It may also be a reflection of how young men feel they are the forgotten generation. 

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on October 21, 2024.

OTTAWA—It has been 95 years, on Oct. 18, since Canadian women were given the right to vote.

In recognition of that right, the Ottawa chapter of the Famous Five Foundation will celebrate a Pink Tea event at the Canadian Museum of Nature on Oct. 27.

At the ceremony, the foundation will unveil this year’s recipients of the Famous 5 award for their contribution to the fight for equality.

Dozens of other Famous 5 chapters across the country hosted similar events to commemorate Oct. 18, 1929.

That day, a landmark decision by the Privy Council of Great Britain recognized women as persons before the law, thus conferring upon them the right to vote.

The appeal to the British Privy Council followed an unsuccessful campaign in 1928 at the Canadian Senate for women’s right to vote. The effort was led by five Alberta suffragettes who became known as the Famous Five. Their names are Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, Irene Parlby, and Henrietta Moore Edwards.

The Famous Five is currently the most visited grouping of statues within the Parliamentary Precinct on Wellington Street in Ottawa. The Famous Five Foundation was formed to secure national recognition for those women, and then to fight for recognition of modern-day suffragettes.

At next Sunday’s Pink Tea, five women will be honoured for fighting for Indigenous rights, the rights of Afghan women and others involved in the battle for modern day racial and gender equality, and against misogyny.

The Famous 5 Ottawa will recognize the following award recipients: Mariam Abdel-Akher, Cindy Blackstock, Najia Haneefi, Marie-Noëlle Lanthier, and Christine Romulus for special recognition, each in their own area of expertise.

“These extraordinary women continue to doggedly push the envelope in the face of obstacles and challenges just as the original Famous Five had to do,” said Beatrice Raffoul, chair of Famous 5 Ottawa.

The modern Famous 5 know that much work still has to be done when women in some parts of the world are not even allowed to go to school, and Indigenous women are recovering from the trauma of residential school cultural annihilation.

Canadians think that the fight for equality is over, but one only has to look at the current political situation to understand that we still have much work ahead.

In the upcoming American presidential election, according to an Environics Institute poll published by The Globe and Mail last week, the majority of Canadians prefer the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over Republican Donald Trump.

But the younger a man is, the more likely he is to support Trump.

Notwithstanding his multiple criminal convictions and Trump’s vehement refusal to accept the 2020 election loss, the former president’s level of support has actually increased since the last election, Environics revealed.

At that time, Trump had the support of 15 per cent of Canadian respondents, and that figure has now increased to 21 per cent. Trump’s greatest level of support comes from young men, and in that cohort, young Conservatives are most likely to support the convicted felon. Conservatives were more likely to support Trump than Harris, with 44 per cent voicing support—an increase of 11 per cent from four years ago.

The vote split in other parties has remained relatively stagnant, with 89 per cent of Bloc Québécois supporters, 85 per cent of Liberals, and 82 per cent of New Democrats preferring Harris over Trump.

The rise in Conservative support for Trump makes one wonder whether the current Democratic candidate’s gender is at play.

Former president Barack Obama hit the campaign trail last week with exactly that message.

He specifically called out Black men for refusing to support Harris simply because she is a woman.

Obama told his audience that while they claimed other reasons for not supporting her, their refusal is based on misogyny because they will not vote for a woman.

Harris is currently working hard to try to bridge that gender divide, reaching out on podcasts and other non-traditional media platforms hosted by men for men.

But, just like in Canada, the gender gap in voting is quite stark in the United States.

Older people and women are supporting Harris, while the younger male generation has been more supportive of Trump.

That the level of misogyny is highest in young voters is troubling. It may also be a reflection of how young men feel they are the forgotten generation.

Some 95 years after Canadian women got the right to vote, we still have a long way to go.

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

Most commentators ignored the paucity of diversity on his team. But for those of us who care about these issues, the photo was a stark visual reminder that in Poilievre’s party, it is still a man’s world.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on September 19, 2022.

OTTAWA—Will Rogers said you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Pierre Poilievre must not have been listening.

If so, his first week as leader could have been a winner.

On the evening of his coronation, even with regal funereal news competition from across the pond, Poilievre knocked it out of the park.

His spouse’s introduction placed the new leader exactly where he needs to be, a happy family man whose soft edges are inclusive.

His embrace of personal diversity, including his own family story, were certainly not aligned with the narrative he had used to steamroll his way into the win.

The party endorsement was overwhelming. Two-thirds of the vote went to him, while former premier Jean Charest was reduced to the teens.

Poilievre’s opening performance seemed to indicate that he was prepared to pivot. Having convinced the vast majority of fellow Conservatives that he was their man, his job is now to convince the country.

The acceptance speech got a lot of Liberals worried. Several former cabinet colleagues were gathered at a Toronto symposium on foreign policy the same weekend.

The group’s consensus was that the government would be foolish to assume that Poilievre could not win an election.

The good news for Liberals is that most people do not tune in to party conventions.

And the softer side of the new leader was immediately disposed of at his first post-leader press conference.

After opening the presser with a refusal to take questions, Poilievre was heckled by Global News reporter David Akin, who insistently raised his voice to ensure a question period.

Poilievre accused Akin of being a Liberal plant, set up to heckle him on his first day.

His tone was crisp and angry. That was the first impression he left with those who were seeing the Conservative leader for the first time.

Akin, hardly a Liberal troll, was immediately attacked by Tories heeding Poilievre’s call to “go around” the media.

Later that day, Akin posted a Twitter apology, characterizing his outburst as “rude and disrespectful.”

But that did not stop the Tories from using the incident as a fundraiser.

Within 48 hours, Poilievre’s team sent out a fundraising email, claiming the party could not count on the media to carry their message, saying, “we have to go around them and their biased coverage.”

He also reiterated his promise to defund the CBC.

Poilievre has obviously decided that his best path to victory is in bypassing the media, mobilizing followers to use social channels and attack the messenger.

In the Akin instance that worked, as the apology actually set up the narrative of an aggrieved party that cannot count on reporters to tell the truth.

But Poilievre tried the same tactic in French and he got his clock cleaned.

This mistake will prove a lot more damaging than Poilievre’s decision to bypass the mainstream media in English.

When former Quebec lieutenant Alain Rayes announced he was leaving the party because Poilievre’s leadership was incompatible with his values, Tory trollers were whipped into high gear.

Instead of adopting a conciliatory tone which could have downplayed the departure, the leader came out with fists swinging.

He accused Rayes of refusing to fight Justin Trudeau’s inflation and went on to claim that he had the support of the majority in Rayes’ riding as 53 per cent of the 663 Tory ballots cast there were for Poilievre.

That may be the only time Poilievre gets a majority in Quebec.

His thrashing of a native son did not play well, and his next move was career-shortening.

The leader sent a message to electors in Rayes’ riding, asking them to phone the office of their Member of Parliament to demand his resignation.

When that news became public, the backlash was so horrendous that Poilievre became the one doing the apologizing.

Two apologies in a week marked Poilievre’s public foray as leader.

The announcement of his leadership team, complete with a photo on the steps of the West Block, was also a step backward.

In a team of 10, Poilievre only managed to include two women and one racialized Canadian.

Compare that to the equity cabinet of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It makes one wonder if the Tories are going back to the future.

Most commentators ignored the paucity of diversity on his team.

But for those of us who care about these issues, the photo was a stark visual reminder that in Poilievre’s party, it is still a man’s world.

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

Human rights organizations and feminists rose to support a movement that forced all the men involved in the Charter drafting to back down. At the time, federal ministers Monique Bégin and Judy Erola led the charge.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on April 25, 2022.

OTTAWA—As the 40th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was celebrated last week, much was written about the effect of the new law on Canada.

Some great ideas on Charter improvements, including multiple suggestions on how to tighten up the notwithstanding clause, open the door for a new constitutional debate.

But there were two elements of the Charter battle that got little attention.

The first was the role played by women politicians of all parties to save the equality clause in the Charter.

Back in 1982, I was the sole woman in the Opposition Ontario Liberal caucus. We were six women altogether representing three parties in the 125-seat assembly.

The fight for Charter equality was the first and only time that we all got together to strategize for a Charter change to fully protect women’s rights.

At the time of the initial Charter agreement, the rights of women, articulated in Sec. 28 of the agreement, were supposed to be subject to the Sec. 33 notwithstanding clause.

What that meant was that if any government wanted to ignore equality rights, all it had to do was invoke the charter to bypass women’s right to equal pay, right to access housing, healthcare, etc.

The charter of inequality had been signed by all first ministers except Quebec, so male politicians were loath to reopen with the document.

Women across the country were livid, and Canada witnessed a female political consensus the likes of which it has never experienced before or since.

Human rights organizations and feminists rose to support a movement that forced all the men involved in the Charter drafting to back down.

At the time, federal ministers Monique Bégin and Judy Erola led the charge. They reached out to female legislators across the country from all political parties, organizing a movement to force all parliaments to support a Charter amendment that would remove the notwithstanding clause from any oversight of women’s rights.

Bégin would later become beloved for her work in the creation of the Canada Health Act. Well-known as the mother of medicare, in 1984, Bégin implemented the legislative framework for hospital care across the country. That legislation secured universal access for all which has remained in place to this day.

Erola, the first female minister of mines, was equally capable, reaching out to legislators across party lines in an effort to secure women’s equality.

The pair organized a group of female politicians across the country, determined to amend the proposed Charter.

We were fighting an uphill battle.

Some premiers were adamant that there could be no changes to the initial document that had been agreed to by all provinces except Quebec.

Since any new change might prevent the Canadian Constitution from being repatriated from Westminster, the federal cabinet did not want to rock the boat.

The notwithstanding clause had already covered other groups, like francophone minorities outside Quebec, so there was a belief that any change, including full equality for women could cause the whole house of cards to collapse.

But the ferocity of women’s anger could not be ignored. Premiers across the country quickly backed down when they saw how women had united in favour of our equality.

The proposed Charter was amended and women’s rights were fully protected before the document was repatriated in April 1982.

The second element of the charter which received little attention but prompted huge social change was the section which proffered rights to all Canadians in both official languages.

Until the Charter was drawn up to protect minority linguistic rights, most francophones outside Quebec had little access to schooling in their language.

They were undereducated and poorly paid, making up the lowest earning group in the country.

As the Charter took hold, and provinces were forced by law to start offering minority language services, that situation turned around.

With robust French-language education available for francophones across the country, the level of education catapulted quickly.

Within twenty years, the poorly-paid, undereducated francophones became the best-educated, and most highly paid group in the country.

Unlike women’s rights, minority language rights were subject to the notwithstanding clause, causing Ottawa Liberal Member of Parliament Jean-Robert Gauthier to vote against the Charter repatriation.

Gauthier did not secure institutional bilingualism for all provinces, nor did the Charter enshrine French-language school boards and education. But the result of the Charter was that every province was eventually cajoled or sued into guaranteeing minority language rights in education.

Women and francophones were the real Charter winners.

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

So, we are languishing on the vaccination rollout and medical doctors who are working in intensive care units filled with COVID carriers are not even allowed to get the second vaccine, which has greater protection for variant mutations. What is wrong with that picture?

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on April 26, 2021.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s tears failed to dampen the unprecedented spike in his unpopularity.

His mea culpa, offered while in isolation at his late mother’s home in Etobicoke, was designed to let people know that their pain was his pain. But nobody was listening.

The government’s decision to announce draconian lockdown measures the previous weekend was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Within two days, decisions to close children’s playgrounds and unleash unprecedented police powers on an already suffering populace were hastily reversed.

Ford says he went too far, but that is not the issue. He went to the wrong places.

During COVID, if we have learned one thing, it is that the outdoors is our friend. So why prevent children from enjoying playgrounds and shut down the sports of golf, tennis, baseball, soccer, and the like?

Surely if there is one thing that should be encouraged in a pandemic that is well into its second year is the need to get outdoor exercise through several avenues. The closure of all outdoor athletic venues is absurd, and the notion that you cannot even sit on a picnic table in a park is illogical.

What is not enough is the decision to ignore a plan for asymptomatic testing in vulnerable workplaces like grocery stores, food factory floors and shipping areas.

What is not enough is the decision to deny the most vulnerable workers paid sick leave.

Is it any surprise that without sick leave, and with no random workplace testing that silent and not-so-silent carriers are spreading the virus?

What is also not enough is the way that multiple governments have refused to prioritize hot spots for treatment.

In a Confederation, the vaccines are distributed on a per capita basis, but when one city has more than 1,500 cases per day, and a province might have less than 10, why is that per capital system inviolate?

We literally have dozens of public health experts micromanaging in their own municipalities, but we do not have a national approach for tackling this virus.

Provincial governments just say, give us more money to solve the problem, but they are not willing to play ball with a national “hotspot” strategy.

So, we are languishing on the vaccination rollout and medical doctors who are working in intensive care units filled with COVID carriers are not even allowed to get the second vaccine, which has greater protection for variant mutations.

What is wrong with that picture?

If we have learned anything during this pandemic is that the old ways are not always the best ways, and it makes sense to have a national rollout of a vaccine strategy.

It also makes sense to prioritize workplaces and school sites for onsite, antigen testing to stem the spread of the virus.

Shutting down playgrounds and treating people like criminals is no way to get the population on side.

Ontario’s COVID meltdown overshadowed a national budget rollout that should have put smiles on everyone’s faces.

The promised childcare investment, while lauded by every parent, will be a tough sell in provinces that do not want federal incursion in their field of responsibility.

Better to have $1,600 a month daycare in Toronto than embrace a national plan that makes childcare affordable and accessible wherever you live.

During the pandemic, women are the majority of those who have vacated the workforce and, in some instances, continued working while they home-schooled their children.

The national childcare investment should be applauded by all parties, but as usual, the Conservatives had nothing but complaints to offer.

Right-wing commentators grudgingly argued it might be a good idea but needs further study.

A national strategy for childcare has been studied almost as long as the legalization of marijuana, with the first report on the matter dating back to 1970.

Equality First: the Royal Commission on the Status of Women recommended 51 years ago that there should be a sliding scale of payment for childcare based on need. Chair Florence Bird would turn over in her grave if she heard that people were still asking for more studies on childcare.

The federal budget charts a path forward for other provinces to follow the lead of Quebec with a truly affordable system of childcare.

The economic burden of the pandemic has disproportionately fallen on women. Kudos to Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s first woman finance minister for investing real money into a national plan fifty-one years after it was first proposed.

Hopefully this plan will actually come to fruition.

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

Public-sector employers are under more pressure from voters to even the odds for women and minorities; not so for the private sector. Their veil of secrecy needs to be lifted.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on March 1, 2021.

Kudos to The Globe and Mail for digging into the darker side of Bay Street’s dirty little secrets.

In a series on workforce gender bias last week, The Globe published confidential information on the remuneration of partners in one of Canada’s largest business law firms. At Cassels, Brock & Blackwell LLP, female equity partners earn almost 25 per cent less than their male counterparts.

Women are fewer in number, and women of colour are literally at the bottom of the pay grid.

That should not be surprising to anyone who looks at the corporate makeup of Bay Street.

What is surprising is how hard it is to identify discrimination because all law firms keep their business very private.

Inequality was even more glaring when it came to bonuses. According to an internal email leaked to The Globe, “over 80 per cent of men got a bonus, only 44 per cent of women did. Men took home 69 per cent of the total bonus pool given out to years one through seven.”

Despite the Globe’s efforts to dig deeper into the money trail at several other law firms, none was transparent with their partner payouts or employee numbers on gender imbalance, even after a two-year Globe investigation.

This journalistic investigation paralleled an internal review by the Canadian Bar Association prompted by a request from the Women Lawyers Forum, a branch of the association. The forum began by asking multiple law firms to reveal the details on partner compensation to verify or disprove the gender gap many women lawyers anecdotally identified.

According to The Globe “the majority of the firms were unwilling to release compensation amounts—even expressed as a percentage of total partner income. The final report was published last October with no information on the gender wage gap. The WLF could gather only some data on partner representation—the firms that participated had an average of 49 partners, 30 per cent of whom were women—and some insights into how firms determine compensation. Just 27 (unnamed) law firms out of 65 responded to the survey.”

The fact that more than half of the law firms refused to even respond to a survey from one of the branches of the Canadian Bar Association speaks volumes about the depth of the problem.

Sadly, one could move to most other Bay Street areas of business to find the same lack of commitment to gender equity or transparency. Only 24 (or about 3.5 per cent) of TSX-listed Canadian companies had a woman CEO as of July 2019. Women represented an average of 17.9 per cent of executive officers in S&P/TSX Composite Index companies as of December 2019.

According to the first ever Statistics Canada report on corporate boards and the gender gap, published in 2019, only 19.4 per cent of corporate board members in Canada are women.

The Globe series, by Robyn Doolittle and Chen Wang, took a deep dive into Canada’s gender inequality. Their first review involved the public sector, in a series published last month. In that review, the pair undertook an unprecedented analysis of public sector salary records, involving 90,000 employees across the federal, provincial, municipal ranks, and including Crown corporations, university and even liquor store remuneration practices.

The pair reported that “women aren’t only underrepresented at the apex of the public sector ladder, but on the many rungs below, as supervisers, managers, senior managers, directors, executive directors and vice-presidents, as well as deans and professors. In most cases, men made more than their female counterparts with the same title. Sometimes the difference was small—one or two per cent—but the gap steadily widened on the way to the top. (At publicly owned corporations, for example, women on executive teams made an average of nine per cent less than the male executives.)”

While still not equal, that appears to compare favourably with the mostly secret salaries of partners and juniors in the legal profession.

When it comes to the public sector, transparency has been the law of the land for decades. In Ontario, the so-called “sunshine list” has mandated the release of all public-sector salaries exceeding $100,000.

With transparency comes accountability. When executive salaries are released annually, it is easy to identify gender and diversity gaps in hiring and promotion.

Public-sector employers are under more pressure from voters to even the odds for women and minorities; not so for the private sector. Their veil of secrecy needs to be lifted.

It is time for a private-sector sunshine law.

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

If elected on Nov. 3, Kamala Harris is literally a step away from the president’s job. Her boss is already 77 years old and has mused about serving one term. Maybe that is why she is always smiling.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on October 12, 2020.

OTTAWA—The vice-presidential debate reinforced every element of exclusion that women in politics and business have experienced for years.

It was almost like riding a time capsule back into the 20th century, when men were in charge and women were supposed to smile and look pretty.

Notwithstanding a clear set of rules negotiated by the Commission on Presidential Debates, U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence cavalierly walked all over his opponent, ignoring moderator questions and talking over Kamala Harris. The Democratic nominee kept smiling and weakly demanding that her two-minute speaking slot be uninterrupted.

The moderator made the situation worse by constantly apologizing to the vice-president for his failure to respect the rules. Susan Page from USA Today is a print journalist, so she might not have much experience in cutting off overbearing debate participants. Her timid, apologetic treatment of Pence allowed the man to run roughshod over the rules and his opponent.

Harris kept a grin on her face, but you just know she was screaming inside. Her lack of forcefulness was also grating because it reminded so many women, including me, of the double standard that still applies to women and men in public life.

Harris was too nice. She should have demanded the vice-president respect the rules. Even the moderator should have had her knuckles rapped. Instead, Harris played nice, constantly smiling at the vice-president whilst she was trying to shut him down.

The Democratic vice-presidential nominee was trying to balance the twin objectives of protecting her ticket’s lead and remaining collected and composed.

Her appearance was designed to make people believe that she was vice-presidential material. In that effort, she succeeded.

But the exit polling showed that her opponent, Pence, scored even higher than Harris as a potential vice-president.

There is already a huge gender gap in the support for Biden and Trump. The vast majority of women don’t like Trump and will be voting for Biden. The debate reinforced that schism.

The vice-president’s propensity to answer the questions he wanted, instead of those posed by the moderator, should have been aborted.

Instead, Page’s performance was nothing short of appalling.

The constant apologies to the vice-president, while he simply ignored the rules and kept talking were a stark contrast to her more aggressive demands when Harris ran overtime, usually cutting her off within 15 seconds.

Maybe Harris could have simply followed the lead of Pence, ignoring the moderator and barrelling ahead with minutes of airtime stolen from the opponent.

But had she done that; Harris would have been characterized as a hectoring woman who disrespected the vice-president and was not ready for prime time.

Harris faced the dilemma that has been experienced by every woman trying to make it in a man’s world.

While her opponent ignored the time limits and even the questions posed by the moderator, Harris kept a permanent smile on her face. Even when frustrated, she simply repeated “Mr. Vice-president, I am speaking, I am speaking.” She remained demure and ladylike. That too, reminded me of a gender identity throwback to the last century.

As a woman in a man’s world, I know what it’s like to be boiling inside and demure on the outside. Sometimes, too much demure is not a good thing. If the Twittersphere were any indication, the uneven treatment of Harris and Pence was painfully obvious.

In particular, women weighed in to say things like: “He interrupted me, and I’d like to just finish please, is a line every woman who has ever attended a meeting with men can relate to.” One tweeted: “The gendered dynamics of interruption and the power to interrupt is always so in your face in these settings.” Another tweeted: “Just as women get paid 20 cents on the dollar less than men, Harris appears to get 20 seconds less on the minute than Pence.”

I was hoping Harris would speak out more forcefully, to demand that the moderator start applying the principle of equal treatment.

But she opted for a risk-free evening, so as not to reduce the 10-point lead that her ticket with Biden is currently enjoying.

Harris achieved that risk-free evening. But she reinforced a frustrating perspective that women need to “play nice” if they are going to be accepted in a man’s world.

If elected on Nov. 3, Harris is literally a step away from the president’s job. Her boss is already 77 years old and has mused about serving one term.

Maybe that is why she is always smiling.

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

Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer says he supports equality for women, paying homage to his own mother who sponsored a refugee group during an immigration announcement last week. But his actions, and those of his party, tell a different story.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on June 3, 2019.

OTTAWA—The usual suspects are lining up telling Canadian women to shut up about the abortion question.

Anti-feminist Margaret Wente penned a column last week accusing Liberals of creating a false issue.

Talk show hosts joined with Global Television’s Ottawa bureau chief David Akin to downplay any concern on abortion access in this country.

“Alarming rhetoric aside, there is no serious threat to abortion rights in Canada,” said Calgary talk show host Rob Breakenridge on a Global newsfeed.

Similar pundits went crazy when newly-elected prime minister Justin Trudeau set a precedent by making gender equality a crucial element of cabinet making.

The national press gallery pounced on Trudeau when he left Rideau Hall, demanding to know why he would ever introduce a notion like gender parity in cabinet appointments.

“Because it’s 2015,” was an answer that left them speechless. That same answer prompted millions of women around the country to celebrate the fact that Canada would finally have equal numbers of women and men in cabinet.

Just last week South African President Cyril Ramphosa announced a parity cabinet, joining Rwanda and Ethiopia in the rarefied club of African equals.

If he wins the election, the Canadian leader of the opposition won’t be joining that club.

Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer says he supports equality for women, paying homage to his own mother who sponsored a refugee group during an immigration announcement last week.

But his actions, and those of his party, tell a different story.

Instead of committing to cabinet parity, Scheer leads the only political party in Canada that still refuses to set targets for recruitment of women candidates.

Equal Voice, a non-partisan organization designed to promote the election of more women, polled every party in the last election and all responded with specific goals, except the Conservatives.

Scheer also slapped women in the face when he named a vocal anti-choice advocate as his Status of Women shadow minister, or party critic.

Before the appointment, Member of Parliament Rachael Harder, an anti-abortionist, was reported by iPolitics to have approved $12,000 in federal funding grants to two pregnancy care centres that refuse to refer clients to abortion centres.

Defending his decision, Scheer said, “Harder is a very, very strong, hard working, dynamic young MP and a woman who was democratically elected by her constituents and who shares my positive vision for a government.”

Just what that vision is remains murky.

The following communiqué was sent in 2017 to members of RightNow, an anti-abortion group. The message summarized a meeting held with leadership hopeful Scheer.

“Andrew Scheer has said that the government will not introduce legislation on abortion. When leadership candidates (or even elected leaders) of political parties say that, it means the cabinet. Let’s say the Conservatives win 180 seats in the next federal election and of the 180 MPs, 30 of them are in cabinet. That means 150 other Conservative MPs would be allowed to introduce a private member’s bill on this. He also never said that he would whip his cabinet not to vote for pro-life motions or bills nor did he say he himself would not vote for them either.”

Scheer won the leadership by a vote of less than two per cent. His main opponent was pro-choice. To curry anti-abortion support, he bragged that he had always supported “pro-life” legislation.

In a corollary move last week, Scheer also promised to reopen the Office of Religious Freedoms in Canada, opened by Stephen Harper in 2013.

There is only one other country in the world that has such an office, the United States of America, a country that has been aggressively legislating to reduce access to safe abortions.

In a shocking report from Harvard Medical School, American women today are 50 per cent more likely to die in childbirth than their mothers.

Researchers report that the risk is also consistently three to four times higher for black women than white women, irrespective of income or education.

The death rate per 100,000 women has jumped from 17 to 26 in the past quarter century. Maternal mortality is still lower than in most of the world.

In developing countries, the ratio in 2015 was 239 deaths per 100,000 live births. The World Health Organization cites unsafe abortions as a key contributor.

Former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper blocked aid to international organizations that offered reproductive choices.

Why should Canadians shut up when women around the world die because they cannot access safe abortions?

Scheer tipped his hand in his anti-choice appointment to Status of Women chair. He would reverse women’s gains, on many fronts.

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 23, 2018.

OTTAWA—Barack Obama is not the only one who says men are getting on his nerves.

Men in positions of power who don’t seem to understand when they have crossed the line are getting on my nerves.

Just last week, Pablo Rodriguez replaced Mélanie Joly as minister of Canadian Heritage. One man replaced one woman in a cabinet change. Joly did not lose her job, she was shuffled into a different portfolio.

In addition, five newbies were added to the roster, including two women and three men.

So why does a seasoned journalist write that a “parade of men” had been “called on to clean up the messes others could not.”

Others is code for women, as there are no transgendered members of the cabinet yet.

Why would The Globe and Mail carry a blazing headline that reads “Trudeau deviates from the diversity script.”

Talk about misleading sexist claptrap.

In a featured opinion piece garnering coveted top billing across from the daily editorial section, journalist Konrad Yakabuski called the decision to replace Joly by Pablo Rodriguez a blow to “the sisterhood.”

Does Yakabuski really think a parity cabinet with women in senior portfolios including foreign affairs, justice, environment, and health is a downgrade to women?

Or is he amongst those scribes still smarting over the quip that shut down journalistic criticism of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s original commitment to equality almost three years ago?

“Because it’s 2015” was an answer that silenced the initial vocal backlash to the prime minister’s gender equal cabinet.

The Yakabuski narrative, that men have been brought in to clean up women’s messes, featured by the Globe, promotes the notion that somehow the “weaker sex” is simply not up to the job.

But the facts do not bear out this opinion piece. In the last few months, much of Canada’s heavy lifting, on the trickiest economic file facing the government, has been done by Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland. She has had to navigate the murky waters of Washington, staring down a dictatorial wannabee and accomplishing it with a rapier tongue and the aplomb of a diplomat.

Likewise, the trickiest federal-provincial files, the move to legalize marijuana and fight climate change, have been stickhandled by two very capable ministers, in justice and environment, who also happen to be women.

Yakabuski claimed Trudeau “deviates from his own script, which we noted because he drew attention to diversity in his first cabinet.”

But then he offers absolutely not one shred of evidence to back up his claim. On the contrary, cabinet positions are still split equally among women and men, and the prime minister is continuing a trend which has changed the face of Canadian politics forever.

Any new prime minister who tries to ignore the established equity principle will do so at their peril.

The notion that somehow women need to be cleaned up after needs to be exposed for what it is, the ranting of an out-of-touch scribe who simply does not get it.

On the same editorial page where Yakabuski makes his claim, there are two other opinion pieces, one written by a man, the other by a woman.

On the opposite page, in letters to the editor, there are seven letters submitted by men and one submitted by a woman. Not surprisingly, the editorial page editor also happens to be a man. The first five names on the Globe masthead are all men, from the deputy editor to the executive editor to the managing editor.

On the front page that same day, every single political story from Ontario, Ottawa, and Washington was written by men; five of them and not a single contribution from a woman.

It is not surprising that a misleading narrative on diversity would pass muster with this male-dominated editorial team.

Parity may be good for politics, but it is not a media priority. Instead, journalists are still not-so-subtly promoting the notion that the men in cabinet are stepping in to save us from incompetence.

When Trudeau made world news by insisting on parity in his first round of cabinet choices, the biggest pushback actually came from the media.

The good news is that the majority of his ministerial choices have been sound. With a few exceptions, most ministers have been able to move forward on an activist government agenda. His female roster is strong, capable and in charge of their files.

If anything, the balance of cabinet excellence is tipped in favour of women. They are obviously getting on someone’s nerves.

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 on April 30, 2018 in The Hill Times.

OTTAWA—Misogyny lives. And the internet is giving it too much oxygen.

While Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is being called to account by governments around the world for political misuse of social media intel, a bigger issue looms in cyberspace.

Normal platforms of discourse are governed by legal restraints which serve to cool down the rhetoric that can come from unfettered anonymity. Slander, libel and anti-hate laws serve to make people think before they speak, write or act. Not so for tweets and social media postings.

The kind of bilious outrage that is common on the internet would be outlawed in traditional newspapers and television.

The internet is the modern-day equivalent of the Wild West, with like-minded bandits, terrorists and incels getting together to cultivate a venomous sense of brotherhood.

Hate speech is given free rein on the web, and communities connected by common deviance are rapidly mushrooming. They thrive in the dark web with little public knowledge or exposure. Underground chat groups provide blanket anonymity, encouraging deviants and misfits to group together into cells of like-minded outsiders who do not even have to use their own names to make common cause against the world.

From jihadists to white supremacists, from incels to pedophiles, they derive comfort in the belief that they are part of a bigger movement and form a community.

Their hate-mongering would be illegal in other fora. So it is about time the purveyors of social media put their mouth where their money is. Anonymity in social media should be outlawed.

An international convention to ban internet hate speech would be a good place for world governments to start. That initiative should be accompanied by national laws outlawing anonymity and hate speech in social media communications. And social media owners should be responsible for the content their platforms create.

Last week Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly joined with the Canada Council for the Arts in announcing a series of initiatives to support harassment-free workplaces in the arts. She vowed to deny funding to organizations that fail to provide such a workplace.

The initiative is an important one. But it pales in comparison to the looming challenges of the virtual workplace. One should not preclude the other but the government would be well-advised to launch targetted public discussions about how to achieve a harassment-free internet.

The tragic events in Toronto last week shone a light into the depth of misogyny that festers and is fostered in the deep net.

Like many, I had never heard of the incel movement. But the more I learn about it, the more I fear that with these movements growing by the day, misogyny will never be stamped out.

According to an investigative piece in Elle magazine, incel is an underground movement of disgruntled men who blame women for their incapacity to form lasting relationships.

Until it was shut down last November, internet purveyor Reddit provided a safe place for misogynists to gather and spew hate. The site posted this proviso to warn users “Normies are allowed to post here, but do note that many incels are generally hostile to normies; tread carefully. Blackpill: A subjective term used to describe the real or perceived socially unspoken realizations that come from being a long-time incel. This sidebar will certainly be revised every now and again.”

Reddit boasted 40,000 registered members in its incel chat group. The real numbers are much higher because that figure does not include visitors who monitor the site without establishing their own accounts.

The now-infamous Facebook posting of Alek Minassian was linked to incel chat rooms. He conferred high praise upon the self-described “supreme gentleman” Californian Elliot Rodger, who murdered six people and injured 14 others before killing himself.

Minassian appears to have replicated Rodger’s massacre, right down to motive. In Rodger’s pre-massacre suicide note, he claims his murders were designed to “punish all females for the crime of depriving me of sex”. He also uploaded a YouTube video explaining why.

Minassian claims similar victimization status on his postings. After the murders, Facebook deleted the Minassian account, but that is not enough. A current posting on Incel.me says that women should be like cattle, enslaved to service men’s sexual desires.

The oversight of hate speech must be expanded and included in a legislated, legal framework.

The only way to stop poison spewing from hate sites is to shut them down and deny the cover of anonymity to potential perpetrators.

That would be a noble outcome of the horrific Toronto tragedy.

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 on Monday, October 30, 2017 in The Hill Times.

OTTAWA—Show me the money and I will show you the path to equality.

Just last week, the university sector announced groundbreaking news about a new nation-wide plan to collect and publish data on how each institution is doing when it comes to diversity.

The Action Plan for Inclusive Excellence, a five-year strategy unveiled Thursday by a group representing all Canadian universities, made positive headlines across the country.

The plan includes self-monitoring, and publication of demographic data on faculty, students, and staff. On first blush, it appears to be a robust attempt to tackle the gross financial and tenure discrepancies in the treatment of white men and everyone else in the university sector.

But the further you dig, the more you realize that the universities are being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.

The unheralded hero of this announcement is actually federal minister Kirsty Duncan.

Last spring, Science Minister Duncan announced a government initiative, the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion plan, which requires universities who want to access Canada Research Chair funding to revamp the way they recruit chair holders. The plan seeks the elimination of unconscious bias, active recruitment of diverse candidates, and continual monitoring for diversity in every step of the selection process.

Duncan gave a Dec. 15 deadline for universities to implement their own plans to improve transparency and diversity objectives, including public posting of their progress. Universities with more than five research chairs will have funding withheld if they fail to meet equity targets in hiring of women, aboriginal and visible minorities and the disabled.

Last week’s announcement was an attempt to collectively meet the challenge that Duncan has placed before the universities.

And given that $265-million in Research Chair money is at stake, the universities had no choice but to tackle the inequities.

Duncan knows first-hand the challenges faced by women and minorities in the university world. Prior to her surprise win in the riding of Etobicoke North, Ont., in 2008, Duncan taught meteorology, climatology and climate change at the University of Windsor and she still serves as an adjunct professor teaching both medical geography at the University of Toronto and global environmental processes at Royal Roads University. Duncan was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.

Having spent a lifetime as a woman in science, she experienced first-hand the sexism in the Canadian university sector.

Last June, she penned an op-ed piece for The Globe and Mail which served as a stark reminder of the rampant sexism in the university world. Excerpts included this stunning revelation: “When I was teaching at a university, a fellow faculty member shot a question at me during a staff meeting: When did I plan on getting pregnant? On other occasions, I was asked how I wanted to be treated: as a woman or as a scientist. Later, when I asked a university official why I was being paid in the bottom 10th percentile, I was told it was because I was ‘a woman’.”

Move over Harvey Weinstein. The depth and breadth of sexism is not exclusive to Hollywood.

Congratulations to the minister of science for putting the issue squarely on the table. As for the universities, statements on the launch of the diversity plan prompted a few questions.

University of Lethbridge president Mike Mahon, speaking on behalf of the Universities Canada board which he chairs, said the initiative involved “public self-monitoring” which he said would provoke change.

The new initiative involves developing a public national data base which will upload individual university information on race, gender, and ethnicity. Universities already keep individual databases but in most cases, the information collected is neither cross-referenced nor public.

In commenting on the plan, Mahon said the university strategy would also include broadening the pool of diverse students by starting at junior high school. That comment caused some alarm bells to ring, as it suggests that the current diversity deficit is caused by too few applicants from the underrepresented groups.

The minister’s own experience as a scientist clearly demonstrated the solutions are caused by biased university processes, not the paucity of applicants.

Paul Davidson, president of Universities Canada, added the action plan would be transparent “but I don’t think you will see us doing rankings and report cards.”

The minister should push back hard on that one.

Report cards and rankings are exactly how student performance is evaluated. Why shouldn’t universities be subject to similar testing?

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