Artists who are out on the streets once again because of COVID lockdowns are lobbying furiously for a return to a full Canadian Emergency Response Benefit for their sector.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on January 6, 2022.

OTTAWA—Musical blockbuster Come From Away has already been seen by a million Canadians.

But if you missed the Canadian performance in Toronto, you won’t be able to see it in this country again.

The story of how the people of Newfoundland opened their hearts to passengers stranded by the downing of the World Trade Centre is reverberating around the world.

It is the most successful Canadian musical ever produced and has prompted a domestic theatre renaissance that has already spawned more live theatre offerings for the globe.

The numbers published by David Mirvish when he announced the shuttering over the Christmas week were indeed impressive.

The press release cited box office sales of $115-million, including over $15-million in HST.

Mirvish estimated the economic impact on the Toronto economy at $920-million.

Mirvish pointed a finger directly at government, “in other parts of the world, the government has stepped up to support the commercial theatre sector by offering a financial safety net for the sector to reopen and play during the pandemic, thus protecting the tens of thousands of good jobs the sector creates. That is the case in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia—where productions of Come From Away continue.”

But in Canada there is no such government support.

Mirvish’s holiday announcement provoked shock waves in Canada’s artistic community.

New Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has been working feverishly to find a solution to the dilemma.

And artists who are out on the streets once again because of COVID lockdowns are lobbying furiously for a return to a full Canadian Emergency Response Benefit for their sector.

With all the theatres shuttered, it is impossible for the thousands of people who depend on live performance for their livelihoods to even feed their families.

Canada Council for the Arts CEO Simon Brault has emerged as a champion for those artists.

He has been working with unions representing the arts community trying to figure out the best solutions for support in these trying times.

But the question begs. If the city of Toronto garners almost a billion dollars in economic benefits from live performances, why are the arts treated like an afterthought in Canada’s COVID business support model?

For some reason, if you are manufacturing autos or pumping oil, your jobs are worth the full attention of governments.

If you are artists, bringing joy, perspective and global reach to the Canadian story, you are left picking up the scraps.

And it was always thus.

For some bizarre reason, commercial success in cultural industries has generally disqualified creators from government support.

There are government incentives and subsidies for book publishers, media content creators and community not-for-profit operations. But live commercial productions are generally left to their own devices as they are profit-making enterprises. However, governments help lots of industries in the name of economic development. Why exclude the cultural industries?

On the Hill, there is much discussion about how to turn this around. Not much is happening at Queens’s Park either even though the provincial capital is by far the largest beneficiary of commercial entertainment investment.

Some are discussing possible tax credits, which kickstarted a robust growth in Canadian film opportunities back in the nineties.

The tax credit introduced then has been replicated around the world, and it has been one of the best models for media content creation on the globe.

That credit was introduced by the Department of Finance, in tandem with Heritage, which begs the question. Where is Toronto-based Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland in this picture?

The cut to the CERB may have made some debt hawks on Bay Street happy. But it has devastated the creative sector, who continue to lobby for direct support for unemployed artists locked out of their places of employment by pandemic fiats.

Where, too, is the Department of Industry in this quest for solutions?

Francois-Philippe Champagne’s ministerial title is minister of innovation, science and industry. Surely the world of entertainment is built on innovation.

Before Come From Away, there was no real hope of developing a domestic theatre industry equivalent to London’s west end or Broadway.

But this magical story got Canada’s foot in the door for the creation of a whole new innovative industry, live theatre that actually makes money and entertains.

The brains behind innovation in Canada need to get together and find a solution to this gaping hole in public policy. All hands need to be on deck, including the prime minister’s office.

Come From Away should not have Gone Away.

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.

Andrew Scheer is leaving, so he won’t have to answer in the next election to the claim that he considers Canadian workers lazy.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on May 11, 2020.

OTTAWA—Andrew Scheer is sounding more and more like Stephen Harper.

Who could forget former prime minister Harper’s claim that Atlantic Canadians were suffering from “a culture of defeat”?

Harper claimed his comments were misrepresented and what he was trying to say was that Atlantic Canadians were subject to Ottawa’s culture of defeat, “I’ve never ever suggested that the people of this region are responsible for the region’s have-not status.

“There is a policy culture of defeat at the federal level and that’s what we want to change,” he told a business group during a pre-election tour.

But Atlantic Canadians did not forget those comments, and for the last few elections, the party has been struggling to overcome that backlash.

During the Justin Trudeau sweep of 2015, Liberals managed to pick up all the seats in Atlantic Canada, including some that had never voted Liberal in the history of the country.

If the Conservatives have any hope of forming government, they need to attract voters in the region.

They also need to reach out to ordinary people. Andrew Scheer’s comment last week that the federal government’s programs were derailing provincial efforts to get people back to work will not help.

For most Canadians, federal benefits have been a lifeline in a worldwide crisis that has no precedent.

It is not as if Canadians quit their jobs of their own accord, and there certainly is no new job waiting for them to fill.

In most instances, when there is a reluctance to return to work, it is based on unsafe working conditions.

Canadian farmers have petitioned the government to approve temporary worker applications because the back-breaking work involved in planting and harvesting is not compensated commensurate to the workload.

A minimum wage farming job is attractive to a Mexican migrant who makes one-tenth of that in his home country. It is not attractive to a Canadian who can usually work at a much less physically demanding job for more money.

The same holds true for workers in meat factories. The person who died at the Cargill plant near High River, Alta., was a 67-year-old Vietnamese boat person. Her family came to Canada as refugees, and with little English, her work options were limited.

According to her husband, she enjoyed the work at Cargill, where she and more than 900 other employees contracted the COVID virus while on the assembly line.

More than half the plant employees were infected, forcing a plant closure which is choking off the country’s beef supply. That single factory is responsible for 40 per cent of Western Canada’s beef production.

Governments moved in quickly to investigate and secure the food supply, as even the Golden Arches were claiming they had to source their 100 per cent Canadian beef elsewhere.

Given the precarious situation of the Alberta economy, it is obvious that an indefinite shuttering would not work.

However, how would most Canadians react if they were asked to return to work within two weeks to a factory that had seen 949 employees infected with the COVID virus?

As a workplace, Cargill is a magnet for immigrant, unskilled labourers who don’t need to speak English or French to work on an assembly line.

It is also a place where union/management disputes and difficult working conditions make it a less than attractive proposition for many Canadian workers.

So, when Scheer says Canadians don’t want to go back to work because they are receiving federal government benefits that are too generous, he is simply feeding a stereotype that has no basis in fact and is politically untenable.

Scheer is leaving, so he won’t have to answer in the next election to the claim that he considers Canadian workers lazy.

That explanation will be left to his successor, whomever that might be. But the anti-worker stigma that he and his predecessor have inflicted on the party the party will be very hard to shake.

And when it comes to election time, workers make up a very important part of the population.

The so-called 905-belt soccer moms whose votes can swing an election are often working at low-paying jobs in the transportation industry, at the Toronto International Airport and in other low-paid hotel employment where fluency and literacy in English is not required.

They are also the ones who are employed as personal service workers, in the jobs that we all now recognize as life-saving and life-threatening.

These are the people who really need to work. And right now, they need help, not insults.

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