The party that Peter MacKay built is not the party that will be voting on the leadership review next spring. Some left politics altogether (including MacKay), and some switched parties, like Scott Brison, André Bachand, and Bill Casey.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on November 4, 2019.

OTTAWA—Andrew Scheer has time on his side. Short time that is.

The Conservative Party is scheduled to review his leadership in less than six months.

When Joe Clark was under attack for his leadership, he personally set the bar very high. The youngest prime minister ever elected promised to step down if at least two-thirds of the Progressive Conservative Party membership did not support him.

He got the support of 66.9 per cent, missing his goal by less than 1 per cent. Clark stepped aside anyway and reoffered his leadership in a campaign which saw Brian Mulroney beat him.

Many are drawing comparisons to that race, with Peter MacKay as the foil for Scheer that Mulroney played with Clark.

But that was then, and this is now. Progressives have largely fled the party and MacKay is stuck with trying to convince current Conservatives that the party needs to veer to the left.

If the public had a vote, that shift would be a no-brainer, but this is a ballot within a political party, which is quite a different beast.

The decade-long leadership of Stephen Harper, followed by social conservative Andrew Scheer, have solidified the party’s role as guardian of the right. Scheer’s refusal to support gay rights, by marching in a parade, is not just a personal religious choice. It is a reflection of the political direction that won him the party leadership and will secure his position in the review.

The Progressive Conservative party that Peter MacKay merged with Harper’s Canadian Alliance back in 2003 does not exist anymore.

Except for a few pockets in Eastern Quebec, and Atlantic Canada, many current Tories likely support Scheer’s view that homosexuality and abortion should not be legitimized in equality legislation.

Throughout the campaign, Liberals were bombarded by media criticism for tying Scheer to the anti-abortion movement in past word and deed.

Scheer beat Maxime Bernier in a cliff-hanger leadership race on the 13th ballot by promising anti-abortionists that their private members’ bills could be introduced under his watch. During the leadership, he was captured on video telling the RightNow anti-abortion organization that he would not prevent private members from introducing anti-abortion bills and revealing that he has always opposed abortion in any House of Commons vote.

After the election, RightNow co-founder Alissa Golob said in a media interview that the total number of pro-lifers in the House of Commons has increased from 53 to at least 68 seats. RightNow plans to stay in politics for the long game, with the aim of taking over Canada’s mainstream Conservative movement by stacking nomination meetings and presumably leadership review votes.

The current Conservative mechanism for leadership review favours takeovers because the decision on who gets to vote for or against the leader falls to a delegated convention. That means each riding elects up to 10 representatives to attend the Toronto meeting and cast their leadership review ballots.

With anti-Scheer forces led by Peter MacKay, there will be a party showdown between former progressives and current Conservatives. Last week, MacKay was back-pedalling on his criticism of Scheer’s campaign strategy. After saying that gay and abortion rights issues “hung around Andrew Scheer’s neck like a stinking albatross,” MacKay declared his support for the leader less than 24 hours later.

However, behind the scenes progressives like MacKay will be trying to convince delegates that the party needs to move away from right-wing social ideology if it has any hope of forming the next government. But he may be facing a wall of social ideologues who were not a factor when MacKay and Harper convinced their supporters to merge two parties into one Conservative Party 16 years ago.

The party that MacKay built is not the party that will be voting on the leadership review next spring. Some left politics altogether (including MacKay), and some switched parties, like Scott Brison, André Bachand, and Bill Casey.

There is another operative truism in politics. The longer you have been around a party, the less work you do.

The up-and-comers in Parliament owe their victories to Scheer and will work hard to support the leader.

Losers will be busy trying to reinvent themselves, and may not have the energy or the appetite to mount strong local battles to unseat Scheer. In the end, the short time-frame, minority challenges and delegated convention all point to a Scheer victory next April.

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

I never was much of a tweeter until earlier this year, when another columnist accused me of taking my marching orders from the Prime Minister’s Office. The attacks were in the Twittersphere, so I decided to fight fire with fire. Like everyone, I am anxiously awaiting the Monday’s election outcome. And on Monday evening, I am taking a break from that vicious medium, Twitter.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on October 21, 2019.

OTTAWA—Goodbye Twitter! I can’t wait until this election is over.

Like everyone, I am anxiously awaiting the outcome. And on Monday evening, I am taking a break from that vicious medium.

I never was much of a tweeter until earlier this year, when another columnist accused me of taking my marching orders from the Prime Minister’s Office.

The attacks were in the Twittersphere, so I decided to fight fire with fire.

For weeks, the word war was abuzz with contradictory stories of SNC-Lavalin and former attorney general and justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould. My question at the time, still unanswered, was “why does Wilson-Raybould want to deliver the election to Andrew Scheer?”

The Twitter response was brutal. I was deemed anti-women and anti-aboriginal. I was so discouraged at the vitriol emanating from that universe that I vowed to get out.

But a friend made me promise to hang in there until the election was over.

She believed that social media interventions would play a major role in the election outcome.

At her request, I agreed to stay active on Twitter until Oct. 21. It has been a debilitating and exhausting experience. It is impossible to influence anonymous participants who are so filled with hate.

I am a great believer that negativity breeds negativity. To be happy in life, you should surround yourself with positivity.

That isn’t possible on Twitter. I found myself getting more and more negative by the day. But people should vote on the positive program of a government.

Trudeau has made more than his share of mistakes. But as for his agenda, never in the history of the country has a prime minister embraced Indigenous reconciliation so wholeheartedly. Never has a prime minister taken the issue of climate change to heart, and developed a real plan to turn the situation around. Never has a prime minister aggressively tackled poverty and embraced minority sexual communities.

Trudeau’s vision is exemplary. He definitely deserves the second term that former U.S. president Barack Obama recommended.

Obama’s words speak for themselves. “I was proud to work with Justin Trudeau as president. He’s a hard-working, effective leader who takes on big issues like climate change. The world needs his progressive leadership now, and I hope our neighbours to the North support him for another term.”

With that endorsement from such a respected world leader, Trudeau should be rewarded with re-election. Maybe the experience of the last four years will also strengthen his backbone.

One of his biggest mistakes was not dealing with the poison festering in his own cabinet.

Trudeau’s patience with two cabinet ministers who were attacking him publicly was, without a doubt, a reflection of his commitment to do politics differently.

On the surface, that vision inspired a whole generation of political agnostics to get involved.

But in the end, Trudeau learned what every prime minister has known since the beginning of Canada. There is only one way to do politics.

Governments need to lead, and if that means being tough from time to time, so be it.

The Liberals naively set up a committee to review the voting system, with the New Democrats in the chair.

But the failure to deliver on that voting promise is Trudeau’s and Trudeau’s alone.

He cannot waste precious election time explaining why there was no consensus in a Parliament where the Conservatives sought a referendum, and the New Democrats insisted on consideration of only one option, that of proportional representation.

Had a member of the government with political experience led the discussion, the voting system could have been changed.

Trudeau recruited fresh faces, including Canada’s first aboriginal attorney general. Wilson-Raybould had only three years experience working as a prosecutor.

He also named other newbies, talented people with incredible backgrounds, but zero political experience.

One of those was the minister responsible for delivering on Trudeau’s promise to change the voting system. Maryam Monsef went from Afghani refugee to a seat at the cabinet table with only eight months membership in a party.

To manage an electoral reform agenda, you need a broad and deep understanding of how elections work.

The “mantra” of doing politics differently has convinced former ministers Jane Philpott and Wilson-Raybould to run as Independents. They both believe Canada should be governed like a giant citizen’s assembly with members voting their constituents’ wishes.

In a country as diverse as ours, that would be chaos.

There is something to be said for a Westminster system that has functioned for more than 400 years.

Successful Parliaments are not about doing politics differently.

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

Just last week, the Liberals and the New Democrats both launched their environmental platforms. But analysis of those platforms did not even manage to make the front page of most newspapers.

OTTAWA—Former prime minister Kim Campbell once said an election is no time to discuss policy.

Her party went on to face a historic defeat, saving only two seats in the House of Commons.

In this election, Campbell’s viewpoint seems to be shared by some journalists on the campaign trail.

Just last week, the Liberals and the New Democrats both launched their environmental platforms. But analysis of those platforms did not even manage to make the front page of most newspapers.

Instead, The Globe and Mail chose to print a front-page story allegedly exposing insider details of why a former Liberal Member of Parliament was not re-offering.

The piece, by the same journalist who broke Jody Wilson-Raybould’s story, reflected a similar message. Strong woman, who would not defend the PM, are allegedly shown the door.

Delving deeper into the details, the MP claimed that all three colleagues in ridings neighbouring her own had been bullying her. She claimed intimidation and harassment starting in 2016.

She also showed The Globe the screenshot of a text conversation with Montreal Minister Mélanie Joly. She said the minister called to ask why she wasn’t supporting the prime minister when his feminist credentials were under attack by media during the SNC-Lavalin case.

Presumably The Globe published the piece on the front page because editors believe this “Liberal woman as victim of Trudeau” narrative was relevant.

But voters are smart enough to make decisions based on current issues, not on fake personality politics.

That explains why Justin Trudeau’s Liberals did not lose ground following the revelations that he costumed himself in blackface and brownface on more than one occasion 20 years ago.

Media blackface coverage dominated the airwaves in Canada and around the world for a week. Trudeau tackled the issue head on, with a town hall meeting in Saskatchewan on the evening after the revelations. He also apologized immediately and appeared to genuinely understand the gravity of his childish actions.

It was a shocking news story. But the notion that somehow Trudeau is a racist did not ring true.

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi put it best in an op-ed he wrote for The Washington Post. “He should be judged on the totality of his record and whether Canadians believe in his ability to do good in the future.”

When Trudeau demoted Wilson-Raybould, he was accused of being a fake feminist. Nothing could be further from the truth.

He was the first prime minister in the history of the country to deliver a gender equal cabinet. Andrew Scheer has refused to commit to doing the same, if he forms government while NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has committed to a gender equal cabinet in the unlikely event of a New Democratic Party victory.

Journalists attacking Trudeau’s feminist credentials in the Wilson-Raybould case included so many misogynists that the claim was obviously fake news. When the sexist Sun chain decried misogyny, women laughed.

Differing viewpoints on the use of the deferred prosecution agreement has nothing to do with sexism.

So attacks on Trudeau required caucus and cabinet women to come forward and set the record straight. That is how politics works.

There are many strong women in Trudeau’s caucus and cabinet.

The decision of Wilson-Raybould to quit the cabinet had nothing to do with feminism or sexism.

Although the minister was upset to lose her “dream job” as attorney general, she accepted another ministerial post in veterans affairs. She even tried to remain in caucus, all the while secretly taping conversations and breaching the trust of all those who served with her on the team.

When you are part of caucus, you don’t screenshot internal texts and you don’t secretly tape conversations. You trust each other and work as a team.

As a minister, you do not write copious notes about cabinet conversations because they are supposed to be confidential discussions between trusted colleagues. This is the normal functioning of a healthy political team.

In an election campaign, the public is not focused on the internal machinations of a caucus. They are interested in what policies differentiate the political parties.

On Sept. 27, thousands of young people gathered in a huge strike in Montreal with Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg.

Young Canadians want to know what the parties are doing to confront the climate crisis that, if unchecked, will destroy their futures.

Trudeau, who has actually submitted a substantive climate plan, joined the young people in this march.

Scheer took a pass. That is real news.

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 September 23, 2019.

OTTAWA—The debate about the debates is debatable.

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was criticized for not attending the first televised debate organized by Maclean’s magazine and CityTV.

He will face more criticism next week as a likely no-show at the Munk Debates on Foreign Policy Oct. 1 in Toronto.

Trudeau’s explanation is that he is attending three debates, including two organized by a national commission established to manage fair and open televised debates.

The Leaders’ Debates Commission was under attack last week for allowing People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier to join the official debates on Oct. 7 in English and Oct. 10 in French.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, reacting to the flip-flop by the commission headed by former governor general David Johnston, issued a statement attacking “Trudeau’s hand-picked debate panel.” New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh decried the decision, disagreeing with People’e Party views that, “promote an ideology of hate.”

Scheer neglected to mention that former prime minister Stephen Harper named the commission head governor general. At the time of Johnston’s debate appointment, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May called the decision “inspired” and lauded the fact that transparent and open criteria would decidedly ensure her presence.

After being denied debate participation in 1988, the Green Party unsuccessfully sued the previous broadcast consortium.

This first attempt to have an independent body set the rules for political debates is certainly not perfect. But it is better than what happened in the 2015 election.

If the Conservatives have anyone to blame about the new format, they need to look no further than their recent leader.

Up until Stephen Harper became prime minister, a broadcast consortium was responsible for ensuring nationally televised debates in both official languages. Established in 1968, the process worked reasonably well for the major parties until, in 2015, Harper refused to participate.

Instead, he joined as many as five independent debates, with little apparent criteria for who organized the events and what was debated.

With the boutique debate strategy, audience participation numbers plummeted. Rogers Media reported an average audience of 1.5 million for the Maclean’s English-language debate. The previous consortium debate surpassed 10 million viewers. The appointment of a former governor general signalled this would not be a partisan effort. And the criteria for debate participation, included in the terms of reference, guaranteed that smaller parties like the Greens would not have to sue to be heard.

The new process ensures broader participation because one of the three criteria is that any party receiving four per cent of the vote in the previous general election is invited. The third criterion, and the one the commission underscored in allowing Bernier in, was that his party has a reasonable chance of winning some seats in the upcoming election.

Those who organized 2015 debates were invited to participate in the Leaders Debate Commission organization. Some refused, launching social media campaigns to convince Trudeau to change his mind and join their separate broadcast efforts.

As it turned out, Trudeau’s absence from the first debate may have played in his favour. The Green and New Democratic parties primarily focused their attacks on Scheer, who appeared defensive and unfriendly.

Trudeau’s absence from next week’s Munk Debate is easier to explain.

No doubt, the admission of Bernier into the debates will change the dynamics. Not only will Canadians see different views on the left of the political spectrum. They will also see real fractures on the right. Much of what Bernier has to say will not be supported by the majority of Canadians.

Bernier’s anti-immigrant message is no doubt going to raise some hackles. But the bottom line is, if an election period is not a good time to discuss different viewpoints on policy, there is no good time.

Former prime minister Kim Campbell announced at the beginning of the 1984 campaign that an election was no time to discuss policy. She ended up going down in flames, with only two members of the Progressive Conservative party left in Parliament after her defeat.

National debates need competing viewpoints. This is really the only time when ordinary Canadians get an insider’s glimpse at what makes political parties tick.

You don’t have to agree with any of them.

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 September 16, 2019.

OTTAWA—The Justin Trudeau campaign plane being hit by the media bus could be a metaphor for his campaign. Or not.

It depends on the success of what appears to be a campaign by The Globe and Mail to keep the SNC-Lavalin story on the front page.

The first two official days of the race have been dominated by stories of fresh, anonymous claims in the ongoing story involving allegations of undue pressure on former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould.

Globe’s Ottawa bureau chief Bob Fife tweeted that RCMP interviews earlier last week with Jody Wilson-Raybould were “to discuss political interference in SNC criminal prosecution.”

The only person who publicly claimed she participated in a recent RCMP interview is Wilson-Raybould. The Liberal leader’s office issued a statement saying no one on their team has been contacted or interviewed.

Wilson-Raybould had initially testified before the House Justice Committee that there was nothing illegal in the interventions of the prime minister and his officials on the issue of SNC-Lavalin.

But, according to The Globe, she appears to have revised that opinion, now claiming that the ethics commissioner’s report opened new questions. “I believe the public deserves to know and to have full knowledge of this matter.”

She will no doubt have more to say on the matter when she launches her book this week.

The unschooled observer might be forgiven for thinking that an RCMP interview of Wilson-Raybould constitutes an investigation.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer jumped on The Globe story, falsely claiming on television and in tweets that the RCMP has opened an investigation into possible obstruction of justice.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Globe was careful not use the word “investigation.” Instead, it focused on the fact that police went to Vancouver to interview the former attorney general.

But travelling to a former minister’s riding to take a statement is a well-established police protocol.

The RCMP has interviewed me several times during my life in politics. Sometimes, it was at my request. Sometimes the police initiated the interview.

When they come to your office to take a statement, that action does not constitute an investigation.

The RCMP does not take statements by phone. So if the former minister called them to provide further information, after telephone contact, she would always be interviewed in person.

The Globe story did not clarify who initiated the “several telephone conversations” that precipitated the in-person interview.

Some believe, present company included, that The Globe is ginning up the story in tandem with Wilson-Raybould and her advisers, in an effort to do maximum damage to the electioneering Liberals.

It remains to be seen what impact these confusing RCMP claims will have on the election trajectory.

Some polls say Canadians have already made up their minds on the actions of all parties in the SNC-Lavalin deferred prosecution agreement question. Whether they support Trudeau or Wilson-Raybould, the issue has already been factored into their voting intentions.

But the explosive headlines on the first two days of the campaign could change that.

It wouldn’t be the first time that the spectre of an RCMP investigation was used to sow uncertainty during an election campaign.

Back in 2006, RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli faxed a letter to an NDP MP, confirming that the force had commenced a criminal investigation into budget leaks from the Finance Department headed by Ralph Goodale, named in the communication.

Stephen Harper won that election. In the end, Goodale was completely exonerated but a departmental official was charged.

Some say the letter from Zaccardelli literally changed the outcome of the election. Up until that point the Liberals had been leading in voter intentions.

One only has to look at the last election in the United States, where a judicial intervention in the last 11 days of the debate changed the outcome of the election.

FBI director James Comey’s letter in the dying days of the American election had a lasting impact on democracy.

His announced reopening of a stale-dated investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails was the likely tipping point in securing Donald Trump’s election victory.

At the time, Comey claimed he acted because polls showed Clinton would win and he did not want to be accused of concealing relevant information.

To avoid undue election influence, the RCMP has announced it will not be investigating anything during the writ period. That fact was buried in The Globe story.

Front-paging a self-generated police interview makes great headlines.

Time will tell whether the story influences the election result.

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

Maxime Bernier’s ideas should be defeated at the ballot box, not in the back rooms of the Leaders’ Debates Commission.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on August 26, 2019.

OTTAWA—The broadcast debate rule makers need to take another look at their election work. By the current rules established for party leader participation, floor-crosser Lucien Bouchard would have been silenced.

At the time of the 1993 election, Bouchard was the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, having been previously elected as a Progressive Conservative. His party did not field candidates across the country, the second of the three criteria established for entering October’s debates.

The rules currently bar the People’s Party of Canada from the debate because leader Max Bernier was elected as a Tory. Can you imaging the uproar if the founding leader of the Bloc had been denied a seat at the televised debating table?

Rules say a party must run candidates in 90 per cent of the ridings across the country, which again eliminates new regional parties like the Bloc. The threshold for support is either a reasonable chance to win a couple of seats, or support from approximately four per cent of the popular vote in a general election. Current polling numbers situate the PPC just under 3 per cent with a chance to win one seat. Those numbers will fluctuate once the campaign begins.

Not surprisingly, the decision to block Bernier has been met by other parties with muted acquiescence. Conservatives are breathing a sigh of relief because Bernier is trying to tap into the right wing of their base. New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh went so far as to claim the party should be blocked because its viewpoints are odious, and do not deserve a platform.

Many Canadians might have felt the same way about a separatist party, but it was never denied a voice at the table.

Politicians of any stripe should not welcome state-mandated censorship, even when they vehemently disagree with another party’s viewpoint. An organization headed by a sitting Member of Parliament, with candidate recruitment across the country, deserves a chance to be heard.

Last weekend, Bernier’s party held a countrywide candidates’ convention in the nation’s capital, attended by 500 people. The party has managed to nominate candidates from coast to coast and has even recruited some dubious stars, like the widow of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford.

Bernier, who came within two percentage points of leading the Conservative Party, is no political neophyte. His father sat as a Tory member before him, and with his deep roots in that party, Bernier also managed to recruit a number of former Conservative colleagues. Most of them claim to have left the Conservative party to pursue more freedom of speech. They believe the current crop of Tories are too mainstream, denying debate on race and immigration issues.

The PPC is officially advocating a reduction in annual immigration targets by two-thirds, and an end to multiculturalism in the country. Their leader also claims that climate change has not been caused by human activity, despite ample scientific evidence to the contrary.

I am not a fan of Bernier’s ideas. From his misrepresentation of global warming to his call to build a wall against Canadian immigration, he represents the antithesis of my political philosophy. But surely his viewpoint is relevant.

If politically-appointed committees are destined to decide which perspectives can be aired, how does that strengthen democracy?

Bernier’s ideas should be beaten at the ballot box, but he should not be outside the debates looking in. That only strengthens his party’s capacity to play the victim card. Marginalized supporters will claim that their voices are being ignored in favour of other politically correct perspectives.

Given the makeup of the moderators for the English language debate, you can hardly blame them. The debate airing on October 7 features five respected women journalists, including Lisa Laflamme of CTV, Rosemary Barton of CBC, Dawna Friesen of Global, Althia Raj of Huffpost and The Toronto Star’s Susan Delacourt.

All of the aforementioned have the qualifications and the experience to be excellent moderators. But why should a panel on Canadian politics only include participants of one gender? I would be first to complain if the debate consortium had chosen only men. So why is it okay to repeat gender bias with a women-only line-up? Former governor-general David Johnston, the first-ever debates commissioner, is treading a fine line in decisions on the format and composition of the debates. In French, there will be a mix of genders, with three men and two women journalists.

By excluding Bernier from this politically correct table, Johnson is providing dangerous fodder to the populists.

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

Most Canadians have tuned out, and things are still looking up for the Liberals in Quebec.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on August 19, 2019.

The gift that keeps on giving.

Opposition parties are salivating at the summer fallout from the damning ethic commissioner‘s report into the prime minister’s actions in support of SNC-Lavalin’s pursuit of a deferred prosecution agreement.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer both pounced on the findings, with Singh suggesting the prime minister was unfit to govern. Scheer was more circumspect, calling on voters to issue their verdict on election day. Both leaders are hoping a recent uptick in Liberal support will be blunted by Commissioner Mario Dion’s findings.

They are also calling for further parliamentary and police investigation with the hopes of making this the central issue in the upcoming campaign. Voters, tired of the issue, may well have something else in mind.

Liberals are banking on the fact that the dog days of summer will swallow the story whole, so it will not play a major role in voter decision-making in the upcoming election. They have a couple of elements operating in their favour.

Most Canadians are not following the minutiae of life on Parliament Hill. Although they understand the broad strokes of the story, the differing, complicated versions of it work in the Liberals’ favour.

For many, it has become a “she said, he said” narrative with people already rendering their own judgements months ago. The complexity of competing legal arguments is white noise to all but the most devoted of political junkies. Most Canadians have tuned out.

There is also a serious flaw in the Dion report that some legal scholars contested last week. Dion concluded the prime minister was not acting in the public interest when he encouraged the attorney general to review the case against SNC-Lavalin. Instead, he found that Trudeau’s interventions were intended to serve the private interest of SNC-Lavalin.

The commissioner claimed that contact would have been permissible to act in the public interest, and this is where he and the prime minister part company. Trudeau continued to defend his view that the government’s only intention was to protect the jobs and pensions of people who had no involvement in decade-old criminal activity in Libya. “I am not going to apologize for standing up for Canadian jobs,” Trudeau repeated multiple times.

However, the prime minister also said that he accepted the report coming from an officer of Parliament, and he took full responsibility for his actions.

Trudeau’s viewpoint was endorsed by at least two high-profile newspapers, The Toronto Star and Le Devoir. Both took the view that Liberals were acting in the public interest, not in violation of private interests. They also criticized the commissioner’s report for wrongly interpreting the law.

Obviously, when politicians make decisions in the public interest, they make those decisions in the context of politics.

At the end of the day, most Canadians will never even read the report. They may reflect briefly on its conclusions, but for the most part, their minds were already made up months ago. And they are tired of the repetitious story line, which has not changed.

Voters make political decisions based on how government policies affect them directly.

Last week, I was visiting Newfoundland. At a kitchen party, I bumped into an SNC-Lavalin engineer who was among the 5,000 Canadian employees outside the province of Quebec.

Along with 4,000 Quebec-based employees, they will likely be voting for the Liberals as the party best placed to protect their jobs.

Even as Conservatives attacked Trudeau, they were silent on the use of a deferred prosecution agreement. An attack on the company will not help their electoral interests, especially in Quebec.

The inflamed rhetoric of Singh is damaging his own party’s re-election prospects in Quebec. He keeps trying to drive a wedge between his party’s socialist purity and the ugly capitalism of his opponents. It is not working. Recent polls show the New Democrats with modest support in Quebec. Unless those numbers change drastically, they will lose all their 16 seats. The hill Singh must climb is steep.

The party best positioned to win NDP seats in Quebec is the Liberal Party.

And even though the commissioner’s report last week was a body blow, the Grits likely have enough positive things going for them to weather this continuing storm.

While the opposition wants to keep the story alive, most Canadians may have already tuned out.

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

But with the continual barrage of mass shootings in the United States, the issue is not likely to go away anytime soon. Almost weekly incidents of gun violence in Toronto pretty much guarantee that Liberals will not be able to dodge the question in the upcoming election.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on August 12, 2019.

OTTAWA—Guns are now a mental problem. So says American president Donald Trump, who continues to claim there is “no political appetite” for legislation governing the guns themselves even though he is finally admitting that it might be wise to improve background checks on those who want to purchase them.

On this side of the border, Liberals seem equally flummoxed in their plan to restrict weapon access in Canadian cities.

In reacting to multiple shootings in Toronto last weekend, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said a package of gun reforms would be included in the Liberal campaign.

He was responding to mounting calls in Toronto, Montreal, and elsewhere to ban handguns in Canada’s major cities. Toronto Mayor John Tory reinforced a near-unanimous city council request after 17 people were involved in weekend shootings. Goodale also referenced action on domestic terrorism, specifically pointing to white supremacy movements that seem to be gaining ground in our country and elsewhere.

While Goodale’s comments were welcomed, many are wondering what the Liberals are waiting for.

A strong response to recent shootings in Canada and the United States would certainly be welcomed in many constituencies where Liberal support has been slipping.

Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction Bill Blair’s handling of the gun file has left many supporters scratching their heads. A member of the public consultation process on guns resigned because she could not support the government’s weak-kneed response to a 2015 election promise of gun reform.

A briefing note published last year by Public Safety Canada downplayed the effectiveness of a handgun ban, claiming it would “primarily affect” collectors and sport shooters who own most of the country’s 900,000 registered handguns, while having only an “indirect” impact on the illicit market by reducing the number of weapons that could be potentially diverted or stolen.

The note also suggested that the evidence on the effectiveness of gun bans remains inconclusive.

“In all cases, the data does not conclusively demonstrate that these handgun or assault weapon bans have led to reductions in gun violence, though some studies drew other conclusions,” it said. “The variation in study results reflects the fact that patterns of gun violence are influenced by many factors and the impact cannot be attributed to one factor.”

Mandated by the prime minister to “lead an examination of a full ban on handguns and assault weapons in Canada, while not impeding the lawful use of firearms by Canadians” the minister seems to have forgotten the 2015 election promise of gun legislation. Simply punting the issue to the upcoming election will definitely hurt the party amongst its core supporters, especially women.

Blair’s consultations were criticized as sloppy when pro-gun advocates admitted they were able to skew the results of a Public Safety online survey in their favour by including thousands of responses from a single computer.

François Bellemare, a Quebec-based engineer and member of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, was reported in the media back in March saying he alone submitted between 25,000 and 35,000 responses using a computer automation application called Macro Recorder.

That survey ultimately concluded by a majority of 76 per cent that there was no appetite for a ban on assault weapons in Canada. But the report was obviously bogus and distorted the real public appetite for action on gun reform in Canada.

Blair botched the consultations and now Liberals are wavering over whether to come down hard on the availability of assault weapons and handguns in our country.

The party was probably hoping to get through the election without a lot of attention focused on that issue.

But with the continual barrage of mass shootings in the United States, the issue is not likely to go away anytime soon. Almost weekly incidents of gun violence in Toronto pretty much guarantee that Liberals will not be able to dodge the question in the upcoming election.

Women and young people, those supporters whom the Liberals need to win the next election, want action.

They fear the increase in gun violence and spike in domestic hate crimes and want Justin Trudeau to follow the example of New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern. She acted immediately following the mass shootings in a Christchurch mosque to introduce a ban on military-grade semi-automatic weapons.

Canada is experiencing a hike in gun-based violent murders, from the Québec City mosque attack to the Danforth shooting of ten people, to the recent British Columbia murder spree.

The time has come for Liberals to get a spine on guns in Canada.

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

A party race does not necessarily guarantee a more democratic outcome.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on July 22, 2019.

OTTAWA—Just last week, the Samara Centre for Democracy denounced the Canadian nomination process as “uncompetitive and biased.”

The organization released a study entitled “Party Favours: How Federal Election Candidates are Chosen,” which reviewed the circumstances surrounding nomination processes in the lead up to the October federal election.

After interviewing more than 6,600 candidates who had run for all parties in the last five elections, Samara concluded only 17 per cent had actually competed for the nomination.

Samara’s take was that “Nomination contests remain too short, uncompetitive, unpredictable, untransparent and exclusionary.”

The report also noted that non-competitive nominations, where parties appoint a single candidate, included fewer Indigenous or visible minority winners who contested nominations.

“Parliament can only ever be as diverse as the pool of candidates that run for it. Nominations designed primarily for insiders, those already plugged into the party and political system, are a major obstacle to achieving a more diverse political class.”

The report said Conservatives had the fewest number of women candidates, and the New Democrats had the most. It also underscored the fact that the Liberals and Tories were more likely to have contested nominations that the smaller parties.

Most Canadians have very little understanding of the internal party processes involved in choosing candidates for election or national party office holders.

There were two factors glaringly absent from the Samara report. First, are the rules governing an incumbent Member of Parliament.

In most parties, there is an effort to ensure that sitting Members of Parliament are actually nominated without a damaging internal fight.

There is a practical reason for giving incumbents a pass on the rigorous nomination process. If you are in Ottawa doing your job, and an opponent is spending all week in the riding selling memberships, it becomes quite simple to knock off a Member of Parliament.

The second factor is the will of the party to be more representative. The reason the Tories had the fewest number of women candidates is because they were the only party that refused to target the nomination of more women candidates in the last election.

That challenge was launched by Equal Voice, a non-partisan organization that encouraged all parties to set a specified number of female candidates in the last election.

Political reality also affects the process. It is sometimes tough for smaller parties to find enough candidates to run in an election, without the benefit of a contested fight.

Just a few months ago, the leader of the Green Party revealed publicly that she had actually offered her own job to former Liberal Jody Wilson-Raybould. At the time, most media focused on the Wilson-Raybould decision not to join the Greens. There was virtually no opposition to May’s proposition that Green leadership was offered to Wilson-Raybould as an enticement to join her party.

The members of the Green Party have a process to choose a leader, but that process did not seem to impact May’s view that she could singlehandedly appoint a new leader.

The reality is that in most circumstances, smaller parties are hard-pressed to nominate candidates, as they stand no chance of forming the government. And when an incumbent is reoffering, the party often eliminates the need for a contest.

In Atlantic Canada, where the Liberals currently hold every seat, almost all Grit incumbents have been renominated without any competition. In the limited circumstances where a member is retiring, contested nominations have already taken place or are about to happen.

Among 32 seats, only three are currently unfilled by the Liberals. But the New Democratic Party, which is struggling in that region, has currently nominated only six candidates, with another uncontested nomination scheduled this week.

The Greens, which experienced a hike in support because of recent provincial seat gains, have actually outpaced the New Democrats with 19 nominees. But most of their nominations were also uncontested, and one includes a former Newfoundland NDP candidate who is now running for the Green Party.

Samara is correct that there are definite problems with party transparency, or lack thereof, in the nomination process. Those problems could be solved by Elections Canada oversight of the process.

Most parties won’t endorse that route because they want to retain control over the choice of party standard bearers. Candidates are not running as Independents. It is understandable that they need to have some attachment to the values of the party they aspire to represent.

But factors governing party nominations are extremely complex. A party race does not guarantee a more democratic outcome.

a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

The book launch guarantees that Jody Wilson-Raybould’s story will dominate the news, ensuring the Liberals receive more criticism for their faulty handling of the file.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on July 29, 2019.

The book launch guarantees that Jody Wilson-Raybould’s story will dominate the news, ensuring the Liberals receive more criticism for their faulty handling of the file.

OTTAWA—In the heat of the SNC-Lavalin controversy, the government was slammed for claiming jobs may be at stake.

Pundits attacked the statement that some of the of 9,000 company jobs could be lost, if the company did not benefit from a deferred prosecution agreement.

The narrative had a distinctly anti-Quebec flavour. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was attacked for saying he had a responsibility to protect jobs in his riding. He was blasted for even suggesting that, as a Member of Parliament, he had a duty to protect jobs in his riding.

Six months later, the chickens have come home to roost and the jobs are being lost. SNC is coming apart at the seams while Jody Wilson-Raybould is promising to lift a veil by publishing her own version of events the week after the election is officially called.

Hopefully she has a good ghostwriter because if she really intends to get elected as an Independent in Vancouver, the former minister won’t have time to be burning the midnight oil on writing a book too.

The book launch guarantees that her story will dominate the news, ensuring the Liberals receive more criticism for their faulty handling of the file.

Wilson-Raybould’s publisher announced the upcoming book launch the same week the Assembly of First Nations was meeting in Fredericton. The book, From Where I Stand: Rebuilding Indigenous Nations for a Stronger Canada, published by Purich Books and UBC Press, will be launched on Sept. 20.

Wilson-Raybould’s nemesis, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, attended that meeting and outlined her government’s efforts on reconciliation. She drew particular attention to the decision to abolish the department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs. “INAC was really about paternalism and in no way reflected the original spirit or intent of treaties or the original understanding of what that relationship was to be about,” she told the AFN’s annual gathering.

Wilson-Raybould could have partnered in this important work if she had accepted a cabinet appointment as the minister responsible for Indigenous services.

Instead, she could go down in history as the aboriginal leader who singlehandedly derailed her people’s agenda.

During the course of the unfolding debacle, Wilson-Raybould continued to state that she wanted to run as a Liberal in the next election because she shared the values of the party.

She and colleague Jane Philpott both repeated that, other than the prime minister’s treatment of the SNC-Lavalin case, they were pretty much onside with most other issues.

If Wilson-Raybould is really concerned about progress on Indigenous issues, why is she doing her best to make sure that Andrew Scheer wins the next election?

Personal hubris must trump her commitment to her people. That is the only explanation for her decision to publish a book timed to come out just days after the writ is dropped to formally launch the October election.

The book is being billed as a collection of speeches and previously published articles on her vision for achieving reconciliation. She is calling for the acknowledgement of Indigenous rights, replacement of the Indian Act, and Indigenous self-government.

All of those goals were possible, had she decided to remain in cabinet. Along with Bennett, she could singlehandedly have transformed the relationship from one of paternalism to a partnership of equals.

Instead, she is on the outside looking in, writing a book which will be long on theory and short on practical application.

Her decision to publish in mid-campaign is timed to do the maximum amount of damage possible to the first government that has actually embodied a vision for reconciliation.

Wilson-Raybould would be hard-pressed to name another prime minister that has made reconciliation the centrepiece of his governance effort.

Not only has the government aggressively pursued infrastructure investments in Indigenous communities, it addressed the most egregious inequality in the system, the fact that education funds available to Indigenous kids were only 60 per cent of what was spent on regular education.

Aboriginal language funding, one of the first cuts made by Stephen Harper, has been reinstituted under the Liberal watch. That decision offers some hope that more than 50 Indigenous languages may actually survive the very real threat of extinction in one more generation.

Liberals may have overpromised on reconciliation.

But at least Trudeau’s government is trying.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has given five major speeches which are supposed to outline his vision as a future prime minister.

The word “reconciliation” is not mentioned once. Conservative Senators have succeeding in blocking passage of bill C-262, which would have guaranteed that Canada’s laws respect the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

If Wilson-Raybould really wants to be a nation builder, she should stop helping Scheer.

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