Lionizing illegal occupiers has nothing to do with freedom. Instead, it is an attempt to overthrow the social compact that Canada was built on.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on July 4, 2022.

OTTAWA—Freedom obviously means different things to different people.

In some parts of the world, freedom is survival.

If you don’t have access to food or water, how can you worry about anything more than securing the basics of life?

If you are a woman in some countries, you do not even have the right to leave home unless accompanied by a male member of your family. Absurd though it may be, your son may actually have the authority to keep you locked inside.

If you are a girl in Afghanistan, you don’t have the right to an education. Even if your family could afford to send you, schools are verboten for those who have been born with a vagina.

If you are not a straight male, there are many places in the world where you could be imprisoned or even killed simply for loving someone.

You are not free to be who you are, but must either hide your sexual orientation or simply bury your sexuality to be free.

In some countries, there is no freedom.

But that is not the case in Canada. And as we celebrated our national holiday on July 1, it is time to start calling out those fakers who claim they are fighting for freedom in our country.

Can you imagine any other country in the world where you are so free you can park a bouncy castle in front of Parliament for weeks, paralyzing the operations of government, without being arrested?

Threatening judges and disobeying court orders is common amongst those who claim they are fighting for our freedoms.

Our “freedoms” involve infecting others with variants of COVID simply because they refuse to embrace the reality that vaccines make us all safer.

Why would any political party want to associate themselves with a bunch of fake freedom fighters whose main claim to fame is an illegal occupation of Canada’s capital?

Last week, interim Conservative leader Candice Bergen authorized all caucus members to meet with these fakers, in the name of democracy. She told CTV “I support peaceful and legal demonstrations, and if my MPs want to be there, they’re free to do whatever they want and they’ll answer to their constituents.”

Conservatives are currently battling with the People’s Party of Canada for the favour of those illegal occupiers who continue to display their disdain for the very system they claim to support.

Illegal convoy organizer Tamara Lich was released from prison in March after she agreed to bail conditions which prevented her from inciting another illegal occupation.

Instead, her lawyer confirmed she was arrested last week in Medicine Hat, Alta., for allegedly violating bail conditions. Meanwhile, political parties battle to share the spotlight with Lich.

“This is disgusting,” tweeted Maxime Bernier, leader of the People’s Party of Canada. “Tamara Lich is a political prisoner and the Liberal regime is persecuting her like all authoritarian regimes do with dissidents. We will continue to support this courageous woman.”

Meanwhile, one judge involved in convoy prosecutions is alleging claims of harassment, intimidation, and even death threats.

In an interview with Radio Canada under concealed identity, the judge said multiple threats forced them to change the locks on their home, vary their daily path to work and consider moving their children out of the family residence.

This is harassment and intimidation from a group that claims to be fighting for freedom. The fact that any of these illegal protest organizers could be characterized as political prisoners illustrates just how bizarre our political narrative has become.

Even more strange is the fact that any legitimate political party would want to be associated with this group of twisted malcontents.

Conservative front-runner Pierre Poilievre constantly peppers his speeches with references to freedoms, underscoring that his political goal is to give liberty back to Canadians.

There may be many challenges facing our country, including the bite taken out of our wallets by rising inflation, but it is pretty hard to absorb the notion that we live in a country replete with political prisoners.

That claim has zero credibility.

As we celebrated our real freedoms on Canada Day last week, let’s not fall into the trap of legitimizing the goal of those who use illegal means to make their message heard.

Shutting down communities, blocking roads with bouncy castles and hot tubs, lionizing illegal occupiers has nothing to do with freedom.

Instead, it is an attempt to overthrow the social compact that Canada was built on.

Living in society comes with collective responsibilities.

Happy and Free 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 for the Liberals, as people’s fear of COVID diminishes, their support for the government’s get-tough approach will fade away.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on February 14, 2022.

OTTAWA—Conservative interim leader Candice Bergen may have her way after all.

With Liberals breaking ranks with the government on vaccination mandates, all eyes are on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

And as the days pass with no solution in sight, what was a small Canadian story has become a global phenom.

Everywhere you look, from The New York Times to the BBC and beyond, all eyes are on Canada to see how we will handle the occupation of the nation’s capital.

The soft approach applied to the first two weeks of the standoff does not seem to be working.

Finally, police are planning to move in with arrests if the truckers do not clear the area of the Parliamentary Precinct.

But the success of the convoy in gathering world attention has also led to plans in other countries for similar blockades.

In addition, there is a lot of confusion over what the actual intent of the convoy organizers really is.

I have a dear friend who is an anti-vaxxer and she has been joining the group every day in sub-zero weather to protest what she characterizes as a communist-like grab by the government to force people to do things they don’t want to do.

She should know from whence she speaks as she and her husband fled communist Hungary and arrived in Canada with a baby and three dollars.

They built a wonderful life and became great contributors to Canada but she feels as though the last two years have ruined her life. Because she is not vaccinated, she has been unable to play sports and her lifelong love of tennis has been put on hold.

Many of her friends have tried to convince her about the safety of the vaccine, including scientific findings from international bodies like the World Health Organization and the American Centre for Disease Control. But to no avail.

Likewise, we have tried to point out to her that the convoy she is supporting is rife with anarchists and racists, who are using the pandemic fear as a way of promoting their racist messages of hate.

She does not care, because she feels as though this is the only way of getting her voice heard.

Of course, she is in the minority, as the vast majority of Canadians have already gotten their second dose of the vaccine. But no amount of cajoling, convincing, concern or coaxing will cause her to change her mind.

And unlike the rest of us, she is likely to make future political decisions strictly based on the vaccine issue.

So even though the vast majority of Canadians oppose the blockade and support the government’s vaccine mandate, they will likely not be voting on that issue in the next election.

However, the small minority of anti-vaxers who are supporting the blockade will likely cast their vote specifically for the only party that has opposed vaccine mandates, the Conservative party.

That gives the Tories a solid 10 per cent. That does not look like a big number but these people are zealous in their beliefs and will add money and manpower to the Conservative campaign effort across the country.

Liberal Joël Lightbound added fuel to Conservative fires when he came out against the government’s vaccine mandate and he was joined by Quebec colleague Yves Robillard in claiming that Liberals were politicizing the issue.

Government spokespeople denied the claim, saying they were simply following the science, but there is no doubt that the election schism on mandatory vaccines was key to the Liberal victory.

Although the Grits limped across the finish line, wavering members of the public decided to stick with the governing party because they supported the message that all Canadians should be vaccinated.

Recalcitrant Liberals like Lightbound and Robillard should understand that the vaccination question is a de facto political choice.

But at the end of the day, the supporters of mandated vaccines will move on to other election issues while those who oppose vaccinations will carry their beliefs with them to the grave.

As for the Liberals, as people’s fear of COVID diminishes, their support for the government’s get-tough approach will fade away.

Three premiers have already broken with their counterparts on ending the mandate, and others are making similar promises.

COVID is something we all have to learn to live with. Those who have protected ourselves by multiple vaccinations have already experienced newfound freedoms.

The unvaccinated are pretty much prisoners of their own personal bad choices.

But they don’t see it that way.

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 Conservatives would ever like to see another PM among their ranks, they need to understand the road to victory involves reaching out to 37 million people, not 73 caucus members.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on February 7, 2022.

OTTAWA—Seventy-three people were able to vote out a leader who was chosen by 100,000 Conservatives. This is democracy?

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole’s departure was as hasty as it was dramatic. And in a touch of irony, the author of the private member’s bill that prompted O’Toole’s demise was one of the few people fighting for the leader to stay.

Michael Chong introduced his private member’s bill, designed to give more power to individual parliamentarians, in 2013. Everyone lined up in favour of the legislation in the belief that empowering members would lead to better leadership.

But in a bizarre twist for this strange law, each party is allowed to opt in to the system, or not, at the beginning of each Parliament.

Not surprisingly, the Conservative party was the only one dumb enough to sign on to a piece of legislation which is guaranteed to create chaos for any opposition leader.

The Conservatives have cycled through six leaders in six years, and O’Toole took them closest to power. His popular vote victory didn’t help much because so much of the weight in numbers came from provinces that could never yield a majority.

And O’Toole failed to make a breakthrough in two key provinces that are crucial for election victory, Ontario and Quebec.

O’Toole, an Ontario member, understood that the failure to make sufficient gains in that province was based on the extreme viewpoints taken by many of his team on social issues like abortion.

After the election, he moved quickly to reposition the party by supporting legislation banning gender therapy conversion in the first session of Parliament.

As for the Quebec vote, his Conservative caucus in that province was verbally supporting the legislation on Broadcasting Act amendments at the same time that Tory fundraisers were out trashing the legislation to buck up their coffers.

The bifurcation in the party was not caused by O’Toole. It was prompted by a party schism that has only been exacerbated because of his departure.

Deputy leader Candice Bergen, who enjoyed coffee with the truckers while the occupation of Ottawa’s downtown core was underway, is a well-known opponent of a woman’s right to control her own body.

It was no accident that she was the only leader to neglect to thank O’Toole in the House of Commons for his work as a four-term parliamentarian, until reminded by the prime minister.

Bergen is part of the right wing of O’Toole’s party who will guarantee that they lose the next election because of their refusal to embrace political moderation.

In the hours following O’Toole’s departure, most blame was aimed at the leader’s inability to manage the caucus and to keep people happy.

Negative comparisons were made with previous leaders like prime minister Brian Mulroney who managed to keep his troops onside even when his own popularity numbers were dipping into the teens.

But that comparison is not a valid one. Mulroney was operating from the prime minister’s chair, first among equals. And with that job comes many opportunities to reward and punish internally.

Mulroney also did not face the crazy Chong legislation that could hit any leader on a bad day. The ousters were working for weeks to collect the requisite number of 35 signatures to trigger a caucus vote.

One of them, Pierre Poilievre, is already being touted as a front-runner to replace O’Toole. He is squarely in the camp of the “stinking albatrosses” that former leadership candidate Peter MacKay characterized as the reason for the party’s failure to launch.

Unlike O’Toole, who embraced diversity in supporting the LGBTQ community, Poilievre actually once introduced a private member’s bill to ban health-care funding for transgender individuals, even though the issue is not federal jurisdiction. Other putative candidates include another social conservative, Leslyn Lewis.

But both of them will push the party further to the right.

Those 73 members who booted O’Toole out may not like his message. But upon his departure, he gave a speech which was a potential road map to victory.

The party could win by embracing diversity. The secret of success for leaders like Brian Mulroney was to embrace the Progressives in his party as well as the Conservatives.

As long as there is no place for progressive politics within the party, the Conservatives have zero chance of forming the government.

Instead of dumping O’Toole, the caucus should have heeded his message. Because the road to victory involves reaching out to 37 million people, not 73 caucus members.

Conservatives who are not progressive just won’t cut it.

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

Fiscal conservatism may be a Tory badge of honour, but Erin O’Toole’s challenge is to reach Canadians in the moderate middle.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on September 7, 2020.

OTTAWA—You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Erin O’Toole should have remembered that last week.

O’Toole has won the Conservative leadership. It is now his job to win the country. The decision to attack the Canada Emergency Response Benefit was downright dumb. It cast O’Toole in the image of a born-again tight Tory.

“Tory times are tough times” is a refrain that has haunted the party since forever. Fiscal conservatism may be a Tory badge of honour, but the O’Toole challenge is to reach beyond those members.

Most Canadians find themselves in the moderate middle. The current government has seen its popularity grow because of a robust financial response to an unprecedented pandemic. But in his first post-convention interview, O’Toole attacked the CERB, saying it undermined the employer wage subsidy program set up at the same time.

The amount of money paid out to unemployed Canadians was only $500 a week, but O’Toole felt it undermined employers who might have otherwise wanted to keep their employees on.

That interview reinforced the impression that the Conservative leader will be there for the money guys but not for ordinary citizens. How could he possibly attack a $500 a week payment that literally kept food on the table in millions of Canadian households during an unprecedented world pandemic?

The program was not perfect. But it was delivered in a timely fashion to a desperate nation.

The government is now considering a Guaranteed Annual Income to replace the panoply of support programs that currently litter the national and provincial landscapes. The conversation on a guaranteed income has been circulating in social policy circles for decades, but it took a real-life crisis to thrust the government into a temporary guaranteed income.

And It worked. With millions of Canadians applying for the benefit, computers did not crash, and benefits were distributed broadly and quickly. Why O’Toole would choose to attack that program in his first media interview demonstrates a clear lack of political antennae.

Much was written about his surprising victory against veteran Peter MacKay and many ascribed his win to political acumen. He certainly had the acumen to attract social Conservatives in his party, but that does not necessarily translate into a capacity to resonate with the general public.

His second move last week was the appointment of social conservative Candice Bergen as deputy leader. The photogenic Manitoba member was specifically tasked with tackling the issue of western alienation.

Bergen also happens to hail from the part of the party that he has to distance himself from if he has any intention of becoming prime minister. According to Campaign Life Coalition “Candice has a perfect voting record in the House of Commons on life & family issues.” That is code for the fact that every time she has had a chance to vote on abortion and gay rights issues, she has turned them down.

Notwithstanding her voting record, Bergen has spoken positively about LGBTQ rights, suggesting that she celebrates homosexuality, pansexuality and transgenderism. So, her viewpoint has been muddied by realpolitik. But the next Tory convention will undoubtedly face a push to approve the re-criminalization of abortion. And where will Bergen be on that issue?

Bergen’s appointment was also introduced as a way to reach out on the issue of Western alienation. With a former Tory Member of Parliament now running the Wexit Canada party, the Conservatives must guard their right flank. But the only way they can become government is by broadening their reach across the country.

O’Toole may have won the majority of Quebec votes in the leadership but his main opponent, Peter MacKay, had the support of most of the Members of Parliament.

That was because the social conservatism wave that rode O’Toole to victory is a non-starter in la belle province. O’Toole was smart enough to downplay his right-wing roots during the French debate. That was obviously enough to assuage his Quebec supporters. But an opening week focused on Western alienation and opposition to emergency COVID assistance is hardly a compelling appeal to Quebecers.

O’Toole’s mistakes were hardly fatal, but they do impart a flavour of just what kind of advice he must be getting. A Conservative spokesperson said he had incorporated some players from the MacKay team amongst his senior advisors. But he may not have been open to their advice. The “stinking albatross” comment may have cost MacKay his party’s leadership.

But the albatross in the O’Toole room is not going away any time soon.

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