So, as I was flipping through the day’s news to write up this newsletter, I read my colleague Paul Wells’s column about how Erin O’Toole has gone extremely to ground, even with an attempted public knifing in the offing by Senator Denise Batters, who has publicly petitioned for a leadership review. Paul traces the similarities between 2021 and 2019 for the Conservatives: a mixed-bag election result giving rise to a dump-the-leader instinct, a muddy idea of who the replacement should be, radio silence from the man himself.
Two things can pull together a frayed party, Paul writes, and one of them is the political power currently not afforded the No. 2 party in the House of Commons. So that leaves only option B. “In the absence of a crisis, or indeed much of anything else, a party is left alone with the voices in its head,” he writes.
You’ve Got Mail: And then just as I was thinking about how to write up that column, a new missive arrived in my inbox: “Statement from Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole.” Well, you don’t say. “Senator Denise Batters has been removed from the Conservative National Caucus,” it began. Ooooh. “As the Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, I will not tolerate an individual discrediting and showing a clear lack of respect towards the efforts of the entire Conservative caucus, who are holding the corrupt and disastrous Trudeau government to account,” O’Toole said.
And in case the broader message wasn’t entirely clear, Dan Robertson, O’Toole’s chief of strategy, tweeted a few minutes later, “Do not underestimate @erinotoole.”
Look, I’m not saying official Ottawa definitely reads Maclean’s, but… <raises eyebrow, taps finger on side of nose>
You Also Have Mail: Okay, wait, I am trying to write this thing in some coherent thematic order but things just keep happening, so let’s just do this live-blog style. So then half an hour after O’Toole issued his statement about giving Batters the boot, she returned fire with a tweet that read, “Tonight, Erin O’Toole tried to silence me for giving our #CPC members a voice. I will not be silenced by a leader so weak that he fired me VIA VOICEMAIL. Most importantly, he cannot suppress the will of our Conservative Party members! Sign the petition: membersvote.ca.”
I think it’s safe to assume there will be much more on this fracas in the news tomorrow, so stay tuned for updates. <Glances back and forth to see what else is incoming> We good? Okay, onward to things that are not the Conservative party gnawing furiously on each other’s legs…
Just Tri Me: Meanwhile, over at the red team, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that in his one-on-one meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House later this week during the revived “Three Amigos” trilateral summit, he will press Biden on his Buy American policy and emphasize the importance to both countries of continental trade and interconnected supply chains.
Biden’s protectionist stance, popular with trade unions and Democrats in Congress, is focused on the auto sector and infrastructure projects, and many business and industry leaders in Canada have sounded the alarm on its impact and limitations. “Since the election of Mr. Biden, we have talked about our concerns with respect to Buy American, which poses a particular challenge not only for companies and workers here in Canada, but also in the United States, because of the integration of our supply chains and our economies in general,” Trudeau said.
Team Canuck: To that end, Canadian Press reports that the trilateral meetings in Washington between Canadian, American and Mexican leaders will feature a “Team Canada” approach like the one that shepherded through the fractious NAFTA negotiations during the reign of that shouty tangerine fellow you don’t hear much about anymore. New Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly will join Trudeau, along with Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, International Trade Minister Mary Ng and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.
Get the shot or get out: An Angus Reid poll found that a majority of Canadians support people losing their jobs if they won’t get vaccinated. “Almost 70 per cent of respondents supported the idea of firing on-board airline employees, school teachers, police officers, paramedics, firefighters and medical professionals if they did not get COVID-19 shots,” Global News reports. Smaller majorities supported restaurant employees (64 per cent), construction workers (55 per cent) and small business employees (53 per cent) being turfed for refusing to be vaccinated.
Well that—in the internet parlance of our times—escalated quickly.
On Monday, annoyed by some of the talking points I heard at the announcement of a landmark childcare agreement between Alberta and the federal government, I tweeted this:
Child care matters to all working parents it is not a boutique women's issue for the love of god.
A thousand retweets and 9,000 likes later, I guess I’m not the only one frustrated about how childcare is so often framed.
That press conference in Edmonton was staged for the purpose of announcing a $3.8-billion agreement the federal government says will reduce daycare fees in Alberta by an average of half by the end of next year, on the way to creating 42,500 new regulated spaces and providing $10-a-day child care by 2026. Getting that deal inked means that Ontario and New Brunswick are now the only hold-out provinces, as Ottawa tries to make its social-infrastructure moonshot of a national early-learning and childcare plan a reality.
Against a predictably noisy thematic backdrop of small children frolicking at a YMCA (subtext: “Do you want this going on around you while you try to work?”), Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said, “Childcare is critically important to our economy. It is as much a critical piece of infrastructure as a road or a grain elevator or a railway,” before adding, “Childcare is important for all Canadian women and children and families.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the last year and a half have made it clear how important it is to have support for kids and families so that parents can work. “Not just for families, not just for those young kids to get the best start in life that they possibly can, not just for moms who are all too often facing impossible choices about whether to be there for their kids or to contribute to their family and to their community,” he said, but businesses of all sizes know that child care is essential for the economy.
Karina Gould, the minister of families, children and social development, trotted out a similar message, saying this plan would be “good for parents, especially mothers.”
Now look, I am being a bit cheap in singling out these federal politicians since they present targets of opportunity this week, because this line of rhetoric that child care is inherently a mother’s problem is so common that it’s pretty much ubiquitous.
But it is bizarre and immensely counter-productive that even in conversations intended to be progressive, childcare is often presented in an offhanded way as a boutique women’s issue. You know, a little something for the ladies, in case they want to sell Tupperware to earn pin money while Junior is at his playgroup. This messaging only reinforces the idea that children are the natural domain and default responsibility of their mothers—which is presumably not what the architects of this national childcare plan are after.
It also transforms childcare from the critical public infrastructure that the Trudeau government has repeatedly described it as and reframes it as a special social policy treat we toss at women. That badly undercuts the message that this is essential undergirding that will have immense payoffs for society as a whole, both economically and socially.
The disruption of the pandemic has rolled back women’s employment gains by decades, in a disconcertingly durable phenomenon economist Armine Yalnizyan has dubbed the “she-cession.” But there is a subtle but important difference between acknowledging that women are more likely than men to quit their jobs or reduce their hours in order to cover gaps in childcare, and making it sound like child care is an amenity just for women, because so are children themselves. One of those messages nods at set of economic, social and personal pressures that need to be equalized; the other makes it sound like this is all an irrevocable and justified state of affairs.
This strikes me as a variation on highly accomplished women who have kids being asked ad nauseam how they balance work and family life, while highly accomplished fathers are asked that on the 10th of Never. All of this treats working fathers as the norm and working mothers as special cases or curiosities. And it treats mothers concerned about, engaged with and sacrificing for the wellbeing of their kids and families as the default, and working fathers doing the same as mythological creatures. Neither is true; both are destructive.
The avalanche of responses to my tweet honestly caught me off-guard, and many of them made different versions of the same excellent point: that when it comes to early learning and child care, we all have skin in this game. People who don’t have kids and never intend to said childcare matters to them so their colleagues who are parents can be focused and available at work, knowing their kids are well looked after. Employers, managers and bosses of all stripes said it matters to them for the same reason, or because someday they will employ the adults those daycare kids grow into, so to have them enrolled in stable, quality programs is an investment in the future.
Of course in practice, many of these childcare burdens are still disproportionately taken up by women. But that’s not an unalterable state of affairs that just dropped on us from the sky. Because guess what happens when an entire society still somehow, in this the year of our lord 2021, thinks kids belong by default to their mothers? Those mothers are paid less, fall into the mommy-track career trap, are taken less seriously and assumed to have one foot out the door and one eye on the kitchen through their working lives.
Which in turn makes it more likely that even a couple that genuinely wants to share parental leave or is trying to come up with a solution for childcare, whether on a long-term basis or for the “Holy crap, one of the kids is sick, how are we going to juggle this today?” emergency that has become so grindingly common during the pandemic, will pick her and not him to take the hit and miss work. It’s not because it has to be that way or was meant to be or even because the individual families involved want it to be that way; it’s because that is the system we’ve built.
These provincial and territorial agreements that are supposed to add up to a national childcare plan could be nothing less than transformative and generational in their impact on the social fabric of this country and the kids and families who will benefit. There are a lot of “ifs” attached to that hypothetical superlative—if the resulting daycare spaces are plentiful and high-quality, if the whole thing survives elections and changes in government, if this meaningfully shifts the choices families can make about childcare and the rest of their lives as a result, if it is economically viable—but the impact could be enormous.
But if part of that project is about building greater equality within families and in society at large—and it should be—then we should talk more ambitiously and honestly about who this is supposed to benefit: all of us.
My favourite bit of any story about Erin O’Toole’s leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada these days is the part where his office declines a chance to defend him.
“Batters did not respond to Global News’ request for comment Monday,” one chronicle of a rogue Senator’s efforts to unseat the leader said. “Neither did O’Toole’s office.”
(To be fair, I’m not sure what returning a request for comment would entail. “Would you like to comment?” “Not really. Would you?“)
In one of my favourites, from Global’s redoubtable Alex Boutilier, MPs are told to refer questions about seat distribution to the Office of the Leader of the Opposition—which then refuses to comment. Look, if anybody’s not going to be commenting, make sure it’s us.
To say the least, it’s easy these days to find communications experts, in any organization, who are quite convinced that the smartest thing to do in a given circumstance is to forego comment. O’Toole, or the people he hires to withhold comment on his behalf, seems to have raised reticence to the level of art. If, hypothetically, the earth were to open up and swallow him tonight, I wonder how many weeks would go by before anyone could be sure it had happened. I’ve got a long history of being less clever than communications pros, so for all I know, maybe it’s actually really smart to respond to accusations of a leadership vacuum by acting out a leadership vacuum.
But so far what’s surprising is the extent to which, for Conservatives, the autumn of 2021 is starting to resemble the autumn of 2019.
Both times, a federal election led to a result that mixed disappointment with tantalizing progress for the main opposition party: a popular-vote plurality, a Liberal incumbent held to a minority in the House of Commons, but no outright victory, no return to power. Each time, the immediate disappointment led to questions about the leader—Andrew Scheer then, Erin O’Toole now. Each time, the early grumbling seemed to give way to longer-term pragmatism. “Sure, we don’t love this guy, but we can’t just be switching leaders every few months either. Let him be.”
And yet by the time the snow flew, both in 2019 and in 2021 questions about the leader had returned. In a second wave, if I may borrow a gruesome analogy. For O’Toole this must be particularly disappointing. He was supposed to represent an alternative to everything Scheer had come, by the end of his leadership, to represent. O’Toole was climate friendlier. He had offered agreement in principle to marching in as-yet-hypothetical Pride parades. Fat lot of good it’s done him so far. In yet another weird flashback to the Scheer era, he’s beset by opponents who, to say the least, seem not to have a clear alternative in mind. Denise Batters was a Peter MacKay supporter. Did she expect MacKay to be more of a true-blue conservative than O’Toole has been? Does she expect MacKay to return from (there’s no kinder way to phrase this) ignominy to run again—to O’Toole’s right? I’d ask her, but I’m given to understand she’s not responding to requests for comment. Which, I mean, would you?
This too was the curse of 2019. “Not Scheer” was an easy answer to who Conservatives wanted as leader, easier than providing an actual person’s name turned out to be. Brad Wall, Jason Kenney, Jean Charest, Rona Ambrose and Pierre Poilievre turned out to be indisposed. Most had made no secret of their reluctance to run. Some would have been highly problematic candidates if they had run. One or two may yet be highly problematic candidates if given the chance.
What’s wearing the leader, now as in 2019, is the sound of silence. Two things can be relied on to rally even a moderately divided party: power and a crisis. If O’Toole had won the election he’d have actual cabinet jobs to hand out, a throne speech to write, a new course in government to steer. It’s not easy and it’s not without its own peril, but power at least brings a sense of momentum. Crisis, and by this I mean a crisis out in the real world, clarifies stakes. It encourages people to set aside petty differences to meet the needs of the moment. But in the absence of a crisis, or indeed much of anything else, a party is left alone with the voices in its head.
I’m almost wondering whether Justin Trudeau’s reluctance to convene Parliament, about which I recently grumbled, isn’t a stroke of tactical genius. Conservatives facing a Trudeau know what they’re fighting. Conservatives facing the void soon find it staring back at them. If I were Trudeau I’d wonder whether it’s possible to prorogue this Parliament before it starts.
Determined internal opponents moved against both Erin O’Toole and Jason Kenney on Monday, putting both politicians’ continued leadership in doubt.
Global’s Alex Boutilierreports that an anti-O’Toole petition launched Monday by Sen. Denise Batters is not a standalone gesture, but will be part of a “campaign that includes MPs and senators, as well as current and former party officials.”
“This is part of multi-step campaign. This will unfold over the next three months, really over the next six months,” said one Conservative MP, who agreed to speak to Global News on the condition they not be named. A second source corroborated the MP’s account. Both sources said Conservative activists are expected to publicly endorse the petition in the near future.
The anonymous MP said “significant number of caucus members as well as both past and current riding presidents, and riding officials across the country as well as former national councillors,” have signed on to the attempt to get rid of the leader.
Kenney challenged: Meanwhile, in Alberta, at least 22 UCP riding associations have passed a motion demanding an early leadership review for Kenney, the Globereports.
The dissatisfied local executives argued in a letter to UCP president Ryan Becker that because at least one quarter of associations passed the motion, they cleared the threshold necessary for the party to respond to their demands. The motion calls for a special general meeting, where members could vote in the leadership review remotely. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney quelled a caucus uprising in September by agreeing to a leadership review in April; that vote will take place at an earlier-than-expected annual meeting, meaning members must be present to cast a ballot.
“We are asking – even demanding – that it be one member, one vote. Not just people who can appear at the meeting,” Samantha Steinke, the constituency association president for Central Peace-Notley, told reporters.
Child care deal: On the same day that a significant chunk of his party launched a leadership challenge, Kenney appeared with Justin Trudeau for an announcement of a child-care deal, the Edmonton Journalreports.
Good day for JT: In the Star, Susan Delacourtponders the events of the day and notes that Trudeau is looking good, at least compared to O’Toole and Kenney, who, she reminds us, are allies.
Just days before the election in September, Kenney emerged with the reintroduction of strict COVID-19 protocols in Alberta, to stem a surge caused by easing up too soon in the summer. Within minutes, Trudeau’s Liberals were delightedly reissuing a video clip of O’Toole praising Kenney’s COVID-19 management. O’Toole promptly went to ground, stopped doing media interviews, and the rest, as they say, is history. So for good or ill, these two Conservative leaders’ fates do seem to rise and fall in tandem, and Monday was another instalment in the saga — on the downward slope. It does raise the question, though, of what has soured Conservatives on two politicians once deemed saviours of the party, in their own ways and together.
Doomed: In the Hill Times, Michael Harrisis writing off O’Toole.
That is the deep failure of Erin O’Toole’s leadership. It is one thing to go down fighting the good fight for your beliefs. You pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and await the next fray. You still have your beliefs intact. It is a very different thing to unilaterally exchange core Conservative positions for a more progressive agenda, as O’Toole did in the last election, all because you believe it is the secret sauce for winning. That leaves the base confused. If you lose, as the CPC did, the confusion eventually turns to anger. At the heart of the anger is the suspicion that it was because you abandoned conservative values that you lost.
Doing well: In the Star, Jamie Watts assesses O’Toole’s handling of caucus antivax eruption and is impressed.
Staring down this dilemma, O’Toole acted with a controlled, calm authority that once again demonstrated his mastery of his role. It speaks volumes that most of his response played out behind the scenes, with the leader stepping in publicly just enough to make his views known. No grandstanding, just a firm and sincere condemnation of vaccine skepticism and an even firmer signal that it has no place in his shadow cabinet. What’s more, the response was both clever and wise enough to avoid affording any further oxygen to his potential leadership challengers.
Partisan clerk? The Conservatives and the NDP are calling on the Liberal government to release email and text messages between the party and Commons Clerk Charles Robert, who is accused of acting as a Liberal partisan, CBC reports.
CBC News reported last week that Robert is facing claims that he made partisan comments and shared confidential information with the Liberals that could have given the party a strategic advantage over the opposition in the House. The Conservatives’ deputy leader, Candice Bergen, called the allegations “deeply concerning.”
Harper fund: Stephen Harper is teaming up US businessman Courtney R. Mather to launch an investment fund, Bloomberg reports.
Vision One plans to bet on undervalued mid-sized public companies and to try to create value through governance improvements and other changes, said the person. The firm will focus on companies with market values of US$2 billion to US$10 billion, especially in the industrial and consumer sectors, the person said. Mather and Harper didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mather worked at billionaire Carl Icahn’s firm between 2014 and 2020 and served on boards of companies including Caesars Entertainment Inc., Freeport-McMoRan Inc., Newell Brands Inc. and Cheniere Energy Inc., his LinkedIn profile shows. He previously spent 13 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Icahn was an advisor to Donald Trump until he resigned amid a high-profile New Yorkerinvestigation. — Stephen Maher
Good morning! Today is the final day of the COP26 summit in Glasgow. Parties have until the end of the day to finalize a draft agreement that—spoiler alert—experts are already saying won’t be enough. An early version of the document came out Wednesday, to much criticism. Thursday’s major outcome was an agreement on zero emission vehicles.
Awkward: Thursday’s national Remembrance Day ceremony didn’t quite go according to plan. While officials would normally arrive at the cenotaph within a comfortable window of 11 a.m. so as to observe a moment of silence, the prime minister walked up at 10:57 and the Governor General was … well … late. Cue the condemnations of callous disregard and blatant disrespect to Canada’s war dead.
Turned out there was an official explanation for the VIP delays. Per an RCMP statement provided to Hill journos: “A suspicious package was reported in the vicinity a few minutes prior to the ceremony. As a precautionary measure, our officers investigated it and the package was cleared a few minutes after.”
Lest we forget: Nov. 11 always brings opportunities to remember Canadian veterans and interrogate how our country has treated them over the decades. At CBC, Murray Brewster had a compelling look at “one-man army” Sgt. Samuel Moses “Moe” Hurwitz, a little-remembered but highly-decorated Jewish-Canadian WWII vet. And in the Toronto Star, former Ottawa Citizen stalwart Tom Spears had an interesting investigation into his own grandfather, Private Jack Spears, and his deteriorating health after the First World War—with insight from historians and physicians as to what’s changed since then.
Like thousands of returning Canadian vets, he came home damaged yet was expected to adapt to civilian life and get a job at a time of high unemployment and labour unrest, without much official help. Certainly without a disability pension. Veterans got a suit of clothes and were turned loose. He got $64.40 in discharge pay.
In case you missed it: Since we were last in your inbox, parliamentary circles have been abuzz over Ashley Burke’s latest scoop. Former staff complained to the CBC that House of Commons Clerk Charles Robert acts “in a partisan fashion that favours the Liberals,” that he sleeps in the chamber during QP and presides over a “disrespectful workplace.” … Annamie Paul is officially (and finally) on her way out of the Green Party … Murray Sinclair will facilitate talks on government compensation for Indigenous children … and Maxime Bernier has lost a defamation suit against Warren Kinsella.
A penny saved: The BBC saw fit to give prominent real estate (at least on its website) to a story straight from the government of Newfoundland, which announced this week that archaeologists found an old English coin at Cupids Cove. “Known as a Henry VII half groat or two-penny piece, it is believed to have been minted more than 520 years ago,” per BBC’s report. If only anything still cost a tuppence a bag.
Conservative leader Erin O’Toole named his 46-member shadow cabinet on Tuesday, and there was a clear trend in who wasn’t invited to the party, as CBC’s John-Paul Tasker points out:
Newly elected MP and former Conservative leadership contender Leslyn Lewis, long-time MP Marilyn Gladu and Saskatchewan MP Rosemarie Falk have been left on the Conservative backbench without a prominent role in the next Parliament.
Lewis has criticized COVID-19 vaccinations for children. Gladu recently took on a role with a new “civil liberties” working group of parliamentarians concerned about vaccinate mandates. Falk has expressed opposition to what she has called “mandatory vaccinations.”
Gladu and Falk were previously members of O’Toole’s shadow cabinet; Mark Strahl, who wrote on social media recently that vaccine mandates are “discriminatory, coercive and must be opposed,” has also been bounced from his critic role.
Interestingly, while the new version of Justin Trudeau’s cabinet has (I am struggling not to use the word “mercifully” here) dropped the role of minister for middle class prosperity, previously held by Mona Fortier, O’Toole dubbed Pierre Poilievre shadow minister for both finance and that conceptual word salad.
Damage control: In what is almost certainly evidence that O’Toole is cracking down on the vaccine-resistant members of his caucus, Gladu issued a statement on Tuesday apologizing for remarks she made in an interview with CTV’s Question Period, in which she suggested that COVID-19 was less dangerous than polio and that there were “multiple sources” of valid data on the virus and vaccines.
“Upon reflection, I recognize how dangerous it is to share misinformation about the severity of COVID-19 and the safety and efficacy of vaccines. I retract these comments in full,” she wrote. “I apologize unreservedly to Canadians. I also apologize to my caucus colleagues and leader for the distraction my comments have created.” Gladu had earlier maintained that O’Toole “approved” of her little rogue caucus, and that she supports him as leader, both of which seem…unlikely in the real world?
Doomed: Don Martin lays out the messy risk Gladu & co. pose to O’Toole, and the obvious strategy behind O’Toole ragging the puck on answering pointed questions or potentially booting the vaccine-refusing and vaccine-questioning members of his caucus: “This is O’Toole playing for time with hopes the crazy caucus idea falls apart under pressure from common sense MPs who understand that having an anti-vaxx splinter in their midst will mean constant Commons condemnation from the Liberals, who smell a majority coming in the next election,” he wrote.
The NDP way: Our own Marie-Danielle Smith sat down for a—in the parlance of our kind—wide-ranging interview with NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, and he had some interesting things to say about that Groundhog Day platform, the seeming leftward tilt of Canadian politics at the moment and why his party just can’t seem to break through in a big way.
It is hard to dream big. It’s hard to imagine a world outside of what you know. Liberal and Conservative, that’s kind of what folks have known, and it’s hard to break that cycle. Are you getting tired?
[laughs] No, do I sound it?
Together again: Sources tell Reuters that talks are underway to revive the so-called Three Amigos Summit next week between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
This would be the first time the three leaders will formally meet in person since 2016 in Ottawa, which was just five years but also an entire lifetime ago, in a universe where the phrase “President Donald Trump” was nothing but a perverse fever dream and no one had ever heard of social distancing. That Ottawa trilat, of course, gave the world this weapons-grade cringe. May we suggest that you employ a stunt coordinator this time, gentlemen?
I caught up with NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh on Parliament Hill on the same day that his new caucus of 25 MPs gathered for their first post-election meeting.
Singh led the New Democrats to a modest increase in the popular vote in September’s election, but the party gained only one additional seat, falling well short of its hope of appealing to an electorate persuaded by progressive rhetoric but dissatisfied by successive Liberal governments.
The lawyer, former Ontario NDP deputy leader and father-to-be spoke about election disappointments, policy priorities, courageous optimism and what he’ll tell his future child about running for politics.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
How do you feel things are going, now that you have two elections under your belt?
I feel an immense sense of honour and gratitude that I get to do something I really believe in and love to do, and that I get to hear people’s stories. Things feel good, but it’s still a struggle and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.
It seemed like conditions were ripe in this election for NDP policies to shine. Why didn’t you gain more ground?
In the scheme of things, people didn’t want this election; they were frustrated and basically said they were sending back the exact same Parliament. I think we’re the only party that grew our vote. Everybody else didn’t, so that shows there’s a good trend.
But it looks like a missed opportunity. What could you have done differently?
I’m disappointed. There were a lot of really good [potential] MPs who were so close to winning and would’ve been really good voices in Ottawa. I think that there are 10 or 12 seats where we were a couple of percentage points away. We have to close those gaps.
As opposed to [using] the back of a napkin, I like data. I’m very data-driven. We’ve initiated a review with the goal to have a constructive assessment of what worked, what didn’t work and the action items that we need to take to correct some of the things that were just close. In Davenport, we were 76 votes away from winning. In Vancouver Granville, 280ish votes. We’ve got all these seats that were just shy, just a bit, like with Ruth Ellen Brosseau in Berthier-Maskinongé. These are all very achievable differences.
A criticism was that the 2021 platform was almost identical to the 2019 platform. People were asking: Why hasn’t the NDP innovated?
Everything in there is stuff that we still believe in, and we’re not going to abandon stuff we believe in. I think the criticism I heard was that we were too ambitious. We want to do too many things. And I think there might be something there. That people want to believe us and are nervous about whether we have a plan to achieve these things.
(Photograph by Blair Gable)
What are the major priorities you want to concentrate on?
I want people to know that we’ve got a plan around pharmacare. It’s a really thorough plan. We’ve studied the New Zealand model. We’ve got clear evidence on how covering those medications will result in fewer cases of extreme illness. We’ve got evidence around outcomes and how it improves health and reduces cost. Even with telecoms, there’s actually a whole bunch of real things we can do. We can start with a price cap. It’s worked in the States; it’s worked in Australia. There’s one clear law that if we changed it overnight, it would open up the ability to have low-cost options, and [the problem] is that low-cost competitors can’t use companies’ existing infrastructure. It’s like building a bunch of roads and no one else can use the roads.
Can you use your leverage in the minority Parliament to work toward those kinds of bigger policy goals?
What can I do right now that would immediately help people, that we can push, that is timely, that we can build enough momentum around? I think the focus would be on getting through the pandemic. One of the most important tools is paid sick leave. I fought to expand it 22 times in Parliament. Trudeau said no, and then in the middle of the campaign he said yes, we’ll do it.
I was insulted by the fact that they had the gall to say no 22 times, and just cynically present it in the middle of the campaign. I would love to get it done. I don’t care about credit; we’ll sort out credit down the road, whenever people believe who they believe.
It seems like there’s a general leftward shift in Canadian politics. Conservatives are sounding more like Liberals. Liberals are sounding more like the NDP. That might be a victory for progressive ideas, but is it a problem for your party that everyone’s moving in on your turf?
No, because our goal is to make things better.
So it doesn’t matter if you’re the prime minister who’s doing it, as long as it’s getting done?
My dilemma is that I don’t think it’s going to get done. Pharmacare is a really good example. Trudeau campaigned on it in 2019 and promised it in a throne speech. And not only did he not do it, but we actually presented a bill to move forward, and the bill was based on their own report. It recommended a Canada Pharmacare Act that would be one of the key steps to establishing the system. We literally put that in word for word—with no, like, “and the Liberals suck,” so they can’t say, “Oh, we voted against it because you added in that the Liberals suck.” They voted against it. The final nail in the coffin is that in their budget they have zero dollars allocated for it. So are they really into pharmacare? No. The evidence doesn’t show that.
You disagree that everything’s moving leftward? You think it’s just a facade?
I think it’s a facade. On taxing billionaires, it seems like a very clear thing. It makes a lot of sense. We put all of that into a motion saying let’s go after pandemic profiteering, offshore tax havens—Pandora Papers type of stuff. And the Liberals voted no. And the Conservatives voted no.
You point to examples of the Liberals sounding more progressive but not living up to their promises. But they’re still winning elections. Why is it so hard for the NDP to capitalize?
It is hard to dream big. It’s hard to imagine a world outside of what you know. Liberal and Conservative, that’s kind of what folks have known, and it’s hard to break that cycle.
Are you getting tired?
[laughs] No, do I sound it?
You keep saying that you’re “fighting for Canadians,” but I wonder if the fight is starting to feel a bit futile?
I am a spiritual optimist. I am a relentless optimist. Part of that is my mom’s training. She taught me these philosophical ideals. There’s a phrase that is commonly used in the Sikh tradition that was her response to anything: “chardi kala,” which means “rising spirits.” When she taught me the phrase as a kid, I thought she just meant she was in a good mood. I said it back once to her. And she said, “Why?” I said, “What do you mean, ‘why?’ I’m trying to use the language and get better at it.” She’s like, “You missed the point.” Chardi kala means rising spirits specifically in the face of difficult odds. Defiant of those odds, I’m in rising spirits.
Your leadership doesn’t seem to be under any outside threat. When will you know that it’s time to let go, to pass the torch?
I would say when you don’t have the energy, you don’t have the fire and you can no longer make a positive contribution. I’ve got lots of energy and lots of fire, and so I don’t see that happening any time soon. I’ve got a good vegetarian lifestyle. I work out a lot and meditate. I’ve got energy for days.
Singh, working out during his successful run for the NDP leadership in 2017 (Photograph by Mark Blinch)
There’s a narrative that says this country is angrier and more divided now than it was before the election. Do you think that’s true?
I think that Trudeau and O’Toole both benefit from that and kind of want to create that. They create moments that are not necessarily divisive at all and make them divisive. Trudeau tried to make vaccination a political issue; that is not something you should be wedging. It is going to literally hurt the country if there’s a divide on that.
We did see the rise of the People’s Party, which welcomed people who are against vaccines.
I would say that’s small. Like six per cent?
Which is not nothing.
It’s like, 94 per cent of people don’t agree with that. So I would say that’s a huge consensus. It’s a supermajority of people who are not in that world.
Beyond the pandemic, we’ve seen prominent women of colour leaving politics, saying it’s become more divisive and toxic, and that systemic racism is still a huge problem on Parliament Hill. As someone who broke boundaries to be here, how do you feel about that?
Everyone is here because of the people before them. It’s hard to imagine yourself as a leader when you’ve never seen someone like you as a leader. And spaces that have been predominantly [occupied by] old white men are not going to be very welcoming to women or racialized people. I think about my contribution, what I can do to tackle that, how I can make the space more inclusive. I think about, with my future kid, what I would tell my daughter. And I have a niece—my brother and I are pretty tight, and we have a common living arrangement. When I’m back in Brampton, we all live in a bubble together. I think about her a lot.
Singh’s tips for a very good day
Jagmeet Singh says an excellent day means supporting local businesses and enjoying quality listening, reading and eating. Here are a few of his recommendations. (Click through this gallery)
Good music: Lauryn Hill on vinyl, picked up at Neptoon Records in Vancouver
Good book: Tigana by Canadian author Guy Gavriel Kay
Good food: His mom’s Rajma Chawal (a vegan Punjabi chili and rice dish)…or, on the road, food from Sushi Momo in Montreal (Jogy Abraham/iStock)
What would you tell your future child if they wanted to become a politician?
I think there are three things people who are not seen as the traditional person that goes into power are told. One is that they’re not good enough, despite their credentials. I’ve called women to recruit them to run who are more than qualified, and they say, “Oh, I can’t do that.” And then the number of times I call, no offence, a dude who’s probably not as qualified, and he’s like, “Oh yeah, for sure, I’d do that.”
The other thing you’re told is that because you organize in your community, somehow the broader community won’t accept you.
The final thing people are told is that they don’t look right for the role. There’s a lot of focus on appearances and clothing and the look of an Indigenous person, of a racialized person, of a Black person. I think we need to celebrate people for what they are, not make them feel like they don’t belong.
What is a concrete thing that you can do to make things better for people who want to push past all of that?
To flip it, it’s to not take Indigenous kids to court. To deliver clean drinking water. To start building affordable housing. I think there are choices being made that reinforce this feeling of not belonging. My community is going through this pain, and the institution that can fix it is making choices that allow that to continue. I think it’s the outcomes that people want, it’s not that they should get a hug when they walk in the door.
But words matter a lot in certain contexts; for example, during the election campaign, the way that Quebec and its secularism laws were discussed. How does it sit with you, how careful you seem to have to be about the way you talk about that?
My goal is that I don’t want to have any discriminatory laws in Canada. Laws that discriminate against people are wrong, period. People on the ground say there’s a way for people outside of Quebec to help and there’s a way for them not to help. I want to be an ally.
How can you be an ally in that context?
Saying that it’s discriminatory is just a fact, so I’m not going to back down from that. But people on the ground are saying that when the rest of Canada isolates Quebec and says Quebec is racist, what happens is that even people who are trying to fight the bill get caught up in the question of Quebec being more racist or less racist than other places, rather than focusing on dealing with this discrimination. Isolating systemic racism or discrimination to one province is not helpful. The worst clean drinking water problems are in Ontario. That’s systemic racism writ large, the fact that Indigenous people can’t get clean drinking water. That’s happening everywhere. Policing that is discriminatory based on people’s race is happening across Canada. That’s a Canada-wide problem.
Erin O’Toole chastised CPC MPs on Monday for spreading confusion about vaccination, CP reports. He was responding, in part, comments from Marilyn Gladu, who said COVID didn’t pose the same “frequency of risk” as polio.
“There’s a big difference between advocating for your constituents who may need reasonable accommodation,” said O’Toole. “It’s very different to cause confusion with respect to the health and well-being of Canadians. Ms. Gladu’s interview did that yesterday and it’s not appropriate at a time we should be answering questions about vaccine hesitancy, not creating new questions.”
He also pointed to comments from Leslyn Lewis and Dean Allison as problematic: “It’s a great example of why members of Parliament, of all stripes, should let the professionals, let the public health officials, let the physicians answer questions about efficacy of vaccines or provincial programs on vaccination.”
O’Toole has declined to say how many of his MPs have are not vaccinated. The story overshadowed his attack on Trudeau for considering a governing arrangement with the NDP.
Trudeau attacks:Justin Trudeau, presiding over his party’s first caucus meeting since the election, attacked CPC vaccination confusion, but did not mention the talks with the NDP around a potential governing deal.
O’Toole warned that any such deal be bad for the economy: “This coalition will create billions in news spending that will further drive up inflation even more. And this coalition will mean that Jagmeet Singh will be able to push an even more radical agenda that will threaten the livelihood of millions of Canadians.”
Caucus divided:La Presse canadienne surveys MPs and finds no consensus on the desirability of such a deal.
Not easy: In the Globe, Campbell Clark gets to the heart of the matter: It would not be easy to agree on the limits of a supply agreement, since governments may rely on confidence votes to unjam Parliamentary logjams.
So while the Liberals and NDP might be able to get their heads around the idea of co-operation, and come up with a legislative agenda, they would still have to work out those things – because they cut to the bottom line of a parliamentary deal. Such an arrangement would typically require the NDP to pledge support on key confidence matters such as budgets, but if the New Democrats renounce all rights to vote non-confidence, the Liberals would be able to stymie many of Parliament’s demands.
Not so hard: John Ivisonwrites in the Post that Trudeau has it easy, given his opponents.
What about the MPs? Susan Delacourtwrites in the Star that Trudeau should pay more attention to his caucus.
Mairesse réélue: Valérie Plantewas re-elected as mayor of Montreal on Sunday night, decisively defeating Denis Coderre for the second time, winning a mandate to continue in her green, progressive ways. In the Gazette, Alison Hanesexplains why she keeps winning. In La Presse, Patrick Lagacéexplains why Coderre keeps losing.
Pas impressionné: Chrystia Freeland joined in the chorus Monday of those disappointed in the linguistic shortcomings of Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau, the Globe reports. Freeland wrote to Air Canada’s chairman on Monday to say that learning to speak French should become part of Rousseau’s performance review.
Not so trusted: François-Philippe Champagnetold CP Monday that Canada only wants to deal with “trusted partners” in AI, a signal that the Canadian rejection of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei as a 5G provider is at hand.
Brilliant campaign: Steve Allan, who ran the Alberta public inquiry into the funding of environmentalists, has given a surprising interview to the Globe in which he says his report should be a wake-up call for the province’s government and oil sector.
“I think the industry and government have really failed,” Mr. Allan said. “It was a brilliant campaign,” he continued, referring to activism opposing Alberta’s oil industry. “It was a brilliant strategy. It was well-executed and everybody can learn from it.”
Inflation threat: In the Post, Kelly McParlandworries that Canada’s leaders are too young to understand the dangers of runaway inflation.
Wrong priority? Canadian officials who met with members of a Ukrainian battalion linked to neo-Nazis didn’t denounce the unit, but were instead concerned the media would expose details of the get-together, according to documents cited byDavid Pugliese in the Citizen.
Too deferential: In the Hill Times, Susan Rileycasts a cold eye on politicians who are falling over themselves to back away from showdowns with unjabbed health workers.
The southbound lanes on Canada-U.S. border crossings will reopen today as the United States finally allows fully vaccinated travellers to cross the Canada-U.S. land border after 20 months, CP reports.
As of midnight, non-essential traffic will resume moving in both directions for the first time since March 2020, when both countries imposed sweeping but selective restrictions in hopes of slowing the spread of the virus — the first widespread border closure since the 9/11 terrorist attacks 20 years ago.
One irritant still remains for travellers: Canada still requires a PCR test, which cost $150-$300 a pop, although Dr. Theresa Tam said Friday “we are looking at that quite carefully.”
Flags up: Canadian flags on government buildings returned to full-mast at sunset on Sunday for the first time since May 30. They will be lowered and raised again to mark both Indigenous Veterans Day today and Remembrance Day on Thursday, after which they will stay at full-mast, CBC reports.
The flags were lowered after the discovery in May of unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. The government has been in talks with Indigenous leaders about how and when to raise the flags again, with pressure, including from Indigenous veterans, to come up with a solution before Remembrance Day.
The Assembly of First Nations released a proposal earlier Friday that called for the government to attach the orange “Every Child Matters” flag to the Peace Tower in Ottawa and other government buildings starting on Sunday. The government said Friday it would work with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to find a place to fly the NTCR Survivors’ Flag. John Moses, a veteran and member of the Six Nations band, said he had been struck by how quickly the plan for the Canadian flags had developed, but was satisfied with the situation as it stands now. “I think the course of events as most recently described is the most appropriate. I concur with the course of action that has been taken,” he said in an interview Sunday.
Cold cases: Defence Minister Anita Anandtells Global that federal officials may decide that past probes by the military police should be moved to civilians for a second look now that the government is tasking civilians with handling military sexual misconduct cases.
In an interview with The West Block‘s Mercedes Stephenson, Anand said she is studying whether there needs to be an independent military watchdog that reports directly to Parliament, as well as whether any previous military police sexual offence probes should be reviewed by civilian authorities. “These are issues that we are … addressing in the process of implementing this bold move that we are making in terms of transferring cases from one system of justice to another,” she said when asked whether probes such as the one into Adm. Art McDonald should get a second look. “Indeed, there are going to be a number of questions, such as the ones you raised just now, that we will have to take a look at in order to ensure that justice is served,” Anand continued.
NDP-Liberal talks: The Globereported Friday that the Liberals and NDP are considering a deal “to prop up the minority government for two to three years in exchange for action on housing, pharmacare, climate change, compensation for Indigenous children and other issues,” as first reported by your correspondent in Maclean’sa week ago.
NDP MP Charlie Angus, who wasn’t commenting when asked a week ago, told the Globe that there are talks, but even if they reach a deal, New Democrats will keep holding the government to account.
Mr. Angus stressed that any agreement would not prevent the NDP from holding the Liberal government to account for scandals, spending abuses or failure to deal with pressing issues such as federal compensation for Indigenous children who were removed from their communities and placed into care since 2006. “No matter what, we will still hold them to account. If there is an SNC-Lavalin scandal, that ain’t getting pushed under the rug,” he said.
Liberals to meet: At iPolitics, Kady O’Malleypoints out a potential governing arrangement will give Liberal MPs something to talk about this morning at their first post-election caucus meeting.
Costly food: Canadians are likely to see inflated food prices at their local grocery stores for several more months, Dalhousie food expert Sylvain Charlebois told CTV on Sunday. Food prices have risen by about five per cent since January, and will likely keep going up, which will mean “several months of rockiness at the grocery store, unfortunately.”
Transitory inflation: Inflation will be transitory but not short-lived, Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklemtells CTV.
“I think transitory to economists, means sort of not permanent,” said Macklem in an interview with CTV’s Question Period with Evan Solomon, airing Sunday. “I think to a lot of people, transitory means it’s going to be over quickly and maybe I don’t know exactly what the right word is, but it’s probably something like you know, transitory but not short-lived.”
Miller puzzled:Marc Miller wants to find out what role Ottawa played in a ruling releasing the Catholic Church from its settlement obligations to residential school survivors, CP reports. “I am as puzzled as everyone,” Miller said. “I don’t know what there is to do yet.”
The ruling, handed down by a Saskatchewan judge in July 2015, found a deal had been struck between the federal government and a corporation of Catholic entities. That deal released the church groups from their remaining obligations within the $79-million worth of payments and in-kind services owed to survivors under the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, approved in 2006.
Who needs jabbing: In Maclean’s, Patricia Trebletakes a close look at which areas of the country are slower to get vaccinated, and discovers that reaching unjabbed rural residents is one of the last key steps toward a pre-COVID normal.
Generally, vaccination levels fall as one travels west from Atlantic Canada. So while 86 per cent of the entire population in Newfoundland and Labrador has received at least one dose, that share falls to 81 per cent in New Brunswick, then to 77 per cent in Ontario and then to 72 and 73 per cent in Saskatchewan and Alberta, respectively, before rebounding to 79 per cent in British Columbia. Within provinces, there are even sharper disparities. In Alberta, which breaks rates down by local geographic areas, 92 per cent of eligible residents in the Sherwood Park area outside Edmonton have gotten at least one dose, compared to 64 per cent in St. Paul, just 175 km away. By contrast, the 34 public-health units of Ontario have relatively similar vaccination rates.
No reset? In the Star, Tonda MacCharlestakes a long look at Canada’s China policy, which official Ottawa says, is not due for a reset.
Specifically, officials downplay any talk of a formal “reset” even as the government faces immediate challenges like the decision on whether to ban Huawei from Canada’s 5G networks, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said is due soon, or how to respond to China’s request to join the comprehensive free trade agreement reached among Trans-Pacific allies that currently excludes China. Behind the scenes, senior government officials, who spoke to the Star on condition they not be identified, say reset is a loaded diplomatic term that Trudeau’s government does not embrace, in part because it implies that there hasn’t already been a shift in the relationship.
Whither Joly? Also in the Star, Robin Searstries to guess why Trudeau made Melanie Joly the foreign affairs minister.
A typical Ottawa insider explanation when a very junior minister gets the top international job — this is far from the first time — is that the PMO will run global affairs and the PM will be his own foreign minister. To some extent this is always true, so that seems unlikely to be the reason. Others point to her increasing leadership ambitions and credit fellow aspirant Chrystia Freeland engineering to have Joly be handed a poisoned political chalice, one that will keep her well out of the country.
ICYMI: In Maclean’s, Jason Markusofftries to figure out what Shelly Glover is up to in Manitoba.
The enormity of what she alleges, atop the wisps of evidence provided thus far, casts her version of events into doubt. To think what she is arguing is true, you’d have to believe that poohbahs in the party that’s ruled Manitoba for 16 of the last 33 years schemed to rig the selection of an instant premier, brazenly overruling the will of their members. And that they did so ham-handedly, in a way that was readily visible to the side that was having the election stolen from it.
Voting in Montreal: In Montreal this morning, either Valérie Plante or Denis Coderre will be celebrating having won the mayoral election last night. La Presse will have results.
A group of 15 to 30 Conservative MPs and Senators is set to launch a “Civil Liberties Caucus” to advocate for anti-vaxxers who are at risk of losing their jobs, reportsAbbas Ranna in the Hill Times.
MP Marilyn Gladu says she will speak for the group, which is likely to be seen as a challenge to the leadership of Erin O’Toole, although Gladu hopes that is not how it is seen.
Ms. Gladu denied the “Civil Liberties Caucus” is aimed to undermine or challenge Mr. O’Toole’s leadership and said she hoped other federal parties don’t exploit this issue as the caucus members are only trying to help their constituents. The group chose “civil liberties” as a name, she explained, because they believe Canadians who don’t want to be vaccinated are not getting fair treatment, and losing their jobs is a violation of their rights. “I would really encourage every MP to listen to constituents in their ridings, because across the country, people are concerned about these things,” said Ms. Gladu, who declined to share the names of other caucus members until next week.
Some unjabbed MPs may try to take their seats in the House!
“I’ll tell you this: Nov. 22, can be a very interesting day,” said one Conservative MP who spoke to The Hill Times on not for attribution basis to offer their candid opinion. “Because I believe there are Conservative Members of Parliament who are unvaccinated who are going to try and get into the Parliament buildings anyways. So, they’re not going to follow the rules, despite what we’ve decided as a caucus. And what happens after that? I think they’re going to be kicked out of caucus.”
Tricky position: Global’s Alex Boutlier has some good behind-the-scenes stuff on the difficult caucus dynamics that O’Toole faces, which may not get easier if some of his MPs are determined to break his policy on vaccination.
NDP-LPC talks: The chiefs of staff to Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh are having “informal talks” about a three-year supply arrangement, La Pressereports (translation), which would allow the Liberals to avoid falling on a confidence vote, if they can reach a deal.
“There is a long way to go from the cup to the lips”, underlined a source in the NDP camp, insisting that there is a certain mistrust towards the Liberals, who make promises in election campaigns and dismiss them once in power. The reform of the voting system and the creation of national drug insurance are two examples.
Your correspondent reported on preliminary strategizing around such a deal in Maclean’s last week.
Bring in civilians: Anita Anandannounced on Thursday that she has “accepted in full” a recommendation from Louise Arbour that civilians should handle military sexual misconduct cases, Amanda Connollyreports for Global. Anand is ready to get to work.
Anand said the reports about her as a contender sparked her to prepare for the role. “I actually had a to-do list of my own ready in case I was indeed sworn in as minister of national defence,” she told Global News. “And when that occurred, I pulled out my to-do list and I reviewed it with the acting chief of staff as well as my deputy minister on Day One, and have been working steadily on it since that time.”
Plante ahead: In Maclean’s, Philippe J. Fournierreports on a Mainstreet poll that shows Valérie Plante has a lead over Denis Coderre in the Montreal mayoral race for the first time in two years, and might win on Sunday.
With only one more day of campaigning left before voters head to the polls this weekend (voting will take place on Saturday and Sunday), a new survey from Mainstreet Research suggests that Valérie Plante has taken the lead in this race for the first time in a municipal poll—from any firm—since fall of 2020. Let’s take a look at Mainstreet’s numbers. Among the full sample of respondents, Valérie Plante has the support of 46 per cent of respondents, compared to 40 per cent for Denis Coderre. Balarama Holness trails far behind in third place with only 5 per cent support. Of the 850 respondents to this poll, 7 per cent were undecided.
For a sense of what is at stake in this race, have a look at this item from Paul Wells from earlier this week.
Best wishes, premier: John Horgan said Thursday that the growth in his throat is cancerous and he will have to undergo radiation treatment, the Vancouver Sun reports: “The surgery and biopsy that were done last week were successful and I am grateful to the amazing health-care team for all the support I’ve received. The pathology confirmed that the growth in my throat was cancerous.”
Horgan stressed that his prognosis is good and he expects to make a full recovery. He will need to start radiation treatment in the next couple of weeks. The premier expects to have completed the treatment toward the end of December. “During that time, I will continue to participate virtually in briefings, cabinet meetings, and other important meetings like the Council of the Federation. For in-person events, minister Mike Farnworth and other cabinet ministers may attend in my place,” he said.
Fear in Kabul: The Globe has a harrowing story about Afghans who worked with the Canadian military who will soon be homeless because the volunteer-led groups that have been funding their safe houses are running out of money.
Joly gets ready: Susan Delacourthas an interview with Mélanie Joly in the Star, in which she reveals that her mentor is Frank McKenna, and that she is busy hitting the briefing books, getting ready to, we hope, successfully face down avaricious Americans who threaten the Canadian auto industry.
No French: Allison Hanes has a good explainer in the Montreal Gazette outlining the catastrophic PR miscue by Mike Rousseau, the new CEO of Air Canada, who has managed to upset the delicate balance of language relations in Montreal by admitting that he has lived in Montreal for 14 years but can’t speak French, seemingly at all.
Even the Quebec Community Groups Network, the defenders of English-speakers’ rights, issued a caustic statement denouncing of Rousseau’s “tone-deaf” and “narrow-minded” comments. QCGN president Marlene Jennings lamented that his remarks inflicted “lasting damage on Quebec’s English-speaking community and the core national value of linguistic duality.” Indeed, as Quebec anglophones are trying to show they, too, care about protecting French while still safeguarding their rights and institutions, Rousseau went and undermined every argument the community used to show Bill 96 is unjustified.
For a cap: CBC’s Aaron Wherry has a thoughtful column explaining how an oil and gas emissions cap can help Canada bring emissions down, a difficult but necessary step.
First out lesbian: Liberal rookie Pascale St-Onge, who won a nail biter in Brome-Missisquoi, became the first out lesbian in a Canadian federal cabinet when she was sworn in as minister of sport, CTV’s Rachel Aiello reports in an interesting profile. St-Onge may also be the first cabinet minister who played bass in an alternative band, Mad June.
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