By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on June 19, 2023.

OTTAWA—A Conservative private member’s attempt to revive the abortion debate by conferring unique legal status on pregnant women was clobbered in the House last week.

The governing Liberals united with New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois to defeat Bill C-311 by almost a two-to-one margin.

Opponents of the bill introduced by Saskatchewan Conservative MP Cathay Wagantall numbered 205. Supporters mustered only 113 votes.

Under most circumstances, that should be the end of the story. But with the Conservatives leading in national public opinion polls, and their strong support for the bill, it will only be a matter of time before the question of the legal status of fetuses ends up being litigated when a future Wagantall bill is passed.

Witness the debate concerning the Violence Against Pregnant Women Act in Parliament to understand why this legislation could represent a threat to legal abortions in the country.

The United States is already experiencing a wave of anti-women and anti-gay legislation as a result of a Supreme Court ruling that put legal abortions at risk in parts of their country.

Canadian pundits said this could not happen here, but another item in the news last week paints a different picture.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith named her cabinet, including a health minister with a strong bias against legal abortions. Adriana LaGrange served as education minister in the United Conservative Party government of former premier Jason Kenney. In that role, she presided over one of the largest public sector cuts in Alberta history, firing 20,000 educational assistants, substitute teachers, bus drivers and maintenance staff.

With LaGrange at the helm and Smith’s well-documented ruminations on private medicine, it likely won’t be too long before the new government moves to start charging for more health services.

Even more concerning is the minister’s opposition to legal abortion in the province. Her maiden speech in the Alberta legislature four years ago was entitled, “The lord leads me where he needs me.”

While she was a school trustee, LaGrange served on the provincial board of Alberta Pro-Life. In her first provincial election, she was backed by RightNow, an activist anti-abortion organization.

As education minister, LaGrange introduced a controversial piece of legislation requiring parental notification when any student joined a gay-straight alliance club. The original protection from parental notification was designed to protect those students who could face danger if their parents became aware of their sexual orientation. Students were also denied the right to use the word ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ in describing after-school clubs, and administrators were permitted to keep their inclusivity policies secret.

If LaGrange was controversial in education, there is no reason to think she won’t repeat that history in health. Those who think that access to abortion is safe across the country need to face facts.

Wagantall in Saskatchewan and LaGrange in Alberta are only the tip of the iceberg. When the bill on pregnant women was introduced, the Conservative party was pretty much unanimous in support, starting with the leader.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he will not introduce legislation on abortion, but he has also stated that other members of his caucus are free to do so.

He is the only leader ambivalent about his support for the LGBTQ2S+ communities, refusing to attend Pride parades or showing visible support for those struggling with a wave of homophobia across the country.

With a raucous parliamentary session coming to close, Poilievre’s popularity continues to outstrip that of the governing Liberals.

Abacus Data released a poll last week in which 35 per cent of the respondents said they would vote Tory if an election were held today. That number had increased three percentage points since the previous month, while the Liberals were down two points at 28 per cent.

The appetite for electoral change is there and the Conservatives are the beneficiaries. Approximately 80 per cent of those polled said it is time for a change in government.

Polls move, and most would agree that both Poilievre and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are stellar campaigners. The fight may come right down to the wire in a tight election in 2025 (or whenever it happens).

If there is a Conservative majority win, do not be surprised if limitations on women’s reproductive rights and rights for those in the gay community resurface.

Premier Smith did not hide her intention to move toward health privatization.

Her party has many abortion opponents sitting in the legislature. A key one is now occupying the health minister’s chair.

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

Hopefully, Quebecers will not fall for this blatant attempt to rewrite history.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on November 2, 2020.

OTTAWA—October is a huge month in Quebec history.

It has been a half century since the October Crisis, which saw a deputy premier murdered and a diplomat kidnapped by the Front de libération du Québec.

It has been a quarter century since the referendum which took Quebec to the brink of a divorce from the rest of the country. Historians and filmmakers are busy interpreting both those events through today’s lens.

It is not surprising that the Bloc Québécois is also trying to influence the narrative 50 years after the fact tabling a resolution calling for the House to “demand an official apology from the prime minister on behalf of the government of Canada for the enactment, on Oct. 16, 1970, of the War Measures Act and the use of the army against Quebec’s civilian population to arbitrarily arrest, detain without charge and intimidate nearly 500 innocent (Quebecers).”

The resolution was handily defeated Thursday, but it served the Bloc’s purpose. The debate gave the party an opportunity to cast the separatists in the victim role, victimization at the hands of the bully Canada, the behemoth that is responsible for all harm to the Quebec nation.

What the resolution fails to mention, and what separatists would like everyone to simply forget, is that the request for the army to intervene actually came from the City of Montreal and the Quebec government of the day.

It also fails to capture the feeling of fear that gripped the province when FLQ cells were working to plant mail bombs that killed several people and culminated in an explosion at the Montreal stock exchange that injured 28 people.

Instead, “You cannot pretend to be deeply in love with Quebec without respecting this desire of Quebecers to receive some apologies from Her Majesty’s government,” was the explanation given by Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet in defence of the motion.

Two elements of his statement bear analysis. First, his claim that it was the “desire of Quebecers” to receive apologi(es) plural.

The Bloc is usually very successful in portraying its views as the gold standard for the thinking of all Quebecers. But in this day of pandemics, I doubt very much that revisionist history is the primary preoccupation of the people.

Second is the reference to “Her Majesty’s government.” Last time I looked the Canadian government was led by a Quebecer who lives in Quebec, not England. But the reference to the Queen is just one more attempt by separatists to convince Quebecers that their destiny is still in the hands of the bloody English.

The same time the Bloc was debating its motion in Parliament, the son of one of the terrorists got sympathetic full-page coverage in The Globe and Mail covering a documentary he made about his “gentle” father Paul Rose.

According to Rose’s son, his killer instinct sprung from living in acute poverty while English-speaking neighbours were all living high off the hog. The story of Rose’s upbringing could just as easily have been the story of prime minister Jean Chrétien, who grew up in a family of 15 on the wrong side of the hill in Shawinigan.

Yet Chrétien turned those early years into leadership and did not set up a terrorist cell with the intention to inflict mayhem on anglos. My own father grew up in abject poverty in northern Ontario, complete with rickets, a bone disease caused by malnutrition. As a child in Hamilton, on my way to Catholic school I was spit on, beat up and called “cat licker” on a daily basis. But that experience made me believe more strongly in the power of diversity.

The Rose documentary views the FLQ from the sympathetic eye of a son. But there is zero recognition of the pain of Pierre Laporte’s family. That does not fit the narrative.

Fifty years ago, Quebec was a very different place, francophones were treated as second-class citizens in their own homes. The same could be said for other minorities in many parts of the country. Witness the shameful treatment of gays and lesbians in that period and later.

Now the same spurned citizens have been premiers and prime ministers.

The country has changed, and we do a disservice to history by rehashing one-sided old grievances.

The wedge politics strategy in the Bloc strategy is self-evident. But, as we have witnessed south of the border, wedge politics can work.

Hopefully, Quebecers will not fall for this blatant attempt to rewrite history.

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

The debate about that strategy could well decide the next election.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on May 18, 2020.

OTTAWA—The prime minister’s admission that we are not doing well by our most vulnerable seniors should come as no surprise.

In reality, we live in a culture obsessed with the fountain of youth.

Media messaging is mostly about how to look young, stay young, be young.

Face creams and rejuvenating emollients do not target older women, they seek to influence the buying power of 20-year-olds.

The spike in plastic surgery and Botox enhancement procedures amongst young people is a direct result of the value we place on the superficiality of looking young.

Trendsetters include the Kardashians whose only claim to fame appears to be what they can wear and who they can sell it to.

Just try getting a job when you reach middle age. At the ripe old age of 50, it is not uncommon to lose your job, whether on a shrinking assembly line or because of a business failure or sale.

It matters little that you might have multiple years of experience in your field. Experience is generally not considered an asset. Employers want younger people whose wage rates are lower.

The survival of many companies actually depends on hiring less experienced people at reduced wage rates.

Just look at the pay differentials between an employee of Air Canada and Tango.

When I left politics at the ripe old age of 52, I was headhunted by a number of potential employers but in the final analysis my advanced age was a factor in their decision to go elsewhere.

Ageism is not only alive and well in the workforce, it is particularly prevalent in politics.

This is the only area where the more experience you get, the more people want to get rid of you.

When Justin Trudeau was elected in the sweep of 2015, the majority of his caucus and cabinet were under the age of 45. There were a few experienced ministers, like Lawrence MacAulay, Ralph Goodale, and Carolyn Bennett. But the general feeling amongst most Liberals was that the Prime Minister’s Office preferred to work with those who had little political experience, but met the age demographic.

After all, having an attractive young minister in front of the camera looks good for the party and the caucus.

The second term has brought more wisdom to the job, with ministers who are older and wiser by all accounts.

Some have learned on the job and other newer, but senior faces have been appointed in the last cabinet shuffle by a more wizened prime minister facing a minority government.

There is a nation-wide consensus about the problem. Something needs to be done to secure safe living accommodations for vulnerable people in long-term care. But consensus on the solution will be much harder to reach.

The Bloc Québécois has made it very clear, that it wants cash with no conditions.

The prime minister promises to respect the Constitution, which clearly designates the provinces as responsible for delivery of care but determines it is a shared responsibility.

Of all the provinces, COVID containment in long-term care facilities in Quebec has been the least successful. The number of deaths there is almost equal to all deaths in the rest of the country.

According to an article in The Globe and Mail, as of May 7, 2,114 of the 2,631 Quebecers who died of COVID-19 lived in an elder-care facility. That’s nearly twice as many as in Ontario, where 1,111 long-term care residents died. In addition, Quebec’s health-care system is missing 11,600 workers who are either sick, quarantined, or unwilling to show up.

So, the notion being floated by the Bloc Québécois that Ottawa should hand over money with no strings attached is a non-starter.

Almost 40 years ago, the Canada Health Act solidified the role of the federal government in establishing standards for institutional hospitalization.

That move is a model that could be considered in any attempt to reform the patchwork of care standards currently in place across the country.

The New Democratic Party proposition to shut down all private nursing homes is completely unworkable.

There are thousands of Canadians living in non-contaminated circumstances in homes across the country and the Canadian government cannot afford to nationalize their living quarters.

The fact that NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is promoting nationalization is proof that his party’s last-place status is not about to change any time soon.

We need a national strategy to restore confidence in long-term care.

The debate about that strategy could well decide 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.