On an unseasonably cold morning, Catherine McKenna enters her Gatineau office after an early morning practice with her competitive swim club. With flushed cheeks, and carrying an assortment of briefcases and sustainable bags, she explains that for her, “the best days always start with a swim.”
During our hour-long conversation, McKenna points to the years she spent becoming a swimmer as something that defines her. Crediting twice daily swims in high school as what kept her organized, driven, and distracted from typical high school drama, she said her role as captain of the University of Toronto swim team further instilled the importance of both teamwork and resilience.
“People always ask what prepared me the most for politics and I think maybe it was law… or maybe it was working for a United Nations peacekeeping mission. But I actually believe it was swimming. It teaches you that you need to work really hard, set long term goals and that you will have setbacks.”
Over the past four years, things haven’t always gone, well, swimmingly for McKenna.
She became one of the most recognizable names in the Trudeau cabinet — but also one of its most criticized members, having been repeatedly subjected to extensive vitriol online, in person, and most recently, through the defacement of her constituency office.
While serving as the environment minister, she in many ways became the public face of the Liberals’ most ambitious climate policies, from the national carbon price to controversial new assessment rules. In this role, she drew praise from some corners, but also derision from angry online trolls who labelled her with the unflattering and sexist name, “climate Barbie.”
In fact, the criticism and threats directed towards McKenna became so great that she was eventually assigned an RCMP security detail — a rarity for a Canadian cabinet minister.
Asked if she fears for her safety or considers her position dangerous, McKenna is reflective, citing her experiences in East Timor working on peacekeeping missions and her time in Indonesia. “Once I got caught in the wrong place and students were shot. I have been in situations which by definition are more dangerous, but it is jarring in Canada to have people write words like c%&* on your office, or to be with your kids, going to see a movie, and have them scream at you,” she explains, referencing the defacing of her constituency office shortly after she won re-election in the Oct. 21 vote.
“Do people sometimes say things that are violent, or do they harass me? Yes. I hope it isn’t something that is dangerous because we do need people to go into politics and this is going to be a huge disincentive,” she continues, adding that she worries about her family, especially her young children who “didn’t sign up for this.” While McKenna says she believes most Canadians are completely reasonable, it’s the unknown that is worrisome.
With an especially divisive election in the rear view, and a new appointment as minister of infrastructure and communities, McKenna is determined to continue to speak up and use her experiences and platform to “change the tone” and improve politics for women, and in general.
Believing that it is incumbent on social media companies to step up and be more responsible, McKenna thinks the ability of people to hide behind fake names on social media and say whatever they wish without any repercussions has the potential to cause even further harm. “If you start normalizing the fact that people can say all of these terrible things online, then it suddenly starts coming offline. Where people think, ‘Well if I can say that, why can’t I just go tell her how I feel?’”
Beyond the Twitter-sphere, she also won’t accept that this type of behaviour is protected by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. “Free speech is incredibly important. I am a human rights lawyer and I believe in free speech, but this isn’t free speech. This is people without real names saying mean aggressive hateful things.”
A place ‘you couldn’t be fancy’
The eldest of four children, McKenna says growing in up in Hamilton, Ontario, is also something that defines her character, calling it a place “where you couldn’t be fancy.” Her parents embraced Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s policies of multiculturalism and bilingualism and insisted that their children attend a French school. “We are an Irish Catholic family…there were a lot of politics at the table. My dad would take either side of an argument and you would argue the other side.”
McKenna also shares a childhood story about a boy on her soccer team who told her that she ran like a girl. Only ten, and one the best players, she remembers feeling deeply insulted – and later motivated – by it. “I never really distinguished myself between being a boy or a girl. I just did stuff.” Laughing she adds, “…and I didn’t even really play with Barbies,” which to her makes the nickname “climate Barbie” even more annoying.
When McKenna decided to enter politics in 2013, she was running an international charity called Canadian Lawyers Abroad. Through the charity’s work with Indigenous youth and communities in Canada, she says she “…realized there was no possibility of being able to do what I wanted to do without changing the government.”
Before running as the candidate for Ottawa Centre in the 2015 federal election, McKenna canvassed her children. Her eldest told her that she had to run for the Indigenous youth that she cared so much about. Her middle daughter told her that she “must run” because there weren’t enough women in politics. And her youngest, who was five at the time, said he would go along with it if there was food. During her re-election campaign, McKenna’s kids and their friends did some door knocking and volunteered at events; they also attended her swearing-in.
Never expecting to be appointed to a cabinet position so early in her political career, McKenna admits that earning her chops as the environment minister was a huge learning curve. “It was totally new in the sense that I wasn’t an environmentalist. I cared about the environment, but I didn’t know a lot about it.”
Within days after her appointment to cabinet, McKenna found herself on a plane heading to Paris for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) and drowning in lingo. She says that being comfortable saying, “no acronyms, we are going to talk like regular people” and “I have no idea what you are talking about” were two phrases that helped with her file.
Once she got over the initial learning curve, McKenna began to understand that success would require equal parts science and empathy — both head and heart. “Empathy means understanding where people are at and why they react to [a] situation in different ways.” Explaining the dichotomy of her role, she asks rhetorically, “Why are young people out in the streets [demanding climate action] and why do you have [oil and gas industry] workers who are angry?” She concludes, “…the science is the science and you can’t change science.”
Given all the challenges she has faced, McKenna says what motivates her to push forward is a passionate belief in the importance of politics.
“The decisions politicians make impact people’s lives,” McKenna insists. “I see this in my constituency office where people are struggling to bring in their spouse because of some problem with the immigration [process]. You can reunite families. We can’t get jaded about politics.”
Asked about what legacy she hopes to leave, McKenna says she would like to be remembered as a strong woman, and as “someone who really cared about making a difference for Canada.”
OTTAWA – Liberal House leader Karina Gould lambasted Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as a “fraudster” this morning after he said the federal carbon price is going to cause a “nuclear winter.”
Gould was speaking just before the House of Commons is set to reopen following the summer break.
“What I heard yesterday from Mr. Poilievre was so over the top, so irresponsible, so immature, and something that only a fraudster would do,” she said from Parliament Hill.
On Sunday Poilievre said increasing the carbon price will cause a “nuclear winter,” painting a dystopian picture of people starving and freezing because they can’t afford food or heat due the carbon price.
He said the Liberals’ obsession with carbon pricing is “an existential threat to our economy and our way of life.”
The carbon price currently adds about 17.6 cents to every litre of gasoline, but that cost is offset by carbon rebates mailed to Canadians every three months. The Parliamentary Budget Office provided analysis that showed eight in 10 households receive more from the rebates than they pay in carbon pricing, though the office also warned that long-term economic effects could harm jobs and wage growth.
Gould accused Poilievre of ignoring the rebates, and refusing to tell Canadians how he would make life more affordable while battling climate change. The Liberals have also accused the Conservatives of dismissing the expertise of more than 200 economists who wrote a letter earlier this year describing the carbon price as the least expensive, most efficient way to lower emissions.
Poilievre is pushing for the other opposition parties to vote the government down and trigger what he calls a “carbon tax election.”
The recent decision by the NDP to break its political pact with the government makes an early election more likely, but there does not seem to be an interest from either the Bloc Québécois or the NDP to have it happen immediately.
Poilievre intends to bring a non-confidence motion against the government as early as this week but would likely need both the Bloc and NDP to support it.
Gould said she has no “crystal ball” over when or how often Poilievre might try to bring down the government
“I know that the end of the supply and confidence agreement makes things a bit different, but really all it does is returns us to a normal minority parliament,” she said. “And that means that we will work case-by-case, legislation-by-legislation with whichever party wants to work with us. I have already been in touch with all of the House leaders in the opposition parties and my job now is to make Parliament work for Canadians.”
She also insisted the government has listened to the concerns raised by Canadians, and received the message when the Liberals lost a Toronto byelection in June in seat the party had held since 1997.
“We certainly got the message from Toronto-St. Paul’s and have spent the summer reflecting on what that means and are coming back to Parliament, I think, very clearly focused on ensuring that Canadians are at the centre of everything that we do moving forward,” she said.
The Liberals are bracing, however, for the possibility of another blow Monday night, in a tight race to hold a Montreal seat in a byelection there. Voters in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun are casting ballots today to replace former justice minister David Lametti, who was removed from cabinet in 2023 and resigned as an MP in January.
The Conservatives and NDP are also in a tight race in Elmwood-Transcona, a Winnipeg seat that has mostly been held by the NDP over the last several decades.
There are several key bills making their way through the legislative process, including the online harms act and the NDP-endorsed pharmacare bill, which is currently in the Senate.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Canadians in two federal ridings are choosing their next member of Parliament today, and political parties are closely watching the results.
Winnipeg’s Elmwood —Transcona seat has been vacant since the NDP’s Daniel Blaikie left federal politics.
The New Democrats are hoping to hold onto the riding and polls suggest the Conservatives are in the running.
The Montreal seat of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun opened up when former justice minister David Lametti left politics.
Polls suggest the race is tight between the Liberal candidate and the Bloc Québécois, but the NDP is also hopeful it can win.
The Conservatives took over a Liberal stronghold seat in another byelection in Toronto earlier this summer, a loss that sent shock waves through the governing party and intensified calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step down as leader.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – The latest phase of a federal inquiry into foreign interference is set to kick off today with remarks from commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue.
Several weeks of public hearings will focus on the capacity of federal agencies to detect, deter and counter foreign interference.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and key government officials took part in hearings earlier this year as the inquiry explored allegations that Beijing tried to meddle in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.
Hogue’s interim report, released in early May, said Beijing’s actions did not affect the overall results of the two general elections.
The report said while outcomes in a small number of ridings may have been affected by interference, this cannot be said with certainty.
Trudeau, members of his inner circle and senior security officials are slated to return to the inquiry in coming weeks.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
