on record in 2023.

And for the past nine years in a row, the planet has been getting hotter.

For the first time ever, Canada’s air quality was worse than the United States, largely because of the effect of massive wildfires across the country.

Evidence is mounting for all but the most obtuse that action needs to be taken to reverse the climate crisis. Zombie fires that started last year are still continuing in parts of British Columbia. New wildfires are starting at an unbelievably early time of the year with 90 fires burning there last week.

But the man who would be prime minister, Pierre Poilievre, is running advertisements attacking British Columbia Premier David Eby because he refuses to pile in with other premiers who are attacking the April increase in the price on carbon established by the federal government.

Instead of focusing on climate solutions, Poilievre is trying to bully provinces into reversing the federal action plan to reduce our carbon footprint.

Politicians should be focused on climate solutions instead of reversing our work on climate action.

Eby was not one to be bullied. British Columbia, arguably Canada’s greenest province, was the first to adopt a price on carbon. That happened a decade before the federal government introduced its 2018 plan.

The B.C. experience has been used as a model for other jurisdictions. Their carbon pricing has had a beneficial impact on the environment with little impact on the economy.

Eby characterized Poilievre’s “axe the tax” as a “baloney office” campaign. Poilievre responded by accusing Eby of forcing British Columbians to eat baloney because of carbon pricing.

What nobody seems to be including in the discussion is how the country will fight forest fires and floods by abolishing the national climate action strategy.

Poilievre has put nothing in the window in his axe campaign, and is deliberately conflating a world inflationary trend with a made-in-Canada carbon plan.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made it very clear that the government has no intention to reverse its climate plan, even after Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal Premier Andrew Furey joined six Conservative premiers in his request to cancel the proposed carbon price hike.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has vowed not to collect the carbon price, which could prove rather costly to his residents.

In the national plan, carbon rebates actually go out to approximately 80 per cent of the population based on their reduced carbon footprint.

If Moe refuses to collect, the average family of four in his province will miss out on an annual rebate of $1,800 according to the federal Department of Finance.

Trudeau is committed to the federal action plan, and vows to keep fighting for pollution pricing, despite the claim by Ontario Premier Doug Ford that the federal Liberals could be “annihilated” in the next election because of the pricing policy.

Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie last week distanced herself from her federal counterparts by saying if she were elected, her party would not impose a provincial tax.

The party could fall back on the federal program, but has not committed to doing so as an internal committee studies the issue.

Suffice to say, across the board, the country is gripped with the issue of climate pricing and nobody is particularly engaged in the challenge of doing nothing.

Poilievre is framing the issue as another Liberal gas tax, and spending millions of dollars to get Canadians on his side.

Meanwhile, the federal government has spent nothing in explaining to Canadians what is actually involved in carbon pricing, and why it is so necessary to help the country fight climate change.

At a heated press conference in Calgary recently, Trudeau said it was not his job to be popular when pressed on whether he should ditch the carbon tax.

But to win elections, and carry out his climate plans, he does need to secure the popular vote.

His climate plan is worth fighting for. It is also worth spending some money explaining to Canadians just what is involved in the fight on climate change.

If the country wants to hang on to the progress we have made on climate change, we need to increase the price on carbon so consumption patterns will change.

We are experiencing the hottest decade in history and we owe it to our grandchildren to push ahead on carbon pricing.

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 November 6, 2023.

OTTAWA—The takedown of Buffy Sainte-Marie is painful to witness. The CBC claims its evidence is airtight, but there appears to be a number of holes in the exposé about Sainte-Marie not being Indigenous.

According to the CBC, the singer-songwriter’s claim to Indigenous roots has been contradicted by her birth certificate and even some members of her own family.

The birth certificate upon which the CBC based its story says that Sainte-Marie was born to parents Albert and Winifred Santamaria. Sainte-Marie says that she was adopted by Albert and Winifred, who changed their names to Sainte-Marie after the war because of racism against Italians.

The CBC story claimed “many instances over the years of contradictory statements from the singer regarding that personal history.”

The story recounted how many awards and recognitions that had come to Sainte-Marie in part because of her unique status as an Indigenous artist in a white world.

Sainte-Marie was named Billboard’s Music Award for Top Artist in 1964 just after she was described by The New York Times as “one of the most promising new talents on the folk scene today.”

But it also laid out the multiple times that Saint-Marie had self-ascribed different Indigenous origins, claiming that she has been Algonquin, Mi’kmaq, and Cree at different times to different news outlets.

Former Globe and Mail reporter Jan Wong had this to say on X about the claim that Sainte-Marie was not adopted because of her birth certificate. “Hey @CBCNews your Buffy Pretendian story rings false. I did quick search of adoptee births in Mass: ‘An amended birth certificate, created after an adoption is finished, lists the name of the adoptive parents just as if the child had been born to them originally.’ ”

There were certainly a number of inconsistencies in the way that Sainte-Marie recounted her life story at various moments in her career.

But it is undeniable that she fought for Indigenous rights at a time when no one was really listening very hard.

Some have claimed she appropriated this identity to further her career.

But given that she burst onto the folk scene in the 1960s, it is pretty hard to see how her Indigenous heritage claim would have been developed simply to support her rise in the music world.

In the 1960s, being Indigenous was no ticket to success. Instead, negative stereotypes prompted many Indigenous Peoples to hide their identity.

Sainte-Marie was consistent in her fight for Indigenous Peoples, and her claim to attachment to her people.

She wasn’t the first to be accused of Indigenous appropriation, and she won’t be the last.

Last week, Newfoundland Premier Andrew Furey visited Labrador to deliver a series of apologies to residential school survivors. Over a few days, the premier visited five Inuit communities to deliver solemn apologies.

That visit happened a month after Furey made a similar apology to the NunatuKavut Community Council.

The premier’s first apology was attacked by members of the Innu nation and the government of Nunatsiavut, claiming the NunatuKavut community has no legitimate Inuit identity.

That difference of opinion was virally reflected in the House of Commons two years ago when the Inuit Member of Parliament attacked her colleague in Labrador for falsely claiming her Inuit heritage.

Then-NDP MP Mumilaaq Qaqqaq was forced to apologize for a Twitter post in which she demanded that Liberal MP Yvonne Jones “validate her Inuk-ness.”

Jones characterized the attack as “lateral racism,” and told the media that “I don’t think I have to prove my identity … I know who I am. I know who my grandmother and my great-grandmother was … I can trace my Inuit history in Labrador back to the early 1800’s.”

But the very public fight was a reflection of the challenges that come with clarifying Indigenous lineage.

The CBC obviously thought it was doing a deep dive into the real story behind Buffy Sainte-Marie.

But the backlash caused by the story, and the questions around adoption practices more than 80 years ago have not been fully answered.

It is a disservice to Sainte-Marie’s lifelong Indigenous commitment to believe that a colonial birth certificate holds all the answers to her birth history.

The story was explosive. But with too many holes in the content, it should have been left untold.

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

If the prime minister’s team thought an early election could move the Liberals into majority territory, the uncertainty in Newfoundland may give them pause.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on March 8, 2021.

Three elections and three majority governments sent the message that a government managing COVID-19 is rewarded by the voters.

That was the general school of thought when Newfoundland and Labrador called its COVID election. But the arrival of the variant crisis has changed all that.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government was forced to call an election by August. Based on previous results in British Columbia, New Brunswick, and Saskatchewan, it appeared as though the electorate would put their trust in the party that was actually managing the pandemic. In all three of those previous elections, the governing party was returned with a comfortable majority.

So Liberal Leader Andrew Furey, a medical specialist, probably thought he was on solid ground when his government called the election in Newfoundland and Labrador. But in the middle of the vote, a virus variant crept into Newfoundland, taking a province that was almost COVID-free by storm, as Mount Pearl and parts of St. John’s were hit hard with the new virus.

All of a sudden, the province went from a place that had been a spectator in the coronavirus battle to a province that was facing a distressing multiplication of a frightening variant. Questions started coming: how can you have an election when people cannot get to the polls because they are forced into a quarantine to protect community transmission of these new variants?

So, health and election officials tried to sketch out a roadmap for a safe election. The government responded with more opportunities for mail-in ballots, but in order to achieve that goal, they needed to change the shape and date of the election.

In mid-February, the chief electoral officer of Newfoundland and Labrador postponed the voting date for almost half of the voting districts in Newfoundland. The delays occurring on the Avalon Peninsula represented most urban voters in the capital’s periphery.

The cancellations were spurred because frightened election workers resigned out of fear of interacting with the public on election day, according to chief electoral officer Bruce Chaulk. And voters were also frightened about what they might face in a lineup going into the voting booths.

Unlike most other provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador had been largely free of the virus, so citizens were extremely concerned that the variant had hit them hard.

The whole election process has been somewhat odd, with the premier participating in regular briefings with the chief medical officer of health, in the middle of an election.

Progressive Conservative Leader Ches Crosbie complained about the conflict of the premier’s appearance during an election, but that complaint was overridden by citizens’ desire for information.

Crosbie and Furey both carry an impressive political pedigree. Crosbie’s father was John Crosbie, the inimitable Newfoundland minister who served in the cabinet of prime minister Brian Mulroney.

Furey’s father is former backroom Liberal organizer and now Senator George Furey, who is the current Speaker in the Senate of Canada. His uncle is Chuck Furey, who served as a minister in the government of premier Brian Tobin.

Polls still predict victory for Furey, but the confusion around the COVID election has definitely eaten into his popularity.

Newfoundlanders are experiencing their first full lockdown. After three weeks, they are getting crusty. They understand it is for the collective good, but they also want to know why an election is happening in the middle of a medical crisis.

Taking a page from the Newfoundland book, a parliamentary committee in Ottawa passed a unanimous resolution last week demanding that no election be called during a pandemic. The Procedure and House Affairs Committee, not usually known for controversial recommendations, unanimously sought a commitment from the government that there would be no election, except in the case of a lost confidence vote. New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh endorsed the resolution, promising that his party would not trigger an election.

The Tories have not chimed in, although they claim the Liberals have been trying to trigger an election.

For their part, the governing grits claim they don’t want an election, but will not allow their legislative agenda to be blocked in by the Tories. The Liberals have accused the Conservatives of trying to block pandemic-related aid legislation designed to assist individuals and small businesses.

Now that Newfoundland’s election has been torpedoed by the pandemic, the prevailing wisdom that governments are rewarded during an election is definitely at risk.

If the prime minister’s team thought an early election could move the Liberals into majority territory, the uncertainty in Newfoundland may give them pause. Pandemic elections may not be so fruitful after all.

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