By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on December 2, 2024.

OTTAWA—Doug Ford is talking tough against Donald Trump.

He knows it is good politics. Canadians are extremely upset about the possibility that our economy will be bludgeoned by a bully.

As premier, Ford is in a position to talk tough and face few of the repercussions that would rain upon Prime Minister Justin Trudeau if he were to say the same thing.

Ford also took a nasty shot at Mexico, demanding they be turfed from the North American Free Trade agreement for allowing Chinese auto production into their country.

Ford has a point, and the new Mexican government may have to rethink the trade policy.

Trudeau must proceed cautiously because the reported animus that Trump feels for him could cost our country dearly.

Canadians are in for a rough ride as Trump also knows that most Canadians do not like him. He is a man who needs to be loved.

Ever since the president-elect won a majority, news from south of the border is nothing short of cringe-worthy.

Putting an anti-vaxxer in charge of health policy, especially one as crazy as Robert Kennedy, is nothing short of deadly.

Kennedy has promised to ban fluoride in all American water systems. Democratic state governors are already lining up to block any federal edicts that infringe on their jurisdiction.

Hulk Hogan is publicly ruminating that he will be given a senior position on the Trump team. An alleged sex philanderer had to drop out as Trump’s pick for attorney general.

Ford attacked Trump for claiming illegal drugs and migrants were coming from Canada. Instead, according to Ford, Canada is the recipient of illegal guns and drugs coming north.

Trudeau is working with premiers on a joint approach to the Trump threat to impose an immediate 25 per cent tariff on all goods entering from Canada on the day he is sworn in.

While Trudeau and Ford may be working together on that issue, they are going to be at political odds in upcoming elections.

Ford has already made noises about moving to the polls early, and his advertising strategy seems to confirm that intention.

His government is running non-stop messaging on radio and television to explain the strength of the Ontario economy. One of the reasons is the move to electrification of vehicles.

At the same time as government ads are lauding the new investments (made in tandem with the federal government), Ford’s party ads are designed to trash Trudeau’s price on pollution.

Trudeau’s fight against global warming is one of the reasons the federal government has invested heavily in alternative energies, and public transit.

In Ford’s party ads, the premier takes all the credit for these investments, when in reality, the push came from the feds.

Ford is intending to run his campaign against Trudeau.

Meanwhile, Trudeau continues to make announcements about good public policy with zero supportive government advertising. It is almost as though Trudeau wants to lose the next election.

In the past week, Ontario became the third province to join the federal government’s plan for a national school food program.

Newfoundland was the first to sign on to the national initiative, followed by Manitoba and now Ontario.

But while the announcement was well-received in each province, there is been little change in the poll numbers for the federal Liberals.

That is partly because of the unpopularity of the prime minister, but it is also because the government has not spent any real money explaining why helping children’s nutrition in schools will lead to stronger communities.

The only federal ad I saw last week was a vague reference to how our banking investments are covered by a government agency known as the Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation.

For some reason, some idiot in federal advertising thinks the inner workings of CDIC are more important than telling Canadians about the new school food program.

The other recent huge-ticket item was a GST pre-Christmas holiday on some items and a $250 bonus for workers with incomes under $150,000. The Liberals have since split the bill and separated the GST break from the $250 cheques which will be sent to most working Canadians in the spring.

How did that giveaway work for the government?

With zero advertising to support the initiative, what made the news was that those who did not work were upset about being left out. What was supposed to be a gateway to a positive story is now more bad Liberal news.

The New Democrats now say they won’t support the program unless it is expanded.

This multi-billion-dollar announcement should have been launched in tandem with a national advertising campaign.

Why not follow Doug Ford.

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

Brian Mulroney was a people person. Even when his party had plummeted in popularity, he was able to keep the caucus united thanks to his awesome interpersonal skills. Though we were political adversaries, we remained friends long after he left politics.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on March 7, 2024.

OTTAWA—This year is the 40th anniversary of the election of Brian Mulroney.

The right honourable prime minister would have loved to celebrate the largest victory in Canadian history, but time robbed him of that opportunity.

Instead, a state funeral will be held to honour his life, and Canadians will revisit the accomplishments of a remarkable leader.

The prime minister and I were elected on the same day: Sept. 4, 1984.

But we sat on opposite sides of the House. Mulroney was leading 211 Conservatives, most of whom were elected in that sweep, while I was one of only 10 new Liberals.

Our party had been decimated, and political pundits were predicting the Liberals would disappear to be replaced by the New Democrats. It was widely predicted that Canada would follow an international trend of the political right and left in constant battle with nobody in the centre.

Mulroney was the leader of the Progressive Conservatives. He was a centrist prime minister who believed in the power of government for positive change.

Current Conservatives say it is the job of government to get out of the way, and let people run their affairs with no collective responsibility.

But Mulroney understood that government could be an instrument of positive change. He was born in Baie Comeau, a small mining town in northern Quebec, and he understood the need for government.

He was also the first Conservative leader to really understand Quebec, and its need for distinctiveness.

It was that understanding that paved the way for a massive Progressive Conservative majority back in 1984.

But it was also his wish to get Quebec’s signature on the Canadian constitution that eventually fractured the party in favour of a western-based equivalent of the Bloc Québécois.

In 1987, the Reform Party was formed under the leadership of Preston Manning. Fatigued by the Meech Lake debate, Reformers believed Progressive Conservatives were too focused on the East, especially Quebec.

Their platform called for a Triple-E Senate: equal, elected and effective. An elected Senate was supposed to counterbalance the influence of the House of Commons, dominated by Members of Parliament from Eastern Canada.

Some Reformers also held negative views towards women, minorities, and homosexuals. Built on a strong Christian base, the party blurred the separation between church and state that had been the foundation of Canadian politics.

But in the 1988 election, Reformers only managed to garner two per cent of the vote while the Progressive Conservatives sustained a second majority with their promise of a free trade agreement.

Mulroney believed in an activist government. He negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement in the face of considerable opposition from the manufacturing heartland of Ontario.

He also introduced the goods and services tax, another initiative that opposition Liberals opposed.

That tax replaced a 13.5 per cent manufacturers’ sales tax, but—unlike the former—it was not embedded in the price of goods, but was added at the cash register.

While it was wildly unpopular, the tax set the stage for fiscal stability as it has generated billions of dollars annually for federal coffers. Last year, it produced more than $16-billion in revenue and, in 2022, government collected $21.5-billion in GST.

Mulroney also loomed large on the international scene, setting the stage for an end to apartheid in South Africa by working within the Commonwealth to impose sanctions.

Mulroney had to fight Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and American president Ronald Reagan on that move, as both opposed the sanctions that ultimately broke the back of the South African government.

Above all, Mulroney was a people person. Even when his party had plummeted in popularity, he was able to keep the caucus united and motivated, largely because of his awesome interpersonal skills.

Even though we were political adversaries, we remained friends long after Mulroney left politics.

Whenever I would call him, his first question would be about my family.

Mulroney had every reason to despise a former Liberal rat-packer, but he never made politics personal. He understood we all had a job to do. While we were adversaries, we were never enemies.

The centrist party Mulroney led no longer exists.

Instead, anti-government former Reformers have taken centre stage in the Conservative movement.

Perhaps it is a reflection of the direction of the country. The notion of collective responsibility has largely been replaced by rabid individualism with an emphasis on the word “rabid.”

Mulroney understood that there was no place in politics for hate.

His prime ministerial legacy changed Canada. May he rest in peace.

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

At this point, there do not seem to be many voices siding with the Department of Finance. So Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s handling of the issue will be a make or break issue for the government.

During the GST fight, the finance minister’s viewpoint eventually carried the day. This time, Finance is strongly in favour of a position that has the potential to create an electoral problem for the government.

By SHEILA COPPS

First published on Monday, September 11, 2017 in The Hill Times.

OTTAWA—Summer caucuses are always hot. And when you combine heated politics with a sunny West Coast location, the temperature often rises.

After more than two months away from the Ottawa cocoon, Members of Parliament are eager to repeat the views they have heard in their ridings. Sad to say, most people don’t make appointments with Parliamentarians simply to tell them what a great job they are doing. On the contrary, riding office hours are usually a continuum of complaints about government policies, directions, and future plans.

The roughest critics tend to be party members. That may seem counterintuitive, as most political activists are usually committed to defending their party of choice. But inside the party, local supporters see themselves as a mirror of their community. They relish the role of the canary in the mine, warning their party if it appears to be taking a wrong turn that has raised the ire of the electorate.

No government can expect the support of all of the people all of the time. But a measure of success is achieved when there are complainants on both sides of any issue. Political equilibrium is in balance when no single issue takes precedence over all the others.

Both factors for a happy electorate were missing from the discussion of proposed tax changes that took centre stage at the recent Liberal caucus meeting in Kelowna.

The last time a tax measure was a key topic at a British Columbia Grit caucus meeting, was in the lead up to the 1993 election, when members revolted against a plan to keep the hated Tory goods and services tax.

At the time, it made tremendous political sense to fight the Progressive Conservatives unpopular tax. Brian Mulroney’s government had revoked an existing manufacturers sales tax, and replace it with a levy on all goods and services. But if Liberals formed government, some wanted to keep the revenue coming.

From an economic perspective that made sense, because it secured ever-increasing government revenues based on consumption, not production. Liberal supporters of the tax also argued that undoing the GST would be akin to unscrambling an egg. The Conservatives had already done all the heavy lifting, with the imposition of the despised measure. Why not simply shut up and reap the benefit?

That pre-election Vancouver caucus meeting proved to be the flashpoint for a heated debate. The majority of caucus members supported abolition of the GST. A smaller number, including the finance critic and supporters, urged the caucus to keep the tax. Liberal leader Jean Chrétien listened carefully to both sides.

At the end of the meeting, he told the media that the majority viewpoint to abolish the GST carried the day.

But he also expressed personal trepidation about whether the decision was the best long-term strategy for the financial health of the country.

Last week’s meeting in Kelowna highlighted eerily similar internal schisms. The broad-based coalition of small business and professional groups opposed to the incorporation tax changes, carried the day on the summer barbecue circuit.

A joint campaign by doctors and other small business owners appeared to have won the day in their public opinion battle. A delegation of women physicians even descended on Kelowna to make their case, claiming the income-sprinkling prohibition would force some female doctors to abandon their chosen profession.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau did his best to counter that, repeating his view that doctors should not get better tax breaks than nurses or police.

But nurses and police are not self-employed while doctors are.

Like other small business owners, they have no access to company pension plans, maternity benefits or sick leave. Many utilize tax avoidance to fill this financial gap.

The proposed changes would directly impact the small business sector in every community in the country.

The Finance Department can win any battle when there is a broad split in public opinion on a tax measure.

At this point, there do not seem to be many voices siding with the Department of Finance. So Morneau’s handling of the issue will be a make or break issue for the government.

During the GST fight, the finance minister’s viewpoint eventually carried the day.

This time, Finance is strongly in favour of a position that has the potential to create an electoral problem for the government.

The Kelowna message was clear. From a caucus perspective, constituents have spoken and they do not support the majority of the proposed changes.

It remains to be seen whether history will repeat itself.

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