It would be dangerous for Liberals to skew their campaign to millennial voters. That cohort was a winner in 2015, delivering a solid majority to the Liberals. But it is not likely to be as effective this time around.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on April 12, 2021.

Liberal Rainmaker Keith Davey led the party to multiple successful elections.

Such was the Senator’s electoral prowess that he is widely credited with the Liberals becoming the “natural governing party” in the last century.

Last weekend’s Liberal convention reflected Davey’s rule.

He always said that the key to Liberal success was campaigning from the left and governing from the right.

The party secured the best policies for a socially progressive country while remaining fiscally prudent, so as not to scare the business community.

But this century is turning politics on its head.

In an effort to guide Canada through the pandemic, the government is spending as widely and rapidly as possible.

So, when it comes to a pre-election message, the party will have to prove that it can also be fiscally prudent.

So do not expect a blanket endorsement of a guaranteed annual income, even though this has been on the agenda of many progressives for decades.

Instead, there will be a resolution to cost the plan, and incorporate the views of provincial and Indigenous governments before anything specific moves forward on the national level.

Such a resolution will give some comfort to Bay Street, which is already making noises about excessive Liberal spending. And main street will be reassured in knowing that national income support will be available at least through the pandemic.

The convention will also embrace near unanimity on a resolution calling for the implementation of national standards for long-term care residences across the country.

There was a time when such a resolution would have meant political death in Quebec.

And everyone knows that it is near impossible to secure a majority government without substantial support in La Belle province.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Quebec Premier François Legault have been making multiple joint announcements in recent time, so they will probably organize an opt-out clause to handle the claim of federal interference in provincial health matters.

But at the end of the day, the death rate in Quebec cannot be ignored and simply assuming that more of the same will be a solution does not make sense.

The sturm and drang of a convention will allow all sides to air their perspectives but, in the end, the party will come out united behind a policy that will ensure a national strategy for long-term care and no national consensus on the Guaranteed Annual Income.

Party organizers have been very pleased with the participation level at the convention, with more than 4,000 registrants, of whom 60 per cent are new members.

New members are good news, but the party also has to be concerned about the ongoing support of long-time, loyal Liberals.

I was chatting last week with a former cabinet minister, who was a very active political organizer in the past, and he is sitting the next election out.

In his words, the party seems a lot more interested in recruitment than in involving those who have been around for a long time.

That could spell trouble, because in most elections where the Liberals lose, their loyal voters don’t necessarily change sides. They just don’t bother to vote.

Pollsters have recently identified that the party is either behind or in a toss-up in 13 ridings which they need to form a majority government.

Most of those ridings are rural, with a population that is not likely as mobile so long-term, loyal voters are important to the victory.

New political participants are important for energy and excitement. The young generation is most likely made up of urban participants who will not carry the day in the case of a tight election.

It would be dangerous for Liberals to skew their campaign to millennial voters.

That cohort was a winner in 2015, delivering a solid majority to the Liberals. But it is not likely to be as effective this time around.

The longer any party has been in government, the harder it is to keep everyone happy.

Marijuana legalization is a distant memory, and that policy will not persuade those new voters to support the Liberals again.

Instead, the party will depend on older people to carry tight ridings in rural areas.

Seniors are usually most likely to vote in large numbers, but the pandemic has altered everyone’s habits.

Trudeau’s Covid hotels have also cost support among snowbirds who represent up to 500,000 voters.

Hopes for majority could depend on whether the Trudeau glow is losing lustre with loyal Liberals.

The convention could kickstart that renewal—or not.

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

Public-sector employers are under more pressure from voters to even the odds for women and minorities; not so for the private sector. Their veil of secrecy needs to be lifted.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on March 1, 2021.

Kudos to The Globe and Mail for digging into the darker side of Bay Street’s dirty little secrets.

In a series on workforce gender bias last week, The Globe published confidential information on the remuneration of partners in one of Canada’s largest business law firms. At Cassels, Brock & Blackwell LLP, female equity partners earn almost 25 per cent less than their male counterparts.

Women are fewer in number, and women of colour are literally at the bottom of the pay grid.

That should not be surprising to anyone who looks at the corporate makeup of Bay Street.

What is surprising is how hard it is to identify discrimination because all law firms keep their business very private.

Inequality was even more glaring when it came to bonuses. According to an internal email leaked to The Globe, “over 80 per cent of men got a bonus, only 44 per cent of women did. Men took home 69 per cent of the total bonus pool given out to years one through seven.”

Despite the Globe’s efforts to dig deeper into the money trail at several other law firms, none was transparent with their partner payouts or employee numbers on gender imbalance, even after a two-year Globe investigation.

This journalistic investigation paralleled an internal review by the Canadian Bar Association prompted by a request from the Women Lawyers Forum, a branch of the association. The forum began by asking multiple law firms to reveal the details on partner compensation to verify or disprove the gender gap many women lawyers anecdotally identified.

According to The Globe “the majority of the firms were unwilling to release compensation amounts—even expressed as a percentage of total partner income. The final report was published last October with no information on the gender wage gap. The WLF could gather only some data on partner representation—the firms that participated had an average of 49 partners, 30 per cent of whom were women—and some insights into how firms determine compensation. Just 27 (unnamed) law firms out of 65 responded to the survey.”

The fact that more than half of the law firms refused to even respond to a survey from one of the branches of the Canadian Bar Association speaks volumes about the depth of the problem.

Sadly, one could move to most other Bay Street areas of business to find the same lack of commitment to gender equity or transparency. Only 24 (or about 3.5 per cent) of TSX-listed Canadian companies had a woman CEO as of July 2019. Women represented an average of 17.9 per cent of executive officers in S&P/TSX Composite Index companies as of December 2019.

According to the first ever Statistics Canada report on corporate boards and the gender gap, published in 2019, only 19.4 per cent of corporate board members in Canada are women.

The Globe series, by Robyn Doolittle and Chen Wang, took a deep dive into Canada’s gender inequality. Their first review involved the public sector, in a series published last month. In that review, the pair undertook an unprecedented analysis of public sector salary records, involving 90,000 employees across the federal, provincial, municipal ranks, and including Crown corporations, university and even liquor store remuneration practices.

The pair reported that “women aren’t only underrepresented at the apex of the public sector ladder, but on the many rungs below, as supervisers, managers, senior managers, directors, executive directors and vice-presidents, as well as deans and professors. In most cases, men made more than their female counterparts with the same title. Sometimes the difference was small—one or two per cent—but the gap steadily widened on the way to the top. (At publicly owned corporations, for example, women on executive teams made an average of nine per cent less than the male executives.)”

While still not equal, that appears to compare favourably with the mostly secret salaries of partners and juniors in the legal profession.

When it comes to the public sector, transparency has been the law of the land for decades. In Ontario, the so-called “sunshine list” has mandated the release of all public-sector salaries exceeding $100,000.

With transparency comes accountability. When executive salaries are released annually, it is easy to identify gender and diversity gaps in hiring and promotion.

Public-sector employers are under more pressure from voters to even the odds for women and minorities; not so for the private sector. Their veil of secrecy needs to be lifted.

It is time for a private-sector sunshine law.

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