Politics

#MeToo turns five: Taking stock of gender-based violence in Canadian politics

Published

2 years ago

October 27, 2022

Five years ago, women around the world began publicly disclosing their experiences of sexual assault and harassment on social media using the hashtag #MeToo.

This milestone provides us with an opportunity to reflect on how Canada has dealt with its own supposed #MeToo reckoning and misogyny in Canadian politics more specifically.

The events of 2017 came 11 years after Tarana Burke founded the #MeToo movement to raise awareness about the violence Black women and girls experience in the United States. The #MeToo hashtag went viral in October 2017 after sexual misconduct allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein became public.

Five years later, what lessons have we learned about gender-based violence in Canadian politics?

The first is that violence and harassment have not abated; if anything, they’ve escalated in the Canadian political sphere.

In response to rising threats and safety concerns for parliamentarians, Canada’s public safety minister announced in June 2022 that all MPs would receive “panic buttons” to increase their personal security.

During the 2021 federal election, analyses of tweets received by incumbent candidates and party leaders conducted by the Samara Centre for Democracy show that 19 per cent were likely toxic, meaning they were uncivil, insulting, hostile, threatening or profane.

While public officials from all backgrounds are being targeted, women, Indigenous, Black, racialized and queer politicians are bearing the brunt of current attacks on Canada’s democracy.

Freeland accosted

In August 2022, a man cornered Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and her all-women staff entourage in a city hall elevator in Grande Prairie, Alta. and hurled abuse and profanities at her.

The incident prompted other women politicians to speak out about their own experiences of harassment.

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek shared her experiences of harassment on Twitter, while Québec Liberal MNA Marwah Rizqy went public with recent harassment and threats made against her.

Rizqy has received death threats, including from a man who allegedly called the police to tell them where they could locate her murdered body. She was pregnant at the time.

A few weeks later, an online harassment campaign directed at women journalists — several of whom are racialized — was underway.

Threaten violence

In all of these instances, the harassers invoked violent, misogynistic, racist language, imagery or props as a way to demean, intimidate and threaten their targets.

We’ve also learned that some political leaders seem willing to use the vitriol seeded in our political culture for partisan gain.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre rises during Question Period in the House of Commons in October 2022.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

In October 2022, Global News reported that a hidden misogynistic tag was placed on 50 of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s most recent YouTube videos.

The hashtag, “MGTOW” (men going their own way), refers to an online anti-feminist movement that advocates for male supremacy.

When pressed on the subject, Poilievre condemned all forms of misogyny but did not apologize.

Silence and exclusion

Academic research shows that when harassment is directed at female politicians, staffers, activists and journalists because they are women, it poses a threat to democracy.

Rutgers University political scientist Mona Lena Krook has argued that the goal of violence against women in politics is to silence and exclude them from public life.

As my research with the University of Windsor’s Cheryl Collier indicates, violence and harassment in politics are barriers to women in Canadian politics and undermine democratic values like equal representation and participation.

After the 2021 federal election, women held 30.5 per cent of House of Commons seats. Today, Canada ranks 61st out of 190 countries in women’s political representation.

A group of women and one man stand for a photo. — Women foreign affairs ministers, including Chrystia Freeland, who was Canada’s foreign affairs minister at the time, pose for a photo at a conference in Montréal in 2018.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

Positive developments

Thankfully, not all of #MeToo’s lessons have been negative, and some positive strides for Canadian women have been made.

In 2018, the federal Liberal government passed a new law, Bill C-65, that updates and strengthens existing legislation to prevent and address harassment and violence across all federally regulated workplaces. That includes Parliament.

In response to Bill C-65, the House of Commons and the Senate updated their policies in 2021 to prevent and address violence and harassment.

Since #MeToo, many provincial and territorial legislatures have also adopted either codes of conduct or policies to deal with sexual harassment.

Although these codes and policies are insufficient and additional measures are needed, the media and the public’s attention on workplace harassment and violence since #MeToo have spurred changes within these legislatures.

A large crowd gathers, many wearing pink hats. A sign in the middle reads The Future is Female. — A large crowd gathers at Nathan Phillips Square for the start of the Toronto Women’s March in January 2019.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Tijana Martin

But more must be done. Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in harassment and violence cases need to be prohibited in all organizations and workplaces, including legislatures. Banning NDAs won’t be enough to stop unethical behaviour, however.

As my research with Collier shows, political institutions — which remain mainly white, cis-gendered and male-dominated — need to do more to uproot their sexist, exclusionary cultures.

Lawmakers must adopt strategies to disrupt the “networks of complicity” that protect powerful perpetrators and enable abusive behaviour. Fully impartial, transparent processes that address all forms of violence and impose serious sanctions on those who commit violence or harassment would help.

Attack on democracy

The harassment of journalists, political candidates, staff and elected officials by a small faction of the public must also be addressed.

An attack on any political official must be viewed as an attack on Canadian democracy, and should not be tolerated in a free and democratic society.

Finally, political parties must do better at recruiting and electing diverse people to public office.

When the 10-year anniversary of the #MeToo movement arrives in 2027, Canadian democracy will hopefully be strengthened by the steps we take today to end violence and harassment in politics.

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Politics

Bloc Québécois ready to extract gains for Quebec in exchange for supporting Liberals

Published

2 days ago

September 8, 2024

Anne Joseph

MONTEBELLO, Que. – The Bloc Québécois is ready to wheel and deal with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government in exchange for support during confidence votes now that the Liberal government’s confidence and supply agreement with the NDP has ended.

That support won’t come cheap, the Quebec-based Bloc said, and the sovereigntist party led by Yves-François Blanchet has already drawn up a list of demands.

In an interview ahead of the opening of Monday’s party caucus retreat in the Outaouais region, Bloc House Leader Alain Therrien said his party is happy to regain its balance of power.

“Our objectives remain the same, but the means to get there will be much easier,” Therrien said. “We will negotiate and seek gains for Quebec … our balance of power has improved, that’s for sure.”

He called the situation a “window of opportunity” now that the Liberals are truly a minority government after New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh tore up the confidence and supply deal between the two parties last week, leaving the Bloc with an opening.

While Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives have promised multiple confidence votes in the hope of triggering a general election, the Bloc’s strategy is not to rush to the polls and instead use their new-found standing to make what they consider to be gains for Quebec.

A Bloc strategist who was granted anonymity by The Canadian Press because he was not authorized to speak publicly stated bluntly that the NDP had officially handed the balance of power back to the Bloc. The Bloc is taking for granted that when a federal election is held in about a year or less, it will be a majority Conservative government led by Poilievre, whose party has surged in the polls for over a year and has been ahead in the rest of Canada for over a year.

Quebec won’t factor so much in that win, the source added, where the Bloc will be hoping to grab seats from the Liberals and where the Conservatives hope to gain from the Bloc.

“It’s going to happen with or without Quebec,” the source said. “They (the Conservatives) are 20 points ahead everywhere in Canada, with the exception of Quebec, and that won’t change … their (Conservative) vote is firm.”

It is not surprising that the Bloc sees excellent news in the tearing up of the agreement that allowed the Liberals to govern without listening to their demands, said University of Ottawa political scientist Geneviève Tellier.

“The Bloc only has influence if the government, no matter which one, is a minority,” she explained. “In the case of a majority government, the Bloc’s relevance becomes more difficult to justify because, like the other parties, it can oppose, it can hold the government to account, but it cannot influence the government’s policies.”

On the Bloc’s priority list is gaining royal recommendation for Bill C-319, which aims to bring pensions for seniors aged 65 to 74 to the same level as that paid to those aged 75 and over.

A bill with budgetary implications that comes from a member of Parliament, as is the case here, must necessarily obtain royal recommendation before third reading, failing which the rules provide that the Speaker of the House will end the proceedings and rule it inadmissible.

The Bloc also wants Quebec to obtain more powers in immigration matters, particularly in the area of temporary foreign workers, and recoup money it says is owed to the province.

The demands concerning seniors’ pensions and immigration powers are “easy, feasible and clear,” Therrien said.

“It’s clear that it will be on the table. I can tell you: I’m the one who will negotiate,” he added.

The Bloc also wants to see cuts to money for oil companies, more health-care funds for provinces as demanded by premiers and stemming or eliminating Ottawa’s encroachment of provincial jurisdictions.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 8, 2024.

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Politics

N.B. Liberals officially launch election bid before official start of fall campaign

Published

2 days ago

September 8, 2024

Anne Joseph

FREDERICTON – New Brunswick‘s Liberals got a jump on the province’s coming fall election today with the official launch of their party’s campaign.

The kickoff, which took place in the Fredericton riding where Liberal Leader Susan Holt plans to run this time, came before the official start of the general election set for Oct. 21.

The Liberal platform contains promises to open at least 30 community care clinics over the next four years at a cost of $115.2 million, and roll out a $27.4 million-a-year program to offer free or low-cost food at all schools starting next September.

The governing Progressive Conservatives, led by BlaineHiggs, have so far pledged to lower the Harmonized Sales Tax from 15 per cent to 13 per cent if re-elected.

Political observers say the issues most affecting people in New Brunswick are affordability, health care, housing and education.

Recent polls suggest Higgs, whose leadership style has drawn critiques from within his caucus and whose policies on pronoun use in schools have stirred considerable controversy within the province, may face an uphill battle with voters this fall.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 8, 2024.

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Politics

Trudeau to face fretful caucus ahead of return to the House

Published

2 days ago

September 8, 2024

Anne Joseph

OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will face a fretful and strained caucus in British Columbia Monday, with MPs looking for him to finally reveal his plan to address the political purgatory the party has endured for months.

Several Liberal MPs privately and publicly demanded they meet as a team after the devastating byelection loss of a longtime political stronghold in Toronto last June, but the prime minister refused to convene his caucus before the fall.

Their political fortunes did not improve over the summer, and this week the Liberals took two more significant blows: the abrupt departure of the NDP from the political pact that prevented an early election, and the resignation of the Liberals’ national campaign director.

Now, with two more byelections looming on Sept. 16 and a general election sometime in the next year, several caucus members who are still not comfortable speaking publicly told The Canadian Press they’re anxiously awaiting a game plan from the prime minister and his advisers that will help them save their seats.

The Liberals have floundered in the polls for more than a year now as Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives have capitalized on countrywide concerns about inflation, the cost of living and lack of available housing.

Though Trudeau hasn’t yet addressed all of his MPs en masse, he has spoken with them in groups throughout June and July and stopped in on several regional caucus meetings ahead of the Nanaimo retreat.

“We’re focused on delivering for Canadians,” Trudeau said at a Quebec Liberal caucus meeting Thursday.

He listed several programs in the works, including a national school food program and $10-a-day childcare, as well as national coverage for insulin and contraceptives, which the Liberals developed in partnership with the NDP.

“These are things that matter for Canadians,” he said, before he accused the NDP of focusing on politics while the Liberals are “focused on Canadians.”

Wayne Long, a Liberal MP representing a New Brunswick riding, says the problem is that Canadians appear to have tuned the prime minister out.

Long was the only Liberal member to publicly call for Trudeau’s resignation in the aftermath of the Toronto-St. Paul’s byelection loss, though several other MPs expressed the same sentiment privately at the time.

Long shared his views with the prime minister again at the Atlantic caucus retreat ahead of Monday’s meeting.

“I’m really worried the old ‘stay calm and carry on,’ which effectively is where we are, is not going to put us on a road to victory in the next election,” said Long, who does not plan to run again.

“If we’re going to mount a campaign that can beat Pierre Poilievre, in my opinion that campaign cannot be led by Justin Trudeau.”

Long fears a Trudeau campaign could lead to a Poilievre government that dismantles the prime minister’s nine-year legacy, piece by piece.

Long is one of several Liberal MPs who confirmed to The Canadian Press they do not plan to go the meeting in Nanaimo. But Mark Carney, the Bank of Canada governor whose name is routinely dropped around Ottawa as a possible successor to Trudeau as Liberal leader, will be in attendance.

He’s expected to address MPs about the economy and a plan for growth.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s decision to back out of the supply and confidence deal certainly complicates any calls for the prime minister to step aside and allow a new leader to face off against Pierre Poilievre in the next election, since that election could now come at any time.

“It makes a much more precarious situation, because Singh probably holds the keys to when that election could be,” said Andrew Perez, a longtime Liberal with Perez Strategies, who also called for Trudeau’s resignation earlier this summer.

“Maybe it presents an argument for the pro-Trudeau side to say that we need to stick with Trudeau, because there’s no time.”

But while some caucus members describe feeling frustrated by the political tribulation, Long insists that those who are running again aren’t yet feeling defeated.

Speaking about those in the Atlantic caucus, he said “to a person, they’re ready to fight. They’re they’re ready to go.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 8, 2024.

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