Most confused Canadians received the payment with no explanation. If they already receive direct deposit payments, the climate bonus arrived with a simple annotation: Climate Action Incentive Plan. Talk about a missed opportunity.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on January 22, 2024.

OTTAWA—Last week, 80 per cent of Canadians found a new year’s bonus us in their bank accounts.

The surprise deposit came from a quarterly rebate which is part of the federal government’s pollution pricing program to tackle climate change.

The numbers are impressive.

According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, the average family of four in Alberta received $386, followed by Saskatchewan with $340, and Newfoundland and Labrador at $328.

Manitobans received $264, with Nova Scotia, Ontario and Prince Edward Island netting $248, $244 and $240 respectively. New Brunswickers received $184.

That was a quarterly, tax-free payment from the Climate Action Incentive Program destined to buffer the adjustment to the price on carbon prompted by an effort to reduce greenhouse gases.

Most confused Canadians received the payment without any explanation.

If they are already receiving direct deposit payments, the climate bonus arrived with a simple annotation: Climate Action Incentive Plan.

Talk about a missed communications’ opportunity. Most Canadians don’t have an idea what CAIP is. Somebody in government should have been able to come up with a sexier moniker to explain the new price on pollution.

A name like POP, price on pollution, would have served to refute the Conservative claim that this is a carbon tax.

Most Canadians don’t make money from a tax.

But the rollout was so quiet that many people were calling their banks to find out whether a mistaken deposit had been made.

The silent deposits were a missed moment to refute the narrative that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been peddling all year on his carbon tax.

He may be using unorthodox methods like YouTube videos and other social outreach measures, but compare that to the work of the government.

Why did nobody even write a letter to all climate action recipients explaining the basics of why they were getting the money, and how it would help them offset increased costs associated with the price on pollution?

The supply chain is facing hikes in transportation costs which ultimately get transferred to the consumer. Fuel, especially home heating, is also facing a hit.

But a payment that in some cases will amount to more than $1,500 a year should ease the pain. Poilievre has promised to cancel this payment should he form government.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau brought some new faces into cabinet last fall, with the specific aim of upping the communications game.

He also brought in a new director of communications, which some saw as a signal that he was finally going to get serious in combatting the Conservative storyline.

Some new faces have been very successful in getting out their individual messages, but when a government is floundering in the polls, ministerial announcements simply won’t be enough to turn the tide.

Instead, the government needs to invest real cash in explaining to Canadians what is at stake.

We have a planet that is burning itself up by the use of fossil fuels, and governments around the world are working to try to reduce carbon consumption.

A price on pollution is the way that the Canadian government has chosen in an effort to move the dial toward carbon reduction.

The quarterly rebate is an attempt to protect more vulnerable Canadians from the financial hit they could face because of pollution pricing.

Everyone needs to do their part, but getting a quarterly cheque from the government is not a bad political move.

If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears, did it really fall?

If a payment goes into your bank account with no explanation, did the government really send it?

The fact that people had no idea how this money ended up in their bank accounts is proof positive that the Liberal communications strategy needs an enema.

Either the government gets serious about using paid means, including major advertising and direct communication with each taxpayer, or the Liberals might as well cede the next election.

They have a great story to tell. But the old way of ministerial announcements is outdated and ineffective.

In the last century, when families received the baby bonus cheque to help with family expenses, the payment went directly to women and was clearly marked “Baby Bonus.”

Pretty hard to mistake that payment. That was a program that people still remember.

Now is the time to POP the question. Are Canadians ready to help in the battle to put a Price on Pollution?

The answer is yes. But the question has not even been asked.

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 July 31, 2023.

OTTAWA—Justin Trudeau has rolled the dice.

Last week’s massive cabinet shuffle makes one thing certain: the prime minister plans to lead the Liberal Party into the next election.

The ballot question he is aiming for is the economy, and Trudeau is banking on enough political runway to convince Canadians that the best masters of the economy are already in the job.

The shuffle is a not-so-tacit admission that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is hitting the mark when he travels the country on his so-called “Axe the Tax” tour.

It matters little that the majority of Canadians are actually getting money back because of the way the carbon tax remittance has been structured. Canadians are reeling from rising prices and the hike in national interest rates. Global issues may be responsible for the cash crunch, as Trudeau mentioned during his press conference lauding the new cabinet team. But all politics is local.

Polls show that local politics right now is hitting the Liberals hard. On the same day as Trudeau announced the massive change in cabinet, Abacus Data released a poll showing the Conservatives were 10 points ahead of the Liberals. Pollara put out a poll earlier in the month claiming the Tories were 12 points ahead among Indigenous voters.

Trendlines are clear. Tories are climbing and the Liberals are lagging. The shuffle is supposed to staunch the political bloodletting.

Highlights included the appointment of Arif Virani, Canada’s first Muslim attorney general and Rechi Valdez the first Filipina woman in a Canadian cabinet. Original reports cited the appointment of a first Filipino, but that was amended, as the first Filipino member of cabinet was Rey Pagtakhan in the cabinet of Jean Chrétien.

The demographic changes to cabinet are pretty clear evidence that the shuffle is intended to launch an election team. As well as specific nominations in the Muslim and Filipino community, the prime minister also named a Tamil Canadian as minister responsible for Crown-Indigenous relations.

Gary Anandasangaree will have big shoes to fill because outgoing minister Marc Miller developed an excellent relationship with Indigenous communities, as both portfolios he has held in the past eight years involved work with those communities. Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu has regional experience with Indigenous peoples because of her home riding in Thunder Bay-Superior North, Ont.

Anandasangaree is a risky choice because his urban Scarborough background is not exactly a hotbed of Indigenous politics. However, he has a reputation as being accessible and active, and worked on an Indigenous consultation process for the Rouge National Urban Park.

He wouldn’t be the first minister to build a relationship with Indigenous peoples from scratch. But the popularity of Miller and Hajdu were undeniable, and, given the government’s commitment to reconciliation, the decision to make a change is potentially tricky.

The Trudeau inner circle of cabinet makers must be banking on the fact that these new appointments will buttress the party in areas of the country where they will be in pitched battles with the Conservatives. Suburban GTA ridings are always a dogfight, so the appointments of Anandasangaree and Valdez could have an impact on potentially tight races.

Trudeau is also trying to change the “change” message. With three terms under his belt, the prime minister is well known to the public and somewhat shopworn.

As my mother taught me, politics is the only job where the more experience you get, the more people want to get rid of you, and in three terms, you make enemies who want you out.

The change narrative is the movement when governments are voted out. It doesn’t matter what kind of a job they have done; their political time is up. In most instances, people vote governments out, they do not vote opposition parties in.

A new government is given the benefit of the doubt. The thinking is, with this sizeable change in positions, there is an element of newness surrounding the team. While that is true, there is no element of newness in the leader.

Trudeau is obviously banking on the fact the surly side of the Conservative leader will convince enough voters that Poilievre is not the right person to lead the country. While Trudeau may no longer be loved by all, his opponent has never been loved by many.

If the ballot question is the economy, the prime minister stands a fighting chance of re-election. If the question remains a need for change, his bold cabinet move won’t mean much at the ballot box.

This past week, the next election got started.

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

If Erin O’Toole really wants to appeal to non-traditional Conservatives, he will have to cut ties with social conservatives and the far right.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on August 31, 2020.

OTTAWA—It would be a mistake to underestimate the electability of Erin O’Toole.

He has many things going for him, the first of which is that he is a relative unknown. These days, the shelf-life of a politician is generally one election. It used to be that if you were doing a decent job, voters might keep you around for a second term.

The longevity of a local politician is still in the double digits. Just ask Ottawa mayor Jim Watson how many ministers on the federal and provincial level that he has outlived. But party politics is one place where the more experience you get, the more people want to get rid of you.

Just look at how many people rabidly despised Hillary Clinton, even though she had more experience than any other candidate at the national and international level. She wore her husband’s warts, and then some.

Clinton was also suffering from the same swathe of sexism that came to the fore when Chrystia Freeland was recently named finance minister. Multiple journalists attacked Freeland’s lack of financial credentials. These same journalists never questioned the bona fides of lawyers cum finance ministers, like Jim Flaherty and Ralph Goodale. Freeland, like ministerial colleague Catherine McKenna, was dished up a particularly vitriolic dose of misogyny.

O’Toole has a chance to shape his brand, and in his early morning victory speech last week, he hit all the right buttons. He spoke at length about how to broaden the party base and invite those who have never voted Conservative to join him. He outlined his support of the LGBTQ community and his opposition to reopening the abortion question.

But O’Toole will also have to stickhandle the demands within his own party, as the radical right gained strength and visibility during the Conservative leadership race.

Tory pundits were lauding the fact that a Black woman surpassed Peter MacKay’s support in all western provinces. They claimed that the support for Leslyn Lewis was testament to Tories’ openness to diversity.

Hogwash. Lewis was a stalking horse for the anti-choice movement, which continues to grow deep and strong roots in the Conservative party.

The fact that a candidate for leadership, who could not speak French, would get 20 per cent of the party’s vote on a first ballot is truly frightening. When you couple her party support with that of Derek Sloan, the pair of proudly evangelical politicians garnered 40 per cent of the Conservative Party’s 174,404 voters. That is scary.

Lewis is now being touted as a new leading light in her party. That blows up O’Toole’s shout-out to inclusivity on election night. Her leadership transcendence was driven by those who would like to turn back the clock on issues like abortion.

Sloan had a 12-point plan on the issue. His first commitment was to promise to work with party grassroots to revoke Conservative Party policy No. 70. That policy, slimly endorsed at their 2018 Halifax policy convention, states that “a Conservative government will not support any legislation to regulate abortion.”

Lewis was ranked No. 1 on the voter’s list recommended by the anti-choice group RightNow. Sloan was ranked second. O’Toole was ranked third, and MacKay came dead last.

RightNow describes itself as the political arm of the pro-life movement and promotes a mandate to work full-time to secure nominations and elections for candidates who oppose abortion. No surprise that Lewis was their chosen candidate.

Like Sloan, she does not support abortion and is opposed to a government ban on conversion therapy, a controversial practice to modify the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians.

MacKay, who ran behind Lewis in all western provinces on the first ballot, was directly attacked by her for claiming that social conservatism was like a “stinking albatross” around the neck of party in the last election.

At some point during the race, one-third of Tory voters cast a ballot for Lewis.

Lewis, who has four degrees including a master’s in environmental science, opposes the carbon tax. She also received support during the race from the gun lobby. She and Sloan both oppose Canada’s current immigration policy and Lewis promised to roll back legalization of marijuana.

If O’Toole elevates her to a senior party position, he will be playing right into the hands of RightNow, whose stated intention is to re-criminalize abortion.

During his victory speech, O’Toole promised to reach out to a broad coalition of Canadians. To do so, he needs to visibly cut ties with his own party’s radical right.

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

Timing is everything in politics. Four months ago, the election question would have been on trust, mistrust of the prime minister because of his handling of the SNC-Lavalin request for a deferred prosecution agreement. Not anymore.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on July 15, 2019.

OTTAWA—Timing is everything in politics.

And the lifespan of a political trajectory is about six months.

Bluntly put, if the cabinet exit by Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott had occurred this month, the Liberal election goose would have been cooked.

The government would have had too little time to turn around negative public reaction to the loss of two high-profile women ministers.

In the fullness of time, people forget about internal party feuds and bloodbaths. They make voting decisions based on the future. They also mark their ballot based on their own economic self-interest.

In the olden days, the Conservative carbon tax mantra would have carried that day. A hike in gas prices used to be the line that politicians crossed at their peril.

Back in 1979, the short-lived government of prime minister Joe Clark fell when finance minister John Crosbie introduced an 18-cent a gallon excise tax on gas.

His budget was voted down, and leaderless Liberals convinced prime minister Pierre Trudeau back from retirement to win another four-year mandate that ended in 1984.

The next politician who dared to tackle the issue of carbon pricing was Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, who launched a bold election platform called the Green Shift, less than four months before the 2008 election.

Conservatives attacked the plan with the same vehemence they are now reserving for the current Liberal carbon-pricing plan.

Pre-election Conservative advertising was effective in caricaturing Dion’s geeky leadership style and Stephen Harper eked out a minority government.

But that election also saw the edges starting to fray around the Conservative anti-environmental message.

Jack Layton’s orange crush fell short of lapping the Liberals, but the New Democratic leader’s surge deprived the Conservatives of a majority.

More than a decade later, the sides on this environmental fight have not changed much. But the population has.

Multiple examples of extreme climate change have convinced Canadians that the warming of the planet is real, and caused by human activity.

Spring flooding gripped Eastern Canada this spring and the ongoing risk is so great that the Insurance Bureau of Canada is calling for an integration of flood planning into the National Emergency Plan. The bureau is recommending government support for homes in flood-prone zones to be raised or relocated. The bureau is also proposing a change in land use planning rules to ban all construction projects on identified flood plains.

Summer fire evacuations are becoming the norm. Just last week roughly 4,350 residents from two northern Ontario communities, Pikangikum First Nation and Keewayin, were airlifted to safety. That follows similar evacuations this year in British Columbia, Alberta, and Manitoba.

People can’t forget the most destructive wildfire in Alberta’s history, which displaced 88,000 people and razed the town of Fort McMurray.

More than a decade ago, these predicted catastrophic events had not become the norm.

Now, even the most hardened anti-environmentalist is usually not a climate change denier, at least not in Canada.

Canadians understand that while there is certainly a cost in pricing carbon, there is also a bigger cost in doing nothing.

A study released last week by EnviroEconomics and Canadians for Clean Prosperity says the Conservative climate plan would reverse Canada’s greenhouse gas reductions and cost the average household $295 in provinces where the federal government is backstopping the provincial refusal to price carbon.

Tories are banking on the fact that, according to a recent CBC poll, most Canadians do not want to be personally out-of-pocket more than $100 to fight climate change.

But the more Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer aligns himself with provincial leaders like Jason Kenney and Doug Ford, the more his party’s numbers are dropping in the polls. Liberal numbers are on the rise.

Kenney cannot lose in Alberta by playing to his base, but he risks losing the rest of the country. His recent decision to hold McCarthyesque hearings into foreign environmental influences, coupled with the multiple unsuccessful carbon pricing court challenges, have caught people’s attention and not in a good way.

The general consensus is that the Liberal government has a serious plan to price carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Critics on the left say the government is doing too little too late.

Four months ago, the election question would have been on trust, mistrust of the prime minister because of his handling of the SNC-Lavalin request for a deferred prosecution agreement.

Now the composition of the next Parliament will depend on how much Canadians are willing to nurture the health of our ailing planet.

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

But by refusing to put a price on his plan, and by assuming that technology alone will bridge the carbon gap, Andrew Scheer’s plan runs counter to advice from environmentalists and economists.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on June 24, 2019.

OTTAWA—Global warming followers may be flummoxed by the differences in party positions on climate change action plans.

Andrew Scheer’s announcement last week was long on photos and short on specifics.

He characterized his plan as the most anticipated policy announcement of an opposition leader in the history of the country.

Scheer framed his work in the context of Conservative prime ministers who came before him, from Sir John A. Macdonald to Brian Mulroney.

Our first prime minister established Canada’s first national park back in 1885. Brian Mulroney was recognized as Canada’s greenest prime minister, launching the $3-billion Green Plan in 1990 in the lead-up to the Rio Earth Summit. This was the first-ever gathering of world leaders on environmental issues.

Since the 1992 United Nations summit, multiple international meetings have tackled climate questions.

Then environment minister Angela Merkel chaired the first United Nations Climate Conference in 1995. Berlin set the stage for the Kyoto Accord, which paved the way for the Paris targets.

Canadians can be forgiven for being confused. After almost 30 years, our carbon footprint is still growing.

Scheer says his plan will change that. He cited multiple Progressive Conservative leaders to buttress his claim that environmental protection was a core Conservative principle.

But one prime minister’s name was glaringly absent from the list, that of Stephen Harper.

Progressive Tory predecessors believed that governments could lead in climate solutions. But when Andrew Scheer and his boss split from progressives to create the Reform Party, environmental interests were also dismissed.

In his time Mulroney signed the Canada-United States Air Quality Agreement with his American counterpart, George W. Bush.

That treaty committed both governments to legislating solutions for the reduction of acid rain. The agreement also annexed a chapter on ozone depletion, pricing ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons that were used as cheap coolants for refrigeration.

Both governments committed to costing pollution, because that is the best way to get companies and citizens to tackle the current climate crisis.

Scheer’s predecessor was not mentioned because in the legacy of green Conservative prime ministers, he is not one of them.

One of Harper’s moves was to eliminate many environmental initiatives, including government funding for homeowners and businesses to retrofit for energy efficiencies.

The cancelled retrofit program was recycled last week in Scheer’s announcement.

Scheer also promised to regulate heavy industrial polluters, forcing them to reinvest in environmental solutions when emissions exceed 40 kilotonnes per year, a threshold 10 kilotonnes lower than the Liberal plan.

But Scheer does not explain how his government would oversee reported company investments. What would stop a company from simply passing off normal capital acquisitions as new technology investments?

By refusing to price pollution, the Tory plan also ignores the origin of one-quarter of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Transportation accounts for one-quarter of our country’s total emissions.

But the Scheer plan does not include any strategy directed to reducing carbon use in planes, trains and automobiles.

Instead, the leader of the opposition plans to follow in the footsteps of his cousin at Queen’s Park. Doug Ford’s first act was to cancel the pricing framework put in place by the previous Liberal provincial government. He also cancelled the planting of one million trees, designed to absorb carbon emissions.

Scheer says his solution will be based on technology, not taxes.

But economists agree that the single most effective way to change consumer behaviour is to properly include the price of pollution in any consumer purchasing decision.

From gasoline to automobile trends to housing footprints, people generally use price as a major factor in their spending decisions.

By putting a price on pollution, the Liberal plan would drive innovation and also encourage Canadians to change their habits.

At the end of the day, Canadians and companies will be moved by the key argument of their wallets.

If it costs them more to pollute, they will find ways to cut down on pollution. That means buying an electric vehicle, or using alternative methods of transportation like bus, rail and bicycle and ride sharing.

LED lighting pays for itself in reduced hydro bills and reduces carbon footprint.

By refusing to put a price on his plan, and by assuming that technology alone will bridge the carbon gap, Scheer’s plan runs counter to advice from environmentalists and economists.

The Liberal plan, while not perfect, will reduce our collective carbon footprint faster and more effectively.

The electoral choice is clear. Those Canadians who consider climate change the key campaign issue cannot vote Conservative.

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