The Conservatives have already started their pre-election communications strategy and are well-funded to keep it going. If the government wants to remain in the game, it needs to get in the game.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on December 11, 2023.

OTTAWA—P.T. Barnum once said that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Oscar Wilde followed suit with this zinger: “There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre followed Barnum’s advice by vowing to bring in thousands of amendments to legislation until the Liberals change some elements of their pollution pricing strategy.

Poilievre didn’t call it “pollution pricing,” but rather “carbon tax,” which is how most Canadians seem to be viewing the issue.

Government House Leader Karina Gould was quick to repudiate Poilievre’s tactic, accusing him of being a bully, and “not a serious politician.”

She also pointed out that Canadians earning less than $50,000 are actually receiving more in their pockets because carbon pricing includes personal rebates.

Poilievre seems to be winning the ground war, and has not been damaged by his bully tactics on parliamentary bills.

Most Canadians are not watching the machinations of Parliament on a daily basis, but they are feeling the pinch of inflation, and a hike in cost for basics like food and housing.

On the housing front, Poilievre dominated the headlines again, for good or for bad.

He released a 15-minute docudrama on housing which was widely quoted by pundits in both positive and negative news columns.

Globe and Mail columnist Gary Mason called the video “a dime-store analysis of our housing crisis.”

Globe columnist Andrew Coyne, on the contrary, called it, “extremely impressive. Simplistic, tendentious, conspiratorial in places, but by the standards of most political discourse, it is a PhD thesis.”

The video had legs. Within days of its posting, the docudrama had received more than three million views.

That compares with a prime ministerial upload the same day that received fewer than 100,000 views.

Liberal Housing Minister Sean Fraser joked that the Poilievre video got multiple views because of the opposition leader dialling in to watch himself perform.

Anyone can manipulate social media to inflate the number of views.

But the fact that the video occupied so much ink in mainstream media means that Poilievre was getting out his message.

The media and positive polling numbers have emboldened the Conservatives in the House of Commons.

Last week, one member was bounced out of the place for accusing the prime minister of lying on the carbon tax issue.

Alberta MP Damien Kurek ignored repeated invitations from the Speaker to withdraw his comments and was drummed out. Kurek almost immediately posted his exchange from the House on Twitter.

Meanwhile, a journalist for social media Insight has used the incident as a fundraising measure, inviting people who support Kurek to assist by sending money to a media PayPal account.

But this is no ordinary media strategy. Instead, Poilievre and the Conservatives plan to use every social media platform to promote their positions.

On these platforms there is no real rebuttal, so it doesn’t matter much that a number of statements in Poilievre’s housing video were simply false.

To follow the Barnum school of promotion, simply getting out the message on multiple platforms helps reinforce Poilievre’s status.

Screaming matches in the House of Commons are intended to reinforce the Conservative message that the carbon tax needs to be axed.

Liberals have some great talking points to deflate the video, but talking points will not carry this day.

Instead, they need to get serious on social media, attacking the falsehoods that are being perpetrated by Poilievre.

Fraser issued his own video in rebuttal to Poilievre’s housing claims.

But he is a single actor in the parliamentary story. Instead, the government needs to spend as much effort on rebuttals as it does on its own positive announcements.

As long as Canadians are talking about carbon tax and not a price on pollution, it is pretty simple to see who is winning this public relations battle.

But that doesn’t necessarily equate to winning the war.

A hard-hitting rebuttal to the “dime-store” housing analysis needs to come from the Liberals, and it needs to involve social media saturation and paid media messaging.

The Conservatives have already started their pre-election communications strategy, and by all accounts, are well-funded to keep it going.

If the government wants to remain in the game, it needs to get in the game.

Any winning team needs a defensive and an offensive strategy.

By leaving the offence to Poilievre, Liberals look defensive. Only by going into attack mode will they win.

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

Sure, it comes with some demographic challenges. With increased demand, the cost of housing in Canada’s major cities is under extreme stress. But that is something that smart government immigration policy can plan for.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on March 27, 2023.

OTTAWA—One million new Canadians is something to celebrate.

Statistics Canada’s announcement last week that the country’s population will shortly reach 40 million was something of a shocker.

I remember when we were only 15 million strong.

But what is so fantastic about this population jump is that the majority of Canadians are happy about it.

In most nation-wide surveys, by and large, Canadians believe the country’s immigration has led to economic prosperity.

Sure, it comes with some demographic challenges. With increased demand, the cost of housing in Canada’s major cities is under extreme stress.

But that is something that smart government immigration policy can plan for.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced last week that his department would be making some changes to the immigration policy. They include targeting specific subsets of workers for the immigration fast track, and incentivizing the immigration point system for people who are willing to move to underpopulated areas of the country.

Both moves make sense. We need skilled workers to cover off the job gap in certain sectors, and if they can come from abroad, the holes will be filled more quickly than waiting for apprenticeship and college graduates.

That doesn’t minimize the need for the government to aggressively promote apprenticeship and interprovincial migration of skilled labour. But it can supplement the shortages on a short-term basis.

As for the changes to where new immigrants live, that will be met with approval by big-city and small-town politicians.

Big-city mayors know that increasing populations put additional pressures on high-ticket items like local transit and infrastructure.

Municipalities are also grappling with the challenge that most downtown locations are becoming too expensive for the locals, pressuring developers into messy evictions and legal disputes with long-term tenants.

By moving immigrants into smaller communities, the changes plug the workforce gap that those communities are facing and simultaneously encourage local economic growth with the arrival of new families who need to purchase housing, appliances, furniture, and other big-ticket items.

With the exception of the People’s Party of Canada, most federal political parties seem to approve of the direction the government is taking in announcing an increase in the number of annual immigrants welcomed into the country.

Parties usually follow the wishes of the population. In most regions, the population is favourable to the hike in numbers.

However, Quebec is always tricky as the voters there do not want to see the French language undermined by immigrants who have a tendency to prefer raising their children in English.

Quebec has not exactly rolled out the red carpet to newcomers, with rules that prohibit religious headgear in public service positions, including teaching.

It is probably the only province where the majority of citizens would likely oppose a plan for mass migration.

As for the rest of the country, most provincial governments have experienced a direct economic boom related to immigration.

If the current population growth rate continues, the country will end up with almost 50 per cent immigrants within the next quarter century.

At the moment, immigrants comprise one-fifth of the country’s population.

But you only have to visit cities like Toronto and Vancouver to see the impact of migration on the new face of Canada.

And thus far, communities seem to be adapting and thriving.

Of course, there are problems. Triads and some gang elements well-established in their home countries have taken root in Canada.

But most studies show that Canadian-born residents are far more likely to commit crime than those who have come from other countries.

That doesn’t stop PPC Leader Maxime Bernier from railing against all forms of immigration.

But the Conservatives are playing it a lot smarter. For those who oppose immigration, they have been very active in demanding that the government close off leaky borders. In that respect, they are able to satisfy those who oppose immigration while at the same time wooing the communities who very much depend on family reunification and the chance to move to Canada.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had to tackle that issue when the American president put migration front and centre on the bilateral agenda.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Ottawa has partly focused on amending the safe country agreement so that land borders cannot be used by those who want to transit illegally from the United States to Canada.

With a better safe country agreement, the boom is welcome.

It makes the country stronger.

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 November 7, 2022.

OTTAWA—Canada is bucking a global trend by announcing a major increase in immigration targets over the next three years.

The announcement that 1.45 million newcomers will be welcomed made headlines around the world.

Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Sean Fraser delivered a clear message at his press conference, “Look, folks, it’s simple to me. Canada needs more people.”

Fraser is right. The country’s future depends on a growing labour force and the only way to achieve that growth is by immigration.

The numbers move rapidly over the next three years to hit the half-million mark in 2025.

While the numbers are large, they are consistent with a historic plan which has Canada welcome the equivalent of one per cent of the population annually.

The minister broke the plan down into details involving family reunification, provincial sponsorship, economic immigration, and refugee sponsorship.

The announcement was met with a positive reaction across the country.

Framed as “An Immigration Plan to Grow the Economy,” the minister explained the plan was a way to allay the burgeoning labour shortage in multiple domains.

There was significant explanation of the why, and most observers greeted the explanations positively.

Even Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has not fallen into the trap of his predecessors who thought they could use anti-immigrant sentiment to whip up electoral support.

With 23 per cent of our population currently made up of immigrants, going after them politically could have very negative consequences.

It is fair to say that the proposed “barbaric cultural practices” snitch line proposed by the Tories during the 2015 election dealt a fatal blow to their election hopes.

Poilievre is not about to make the same mistake. His own wife is an immigrant, so he is unlikely to fall into the trap of opposing a hike in immigration targets.

What he will do is focus on the bread-and-butter issues of how well the program is being delivered.

In that regard, there is some fertile ground for Conservatives to attack the current mess in immigration processing.

The 2023 immigration system, without the announced increases, suffers a backlog of 2.7 million applicants.

Those applicants do not have the political power of Canadians looking to get their passports renewed. But both programs are managed by the same department and they have both been failing.

In IRCC immigration queues, you do not even have the right to get an answer from a human being.

Even MPs are stymied when it comes to assisting applications of family members in queue for a visa.

I have been trying to help a friend who initially applied to immigrate to Canada in 2013. His application was approved in the Quebec nomination process back in 2019.

A university professor from Lebanon who specializes in design, Antoine Abi Aad would be an ideal immigrant.

We met several years ago at a world design summit where he was one of the presenters. He reached out two years ago after he was approved to immigrate to Canada.

All he needed was a travel visa. I offered to help and reached out to the office of then-Global Affairs minister Marc Garneau, whose team did their best to assist.

They could get no information on the file and were told that the IRCC was waiting on him for information. They couldn’t even ascertain the nature of the allegedly missing information.

Even with my help, he was never able to get an answer as to what information was missing.

Two years later, he is still waiting.

All his paperwork is in order and he cannot even speak to a human being on any of the IRCC computerized platforms.

Announcing new ambitious immigration targets is a good thing.

But being able to process the 2.7 million people who have been waiting in the queue for years is even more important.

Governments need to be able to deliver on basic services, like passports and immigration applications.

The IRCC was also responsible for the nation-wide mess that saw passport offices closed for more two years even though Service Canada actually paid the political price for the disorganization.

The passport mess that IRCC was responsible for is exactly the same mess currently facing prospective immigrants.

Canada will lose those immigrants we are hoping to attract if it takes years to even get an answer.

Antoine Abi Aad applied to immigrate to Canada in 2013.

Next year is the 10th anniversary of his application.

Shouldn’t the IRCC deliver the basics. That means ending its 2.7 million waiting list.

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