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Power & Influence Fall 2016 . 1

There has been a great deal of change in the past year. And, with times of transformation

comes the need for readjustment; it’s something we’ve done as a country for almost 150 years now—many would say successfully.

As the final touches are put on Canada’s up-coming sesquicentennial celebrations, it’s a good time to take stock of new identities formed, on-going demands for reformation, recent attempts to rebrand, and pleas to learn from the past.

One of the most blatant changes in the past year has stemmed from the change in govern-ment, as Justin Trudeau’s majority Liberals took the helm in Ottawa after almost a decade under the very different Harper leadership style.

Since October 19, 2015, Trudeau has lead a parliamentary rebrand, ditching old school politics in favour of a Parliament of the people (page 28), and recent signs suggest it’s working. A mid-September Angus Reid public opinion poll indicated that 65 per cent of those surveyed approve of his leadership.

Trudeau continues to form a collaborative (perhaps, too collaborative? Page 20) diverse government, most recently evidenced by the ap-pointment of Bardish Chagger, the first woman and visible minority to be made Government House Leader. As P&I discovered, her personali-ty and commitment to the job qualifies her, even if her past experience—at first glance—may look wanting (page 58).

Trudeau is also crafting his own personal character as a prime minister. After a year in power, observers are still comparing and con-trasting him to his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and while they’ve noticed some striking similar-ities, a number of differences have also become obvious to pundits. P&I chronicles the two Trudeaus in a photo essay with pictures from the archives of Pierre Trudeau’s photographer, Jean-Marc Carisse (page 48).

And, as usual after the freshman year in pow-er, there are a large number of major issues that Trudeau will have to now make tough decisions on, causing some to wonder if his seemingly impenetrable popularity will finally start to show signs of wear-and-tear. On the horizon: major tasks like electoral reform and marijuana legalization (in our zero-to-expert feature, find out everything you need to know about how Canada will ‘go green’: page 76).

The economic news in Canada has been bleak, also requiring aggressive action from Team Trudeau. There have been steep monthly declines in GDP, partly due to ongoing troubles in Alberta, which includes low oil prices and the tragic Fort McMurray wildfire. But, as P&I

learned, Alberta has a plan to get back in the game, and hopefully break the boom and bust cycle that has plagued it for decades (page 32).

Meanwhile, Ontario’s economy is the topic that premier-hopeful Patrick Brown is focusing on, promising to turnaround a province that he says is struggling. The leader of the Ontario Conservatives discusses his reputation, which ranges from Conservative party savior, to enig-ma, to robot; as well as his political platform, personal life, and his often-questioned personal-ity—or, as some assert, a lack thereof (page 38).

As we talk about the forming of new identi-ties, it’s important to recognize that often, this is required during the closing of a chapter—also a recurring theme in this edition of P&I. We catch up with high-profile former MPs who lost their seat in the fall 2015 federal election to find out what kind of post-politico identity they’ve been working on in Where are they now? (page 45), as well as sitting down with prison watchdog Howard Sapers, who, unless he receives yet another extension, will see his 12-year-run as ombudsman come to an end in about six months (page 24).

So, as we cap off a year of big transforma-tions and prepare for more adjustments ahead, I hope this issue provides a snapshot of how the people, places, and ideas that drive our country’s change are responding, and what kind of identi-ties we can expect to see formed and reformed in the process. Happy reading!

EditorAlly Foster

Associate EditorsRachel AielloChristina Leadlay

ContributorsAnthony Jenkins Jake Wright Shruti Shekar Asha HingoraniChelsea Nash Laura Ryckewaert Chris Guly Carl Meyer Martha Ilboudo Charelle EvelynDali CarmichaelJean-Marc Carisse

Guest columnistsPatrick Leblond Dan Ciuriak Tim PowersSusan SmithMichael R. J. Bonner Cameron Groome

PhotographersJake WrightSam Garcia

Vice President, Marketing and Multi-Media SalesSteve Macdonald613-688-8841 | [email protected]

Directors of Business DevelopmentCraig Caldbick 613-688-8827 | [email protected] Reaume 613-688-8836 | [email protected] Massoom 613-688-8840 | [email protected]

Advertising and Sponsorship Executive Ulle Baum613-240-4622 | [email protected]

Production ManagerBenoit Deneault

Senior Graphic and Online Designer Joey Sabourin

Tamer of Woodland Creatures Melanie Brown

Web DevelopersKobra AmirsardariJean-Francoise Lavoie

General Manager, CFOAndrew Morrow

Director of Advertising & MarketingChris PeixotoDirector of Reader Sales Ryan O’Neill

Reader Sales and Marketing ManagerChristopher Rivoire

Reader Development Account ExecutiveSean Hansel

PublishersAnne Marie Creskey Jim Creskey Ross Dickson

Published by Hill Times Publishing 2016 Hill Times PublishingAll Rights Reserved. Power & Influence is published four times a year.69 Sparks Street, Ottawa, ON K1P 5A5613-232-5952 hilltimes.com

Ed i tor’s n otE

An identity issue

2 . Power & Influence Fall 2016

contributorsrachEl aiEllo

reporter for The Hill TimesAssociate editor, P&I magazine

rachel predominately covers legislation and the latest in House and Senate committees by

day, and the Hill social circuit at night as a Party Central columnist. rachel also loves getting to work on a good glossy feature and snappy sidebar. One of her favourite times of the week is the Thursday Question in the House, and thinks a well- organized Excel spreadsheet is a thing of beauty. Outside of work she’s the Canadian Association of journalist’s National Capital region representative and community manager. Also, she has a cat named Basil.

christophEr gulY

Contributing writer for P&I magazine

Chris is a contributing writer to The Hill Times and has been a member of the

Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery since 1993.

anthonY mars jEnKins

Illustrator

Anthony was born in Toronto where he delivered The Globe and Mail in his youth, then

worked at the newspaper as a cartoonist for nearly 40 years. He now lives in bucolic Mono, Ont. www.jenkinsdraws.com.

jaKE Wright

The Hill Times Photographer

jake joined The Hill Times in 2002 and has covered five federal elections, and most, if

not all, of Ottawa’s political elite through his lens. In 2010, he spent three months in Afghanistan embedded with the u.S. military.

shruti shEKar

Editor of The Lobby Monitor

Shruti received her MA in journalism from Western university. She was born in India, grew

up mostly in Singapore, and currently resides in Canada. When she isn’t writing about the lobbying industry, she creates lifestyle-related videos and has her own mini talk show series on her youTube channel.

asha hingorani

Asha, a certified sommelier, is the former editor of Parliament Now and

wine writer for then-Embassy News. Asha teaches regulatory communications at Algonquin College and is the Human resources Manager and Staff Ombudsperson at Hill Times Publishing. Asha can sometimes be found hosting wine events in the Byward Market and never turns down a glass of good vino!

chElsEa nash

reporter for The Hill Times

Chelsea is a recent graduate from Carleton university’s journalism program, where she

specialized in international affairs. She now covers foreign affairs and diplomacy. She is an enthusiastic follower of the political process both at home and abroad, and caught the travel bug at a young age.

carl mEYEr

Contributing Writer for P&I magazine

Carl Meyer is a freelance journalist based in Ottawa, and the former managing editor of

what was The Hill Times’ sister publication, Embassy

newspaper.

martha ilboudo

Martha is a freelance journalist in Ottawa. Originally from Ghana, she was five years old when

her family moved to Canada and settled in Montreal, Que. When she’s not chasing her next big story she doesn’t mind getting lost in a good book or two.

charEllE EvElYn

reporter at The Wire report

Forged from a single block of sarcasm, Charelle has been making a go of this journalism game since

wrangling a Bachelor of journalism degree from Carleton university in 2008. Always up for an adventure, Charelle has done a range of unusual things for stories, including jumping into a frozen lake, auditioning for Canadian Idol, going speed-dating at an amusement park, and travelling to disney World and back in one day.

dali carmichaEl

dali Carmichael is a journalist living in northern Alberta, just south of the oil sands of Fort McMurray.

She first found her footing as a reporter in the Northwest Territories, and it was there she fell in love with the bush. She regularly covers Alberta politics, and natural resources, indigenous, and environmental issues.

jEan-marc carissE, ba

Photographer and author

jean-Marc was hired as official photographer by PM Pierre Trudeau’s National Liberal Caucus in

the mid 1970s, and went on to serve john Turner’s and

jean Chrétien’s PMO. He continues to work as a freelance and portrait photographer from his café and studio. His website is www.carissephoto.com

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off script 8Canadian author Shilpi Somaya Gowda

talks immigration, and why it’s a recurring theme in her popular novels.

WhEn in 10We take a break from ridings and

tour Elizabeth May’s home away from home—her eclectic Parliament Hill office.

Kingston pEn 14What do you do with an almost-200-year-old decommissioned

fortress that has to be maintained to the tune of $1.1-million a year?

climatE changE 17A debate rages in environment

circles about who should pay the piper when the weather

wreaks irreparable havoc.

thE grEat dEbatEs 20Experts discuss if there are too many Trudeau advisory groups,

and whether renegotiating NAFTA would be so bad after all.

dEfEnding thE damnEd 24 An interview with Correctional

Investigator Howard Sapers.

lEgislativE rEbrand 28Inside the Liberal’s new parliamentary strategy.

albErta 32How the province plans to get its

groove back (and keep it).

patricK broWn 38The Leader of the Ontario Conservatives

talks policy, personal life, and counters claims that he’s a flip-flopping cyborg.


45 WhErE arE thEY noW?Catching up with the familiar-face MPs who lost out in the last election.

48 thE tWo trudEausA photo essay on the uncanny similarities and stark differences between father and son prime ministers.

58 bardish chaggErShe is the first female and visible minority to be named Government House Leader. And she relishes the challenge.

62 viKram vijHis journey from India, to Canadian celebrity chef, to Senate advisor.

68 thE EssaYThe deadly problem with a Pearsonian foreign policy.

72 livEstocK antibioticsWhat Canada’s policy plan should be for a post-antibiotic era.

73 commons uncorKEdOntario’s next wine region is … in Ottawa?!

76 zEro-to-ExpErtEverything you need to know about marijuana legalization in Canada.

80 natan obEdThe president of the Inuit Tapiriit kanatami answers 17 personal questions.

Fall 2016Vol. 5 No. 4


On the cover: Howard Sapers (pg. 24) P&I Photograph by Jake Wright

6—Power & Influence Fall 2016

thrEE Words-CANAdA’S 150TH

“In three words, how would you describe the fi rst 150 years of Canadian history?”

“Smart. Resilient. Inclusive.”

—David Johnston, Governor General of Canada.

“Resourcefulness. Growth.

Optimism.” — Mélanie Joly, Minister

of Canadian Heritage.

“Surprising. Inclusive. Bilingual.”

— Thomas Axworthy, former adviser to Pierre Trudeau and a creator of the ‘Heritage Minute’

commercial series.

“Home. Rights.

Nature.” — Thomas Mulcair,

NDP Leader.

“Only the beginning.”

— Paul Martin, former Liberal prime minister.

“Survived every storm.”

— James Moore, former Conservative MP and past

heritage minister.

“We’re still here.”

— Perry Bellegarde, National Chief,

Assembly of First Nations

The year 2017 marks Canada’s 150th birthday, or its sesquicentennial, if one uses the technical term. The hotel prices in Ottawa have already skyrocketed, and Toronto has announced a birthday-

themed New years Eve bash for the occasion. But beyond the pomp, patriotic merchandise, and a controversial logo design, what does this landmark occasion really represent? P&I’s Laura

ryckewaert asked some prominent Canadians for their thoughts.

“Pride. Victory.

Opportunity.” — Rona Ambrose,

Conservative interim leader.

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pEoplE-OFF SCrIPT

Shilpi Somaya Gowda on the beauty of Canada’s

immigration attitude, and the tug that comes from feeling like you’re from

more than one place.

By ALLy FOSTEr

Off Script



OFF SCrIPT-pEoplE

S hilpi Somaya Gowda took publishing circles by storm, both in Canada and abroad, with her debut novel Secret Daughter, which

sold more than a million copies and has been translated into 23 languages.

Now, she discusses how her family’s own experiences with immigration—and the resulting struggles around cultural identity—became key ingredients in her storytelling successes.

Gowda was born and raised in Toronto, where her parents settled after immigrating from India. Gowda has travelled back to India many times. The stark differences and similarities she noticed between the West and her family’s homeland are woven through both Secret Daughter and her latest novel, The Golden Son.

Considering that the Canadian government set a target of welcoming 300,000 immigrants to Canada in 2016, with the goal of opening the door to more refugees and assisting in family reunification, Gowda’s insights into feeling caught in a tug-of-war between two very different cultures, and the journey to finding a balance between honouring tradition and pursuing new possibilities, are increasingly relevant.

Aside from tackling the complex emotions of cultural identity in her novels, she also focuses on the great joys and specific pressures placed on us by family members; a truth that transcends geographic borders.

Gowda spoke with P&I in a telephone interview from California, where she now resides with her family.

This interview has been edited for length, style, and clarity.

Immigration is a common theme in your work. Where did this interest originate?

“I’m the child of immigrants myself. My parents moved from India by way of a few other countries and ended up in Canada in the late 1960s. So I grew up as a first generation Canadian with all of the challenges that it presented—especially at that time—when there weren’t as many aspects of Canadian culture that had been integrated from other cultures.

“Today it feels like you can go to any kind of restaurant, any kind of beauty parlour, any kind of clothing store, but at the time I still had the feeling of being an outsider.

“Then I left Canada and came to live in the U.S., so in a less dramatic way,

I repeated the pattern that my parents had started of leaving my homeland and trying to make my way in another country. Immigration is just very present in my own life, and [something] that I think about a lot when I’m writing: the tug that comes from feeling like you’re from more than one place.”

Have you experienced feelings of cultural dissonance?

“I think I felt pulled between the two cultures because my parents were so comfortable in Indian culture and they—and it—were so out of place in Canadian culture. But of course that’s what I was

born into, and where I went to school, and had friends, and listened to the music and ate the food—it was all Western culture. So I felt the tug that way: between home and my school life.

“Going back to India for me was less about feeling like finishing the puzzle … and was more about understanding my parents and that bridge a little bit more.

“There’s just something very deep-rooted in culture. When people migrate, that’s an element that sometimes either gets lost or assimilated, or is allowed to thrive. I think today, a first generation Canadian growing up in Toronto like I did 40 years ago would have a very different experience, where they would feel a lot more supported and integrated.

“It’s a wonderful thing about Canada; I know it’s not a perfect immigration policy, but I do think the general ethos around

welcoming immigrants and honouring their unique contributions is one of the most beautiful things about Canada, and one of the things I remain most proud [of].”

How do you feel about the changes to Canada’s immigration system over the past several years? There was the creation of the ‘safe countries’ list for refugees, and immigrants with economic benefits, rather than family-class immigrants, were made a priority.

“Generally speaking, I think that there can be a refugee situation in any country; depending on the political climate, depending on the gender. There are many countries that are safe for men, but not for women, and some that are safe for adults, and not for children. I think it makes sense to extend the idea of refugees coming from not just a list of certain countries.

“I do think part of what makes immigration to be successful is allowing and enabling new immigrants to have a family structure behind them, like all of us thrive with a family structure behind us. I do think that making that possible and enabling that for new immigrants is a good idea.”

You’re currently living in California. Are there different discussions on immigration happening there than you’ve been hearing in Canada?

“Historically in the U.S. there has been much more support for immigration and much more of an open feeling towards a multicultural society than there is now. It’s disturbing to me that people are quick to forget that we’re all immigrants, you just might have to go back several generations to find your [roots].”

Immigration is “one of the things that resonates with people about my novels, and that I hear from readers in radically different cultures, like people in Saudi Arabia and Iceland and New Zealand. I couldn’t quite understand why this story, which is very much about two particular cultures—North America and India—was resonating with people in Scotland and Iceland. But I think it’s because everyone has a migration story in their past. No matter where you come from, someone in your family picked up and left a place that was comfortable to them and moved somewhere challenging in the hopes of a better life. Whether it’s moving from the countryside of England to the city of London, or like my parents moving from India to Canada, everybody has a story like that.”

No matter where you come from, someone in your family picked

up and left a place that was comfortable

to them and moved somewhere challenging in the

hopes of a better life.”

plac E s-WHEN IN


When In … Elizabeth May’s Hill offi ce

Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party of Canada, doesn’t have her own desk in her Parliament Hill offi ce.

Instead, the MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C. enters through the door of the small, three-room space, arms laden with fi les—which she miraculously manages not to spill her mug of coffee on—and pulls up a straight-back offi ce chair to the desk of her chief of staff, Debra Eindiguer. “This is where I work,” says May, indicating the section of the desk that she’s just commandeered.

She explains that in making do with tight quarters, she prefers her staff to have the comfortable workspaces.

The offi ce, located on the fi fth fl oor of the Confederation Building on Wellington Street, is comprised of three long, narrow offi ces, each capped with tall windows. Aside from May, the bright offi ce is currently home to six full-time staff, two full-time paid interns, and as many as 25 volunteers cycling in and out. And, as one might expect, it’s rather eclectic in its décor.

By ALLy FOSTEr | IMAGES By SAM GArC IA

At the main door, May proudly points out her fl ag of the planet Earth, which stands next to a Canadian fl ag. “Every other MP, they have the fl ag of their province, but being the leader of the Green Party I fi gured it was more appropriate to have the fl ag of planet Earth, because I’m representing a lot more than my constituents.”

Next, May sails into the room on the far right, which has multiple desks placed in a Tetris-like fashion, groaning under organized piles of papers, books, and fi le folders. This room is primarily used for research and responding to the more than 400,000 pieces of correspondence the offi ce receives each year, she explains.

The taupe-painted walls are covered with brightly-coloured rally posters from the 1990s, with calls to action on topics ranging from climate awareness to human rights and nuclear disarmament.


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WHEN IN-plac E s

Hanging above a platter of homemade, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies is a photograph of a massive tree, reminiscent of British Columbia’s Douglas-firs, and a carving of a spirit by a local Ottawa artist.

There’s also artwork depicting the late Petra Kelly, founder of the German Green Party, who was shot and killed in 1992 in circumstances that many still consider suspicious. “She’s someone I really admire a lot—a real inspiration,” says May, hesitating for a moment to stare at the piece, done by a B.C. artist, before snapping back to the present and continuing on our tour.


Moving into the third and final room, things get a little wilder.

There’s an Amazonian bow and arrow on the wall, mounted next to photos of a young May, beaming at the camera, in a Brazilian village with Canadian music legend Gordon Lightfoot. This photograph accompanies another of her with British musician Sting. The framed photos show a version of May in her pre-Sierra Club days, when she was an activist working in partnership with David Suzuki to organize and fundraise for a protest against a dam project on behalf of indigenous groups. Both Lightfoot and Sting were involved in the cause, and performed to help raise funds.

Overall, there’s a genuine modesty to May’s office. The well-used coffee cups are first-come-first-serve, her ‘Parliamentarian of the Year’ Award was tucked inconspicuously on a lower shelf, and she says there’s often discussion of slinging up a hammock across one of the narrow rooms.

WHEN IN-plac E s

There is also a peppering of editorial cartoons, snipped out of newspapers, framed and hung around the space—most of which poke fun at May in a variety of scenarios.

“I’ve lost a lot of weight, you know, and I wish cartoonists would catch up” she says in mock offense, followed by a big laugh, adding, “you can’t take yourself too seriously.”

Casually placed on her trinket and book-filled shelves are two small jars with a black substance sitting in the bottom.

She picks up one of the jars and holds it up to the light. “A lot of people think Bitumen is crude oil,” she says. “Nope,” she adds, turning the jar upside down, where the black mass remains stubbornly stuck to the bottom.

“It’s a solid,” she explains. “You can’t put this in a pipeline unless you stir in another toxic material, called diluent.”

She holds up the second glass container, containing the mixed substance, dilbit, and flips it as the molasses-like liquid rolls down the inside. She holds the two jars and says, “I need them every now and then to explain to people that it’s a solid.”


plac E s-kINGSTON PENITENTIAry

T he Kingston Penitentiary stands idle and empty; an unlikely marker of time, no longer a guardian of secrets but now a custodian of

history. There’s a nervousness in the air now— an uncertainty so pervading that even the cool summer breeze of Lake Ontario cannot calm it. Change is coming.

As Canada’s oldest and most infamous prison, Kingston Penitentiary, originally called the “Provincial Penitentiary of the Province of Upper Canada,” or the “Provincial Penitentiary,” sits on 8.6 hectares of land located on King Street West in Ontario’s historic City of Kingston. With a sordid past as long as its roll call of famous former inmates, ‘Kingston Pen’ or ‘KP’ as it’s become known to Kingstonians has housed some of the country’s most notorious criminals. For 178 years, this fortress played host to countless thieves, murderers, rapists and the like, ranging from women and children to the infamous Paul Bernardo and ex-Col. Russell Williams.

In 2012, the federal government announced that it would be closing the aging maximum-security prison due to its “crumbling infrastructure and costly upkeep.” In 2013, after nearly 200 years in operation, Kingston Penitentiary officially closed its doors, leaving behind much speculation and uncertainty about its future.

“I would say that Kingston Penitentiary is one of the most interesting and most valuable pieces of waterfront properties we have here in Kingston,” says the town’s Mayor Bryan Paterson. “Obviously, it being the oldest and most famous penitentiary in Canada, it’s something that is interwoven with the identity and history of our community. So when I ran for mayor back in 2014 the number one question that I got at the door was: ‘what’s going to happen to Kingston Pen?’ So it was very clear that there is an overwhelming interest and desire in the community to have a say in what that future might look like,” he says.

By MArTHA ILBOudO

The crown jewel of prisons: in search of a new purposeHaving swapped guarded inmates for guided tours, the future of kingston’s historic penitentiary remains unknown, though full of potential.

The halls of Kingston Pen. are now quiet and still. P&I photograph courtesy of Mayor Bryan Paterson


The following year, in 2014, Correctional Service Canada (CSC) successfully decommissioned Kingston Penitentiary and began the process of removing it from its federal inventory. As it stands, CSC staff are responsible for the continued maintenance of the institution and its grounds, as well as ensuring the facility is cleaned, explains a CSC spokesperson. In addition, the annual expenditures to maintain Kingston Penitentiary for fiscal year 2015-16 (April 1,

2015 to March 31, 2016) were approximately $1.1-million.Kingston Penitentiary was designated a National Historic Site

of Canada in 1990 due to “the sophistication of its plan, its size, its age and the number of its physical facilities of special architectural merit that survive from the 19th century.”

According to Parks Canada, Federal Heritage Buildings are subject to the Treasury Board Policy on Management of Real Properties and as per policy “where their minister has administration of heritage buildings: conservation advice is sought for recognized heritage buildings; consultations with Parks Canada are undertaken before demolishing, dismantling or selling a recognized building and before taking any action that could affect the heritage character of a classified building; and that best efforts for the recognized building be made to arrange for appropriate alternative uses of under-utilized or excess classified and recognized heritage buildings, first in the federal government and then outside the federal government.”

Shortly after it closed its doors, new life was breathed into the aging facility in the form of guided tours to raise money for the local United Way charity. The monotonous footsteps of inmates threading though the long narrow hallways have been replaced with the hurried sound of excited visitors looking to get a glimpse behind the prison’s famed walls. In an outpouring of response from the community, CSC partnered with Habitat for Humanity to offer another series of guided tours. During both fundraising campaigns, tickets for the highly sought-after tour quickly sold out, leaving many to wonder if (given the demand) Kingston Penitentiary could become a viable and sustainable tourism draw.

“The tourism community hopes that whatever the outcome for the Kingston Penitentiary site, a major tourism component be

Kingston Penitentiary was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1990. P&I Photograph courtesy of of the book, Souvenir views of the city of Kingston Ontario, Canada, and the Thousand Islands, River St. Lawrence.

Tickets for the highly sought-after tour quickly sold out, leaving many to wonder if (given the demand) Kingston Penitentiary could become a viable and sustainable tourism draw. P&I photograph courtesy of Mayor Bryan Paterson

CSC staff are responsible for the continued maintenance of the institution and its grounds, as well as ensuring the facility is cleaned. P&I photograph by Martha Ilboudo


included in the project. There are many important buildings within the site that lend themselves well to several tourism opportunities,” says Violette Hiebert, Director of Tourism Marketing and Development at Tourism Kingston. “I’ve heard discussed a desire to see a National Film Centre within the walls – allowing productions to be fi lmed in the historic buildings, and the development of a robust fi lm academy (perhaps an offshoot of Queen’s Film department) within the site. Having a sailing component within the site also makes sense – especially at Portsmouth Olympic Harbour adjacent to the Penitentiary. Of course, the tours themselves are a major attraction for visitors to Kingston, so we want to see that evolve in a big way as well,” says Hiebert.

Its size, continues Hiebert, only adds to the site’s added potential which “means there are several possibilities” for future re-development and growth. Amongst some of the options discussed is the “idea of creating a Distillery District-like experience at the Pen, and that, to me, speaks to the need to make the site accessible to the public. It is such an icon

in Kingston’s history and shoreline,” says Hiebert.

The tours’ popularity brought with it more than just a fl urry of eager guests—it also brought many possibilities. Earlier this year, the St. Lawrence Parks commission announced that it would once again be opening the famed gates of the 560 King St. W. landmark as part of a partnership between the City of Kingston, the provincial and federal governments. The tours, which are said to have pumped approximately $6-million into the local economy, were a short-term remedy for the cherished landmark. Once the tours have concluded in the fall, however, there are no immediate plans for its future, which begs the question: Who will write the next chapter in the narrative of Kingston Penitentiary?

In December 2015, the City of Kingston, Correctional Service Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Canada Lands Company announced that they would hold a public visioning exercise to discuss long-term plans of the iconic Kingston landmark as well as its neighboring properties. In May 2016, the community visioning exercise for the

development of the Kingston Penitentiary and Portsmouth Olympic Harbour was launched. Through the exercise, interested stakeholders have been voicing their ideas of what they would like to see happen to the lakeside property.

“It’s an enormous opportunity for the city and I think that’s very exciting. I think that it is a complex fi le and will take some time to see this vision realized,” says Paterson. “I think myself and everybody else would like to see the future right now. It’s going to take some time and it’s a process, but it will be worth it. I really believe that it’s the right way to do it—that we’re going to get community support for this concept and that we’re going to get the right people at the table. I think that it has the potential to be an enormous tourism draw for our city and an enormous addition to our waterfront that’s something visitors and residents alike can enjoy,” says Paterson.

Although the tides of change are coming, Kingston Penitentiary remains, as it always has, a quiet observer— juxtaposed between the here and the now, the past and the future, quietly watching and waiting for its next chapter to begin.


plac E s-kINGSTON PENITENTIAry

501-100 Sparks Street, Ottawa, ON K1P 5B7 Phone 613-230-2333 Email [email protected] wazuku.ca

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CLIMATE CHANGE-fEat urE


When Saleemul Huq gets into a room with negotiators to hash out climate change agreements,

he prefers not to mince words in making his point about compensating developing countries for loss and damage.

“If you thought 9/11 in New York was bad you ain’t seen nothing yet, because this is the most atrocious injustice that has been done by the rich on the poor and the people who die will have relatives and friends and people that will sympathize and will want retribution,” says the London-based Huq, an environmental scientist by training who splits his time between England and his home country of Bangladesh. “You will not face negotiation any more, you have to face retribution.”

It’s extreme language, but it outlines a future that Huq—a senior fellow and founder of the climate program at London’s International Institute for Environment and Development as well as director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University of Bangladesh—is eager to avoid.

It’s a reality that Huq hopes never comes to pass, and is an argument designed to draw attention to an issue he has spent the better part of two decades exploring: who is financially and legally responsible when climate change causes irreparable loss or damage in developing countries?

tWo-prongEd argumEnt There are two elements to the

conversation about loss and damage: scientific and political.

On the science side, there isn’t much disagreement. If no one does anything about climate change, whether through a commitment to keep the global warming trend capped at two degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels or stemming greenhouse gas emissions, the planet Earth and its inhabitants are in for a rough ride.

Finding examples of climate change-induced loss and damage doesn’t even require looking beyond North America’s borders.

The Alberta government’s website lists increased forest fires, droughts, and “heavy

precipitation with associated increased risk of flooding” as examples of extreme weather events brought about by climate change.

Some experts, including Huq, have pointed to this spring’s wildfires that prompted the evacuation of thousands of Fort McMurray, Alta., residents as a prime example. Add to that the dramatic June 2013 flooding in the province that took the lives of at least five people, and dry conditions that prompted some rural counties to proclaim a local state of agricultural disaster in the summer of 2015, and you’ve ticked a few boxes in barely three years.

“So what we are seeing now everywhere, including in Canada and the United States, is the impacts of climatic changes that we have failed to prevent and failed to adapt to,” Huq says, also pointing to this summer’s flooding in the southern U.S.

“Look at the people that died in Louisiana and the tens of thousands of people who have become homeless right

By CHArELLE EvELyN

Paying the piper

Islands are being swallowed by rising sea levels; unprecedented droughts are cracking open the earth; wildfires

are wreaking more havoc, more often. Debate is heating up over who should be financially and legally responsible when

climate change causes irreparable loss and damage.

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now in Baton Rouge—it’s a one-in-thousand-year flood that occurred twice in the same year. There’s no way this can be attributed to natural events. This is a man-made event.”

But unlike the residents of Fort McMurray, who were eventually able to return to their community, residents in smaller, developing countries face permanent displacement.

“Coastal areas have high vulnerability to the projected climate change-related increased severity of coastal hazards and the degradation of ocean-based livelihoods,” says a 2014 United Nations report on Climate Change and Migration Issues in the Pacific.

“River deltas are highly vulnerable to flooding which is likely to increase due to climate change. Additionally, there are many drought prone areas in the Pacific where increased drought may result in increased migration demand.”

The report says that in looking ahead to potential loss of land, “some Pacific island countries have access agreements with Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America, which already host large diasporas.”

It adds that Oceanic countries such as Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Nauru, which “may have the greatest potential migration pressures,” are doubly affected, as they also “have the fewest international destination options.”

“But nobody really wants to leave their land,” Huq says. “These are desperate measures they have to contemplate now—they really do need to think about losing their entire country.”

In a statement released at the start of a United Nations climate change conference in Bonn, Germany, in May, the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States outlined some of the recent hardships faced by some of the coalition’s 44 members.

“Cyclones Ula, Winston, and Zena wreaked havoc in the South Pacific earlier this year; Severe droughts in parts of the Caribbean and the Western Pacific continue to cause water and food security crises; A massive coral-bleaching event has turned reefs bone white across the tropics; And scientists have confirmed the loss of 5 islands to sea level rise in the Solomon archipelago—showing climate change is now infringing on sovereign territory,” says Thoriq Ibrahim, minister of Environment and Energy for the Maldives.

“It is no accident that several of our members were among the first to complete their domestic ratification processes for the Paris Agreement and we urge all countries to follow suit so that we see its early entry into force.”

‘important sYmbolic Win’The Paris Agreement, borne out of the

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) 21st annual Conference of Parties (COP21) held in the eponymous French city last December is tangible evidence of the scientific consensus and it enshrines the much-publicized commitment to that 2 C benchmark.

Where fewer headlines focused was on the loss and damage aspect of the agreement, which featured the splintering off of the concept from its former home with the section on adaptation efforts.

“It’s a symbolic win, but it’s an important symbolic win,” Huq says.

As stated in Article 8.1 of the agreement: “Parties recognize the importance of averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including extreme weather events and slow onset events, and the role of sustainable development in reducing the risk of loss and damage.”

Part of that recognition was to make permanent a temporary working group established two years prior at COP19 in Warsaw, Poland.

The Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage is supposed to facilitate and disseminate research and best practices by different bodies under the UNFCCC in support of developing countries that are the most vulnerable to climate change.

While the mechanism initially only had a lifespan until COP22, scheduled for Nov. 7-18, 2016 in Marrakech, Morocco, its work can now continue indefinitely.

Where things get tricky is the politics of the underlying question: should rich countries be held liable for the effects of climate change on those nations less well off?

adaptation is KEYThe Canadian government, which

as of publication, had yet to ratify the Paris Agreement, says it’s a proponent of supporting efforts to minimize loss and damage.

“Canada was pleased that the Paris Agreement recognized the need to enhance cooperation to address the losses and damages associated with the adverse impacts of climate change through the strengthening of the existing Warsaw International Mechanism—this work will include enhancing knowledge on comprehensive risk management approaches, and strengthening coordination among relevant stakeholders,” according to an email response from Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna was not made available for an interview.

The Warsaw International Mechanism is the best forum to continue making progress in understanding the issues and challenges “arising from the most extreme impacts of climate change,” the department said, noting “we also continue to provide support to the most vulnerable and poorest countries, so that they may undertake adaptation action domestically.”

A wildfire rages near Fort McMurray, Alberta, in the summer of 2016. P&I photograph courtesy of Chris Schwarz

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Canada is part of the self-proclaimed High Ambition Coalition, a group of countries that came together at the Paris summit to push for an ambitious climate change agreement.

The government has also pledged $2.65-billion over five years “to help the poorest and most vulnerable countries adapt to climate change, deploy renewable energy technologies, and manage risks related to severe weather events,” Environment Canada says.

But the Canadian government draws the line at shouldering the blame.

“Canada encourages and supports all countries to put in place frameworks or strategies that will allow them to undertake effective adaptation actions that would also increase resilience to prevent or minimize loss or damage,” the email says. “These strategies may be developed at the country or community-level. Linking loss and damage to liability could inhibit a country-driven approach to adaptation.

“For Canada, it is important that loss and damage be anchored in adaptation.”

To that end, in addition to the $2.65-billion, Canada is supporting the

National Adaptation Plans Global Network “in order to enhance the effectiveness of adaptation assistance by coordinating support for adaptation planning and action.”

That’s not good enough for critics like Huq, who say the rich—and emission-heavy— countries should be considering the merits of a compromise where they accept limited liability for loss and damage

in less-wealthy countries, and create a formula for working out some form of compensation.

And it’s a lot of money. In 2013, the United States government signed off on a $50-billion relief bill for assistance to areas of the country hit by Hurricane Sandy.

“That’s just for a few hundred thousand people in northeastern United States who were affected. On the global scale, they’ve given nothing to the people around the world who’ve been affected,” Huq says. “So they will look after their own citizens; the question is: will they be responsible global citizens and look after the damage that they are doing to other people across the world?”

Huq says his argument with negotiators from rich countries is that finding a compromise and negotiating a limited liability claim before any catastrophic damage linked to climate change occurs is in their own interest.

“If they fail to do that, then they will have caused damage quite clearly attributable to their actions and their inactions,” Huq says. “And they’ll have to live with the consequences because you can’t negotiate with the dead.”

Nobody really wants to leave their land … These are desperate measures they have

to contemplate now—they really do need to

think about losing their entire country.”

—Saleemul Huq


DEBATESTh e GREAT

Q: Would a renegotiation of NAFTA be a blow to Canada’s economy or an opportunity to make improvements?

Regardless of who becomes the next president of

the United States after the Nov. 8 election, the North American Free Trade Agreement, as it currently stands, faces an uncertain future. Neither Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton nor Republican contender Donald Trump are fans of the 22-year-old treaty, which lays out the rules of trade and investment between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Bellicose Trump boasted that he would rip up the historic document, and Clinton is considering renegotiating the deal her husband ratifi ed while in the Oval Offi ce. Two experts share their views on what a reassessment of NAFTA could mean for Canada.

By PATrICk LEBLONdThe idea of free trade is certainly get-

ting a good beating during the U.S. election campaign. The main target by both pres-idential candidates has been the Transpa-cifi c Partnership (TPP), which cannot go ahead if the United States does not ratify it. For Canada, this means that our opportu-nity to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through the TPP is unlikely to occur, regardless of who wins the presidency in November.

Canada should in principle welcome the opportunity to renegotiate NAFTA, a free trade deal that was negotiated more

than 20 years ago. Since the 9/11 attacks, there have been calls in Canada to deepen NAFTA through a grand bargain: deeper trade integration with the U.S. in return for more security in Canada.

This logic led to the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), agreed to in Waco, Texas in 2005. Unfortunately, the SPP was quietly abandoned fi ve years later, owing in large part to insuffi cient political support from then-prime minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama.

Instead of a trilateral approach to North American economic and security collabo-ration, a double bilateral one was adopted.

Why not give it a shot?P&I illustration by Anthony Jenkins


NAFTA-thE grEat dEbatE s

For instance, in 2011, Canada and the U.S. negotiated a Beyond the Border agreement that aimed to make the border more secure and more fl uid in order to facilitate trade between the two countries. Mexico and the U.S. negotiated a similar agreement.

Although welcome, given that the border has become “thicker” since the 9/11 attacks, these new measures were much less ambitious than the SPP. Moreover, they did not amount to a modernization of NAFTA.

There are two key areas where the three North American governments can probably fi nd common ground to upgrade NAFTA: labour and the environment. After NAFTA was negotiated, U.S. President Bill Clinton got Canada and the Mexicans to accept side agreements on labour and the environment in order to make it easier to pass the agree-ment in the U.S. Congress, which was con-cerned about jobs and investments moving to Mexico as a result of lower labour and environmental standards and, therefore, lower costs of production.

Given that labour concerns are still very present in the U.S. with regards to free trade, NAFTA’s labour agreement may be the most promising area for an update in terms of ensuring high-quality standards.

Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. could also improve labour mobility for business and investment purposes within North Ameri-ca. NAFTA provisions on this issue are too

limited, which might explain why the take up of NAFTA visas has been low. In a world where trade in services is growing, it is important for businesses to be able to send their professionals and technicians abroad to provide such services. It is also more and more important when it comes to selling high-end products, which require extensive after-sale servicing. The Canada-Europe-an Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) could provide the basis for modernizing NAFTA on this important issue.

On the environment, a potential Trudeau-Clinton duo might be what is needed to restore—if not enhance—NAFTA’s Environmental Commission’s original heft, badly damaged during George W. Bush’s presidency and subsequently ignored by Harper and Obama.

A third area that would make sense for a renewed NAFTA is regulatory cooperation. In the 21st century, the most important obstacles to trade are not so much tariffs but standards, rules, and regulations. Dif-ferences in these areas represent important additional costs for producers, which have to adapt their products and sometimes ser-vices to satisfy the rules and norms in each country where they do business. If such rules and regulations could be mutually recognized (i.e., “if it is good enough for me, then it is good enough for you”), if not

harmonized, then production costs would come down. In the end, it is consumers who should benefi t.

Regulatory cooperation was how the SPP was supposed to enhance “prosperity” in North America, so the SPP’s provisions could form the basis for a NAFTA regula-tory cooperation regime. The existing Can-ada-U.S. Regulatory Cooperation Council and U.S.-Mexico High Level Regulatory Cooperation Council would have to be incorporated into a single NAFTA-based framework. Again, trade negotiators could also draw inspiration from CETA, since regulatory cooperation is a key component of the agreement (TPP is considered weak on this front).

In spite of the scaremongering and nasty rhetoric during the U.S. election campaign, there might actually be a window of opportunity to renegotiate NAFTA in a way that brings it into the 21st century. Canada should, therefore, play an active role in pushing for such renegotiation and try to make good on the next American president’s commitment to revisiting NAFTA.

Patrick Leblond is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and CN-Paul M. Tellier Chair on Business and Public Policy in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa.

By dAN CIurIAkFrom a pure economic perspective,

NAFTA could be improved. There are some remaining trade barriers to goods trade, services trade is subject to uncer-tain market access, the rules of accessing NAFTA’s preferential trade windows are restrictive, and small business would ben-efi t from a more liberal regime for small shipments.

However, a NAFTA renegotiation initiated by a new U.S. Administration would not be framed to liberalize trade, but instead a response to populist demands to recapture jobs for Americans. That demand does not translate into a coherent econom-ic agenda for the United States trade repre-sentative to press in talks with Canada.

First, trade tends to improve effi ciency —which tends to be job-destroying rather than job-creating. Politicians may talk “jobs, jobs, jobs” when it comes to trade, but trade econ-omists don’t—they tend to avoid the subject.

Secondly, insofar as the NAFTA rene-gotiation were to increase protection in net terms for U.S. producers with the intent of increasing American jobs, this would serve as a tax on U.S. exports and destroy about as many jobs as it creates.

Simply put, renegotiating NAFTA, with the protectionist objectives implicit in the politics of restoring decent jobs for Americans, would be like rearranging deck chairs on America’s sinking ship of eco-nomic discontent: useless. Actually, worse than useless. As in the 1930s, just as in the aftermath of Brexit, the injection of new re-strictions and heightened uncertainty into trade would result in a welfare-diminishing mutual reduction of exports and imports, and investment.

Absent a coherent economic agenda, the U.S. trade bureaucracy would interpret the mandate to renegotiate NAFTA in terms of addressing the laundry list of outstanding complaints against Canada generated by the well-oiled U.S. trade lobby machine.

In the crosshairs would be the following targets:

intEllEctual propErtY• Canada’s intellectual property enforcement: the U.S. wants Canadian customs offi cials to detain pirated and counterfeit goods that are in transit or are transhipped through Can-ada; and Canada to take measures against online marketplaces “reportedly” engaging in commercial-scale piracy online, includ-ing sites hosted in, operated by, or directed toward parties located in Canada; • Canada’s administrative procedures for approval of pharmaceuticals: the U.S. wants Canada to eliminate rights of appeal in Canada’s administrative process for

The economics of renegotiating NAFTA

thE grEat dEbatE s-NAFTA


Ah, consultations—the great tool of governments seeking to engage their citizens and make them feel like they are part of the public policy-making process. Initiated in the right environment, they can be a power-ful political weapon to shape a government’s

winning narrative. Conveniently, that brings us to the Trudeau government.

Since being elected in 2015 there really isn’t anything the Trudeau government has announced that they won’t be consulting on: military procurement, the legalization of marijuana, democratic reform, etc.

Any good governance model, be it public or private, should have consultations and/or stakeholder engagement as part of the deliberation process. It may shock read-ers to know that the supposedly tone deaf Stephen Harper, the previous prime min-ister, did not have a fatwa against consul-

tations. His government, like this govern-ment, ran extensive budget consultations among numerous other outreach efforts. The Harperites even had a comprehensive public engagement strategy around the imposition of physician assisted dying.

When Trudeau defeated Harper in last year’s election he seized on the public mood and story of the day that Harper didn’t want to listen to Canadians. He was an isolated dictator and the only voice he preferred hearing was his own.

Remember that ad of Harper sitting in his offi ce, all alone, apparently mak-

reviewing regulatory approval of phar-maceutical products and to restrict the Health minister’s discretion in disclosing confi dential business information; • Utility requirements for patents: the U.S. is pressing for a “clarifi cation” of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision con-cerning heightened utility requirements for patents to meet American stakeholder asks;• Canada’s geographical indications commit-ments under the Canada-EU Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA): the U.S. wants to ensure that Canada’s concessions to the EU to protect names like parmesan and feta do not restrict U.S. exports to Canada.

agricultural marKEt accEss• Dairy market access: a small fl ash point is imports of milk proteins that are coming into Canada through a duty free window (“diafi l-tered”). The U.S. will contest a Canadian re-sponse that lowers milk prices for producers of manufactured dairy products to patch this hole in the supply management program. A bigger issue is the interpretation of the TPP’s dairy market access provision: the U.S. Inter-national Trade Commission study of the TPP projects $1.2-billion (US) of dairy exports to Canada, substantially more than the Canadi-an government concedes it negotiated away in the CETA and TPP combined; • Wheat market access: the Canada Grains Act and Varietal Registration System is a point of friction for U.S. wheat exporters as it does not allow American wheat that has not been tested for compliance with Canadian regulations to be graded according to Canadian standards.

Bill C-48, “Modernization of Canada’s Grain Industry Act”, which would have overhauled the Canadian Grain Commission practices but was shelved with the change in Canadian government, would be a U.S. target.

govErnmEnt procurEmEnt• Canada extended unprecedented access to sub-national procurement to the EU under CETA; the U.S. will want the same; access to an expanded list of Crown Corporations is featured in the U.S. Market Access Barri-ers report on Canada;• National security-based restrictions on cross-border data fl ows for management of Canada’s federal email system;• Quebec Hydro local content requirements (which are not covered by government procurement agreements).

canada’s industrial policY• Softwood lumber – again;• Canadian support to the aerospace sector;• Telecommunications restrictions on foreign direct invest;• Canadian content in broadcasting re-quirements;• Canada’s net benefi t test under the Invest-ment Canada Act.

If NAFTA renegotiation actually re-sulted in genuine liberalization by Canada, it should be a good thing for the country. Conventional economic theory—which is refl ected in empirical models that seek to quantify the impact of trade agreements —says that liberalizing markets enables a

more effi cient allocation of resources, high-er incomes, and generally greater economic welfare for both parties—even if only one side liberalizes.

The items on the U.S. negotiating list, however, are not necessarily trade liberal-izing. The fi rst specifi c item in the current softwood lumber review, for example, is a commitment “to maintain Canadian exports at or below an agreed U.S. market share to be negotiated.”

The U.S. is not being hypocritical; it is just doing business. There is a difference. Hypocrisy is about principles. Business is about self-interest—in this case, the self-in-terest of stakeholders.

The rub is that self-interest of individ-ual stakeholders does not translate into national interest.

The hard cases—dairy, telecommuni-cations ownership, aerospace support, and Canadian content in media—would not likely crack. The other items would not register on the GDP Richter scale. So how-ever one characterizes a U.S. approach to NAFTA renegotiation, Canada would not feel the earth move as a result. The exercise would be one of damage control for negoti-ators and fi nding a reason to be somewhere else when ministers announce with forced smiles how they have improved NAFTA.

Dan Ciuriak is a Director and Principal, Ciuriak Consulting Inc. (Ottawa), Senior Fellow with the Centre for International Governance Innovation (Waterloo) focusing on the interface between innovation and trade, and Fellow in Residence with the C.D. Howe Institute.

All consultations must end with decisions, not more consultations

Q: Justin Trudeau is naming advisory groups left, right, and centre. Is this a good strategy for high-level decision-making?

By TIM POWErS

CONSuLTATIONS-thE grEat dEbatE s


ing decisions? Trudeau sure did and ran with the contrast—he was going to be the listener. If his hearing failed he’d employ a “Whisper 2000” because he’d rather go deaf from hearing from you, than listening to the sound of his own voice. The PM’s aural capacity aside, it was smart political branding on the part of the Liberals.

The challenge with consultations is they must end at some point. The decisions must be made. The listener must transform into the decider. The clever political strategist then crafts a path of transition and expecta-tion management because while the rhetoric says every voice will be heard, not every word uttered will become an action item.

In large measure the prime minister is now moving into his Speak-and-Spell phase. It promises to shape the rest of his term and his re-election prospects. What started as a plan to showcase the differ-ence between the old government and the new one has now run its course.Under-estimating Trudeau is a fool’s errand as his opponents should know by now (if they don’t, I recommend a consultation). If he wants to make history and have a lasting impact, he needs to make choices while still striking a balance with listening. Trudeau, like most every prime minister before him, if he wants to be successful, will have to accept that you may not be

as immediately likeable as you once were after you make a call.

Can the prime minister live with less love? We shall soon see. Stephen Harper never cared for public affection, so decisions both good and bad seemed easy for him. Trudeau seems different than Harper in that regard. Trudeau still has stratospheric polling num-bers and no real opposition. There will likely be no better time for him to make choices, tough or otherwise. We will soon see what the next chapter of this government looks like.

Tim Powers is vice-chairman of Summa Strategies and managing director of Abacus Data. He is a former adviser to Conservative political leaders.

Listen. Learn. Lead. In many respects, these three words

characterize the Trudeau government’s approach to governing. When they came into power, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signalled that it was his intent to do government differently. More open, more transparent, consulting with the provinces, listening to First Nations, using evidence and not just politics as the basis for de-cision-making. One way of doing this is reaching out via consultations and advisory boards for the advice of experts, whose experience brings fresh insight and ideas, which can inform better policy and better decisions.

No one should be surprised that asking for advice from experts has been Trudeau’s approach. It’s always been his approach. When he was a new MP, he arrived in Ottawa, took his seat on the backbench, listened and learned. As the new leader of the Liberal party, he crisscrossed the country and listened to Canadians, from Alert Bay to Baie Verte to Bay Street. In the lead-up to the election, he created a key economic advisory committee that brought Bill Morneau, Scott Brison, Ralph Goodale, Chrystia Freeland and others to the table together to map out the Liberal economic vision for Canada. With the advice from this team, he led the campaign with his vision for the country.

Effective ministers have often reached out to the experts beyond the monolithic government buildings dotted around the National Capital Region. Like his predecessors at Finance, Minister Morneau has tapped the sector’s best minds for advice as he implements his game plan for kick-starting the anemic Canadian economy. Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly has brought the same approach to the cultural policy review as has Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains to the critical innovation fi le. And given the past and pending court decisions regarding First Nations communities and natural resource development, as well as the recent controversy around the National Energy Board Energy East hearings, it would be hard to argue against the need for Natural Resource Minister Jim Carr’s Expert Panel on NEB modernization.

Cabinet is listening, learning and gath-ering the evidence they need to make the most informed policy decisions they can.

Part of doing government differently actually means doing some things different-ly. Supreme Court appointments, Senate appointments—we’ve heard the yelping for years about “political appointees” in these important chairs. Former Conservative prime minister Kim Campbell heads the committee for Supreme Court appointees. Public policy expert Donald J. Savoie, whose academic career has been spent critiquing governments of every stripe, is on the independent Senate appointments committee. And following the NEB mod-ernization process, applications for future NEB appointments will follow an open and

competitive process for appointing new board members.

Gone are the days of a surprise list coming out from PMO. Yes, the fi nal names still come from PMO, but this time around your name could be on it, if you are qualifi ed. Submit your application; have it reviewed by an independent committee. Political hacks need not apply.

Can policy-making be slowed down with advisory boards and consultations? It’s defi nitely slower than policy by diktat, dreamed up by political staffers who have never left the Langevin Block. We’ve been there, done that for the last decade, and were left with voters asking for a new vision for Canada.

And does every policy decision require external consultation? The answer is a fi rm no. Three hundred and thirty eight MPs, the Cabinet, and the prime minister have been granted permission by Canadians to make laws and decisions on behalf of Cana-dians for three more years.

Through our votes, we’ve entrusted our political leaders with the task of making the tough decisions that will shape our society, our economy, our courts, our environment, and our participation in global affairs. But history has shown us that if governments stay hunkered down in their political towers with the blinds down and blinders on, they will make many more mistakes than if they reach out and tap the ideas and insights that the country has to offer.

Susan Smith is the Principal at Bluesky Strategy Group. She has more than two decades of experience in government relations and strategic communications, including time as a Liberal communications adviser.

Leadership requires listening

By SuSAN SMITH


For Howard Sapers, one of the most striking moments of the last decade came soon after he

released a damning report on racism and discrimination in Canada’s prisons.

By any reasonable standard, the 2013 report by Sapers, the country’s correctional Investigator, should have given pause to every Canadian. It found that black and indigenous people were being thrown in jail at alarmingly accelerated rates, far out of proportion with their numbers in Canadian society. Moreover, once inside, their treatment seemed to suggest particular scorn.

Nearly all black inmates, whose numbers grew in the prison population every year from 2003-13 at a rate of nearly 90 per cent, reported discrimination by correctional offi cials, the report revealed. Black inmates were overrepresented in

disciplinary measures and more likely to be put in maximum security prisons, despite being at lower risk of reoffending. They reported feeling alternately ignored or targeted by staff, who called them names like ‘gang member’ and ‘drug dealer’, despite 80 per cent not being members of gangs.

Most tellingly, in an education program at one institution, black inmates were made to read passages from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a text that is full of the n-word. They described the experience as “degrading” and “demeaning,” the report noted. One man refused to read it, and was kicked out of class.

“It seemed to me that this was an opportunity for the Correctional Service of Canada to do better, and to recognize that they need to do better,” Sapers recalls thinking. In the report, he recommended the

service develop diversity awareness training, and hire ethnicity liaison offi cers to focus on the needs of visible minority inmates.

mEt With mocKErY and dismissal

Instead, the response from the Conservative government and its members of Parliament landed somewhere between mockery and dismissal.

“The only identifi able group that our justice system is targeting is criminals,” said Steven Blaney, then-public safety minister, when the report came up during Question Period on Nov. 26, 2013. His caucus colleague at the time, an ex-cop named Rick Norlock said Sapers was acting “as if prisons were hotels” and “as if encouraging criminals to read more were a bad thing.”

Sapers, who has spent 12 years as Canada’s federal prison watchdog, says it was

By CArL MEyEr

DEFENDING THE

DAMNEDcanada’s prison watchdog has six months left in the

job. he still has plenty on his prison reform plate, but when asked about the future, he emphasizes optimism.

HOWArd SAPErS-pEoplE


moments like this that came to exemplify a “climate” of denial in Ottawa about the problems inside Canada’s prisons.

“We got into a decade of tough-on-crime rhetoric,” he says in a sit-down interview with P&I in his offi ce on Aug. 17, “and it was diffi cult to talk about empathy, compassion and dignity. But those are really the cornerstones of a good justice system.”

The moment also gives a peek behind the curtain at how this 58-year-old man, who has studied and advocated for prison reform for decades, actually ticks. Sapers has an incredible intellectual intensity packaged with a disarming, straightforward demeanour. He is a crusader, and he knows it, but he’s not one to brag.

“We are now at the point where one in four federally-sentenced offenders is of indigenous heritage; one in 10 is black,” he says, leaning in. “The only way that

you could justify that is if you actually concluded that those members of our community are predisposed to commit more crime.”

Yet, when asked how he dealt with the government slamming the door in his face, Sapers strikes an upbeat, even mischievous tone.

“I’m a very slow learner,” he says, grinning. “I once had a minister ask me when I was going to stop repeating myself, and I said, ‘when you listen.’”

‘this WorK mEshEs pErfEctlY’

Sapers talks about his career in three distinct stages: a decade of work with the John Howard Society, another decade spent in provincial politics, and since then, working within and around the federal criminal justice system.

But really he’s been pursuing the same thing most of his life: peace within his own conscience.

“I am very committed to this work,” he intones. “This work meshes perfectly with my values of the criminal justice system, and my beliefs about how governments should behave, in terms of accountability and transparency.”

Born in Toronto in 1957, Sapers earned a degree in criminology at Simon Fraser University, before heading up the John Howard Society in Alberta. Sapers was fi rst director for the criminal justice advocacy nonprofi t’s Grand Prairie branch, and then executive director province-wide.

He then went into politics, getting elected to the Legislative Assembly in Alberta in 1993. He served two terms through 2001 as the member for Edmonton-Glenora. In his second term, he served as offi cial opposition leader and House leader.

After failing to win re-election a third time, he left the political arena. He became the director of the Crime Prevention Investment Fund at the National Crime Prevention Centre, which is part of Public Safety Canada. The fund, he said, “brought me back to my research days as a criminology graduate student”—back in his element, in other words.

Following that, he became vice-chairperson for the Parole Board of Canada prairie region, and in 2004 was fi rst appointed to his current job as correctional investigator.

He looks back at his days as a politician, working in communities, as good preparation for his role. “I’ve seen the business from different sides,” he says. “I’ve been in and around corrections and law enforcement and crime prevention and policy for a long time, for more than 30 years.”

Sapers is like an exotic bird rarely seen in Ottawa politics: a blunt-talking, feather-ruffl ing watchdog who nevertheless holds on to his job through multiple federal elections. He is only the third such investigator that’s ever been appointed—after an initial fi ve-year appointment, he’s been reappointed four more times: in 2009, 2012, 2015 and this year.

a short-livEd ‘farEWEll tour’

That’s not to say the government hasn’t tried to dislodge him. In May 2015, a notice of vacancy went out for Sapers’ job in the government’s offi cial publication. The press

P&I photograph by of Sam Garcia

DEFENDING THE

DAMNEDcanada’s prison watchdog has six months left in the

job. he still has plenty on his prison reform plate, but when asked about the future, he emphasizes optimism.

pEoplE-HOWArd SAPErS


picked up on it. Sapers said at the time that he hadn’t been given any explanation.

“The government had told me that they were not going to re-appoint me. Unfortunately, they didn’t share that information until literally the eleventh hour,” he tells P&I.

He was given a last-minute reappointment for up to a year, that would last until a replacement was found, he says. At that point, he started packing boxes.

“I was looking for another job,” he said, “and had begun what my staff called my farewell tour: resigning from committees and going to meetings for the last time.”

Soon after, the Conservatives called an election, and lost power. This spring, the new Liberal government gave him another year.

Sapers says rather than seeing it as a second chance, he just sees a continuation of the work that needs to be done.

‘WE’rE still talKing about hEr dEath’

And there’s a lot of that work to do. Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould’s mandate letter from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for example, specifically calls for the implementation of recommendations from the inquest into the death of Ashley Smith.

The mentally ill 19-year-old Smith died of self-strangulation on Oct. 19, 2007 in a segregation cell at a Kitchener, Ont., jail. Guards, under orders not to enter her cell as long as she was breathing, looked on. The title of the June 2008 report by Sapers said it all: A Preventable Death.

Smith had spent almost a year in federal custody in segregation the entire time, sometimes in “oppressive and inhumane” conditions, Sapers wrote. “She was often given no clothing other than a smock—no shoes, no mattress and no blanket. During the last weeks of her life she slept on the floor of her segregation cell.”

Six years after her death, a 2013 coroner’s inquest ruled it a homicide and made more than 100 recommendations.

To this day, Sapers talks about Smith’s death as “shameful.” But he sees a silver lining in the fact that her death created a dialogue. “It’s so tragic that it took her death,” he says, but “we’re still talking about her death, we’re still talking about the circumstances, we’re still talking about how to prevent similar deaths from occurring.”

This summer, Sapers called for more legal limits on solitary confinement after an inquest into the suicide death of Christopher Roy in a British Columbia institution, and

another suicide by Terry Baker in Kitchener, Ont., the same institution Smith was in.

Roy’s inquest this summer revealed that he had been held in solitary confinement for two months, up to 23 hours a day. The institutional probation officer overseeing him told a jury that Roy was banned from reading and writing materials, the CBC reported, and when he saw Roy’s mental health deteriorate he had asked for a TV set, but was denied.

Sapers says he’s “cautiously optimistic” about the prospect of prison reform in Canada under the Liberals. The public mandate letter was important to get on the record, he says.

“When I see that those are actually messages from the prime minister to his

Cabinet, that these are political priorities and something needs to be done about them, that gives me some hope. I am not used to seeing that,” he says.

‘an intEnsElY human businEss’

Despite dealing with these kinds of frustrations day after day, Sapers doesn’t think Correctional Services Canada is inherently a callous institution.

He points out how large the federal prison system is, with 19,000 workers at 53 custody sites, not to mention 700 parole officers at 92 offices and 15 community correctional centres. It’s all managing a prison population of about 15,000, he said, with another 8,000 in some form of conditional release or parole.

“This is an intensely human business,” says Sapers. The hundreds of thousands of interactions between staff, inmates and others in conditional release are mostly “confident, professional, helpful, appropriate—sometimes even heroic,” he says.

“None of that comes to my attention. My office focuses on the mistakes, the

errors, the gaps, and sometimes people making really, really bad decisions.”

A typical day starts with reading what’s called the Sitrep, or situational report. Sapers gets an early edition of that from CSC, as part of his office’s mandate granting access to all Correctional Services Canada (CSC) records, documents, personnel, and places. The Sitrep gives an indication of what happened over the last 24 hours inside correctional facilities.

“There will be anywhere between 20 and 40 incidents that were significant enough to be in the situation report. And they could be riots, they could be assaults, they could be a homicide, it could be a use of force with correctional officers, it could be an escape, it could be an overdose,” he says.

Sadly, he says, it’s often full of self-injury incidents.

After the Sitrep, the office follows up on the reports or starts to piece together evidence of a systemic or thematic situation: is there a policy shift behind the rise in self-injury, for example.

The office also has a team of investigators that travel to the 53 custody centres across the country; meeting with inmates and staff to try to resolve issues.

“We give our investigative staff a lot of latitude. They’re well-trained and very professional … Thousands and thousands, literally, of issues are resolved every year at that level: by the staff in the field.”

Issues that aren’t resolved are escalated to Sapers’ level; he might meet with the commissioner of corrections, or prepare a briefing for the minister, or be called into a Parliamentary committee. There is never a typical week, he says.

The most intense job, he notes, might be the team of four intake officers. Among other duties, the team answers the office’s toll free line for federally-sentenced inmates.

“They got over 22,500 phone calls last year, and between the four of them, spent over 150,000 minutes last year answering those phone calls,” said Sapers. “And you can assume that none of those are happy calls.”

Inmates, he says, are anxious, emotional and upset, and they’re calling because they have a problem. It’s particularly hard for the intake officers, he says, “when they get a call from somebody that says ‘I’m ready to end my life, and I just thought I’d call to tell you that.’ And that can happen any day.”

He manages workplace mental health initiatives, like training and reminding people of employee assistance programs. “We encourage people to use their leave

I’m a very slow learner … I once had a minister

ask me when I was going to stop repeating myself,

and I said, ‘When you listen.’”

—Howard Sapers


time. Take your holidays...we look at things like alternative work arrangements.”

‘i visit jails WhEn i’m on holidaYs’

Sapers himself has a variety of techniques he uses to try to decompress, although you wouldn’t know it by the way he describes it.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in jail,” he says, laughing. “I’ve been going in and out of jails and prisons since the early 1980s. I visit jails when I’m on holidays.”

Sapers says he has “actually had the experience of going up to the front door of a prison and saying ‘Hi, I work in corrections in Canada, can I come and have a look?’”

He also goes for walks, or deliberately ignores the phone for a while. “I find it hard to put down the BlackBerry, but I do sometimes. Not often. My wife will tell you never, but that’s a bit of an exaggeration,” he says.

He has a camera that he admittedly doesn’t use much, although he says photography was “a big part of my life up until I ran for office, so I’d like to get back to that.” But with such a demanding job, and four kids “just now out of the house,” there isn’t a lot of free time.

But Sapers is not a power-hungry workaholic-type, either. While always keen to talk policy, he shies away from drawing direct connections to himself, even when asked.

“I think that anybody who’s in a job like this puts their own stamp on it,” he says.

“Whoever’s in the role, I think their personality and their bias and their perspective will no doubt come through. But more important than that...people come to an ombuds office to get clarity.

“When I edit a draft report, most of my editing is taking out adjectives. Let’s just get to the point. We don’t have to editorialize. Stick with the facts…our conclusions will be stronger, I think, because of that.”

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Sapers, while visiting a

concentration camp prison in the Czech

Republic. P&I photograph

courtesy of Howard Sapers

Inside the Liberal’sparliamentary rebrand

P&

I ph

otog

raph

By

Jake

Wri

ght

“Last fall, Canadians overwhelmingly voted for positivity, optimism and collaboration, and that is the tone that I will

continue to bring to Parliament.” Those were the fi rst words uttered by new Leader of the

Government in the House of Commons, Bardish Chagger, just a few weeks before Parliament returned from summer break. To some, the government was effectively hitting a reset button, wiping away the scorched earth left between the parties after a fi rst sitting fi lled with growing pains. But Liberal insiders say the decision to replace now-Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc with the fi rst female House Leader elevates their plans already underway: to rebrand Parliament.

Every political party does three things when they take offi ce: they try to eviscerate the existing brand, they try to reclaim it, and they also rebrand the state, according to Alex Marland, Memorial University professor and author of Brand Command: Canadian Politics and Democracy in the Age of Message Control.

“When a political party forms government, what they want to do… is mould it in their image,” Marland tells P&I. He says the Liberals are succeeding at setting themselves apart “quite impressively, in all the right ways,” from the last government, lifting the dark cloud of cynicism people associated with politics in Canada, and in its place inviting them in, from opening up their swearing in ceremony at Rideau Hall, to holding an unprecedented number of public consultations.

“If I was to assess ‘what have we actually done, outside of the legislation?’ I would suggest to you the greatest thing that we’ve accomplished is the sense of a prime minister that genuinely and truly cares about people,” says longtime Liberal MP and right-hand-man to the House leader, parliamentary secretary Kevin Lamoureux.

He says one of the strongest things Trudeau has impressed on his caucus is his desire to make Parliament feel like it belongs to everyone, and the best way he sees this done is by changing the way it works. While that line has likely just received an eye roll from the press gallery and opposition benches, there’s a sense inside the House that the government genuinely means it.

It hasn’t been a fl awless execution. Liberal insiders acknowledge the contradiction that kicked off their reign of the House with the party’s outward branding of themselves as open and transparent, while inside the walls of Centre Block, draconian motions loomed overhead and parliamentary secretaries found seats at committee.

“The old style of politics made their way into the last parliament at a time where the public aura or public image that we as a party wanted to project was very different in the House of Commons,” says one Liberal insider.

But much of the rebranding is happening where most Canadians don’t really see it: within the walls of Centre Block. Some are small, but all are signifi cant. From their choice to be the face of the government in the House of Commons; the refocusing of Cabinet committees, to departing from the micro-targeting of legislative language in favour of broad appeal.

chaggEr and a brEaK from old-school politics

“Bardish Chagger, she embodies everything that’s new and fresh about where the government wants to bring this. She’s a woman in her 30s, she’s a visible minority, she hasn’t been beholden to the culture of Parliament,” says an insider source with knowledge of Chagger’s appointment. “She wants to come in and ensure that the government gets its legislation through, but also bring a new tone of hopefully shared cooperation.”


Out with the old style of politicking, in with the people

By rACHEL AIELLO

New Government House Leader Bardish Chagger, with Liberal MP Matt DeCourcey. P&I photograph by of Cynthia Münster

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As many have pointed out, historically, experienced, middle-aged male politicians have held the role of House leader. Visually, putting Chagger in the role is an about-face. It’s a reclamation and has possibly blown open all parties’ considerations for future House leaders.

Marland sees it as a continued softening of Parliament’s image, but more so it’s a rebrand of the Liberals themselves, changing the narrative of what they stand for and who they represent.

“Her demeanor really exudes a sense of collegiality, a sense of togetherness,” says Jacquie LaRocque, principal of Compass Rose Group, and past Liberal Cabinet minister staffer.

It’s a role that requires procedural wrangling and negotiating, and the self-proclaimed life-long politico Chagger says she wants to work together with the opposition, but has also emphasized that “democracy should be engaging with Canadians.”

She’ll have to continue the rollout of the government’s promised parliamentary and democratic reforms, from Senate reform to amending Parliament’s Standing Orders to end the practice of omnibus bills, and to give House committees more resources.

Helping make sure the government remembers the mandate it was given is Mark Kennedy, a long-time Hill journalist who is now working in the Prime Minister’s Offi ce as a communications adviser for parliamentary affairs and democratic reform. The position itself an interesting piece of the overall rebrand puzzle.

rEnaming cabinEt committEEs and ministriEs

Days after Chagger moved into the sumptuous offi ce inside the House of Commons foyer, the government announced a restructuring of its Cabinet committees that provides another glimpse into the Liberal’s approach to Parliament.

The most relevant: the Cabinet Committee on Open and Transparent Government was merged with the Cabinet

Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, and re-named the Cabinet Committee on Open Transparent Government and Parliament.

LaRocque says a year into the mandate is a logical time to look at what’s working, and to decide that a more shared table was appropriate to further their plans.

“I think that what they are realizing is that the democratic part of it and the openness and transparency need to be one in the same. I think it’s an operational change, but also a very symbolic one,” LaRocque says.

As well, the Cabinet Committee on Inclusive Growth, Opportunities and Innovation became the Cabinet Committee on Growing the Middle Class “to refl ect the committee’s central role in advancing this key objective,” the press release reads.

“A lot is in a name, wording is very important,” says Lamoureux, adding that the focuses on open government and the middle class are central, and wholly intentional, part of a “well-coordinated” long-term vision that Trudeau and his transition team put in motion. In discussing the Cabinet shifts, Lamoureux reminds P&I that Cabinet is where the legislative and broader House strategy is decided, and then executed by the House leadership team.

Liberal insiders see the reconfi guring both as a symbolic message, but also a signal that the internal priorities of the committees have changed.

Ahead of the most recent change, the government had renamed the Cabinet Committee on Agenda and Results to be the Cabinet Committee on Agenda, Results, and Communication.

“Little pieces of the puzzle have been put into place over the past number of months,” says Lindsay Doyle, consultant at Summa Strategies and former Liberal political operations staffer. “When you talk about the communications of this government, it’s exceptionally important for them to communicate to people—to Canadians—exactly what’s happening… they’re putting a huge priority on that,” she says.

All these second-inning changes send the message that the government is still shaping its focus, says Marland. From a brand perspective they’re a mouthful to say, but, bigger-picture, the naming gives cues to the government’s priorities.

This is an extension of the fi rst round of big name changes the government did at the time of swearing in the fi rst Liberal Cabinet: renaming government departments and the coinciding minister’s titles: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development became Indigenous and Northern Affairs; Environment Canada became Environment and Climate Change Canada, and so on.

Marland says this “rocketed to the top of the agenda” a number of issues, and the politics of language being what it is, resulted in a societal vocabulary change, reclaiming the brands. “Instantly people have moved away from using the word aboriginal and moved on to indigenous,” he says.

no catch-phrasing bills… for noW

This is the eviscerate piece of the three-step branding process. Not only are the Liberals repealing a bunch of the Conservative’s legislation, but also they’re moving away from how those bills are named. They’ve avoided putting short titles on bills and in almost every case are letting them stand as the long technical titles, spelling out all the acts the bill aims to amend. The past Conservative government was notorious for their catch-phrasing of bills, such as the “Life Means Life Act,” for example.

Keith Beardsley, former deputy chief of staff to Stephen Harper when he was prime minister, admits it was a niche marketing technique targeting supporters. “They tend to be more broadly-oriented,” he says of the new government.

To the Liberals, it seems a bill is a bill again, and the “harsh political statement” that a short title can make, as Lamoureux put it, does nothing for their attempts to build consensus. That’s their view so far.

“Over time, governments do learn the importance of coordination,” says Marland, pointing out it can be a risk to let others coin the bill and its policy aims for you. “How are you supposed to operate in a world of social media, 140 characters, if you don’t have a short version?”

Realizing this, the government is not ruling out their appearance down the line.

“If there is some minister that’s coming forward saying ‘here’s what I want for a

Kevin Lamoureux Mark Kennedy

PArLIAMENTAry rEBrANd-fEat urE


short title,’ they might have to sell it to the Prime Minister’s Office and House leadership team,” says Lamoureux.

from promising diffErEnt, to dElivEring diffErEnt

The real test of all this is still to come, starting in earnest with the government’s next budget and passing the next round of government legislation. Building consensus in trying to get their ambitious and varied agenda through is only one part.

Lamoureux says time management will be key, “less time on bells, more time on debates,” is what he’d like to see.

The other part of the brand that will also start to take shape will be the Liberals’ record. As time passes it’ll grow continuously harder to rest on promises of change– it’ll have to be realized.

“By the time you get in to your second year, people are waiting for you to make hard decisions and this is where we’ll see exactly how their brand shapes up,” says

Beardsley. “They’re still in the early stages… the main thing right now is we’re not Harper, that’s really, when you get down to it, the branding that they’re doing,” he says.

The line between the Conservatives and the economy was drawn in thick, black indelible marker. For the Liberals, that one identifier has yet to rise to the surface.

Doyle says election buzzwords like ‘fairness’ and ‘opportunity’ haven’t left

the government, but others that could become the basis of its identity include

‘innovation’, ‘the middle class’, and ‘Indigenous affairs’. She says although the brand isn’t etched in stone yet, they’re putting out the image they want to be at this stage in their term.

“From day one, branding is obviously exceptionally important to this government,” she says.

They’re also getting some help from across the aisle, where the absence

of strong opposition on either side means no one is really pushing the Liberals into taking a shape, many point out.

“The reality for the Liberals is that their extended honeymoon is a result of delivering on change of tone and policy and the weakness of the opposition,” writes pollster Nik Nanos in an Aug. 23 column in The Globe and Mail. “Expect the advantage to continue until the opposition parties select leaders and present a potential solid counterpoint to the Trudeau Liberals.”

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plac E s-ALBErTA


“Make no mistake, it is bad for sure.”Mary Moran, president and

CEO for Calgary Economic Development (CED), doesn’t bother to sugar coat her city’s current economic situation.

As Alberta slogs through its second year of recession following an oil price slump, Moran—who has spent the last seven years working her way up the city-run not-for-profit corporation’s chain, witnessing periods of both boom and bust—paints a picture of Calgary, a city that is down, but not out.

“I would just say that typically, in a downturn in Alberta, Calgary actually gets

hit pretty hard, pretty quickly,” Moran says. “Following the layoffs like you see in Fort McMurray [where] you start to see them in the field—you start to see them in the downtown core of Calgary.”

In the last two years or so, Moran estimates approximately 25,000 people have lost their jobs in energy-related industries in the hub of Calgary, a metropolitan area of roughly 1.1 million residents.

The consequences of that, she says, can be seen in the cubicle ghost towns in downtown office spaces. “They’re reporting it in kind of the low 20 per cent, but there’s a whole bunch of other space that’s

probably not being captured because it just hasn’t been subleased,” she says.

bY thE numbErs However, Moran is still optimistic about

some economic indicators in her city. “There was no net [population] loss

from July 2014 to July 2015,” Moran says. “And then from July 2015 to 2016, our out migration was about 6,000 people.”

She adds: “6,000 people isn’t really that bad, considering we had about 160,000 people come here over the last five years.”

Still, the statistics across the province aren’t pretty.

By dALI CArMICHAEL

albErta: the province that is down, but not out

Industry and political leaders are banking on innovation to move beyond an oil-reliant economy and to jumpstart the province

The skyline of Calgary’s downtown core shows office towers that many report are now a sea of empty cubicles. Photograph courtesy of Chuck Szmurlo

ALBErTA-plac E s


According to information on municipalities released by the provincial government on Sept. 8, the recession has caused Alberta’s unemployment rate to rise from 4.4 per cent in December 2014 to 8.6 per cent in July of this year.

Payroll jobs in the oil and gas services sector have dropped between May 2015 and 2016 by 26 per cent, from 53,098 in June 2015 to 39,503 in June 2016.

Not to mention, Alberta is currently seeing the highest unemployment rate in the province since 1994. Employment has fallen between 11 per cent and 14 per cent in the manufacturing, construction, and engineering and architectural services sectors between June 2015 and 2016.

What will it take to stop out migration from the province, to halt the recession, to get the economy jumpstarted again; and maybe—just maybe—break the boom and bust cycle that has beleaguered the province for decades?

Sometimes, it just comes down to thinking outside the box.

innovation is KEYEnergy and industry leaders met in

Calgary on Aug. 30 to attend a panel titled Energy policy and the economy for tomorrow, hosted by the Calgary Chamber of Commerce and The Pearson Centre.

There, federal Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr spoke to the importance of innovation in the country’s energy future.

“The way in which Alberta will fi nd itself turning its economy around will really not be waiting for the price to increase again, but will be to be driving innovation—innovation with the notion of energy that may be both renewable and non-renewable,” says Calgary Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Adam Legge, citing Carr’s presentation.

“He was really encouraging companies to ... think about how can you bring about innovation within your own company, to make sure that you can take advantage of the way in which the world is needing its resources and the way in which the world is developing and consuming its energy products.”

Legge says that Carr emphasized the importance of new pipelines for the growth of the oil and gas industry— a sentiment echoed by Moran.

“It’s a much more efficient and much safer way to transport the products that we have here,” she says. “If we can’t

“As companies innovate, we also need to be looking to new markets... We can’t keep selling to the same customer all the time.”—Adam Legge

“not supporting pipelines for Canadians is

a very short-sighted view

because they’re going to need fossil fuels. It’s still

going to be probably 75 per cent of their

consumption for the next 15 years.”—Mary Moran

plac E s-ALBErTA


get that, then there’s high risk that we’ll leave 95 per cent of the carbon in the ground. Yet, world demand will still be very high so … not supporting pipelines for Canadians is a very short-sighted view because they’re going to need fossil fuels. It’s still going to be probably 75 per cent of their consumption for the next 15 years.”

Legge notes that in the panel discussion, one upgrader company said Alberta has a great economic opportunity to provide value-added product, diversifying the oil and gas industry by refining products within Canadian borders.

Beverly Dahlby, a distinguished fellow in Tax and Economic Growth at the School of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at the University of Calgary,

warns that discussions of diversification needed to be nuanced, and more than a buzzword to be less volatile.

“What we see is many of the attempts to diversify the economy, in fact, don’t really diversify the economy,” he says. “When you build an upgrader or a refinery, you’re adding more activity that is highly related to oil and gas prices and you’re adding to construction, which is also a very volatile industry.”

‘rEnEWablEs arE coming’In addition to expanding fossil fuels,

Moran says she recognizes Calgary’s potential to truly diversify its energy sector, and to become an international leader in the development and distribution of clean energy.

“Renewables are coming, there’s no question about it,” Moran says. “The question really, or the unknown, or the wildcard, is what percentage of energy supply will they service or generate? You get estimates anywhere from 15 to 25 per cent by 2040.”

Two of the CED’s top priorities are to develop both long and short-term strategies to employ Calgarians, and to fill empty commercial spaces.

One way to achieve those goals includes supporting and growing Calgary’s renewable energy industry.

“We have the best science-based population in the country,” says Moran. “We’ve got to make sure we’ve got the best policies, both at the provincial and federal government, to induce investment into

“Edmonton is actually showing tremendous resilience through this commodity down cycle and that’s partly because Edmonton’s part of the energy economy is quite different than Calgary’s.” —Don Iveson

‘Edmonton handles a different piece of the energy business, namely following through on projects,’ says Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson. P&I Photograph by Jake Wright

ALBErTA-plac E s


clean energy tech, and we need to make sure we’ve got the places and spaces for people to create, build develop.”

She adds that Alberta’s climate and infrastructure made the province “well-positioned” to develop renewables.

“If you look to our province and you look to the north, we have carbon underneath us and to the south we have places for strong wind and solar farms,” she explains. “We’re so well-positioned to be the global energy centre for Canada that we have to figure out what our position is on renewables.”

Further, to move ahead, industry and policy leaders will need to find ways to sell that energy on a global scale.

“As companies innovate, we also need to be looking to new markets,” Legge says, paraphrasing some of the discussion at the energy panel. “We can’t keep selling to the same customer all the time, whether that’s domestically within Alberta or in Canada. We do need to be looking at international markets to sell our products because we are, even as a nation, too small a domestic economy to really drive significant investment and corporate growth within Canada.”

To that end, the CED is striving to ensure its workforce is ready to participate in the global economy.

“From a talent retention or workforce retention perspective, we’re doing a number of things, including trying to get people to retrain, potentially re-engage, or even just pivot their careers into other high-potential growth areas,” Moran says. “A great example would be, if you had been working in kind of conventional oil and gas that you might want to consider moving into renewables, because … there’s some growth area in that subsector of the energy industry.”

The CED currently has several studies underway to identify the people who are unemployed in Calgary, their professions, and where—globally—there is need for those sectors. Following these studies, the organization plans to approach those jurisdictions and pitch Calgary as an international talent hub.

“One thing about Calgarians is … 30-some per cent of people do flexible and/or remote work styles,” Moran says. “We have office space vacancy.”

She adds, “The initiative is called the Global Talent Hub. It helps us retain people, it helps us retain some of the office space, and it also help us potentially diversify the economy.”

Moran would like to see this initiative move ahead, not only to boost the province’s energy industry, but also to improve other thriving sectors, including finance, film, and agriculture.

“We’ve got a very strong knowledge base here on financial services,” she says. “We do 10 to 15 per cent of world energy deal flow out of Calgary, which is kind of a big gap from what we produce as a head office. We produce 35 per cent of world energy.”

To encourage this use of human capital, she would like to see partners in Calgary coming together to find innovative solutions to the recession crisis.

“I think private sector, government organizations—including our organization … and postsecondary need to work together,” Moran says, citing booming tech economies out of Silicon Valley, Waterloo, and Toronto as successful co-operative models. “If I had another criticism of Calgary, it’s that we’re probably a little bit behind the eight-ball with respect to triangulating that effort.”

Edmonton’s rEsiliEncEThis economic diversification is

something that Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson says has “mercifully” helped keep his city afloat during the recession.

“Edmonton is actually showing tremendous resilience through this commodity down cycle and that’s partly because Edmonton’s part of the energy economy is quite different than Calgary’s,” he explains. “The way I describe it is, Calgary is in the deal-flow business and there’s not a lot of deal-flow right now, obviously, because of the low energy price.”

Meanwhile, Edmonton handles a different piece of the energy business, namely following through on projects from the design stage to the decommission and rehabilitation stages, he adds.

“Cumulatively, across northern Alberta, there’s still generations of work to do, regardless of today’s oil price,” Iveson says. “Some of that work actually makes sense to do when commodity prices are low, because that’s when you’d want to shut off production to do a major upgrade or overhaul or maintenance cycle. It’s Edmontonians and northern Albertans that do that kind of work.”

Iveson wouldn’t go as far as to say Edmonton has been immune to the downturn, but he did say that jobs have been added, and the city’s economy has

Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr is challenging Alberta resource firms to be more innovative of commerce. Photograph courtesy of Calgary Chamber

Payroll jobs in the oil and gas

services sector have

dropped between May 2015 and

2016 by 26 per cent, from 53,098 in June 2015

to 39,503 in June 2016.

plac E s-ALBErTA


grown, albeit much more slowly than in the last few years.

“We have other industries in health, in ICT [information and communications technologies], in finance insurance, real estate, engineering, and design,” he points out. “[They] aren’t necessarily publicly-traded Fortune 500 companies, but when you add them all up, it’s actually an incredibly diversified economy here.”

a provincE on firE On Aug. 23, the provincial government

released its first quarter financial report for 2016-17.

Alberta’s Minister of Finance, Joe Ceci, forecasted a provincial deficit $10.9-billion, $527-million higher than estimated when the budget was released in April.

He attributed a majority of this increase to the net fiscal impact of the Wood Buffalo-region wildfire, a devastating event that caused almost 90,000 people to flee Fort McMurray and the surrounding area in the course of a few days–and stay away for almost two months.

Current estimates for the cost of the fire sits around $500-million for 2016-17. This accounts for almost $275-million doled out in financial aid to evacuated families, and the cost of losing out on almost 40-million barrels of oil deferred over two-month period.

On the other hand, the revenue forecast saw an increase of $708-million, up to $42.1-billion, mostly due to a small increase in oil prices per barrel.

When the NDP came to power in 2015, they had promised tax increases, a review of the energy royalty system, and changes to the electricity system, Dahlby says. These all factors that he says have added to uncertainty, and may have made it more difficult to supply investments in Alberta.

“These current policies are not going to make the economy more diversified in the sense of less volatility,” Dahlby says. “What we need is a return to policies that attract investment—which is low—lower corporate tax rate, lower personal income tax, and then markets will determine what activities can take place here that would be not so closely related to the oil and gas industry.”

2017: a rEbound YEar However, the first quarter report also

suggested Alberta’s economy is expected to begin recovering in 2017.

The province also forecasted real GDP would grow by 2.4 per cent in 2017, with Oil Sands photos by Jake Wright


support from wildfi re reconstruction, a rebound in oil production, additional investments in public-sector infrastructure, and some modest improvements in oil prices.

“I kind of feel like we have about another 12, 18 months to really advance some of these things that we’re talking about to better position us for the modest growth that we will experience,” Moran says. “I’m not a believer that we will return to $80, $100 oil. I think the energy industry will become much more competitive and it needs to be much more effi cient and productive, but it also needs to be much more innovative.”

Dahlby remembers times being much worse, noting that the decline in housing prices has been “quite moderate overall,” especially when compared with the recession of the 1980s.

“I think it’s partly because this downturn is occurring in the era of low interest rates, so people can hang on to properties for longer periods of time,” he says. “There’s a market out there for new properties, both domestic but also international. I think that’s probably one

of the things that’s going to buoy current housing prices.”

As for the commercial spaces, Moran says the CED is working with Calgary’s real estate community to make better use of the empty buildings.

“You’ve seen this in kind of older cities, in particular U.S. cities—Pittsburgh, Portland, Seattle, and even Rochester—where they’ve converted offi ce spaces into residential hotels,” she says. “More recently—and you see this in Toronto—the traditional offi ce space with the fl oor plates are being converted into things like incubators, accelerators, co-shared space, so we’re looking at all of those.”

At the end of the day, Moran realizes that it won’t be easy for Alberta to rise to its previous levels of economic success, but she remains optimistic about the future.

“People can’t lose sight, as bad as things feel,” Moran says. “You have to remember that these two years of recession are coming after a very overheated period, but if you look at the 10-year horizon, we’re still doing much better than most jurisdictions in the country.”

©2016 Engel & Völkers Ottawa Central, Brokerage. All rights reserved. Independently owned and operated. Presented by John King, Broker of Record.

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“I’m not a believer that we will return to $80, $100 oil I think the energy industry will become much more competitive.”

—Mary Moran

NO MORE TREADING WATERbY allY fostEr

P&I Photograph courtesy of Tavis Nembhard

PATrICk BrOWN-pEoplE


Patrick Brown has heard it all before. Assertions that the Ontario

Progressive Conservative leader’s most defined personality trait is that he’s not Kathleen Wynne; that he’s flip-flopped on policies as starkly as Donald Trump has on immigration; and even that he’s a dead-eyed, brainwashed robot that runs on talking points uploaded to his hard drive by Bay Street CEOs.

And he seems overwhelmingly unfazed. During a telephone interview with P&I,

the thick-skinned Brown—who may very well become the next premier of Canada’s biggest economic heavyweight—defends his perceived shifts on major issues, lays out some of his policy priorities, and details his grueling work schedule.

Since winning the Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership race in May 2015, most of Brown’s days are the same: wake up after three or four hours of sleep; leave the house by 6:30 a.m.; down a Red Bull and a protein bar on the way to the morning’s first event; push through carefully scheduled back-to-back meetings; sneak in a mandatory one-hour workout; attend more events and meetings—usually until midnight or later, then rest and repeat.

But the 38-year-old, who has lived and breathed politics since he was young, says the long hours and all-consuming workload are worth it.

“I’m comfortable dedicating myself right now to Ontario, and this project of seeing if I can form a government and turn Ontario around,” he says. “That excites me; it drives me … you don’t pay attention to the hours, or the work that is required.”

truE bluE Those who know him well would likely

say this is what Brown was always meant

to do. He recalls that when he was in the third grade, he had to write a report on acid rain. He wrote a letter to then-Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney asking what the government was going to do to tackle the environmental challenge.

He received a hand-written response, which caused him to become “interested in the environment, and interested in the Conservatives,” he says, despite coming from a household that had strong ties to the New Democratic Party.

His father, Edmond, ran unsuccessfully for the federal NDP in 1979 and 1980. Brown recalls when he told his father he was leaning blue instead of orange, his father applauded him for taking an interest and told him to research the different parties thoroughly before choosing one.

“It was a unique conversation to have when you’re 10 years old, but my dad would read the paper over breakfast, and I would read the paper next to him,” he recalls. “We would talk about current events.”

His dad has since become a Progressive Conservative, supporting his son’s new direction with the party. And he’s not the only convert.

Brown has grown the party membership to more than 80,000 members—a number which had dwindled to around 11,000 before his nomination, reflecting a demoralized party that has gone without power for more than a decade in a province where it dominated for most of the last century.

He says he and his team have felt “a lot of wind in our sails” due to the rise in donations, the steady lead in the polls for most of the past 18 months, a growing membership and successful by-elections.

A Forum Research poll published Sept. 15 shows Brown is up in the polls. The Progressive Conservatives lead with 45 per

cent, with the Liberals trailing behind at 25 per cent support. The Ontario NDP has the favour of 23 per cent of participants, while the Green Party had the support of six per cent of those surveyed. Two per cent said they would vote for any other party.

flip-flopping, or nEWfound frEEdom?

Brown has appeared to backtrack on a few significant stances since taking leadership—the most recent example being the confusion over a letter from his office to Scarborough-Rouge River voters on Aug. 26 saying that if he were elected premier, he would “scrap” the Liberals’ updated curriculum on sex education.

After several days of mixed messages, he released an open letter on Aug. 29 saying that the letter featured a “mistake” in its use of language, and although he would like to do more consulting with parents and review changes to the curriculum if elected, he would not axe the plan altogether.

After stating he wanted to correct the record before the by-election, regardless of the political consequences, he wrote: “I also want to be very clear about something else. Consultation doesn’t mean opening the door to intolerance. I will never support removing LGBT sensitivity or combating homophobia from schools. I will always support consulting with parents and giving them a voice, but I will never support intolerance in our society.”

He tells P&I that his “position has been consistent on this issue since the leadership race. While I support an updated curriculum that takes into account changing attitudes and the world in which children now live, any updates to the sex-education curriculum should include extensive and thorough parental consultation.”

The leaDer of The onTarIo TorIes has shaken uP The sInkIng shIP hIs ParTy haD become. buT There are jusT as many PeoPle quesTIonIng The real DIrecTIon of The brown banDwagon, as There are Those who have haPPIly hoPPeD aboarD.

He adds, “I quickly corrected the record despite the political implications. I was very clear. I did not want anybody voting for [the] candidate under the false pretenses that I would scrap the sex-education curriculum.”

But in a letter to the editor sent to P&I’s sister publication, The Hill Times, the faith-based, far right organization, The Institute for Canadian Values—which has 110,000 members—wrote, “Patrick Brown campaigned to become leader on a pro-family platform, promising to protect children from the radical sex education curriculum of Kathleen Wynne. Thousands believed him, signed up as members, paid the fee and voted for him in May last year. The very next month Mr. Brown reversed his position and marched in the Pride Parade supporting the curriculum. With another election looming September 1st, Leader Brown switched again, writing a letter to constituents affirming his original position of ‘scrapping’ the controversial curriculum. The wind started blowing in his face so Leader Brown now says his letter was a mistake and he in fact does support Wynne’s Curriculum.”

The notion of flip-flopping is a criticism Brown has faced before.

While a backbencher in the federal Liberal Caucus under then-prime minister Stephen Harper, Brown’s votes leaned pretty far to the right, causing some to label him a social conservative.

For example, he voted to repeal same-sex marriage laws, wanted to reopen the debate on rights to abortion, and went against medically assisted dying during his time on Parliament Hill.

Yet, one of his first acts as Ontario PC leader was to take a delegation to the Toronto pride parade, becoming the first PC leader to take part. He has said on many occasions that if he were to take the helm at Queen’s Park, he would not seek changes in the legality, funding, or availability of abortion in Ontario.

He’s also appeared to change his tune on the environment, referring to climate change as “man-made” damage, and advocating for something he had previously spoken out against: putting a price on carbon. He has remained opposed to the cap-and-trade plan favoured by the

Liberals, and has said his version would be revenue-neutral.

But, speaking to P&I, Brown insists these examples don’t reflect a change in his views, but rather are indicative of the newfound opportunity he has to voice how he truly feels.

When he was a low-profile MP in the Harper caucus, Brown says he was expected to toe the party line. “There’s only so far you could go without getting into trouble with the PMO,” he says, adding there were several times that he felt the displeased sting of a crack of the whip.

Brown references how, in 2009, he became one of the first MPs to help the Canadian-Tamil community by raising awareness about human rights abuses allegedly made by the Sri Lankan government. He adds that he was the first MP to use the word ‘genocide’ in the House when discussing this issue.

In response, the Sri Lankan government denied him a visa in 2009.

“I pushed the line a fair bit,” he says. Now, he adds, “the beautiful thing” is

that he’s a party leader and can say what’s “in his heart.”

pEoplE-PATrICk BrOWN

uvic.ca/PartnerWithUsEducation grad student Mike Irvine presented his master’s project underwater and started the Fish Eye Project, an organization that brings marine research to classrooms and the world through interactive livestream shows.

In the talent that drives powerful ideasIn the urgency to innovate for a healthy, sustainable world

In creativity and breakthroughs today for a better tomorrow

In solutions that matter to people, places and the planet you’ll find it—the UVic Edge.

THE EDGE IS HERE


For some critics, though, those communiqués aren’t heart-felt enough.

A column from Bob Hepburn in the Toronto Star claims that more than a year after winning leadership, Brown still hasn’t made much of an impression, and that his biggest personality trait is that he’s different from Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Hepburn referenced an April 2016 Forum Research Poll which indicated that 48 per cent of people surveyed said they don’t know Brown well enough to form an opinion of him.

‘WorK hard, and bE on thE right sidE of thE issuEs’

When asked if this robotic reputation bothers him, Brown says that he has received good advice on the matter from a former premier:

“His name recognition a month before he was elected premier was eight per cent,” recalls Brown. “He said ‘the Toronto Star may criticize you on name recognition, but that’s the last thing


uvic.ca/PartnerWithUsEducation grad student Mike Irvine presented his master’s project underwater and started the Fish Eye Project, an organization that brings marine research to classrooms and the world through interactive livestream shows.

In the talent that drives powerful ideasIn the urgency to innovate for a healthy, sustainable world

In creativity and breakthroughs today for a better tomorrow

In solutions that matter to people, places and the planet you’ll find it—the UVic Edge.

THE EDGE IS HERE


One of his first acts as Ontario PC leader was to take a delegation to the Toronto pride parade. Photograph courtesy Rona Ambrose’s Facebook Page

xxx-xxx


in the world you need to worry about, especially when the Liberals are going to run millions of dollars on attack ads against you. The only think you need to focus on is just to continue to work hard, and be on the right side of the issues.’”

He adds: “The best way to get name recognition is to say something stupid, and I’ve got no interest in doing that. Frankly,

our party has done that before, and it let the Liberals off the hook.”

Perhaps the closest he’s come to a real controversy has been his aforementioned letter on scrapping the new sex-education curriculum.

But, like any good politician, Brown is quickly moving forward. The blunder didn’t cost the PCs the by-election in

Scarborough, which happened just days after the sex-ed curriculum scandal. Progressive Conservative candidate Raymond Cho took the riding, which had been held by the Liberals since its formation in 1999.

Brown is now focusing on his plan for improving Ontario’s economic output: reducing red tape; investing in infrastructure, especially in transportation; having affordable energy prices; and evolving Ontario’s education system to meet the changing job market.

four-pillar Economic plan

Throughout his more than 30-minute interview with P&I, Brown has maintained a nonchalant tone. Until now.

When he starts talking about his “four-pillar plan” for Ontario, his voice rises in pitch and volume. He talks faster, and is obviously excited.

Maybe it’s practice, or maybe he had just cracked a Red Bull. Or maybe—just maybe—he’s genuinely excited to try to create change.

When addressing the amount of figurative red tape found in Ontario, and the barrier it creates for business, he says, “We have 380,000 regulations. We are seen by foreigners and by ourselves as a slow place to do business. Whether it’s a transit project that’s going to take five years for approval; or an aggregate development that’s going to take nine years; an environmental assessment for a mining project that’s supposed to take 45 days, and takes two years; we have become the capital of red tape in North America and you can’t succeed in that way.”

He says he wants to improve the province’s transportation infrastructure, and that under his leadership, projects wouldn’t be announced until they are ready to begin.

“I would love to be known as a premier that significantly invested in transportation to get product and people to marketplace,” he says, adding that he wouldn’t follow Wynne’s practice of growing fuel surcharges on air travel.

Brown refers to hydro and energy prices in Ontario as an “unmitigated disaster” with “signed renewable contracts that we don’t need, and a master surplus. We sign contracts to give that same energy away because we can’t store it.”

Some of Wynne’s heaviest criticism

In high school, Brown says he was known for hockey and politics. P&I Photo by Jake Wright


stems from her plans to privatize Hydro One and to move away from natural gas heating to electric, solar, or geo-thermal sources in commercial and residential buildings.

A December 2015 report from Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk also found that Ontario is likely losing money from the Liberal government’s energy conservation efforts, as the province’s electricity surplus is being sold off at a loss.

“In the last two years they’ve given away $3.5-billion in energy,” says Brown. “I would stop the privatization of Hydro One, I would stop signing contracts for surplus energy, and I would fi nally start listening to the Independent Electricity System Operator and actually let energy experts rather than ministerial directives direct our energy policy.”

Lastly, Brown talks about education. His mother was a principal, and he says

he’s particularly passionate about the topic. “When it comes to education, it’s all

about graduating young people for the right jobs,” he says. “Right now, we’re graduating young people for jobs that existed 20 years ago. The Conference Board of Canada says we lose $3.7-billion a year for jobs that are available in Ontario that we can’t fi ll. It’s just backwards.”

According to the Conference Board of Canada website, Ontario’s skills shortages cost the economy around $24-billion—or four per cent of the province’s total Gross Domestic Product—in forgone GDP, and $3.7-billion in provincial tax revenues each year.

“Last year, we graduated 9,000 teachers for 5,000 teaching positions,” he says. “We graduated young people for jobs that do not exist. And yet, in engineering fi rms, 50 per cent of positions don’t get fi lled.”

Brown continues: “I would like to bring pride back to the skilled trades, start properly funding the industrial arts in school. I would like to have enhanced

computer literacy knowing that there are tech jobs available.”

He points out that British Columbia is in the process of adding computer coding courses to its curriculum.

“We are not doing that in Ontario,” Brown says. “We’re treading water in education and we’re not meeting the labour market demands.”

thE road to 2018 It’s still a long slog until the 2018

Ontario provincial elections, and it remains to be seen whether Brown can convince doubters that he is as genuine in his beliefs as he is disciplined in his modus operandi.

In the mean time, he’ll continue his 20-hour workdays, squeezing in his version of ‘family life’ when possible. “I have a 102-year-old grandmother, so I try to set aside time each week to visit her or talk with her, and I’ve got three young nephews who I like to spoil,” he says.

When asked about the toll his career has taken on prospects of starting his own family—it’s been pointed out that Brown is still single, a rarity for middle-aged conservative politicians—he says, “I do want to have a family one day. I get a lot of pressure from my grandmother and mother that they want more grandkids and great-grandkids, so I do face that weekly scrutiny.”

What’s one thing most people don’t

know about you?

“I’m a bit of a fi sh. Whenever I’m travelling around the province in the summer and I see a lake, I will go for a swim for fi ve minutes and then come back in the car.”

Who has inspired you the most?

“I had a late grandfather in Barrie, Ont., Joe

Tascona Sr., who had a car lot and worked until he was

94. I used to have dinner with him every Sunday, and his work

ethic I always found inspiring. He always told me, ‘there’s no shortcuts in life.’ I was very, very close with him, and he had a lot of infl uence on me and still does today even though he’s no longer around.”

Name something you’re really bad at.

“I am a bad clapper. I don’t clap in sync. I’m a bad singer. My tune is horrible, and I’m horrible at musical instruments … My sisters tease me that I even get the tune wrong in Happy Birthday.”

What were you know for in high school?

“Politics and hockey... I brought Jean Charest to my high school and I think that was signifi cant.”

You’re known for wearing impeccable suits. Do you wear them on the weekends?

“No, I defi nitely dress down. If I show up to a hockey rink in a suit, I would be mocked by my friends ... I would be just as often to show up in a backwards hat and a jersey to visit my nephews or my grandmother.”

Teetotaler Brown holds up a glass of pop at a party in Ottawa while he was an MP. P&I Photo by Jake Wright


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WHErE ArE THEy NOW?-fEat urE


The 2015 election that saw Justin Trudeau’s Liberals thrust into power

meant there were several major electoral upsets across the country. Strategic voting

meant that the New Democratic Party took a hard hit to the number of seats it held, and the Conservatives, while moving into the official opposition, were

worse off compared to their two terms of majority governments. P&I spoke to several prominent politicians who lost their ridings despite the predictions of many.

Peter StofferPolitical affiliation: nDP former riding: sackville-eastern shore, n.s.years spent in office: 18

On the day Stoffer spoke with P&I, he had just gotten his car repaired and had picked up some bottles and cans off the side of the road for charity. He also had a few phone calls from military and RCMP veterans and their families across the country, looking for his help.

That’s because the former NDP MP of 18 years is currently volunteering for seven different veterans associations across the country—that’s right, seven—as well as donating some of his time to the lobbying firm Capitol Hill group, and of course, enjoying retired life.

“It’s hard to say no to these good people,” says Stoffer, when asked what made him want to tackle so many volunteer roles. “I give them what I think is the right advice. In many cases I refer them directly to their member of Parliament, you know.”

The former veterans affairs critic for the NDP says he played a role in “the Petter Blindheim situation.” Blindheim is a 94-year-old Norwegian war veteran who was denied access to the Camp Hill Memorial Veterans hospital in Halifax, N.S. on the grounds that he was not an Allied veteran. Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr finally granted the Blindheim family’s request that he be admitted to the care facility after months of struggling.

Stoffer says he’ll “never say never” when asked if he thinks he’ll return to politics, but it’s 99 per cent unlikely. For now, he is happy pursuing his passion for volunteering and fundraising, and “living the dream” of retired life.

“The wife and I are just enjoying each other’s time, and getting to know my neighbours more, and just really enjoying Nova Scotia and Canada. I’ve been doing a lot of work around the house,” he says.

Stoffer says he still plans to remain involved in the New Democratic Party. As far as the ongoing NDP leadership race, he says whoever the next leader is, they need to be bold and fiscally-responsible. “Both parties right now, both the Conservatives and the Liberals, aren’t doing that. Our debt is getting out of

control eventually, and I don’t want to see happen to the country what’s happening in Newfoundland right now, where they had to take drastic, drastic, measures to get their books in order,” he says.

Stoffer says he plans to write a book one day about his extensive life in Parliament, and “how a backbench NDP MP managed to get 16 Private Member’s Bills through Parliament, but not one of them has his name on it.”

Oh, and he’s still got some hats for sale. Stoffer was well-known on Parliament Hill for his collection of thousands of hats that adorned his Ottawa office. Since losing the election, he has been selling them off and donating the proceeds to charity. He said he’s raised close to $4,000 already, and has 500 hats left to go.

WhErE arE thEY noW?P&I caught up with some former MPs who lost

their seats in the last election, and found out what they’re doing with their newfound free time.

By CHELSEA NASH

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Megan Leslie Political affiliation: nDPformer riding: halifax, n.s. years spent in office: seven

The former NDP MP from Halifax is taking some much-needed time to learn about life outside of politics.

“I used to think, what do people do in the evenings? There’s all this time. There’s, like, hours and hours of time. What could they possibly do to fill at that time? Well, now I know,” she muses. Leslie says she is grateful for every minute, evening, and weekend that she gets to spend living out her own agenda, without needing the “permission” of a whip’s office, a caucus, or other colleagues.

“You can’t really say what’s less stressful, or what’s the biggest lifestyle change, because it’s a completely different life. I loved being in politics, I loved being elected. I worked really hard to get re-elected, but didn’t.” Now she says she’s been “thrust into this new life, and I have to admit, I really friggin’ love it.”

Shortly after the election, Leslie started working for World Wildlife Foundation Canada in their Ottawa office, though her condition for accepting the job was that it was a short-term contract, because she wasn’t in a place to make a long-term commitment about her future.

Leslie has had a busy summer. With her contract up at WWF, she moved back to Halifax with her partner, and just booked a one-way ticket to Europe.

After going from a “hyper-scheduled, hyper-structured life,” the act of buying a one-way ticket for a solo adventure through Europe, “and not knowing what the hell I’m going to do, sounds amazing to me,” she tells P&I.

When she returns in November, Leslie will take up the position of vice-president Oceans at WWF, this time in Halifax.

Leslie says despite thoroughly enjoying her new free time, going back to politics is definitely an option. She says she holds no resentment for the lifestyle she led, but that if she were to do it again, she would likely do it in a more balanced way so that she didn’t get to a point of being “tapped out.”

“I’ve shut the door on the leadership right now. I don’t know how I’m going to feel in three years. Right now I see it as a question mark,” she says, reminding P&I that she’s still young. And she is: at only 42, Leslie says she could easily take 10 years to do something else, and return to politics at 52, spend 10 years as an elected official, and still be under the age of retirement.

Joe Oliver Political affiliation: conservative former riding: eglinton-lawrence, ont. years spent in office: four

Former finance minister Joe Oliver has been busy putting together a “portfolio” of different roles since he lost his seat to rookie Liberal Marco Mendocino. He’s currently the chair of the advisory board at Origin Merchant Partners, is a senior

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test.indd 1 16-04-04 3:42 PMPower & Influence Fall 2016 . 47

scholar with the Montreal Economic Institute, is on the board of the Manning Institute, and writes a column fairly regularly for the Financial Post. But, despite all of that, Oliver says “it’s still not nearly as intense, obviously, as it was before.”

He says he misses political life, as most people would miss something they enjoyed doing, but is also grateful to be doing things in a more relaxed environment.

“We had been in power for nine and half years. It’s always difficult to extend that, historically, that’s been the case, unless there are unusual circumstances in play. I don’t think we ran a good campaign. You know, we didn’t. The Liberals ran a very good one,” he says, reflecting on the election campaign which resulted in him and many other former cabinet ministers losing their seats.

Watching from the sidelines versus having direct influence in government has been a unique experience, he says, and it’s “disappointing” to see the Liberal government “seemingly obsessed with overturning everything we did, irrespective of its merits.” Oliver says he finds

changes to the National Energy Board’s review process for energy projects to be particularly frustrating.

“I’m hoping that at the end of the day, they’ll approve some of the pipelines, because they’re so critical,” he said. “[Justin Trudeau]’s going to have to make a decision and some people will not like it.”

Oliver says he doesn’t have plans to return to politics for the next election, saying that’s something that should be left for the next generation.

Despite that, he says he will stay actively involved in the party, and he will be supporting someone in the Conservative leadership race, though he says he hasn’t yet made up his mind.

In addition to Oliver, a number of high-profile Conservatives were unseated in 2015 including Chris Alexander, Leona Aglukkaq, Ed Holder, Julian Fantino, Gail Shea, and Paul Calandra. While they did not return requests for comment on their newfound lives post-elected politics, according to her social media presence, Aglukkaq, for one, is keeping a low profile

up north, while Alexander is set to run for Conservative leadership. According to the London Free Press, Holder has since taken on a new gig, heading a trade group promoting trade between Canada and Saudi Arabia. Shea, according to the CBC, is enjoying retirement and is considering opening a small business, and Calandra has announced his intent to enter provincial politics, seeking the nomination to become the Ontario PC candidate in Markham-Stouffville in the next Provincial election scheduled for 2018.

Paul Dewar also lost the only New Democrat seat in Ottawa—a surprise for many who considered the son of former Ottawa mayor Marion Dewar to be a shoe-in. Dewar was high-profile as the NDP’s foreign affairs critic in the shadow Cabinet, and had held Ottawa Centre since 2006 before losing it to Liberal MP Catherine McKenna. Dewar was quoted on Sept. 21, speaking with CBC Ottawa, that he has not yet ruled out running for mayor of Ottawa. “I don’t know what’s next, but who knows.”

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It’s been almost a year since Canada was swept into its second bout of Trudeaumania. Many like to compare the fanfare caused by the Liberal party’s young, charismatic

leader, Justin Trudeau, when he won the Oct. 19, 2015 election to the hype created by his late father almost 50 years ago, when Pierre Elliott Trudeau also won a majority Liberal government.

But now, after a year with Pierre’s eldest son at the helm—with bills passed, a Cabinet shuffl ed, meetings conducted with foreign leaders, tempers lost in the House of Commons, and promises both kept and still waiting to be fulfi lled—political observers and historians weigh in on both the uncanny similarities and stark differences between the two Trudeaus.

With photos from the archives of Pierre’s photographer, Jean-Marc Carisse, and Justin’s photographer, Adam Scotti.

The TwoTrudeausin photos

By ALLy FOSTEr

Photos by Jean-Marc Carisse

THE TWO TrudEAuS-fEat urE


Opposites in politics

Meanwhile, “Justin obviously enjoys politics enormously,” says John English, a

political historian who wrote a two-volume biography on Pierre. “He works a crowd

like a Clinton.” Pierre “was absolutely the opposite. He openly would say that he

didn’t like politics. He loved his job, he loved being prime minister and he found it diffi cult after he left offi ce, but he was not,

in the political sense, a ‘people person.’

Pierre was “not a natural politician” says Hillmer. “Which is odd to say about a politician who ended up as prime minister for 15 years.” Despite having major reservations about the Pearson Liberal government, he came into politics to fi ght Quebec nationalism and build a country that respects both languages.

Neither Pierre nor Justin set out to be career politicians, explains Norman Hillmer, a political historian and professor at Carleton University. Pierre was a lawyer by trade, and later a law professor. Justin was a teacher, and for years insisted that he had no desire to follow in his father’s political footsteps—which he ultimately did, winning the riding of Papineau, Quebec in 2008, and the Liberal party leadership in April 2013.

Justin, pre-politics in 2002. Jean-Marc Carisse

Justin, campaigning in 2015. Jean-Marc Carisse

Jean-Marc Carisse


Disciplined, deliberate, dramatic

Stephen Azzi, a political science and history professor at Carleton University, says that while both Trudeaus are known for being activists, Pierre was known for certain “missions” which came to define him. Hillmer lists these missions as the creation of the constitution, encouraging language equality, and subduing nationalism. “With Pierre, there’s a definable sense of ideas that you can associate with him, from the time he was a professor in Montréal through his period as prime minister,” adds Azzi. “That doesn’t exist with Justin. Certainly he has a sense of values that he brings to the job, but I don’t think he has the same sense of mission that his father had.”

Azzi says that at heart “Justin is an extrovert, and Pierre was an introvert.” Azzi and Hillmer both describe Justin and Pierre as “athletic,” and Hillmer draws parallels in the way both men made use of theatrics; strategically, but also simply because they can’t seem to help themselves. “The pirouettes, the one-armed pushups ... they are both performers,” he says.

English says that Pierre was “magnificent, when the occasion demanded him to be a speaker,” adding that he “gave very memorable speeches on many occasions, and had a different kind of eloquence than Justin.”

Welcome to the 1980s. Jean-Marc Carisse

Pierre, clowning around, 1981. Jean-Marc Carisse

Justin, throwing his son, Xavier, 2008. Jean-Marc Carisse

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Physically, Pierre wasn’t a large man, but English says that he “oozed athleticism.” Carisse, who photographed Pierre for more than 25 years, says Pierre’s modest physical size was compensated by the larger-than-life way he carried himself; tilting his chin upwards, squaring his shoulders, puffing his chest, and often tucking his thumbs into the waist of his trousers like a gun-slinging sheriff in a Wild West film.

“Justin, as we know, is an athlete. Pierre’s walk and posture, everything about him had a deliberate quality,” says English. Father and son have always acted with immense self-awareness, and carry themselves with confidence and self-assurance, he adds. Justin’s athletic side has been photographed many times, sometimes garnering criticism that he’s a showoff. There was the high profile charity boxing match in March 2012 against then-Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau. He was also photographed boxing in Gleason’s gym while in New York City for climate change talks, doing one-armed pushups on a Parliament Hill desk, and going for an early morning run in Ottawa with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto during the North American Leaders’ Summit in June, 2016.

Jean-Marc Carisse

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fEat urE-THE TWO TrudEAuS


English points out that while both Pierre and Justin are passionate, that passion can flare into anger. “Pierre had a temper that would come out in an unexpected way,” he says, referencing the 1971 incident when Pierre allegedly told Conservative MP John Lundrigan to “F--- off” in the House. Later, Pierre told reports he simply said “fuddle duddle.” Justin has had scraps of his own in the House, most notably this past May when he tried to forcibly move Conservative whip Gordon Brown through a throng of NDP MPs so he could vote, accidentally elbowing NDP MP Ruth-Ellen Brosseau along the way.

Azzi notes that both Pierre and Justin are “very much into self improvement. They care for their bodies, they’re both constantly challenging themselves physically, they’re both very well-read—I don’t think Justin gets the credit for this that he should—he’s constantly reading.”

Justin and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto in June 2016. Adam Scotti

‘Elbowgate,’ CPAC Screenshot

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Pierre, playing in the water at

Harrington Lake. Jean-Marc Carisse



Born leaders

Azzi says that the picture painted of Pierre with his caucus was always one of dominance and even arrogance, but says “I’ve spoken to many of Pierre’s Cabinet ministers, and they all say the same thing: he was willing to listen to people, as long as they were well-prepared, he … largely delegated to ministers—as long as they didn’t foul up.”

English notes that with Justin and his government, the reputation is that he’s “very accessible,” collaborative with his colleagues, and enjoys engaging in constructive debate. “Pierre liked debate, but he could be withering in his treatment of someone he thought was being stupid. He was more distant,” says English.

Pierre, having a strong word with then-minister, Norman Cafik, 1977.

In forming their Cabinets, they were both mindful of representation, English points out. Pierre was careful to have bilingual representation, and Justin was set on having gender parity, and an ethnically-diverse Cabinet. “The big thing about Pierre is that he brought French Cabinet ministers and public servants to Ottawa,” says Hillmer. “I believe if he hadn’t brought the French fact to Ottawa in 1968, and succeeding years, we would have lost Canada.”‘Elbowgate,’ CPAC Screenshot

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Pierre’s 1980 Cabinet. Jean-Marc Carisse

Pierre’s with then-minister Marc Lalonde. Jean-Marc Carisse

Justin’s 2016 Cabinet. Jean-Marc Carisse

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But as Azzi notes, there is also a major difference in Justin’s first Cabinet, and Pierre’s first government, which he largely inherited from Pearson. Pierre’s first Cabinet had a ton of expertise, and was not keen on a lot of change. “They knew what they were doing. They’re into tinkering. Justin comes in with a lot of people without any political experience and the Liberals haven’t been in power for 10 years—he’s got an impressive Cabinet, but it’s not an experienced Cabinet. It’s a more chaotic time.”

Says Hillmer, “In the end, Pierre is more small-c conservative than his son. His son is much more daring, although you think of Pierre as the most daring guy in the world.”Justin, fresh off his Oct. 19 election win, with his new Cabinet and family. Jean-Marc Carisse



Star power

“In Canada, we don’t really do star power,” says Hillmer, then referring to politicians like Sir Robert Borden, William Lyon Mackenzie King, and Stephen Harper. “But they are both stars,” he says of Pierre and Justin. “They both break the mould.”

And the Trudeau charm remains in 2016: Justin has been illustrated into a Marvel comic character; celebrated by GQ magazine as one of ‘the most stylish men in the world;’ featured in a photo spread in Vogue; and continues to be swarmed by fans in cities across the world, all stretching for a selfie with him. But with the highs of the honeymoon phase comes the speculation of when it will end. Pundits question how well Justin will fare after a summer of shirtless photos and several weeks of vacation time.

A mock cover GQ made to celebrate Justin’s fashion sense.

As The Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno writes, “Pierre Trudeau made Canada cool and sexy. He put us on the map, with his flamboyant capes and his hippie sandals, roses and his (pre/post-Maggie) arm-candy. He was a rogue who twirled impishly behind the Queen. He rode motorcycles. He said fuddle-duddle in Parliament. Amidst the FLQ crisis, he proved fearless.”

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Defining issues

Internationally, Pierre faced fallouts from major events like the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the 1973 oil crisis, and the global economic repercussions of the oil embargo. Justin faces an equally tumultuous global economy, and ongoing conflict in the Middle East and eastern Europe. However, Pierre wanted to focus on Canada’s needs and initially begrudged getting involved in global affairs, says Hillmer. He “fundamentally questioned the U.S., and wanted to bring all of our troops home from NATO.”

“But by the end of his time, he had become a conventional, Pearsonian prime minister,” adds Hillmer. “He loved the commonwealth, loved NATO—or at least tolerated it—and he was a peacekeeper.”

Justin has had a notably friendly relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama; causing some observers to dub it “the bromance”—especially after the North American Leaders’ Summit in Ottawa this past June. But, as English points out, that will soon change with the November 8 U.S. presidential elections, regardless of who wins.

Justin’s trip to China in August appears to have gone well, earning him the nickname ‘little potato’ based off the word ‘tudou,’ which means ‘potato.’ Pierre was also known fondly as senior potato in China, a country which he renewed diplomatic ties with in 1973, earning him mutual respect with Chinese leaders.

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Pierre, and then-president of the U.S. Ronald Reagan, 1981. Jean-Marc Carisse

Justin greets Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, 2016. Adam Scotti

Pierre greets Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang. Jean-Marc Carisse

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Justin is going to need all the international goodwill he can gather. English notes that, “the world is at a tipping point. It’s the most dangerous it’s been for generations, and he’s got that challenge to face. What happens in the world is going to affect Canada more than what happens domestically.”

Meanwhile, English adds that Pierre was very nationally focused. “Quebec confederation was Pierre’s greatest challenge, and it’s one that he met. Without him becoming prime minister in 1968, Canada wouldn’t have stayed together.”

Justin’s biggest work is global. Canada’s economy is more closely linked with financial systems beyond the border; terrorism is a mysterious and difficult enemy to try to fight; and climate change is an enormously complicated problem.

Justin is “intuitively realizing that we are in a very dangerous place and is trying to act in a way that minimizes those dangers. What that takes is debatable, but he’s clearly going to be very active … Canada will be very active in multilateral organizations, believing that only be working together can we get through this,” says English.

Justin talking trade in Japan alongside Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland. Adam Scotti

Ukraine, July 2016. Adam Scotti

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challengehaving made Canadian political history this

summer, Bardish Chagger plans to bring change to the capital’s primary institution

this fall.Only two weeks into her job as Government

House Leader, the fi rst woman and fi rst member of a visible-minority community to serve in that role, reveals in an August interview her high hopes for bringing greater collegiality and better decorum to the House of Commons.

“Tone is very important,” 36-year-old Chagger tells P&I. “People are watching us, whether it’s on CPAC or when they’re touring the Parliament buildings, so it’s important that we have a constructive dialogue and be respectful of each other’s opinions.”

She’s already heard from her Cabinet and caucus colleagues during their respective retreats in August about their priorities as to how the House should function, and planned to reach out to departmental offi cials and opposition House leaders to get their views and, with the latter, “ensure that they want to work together” in identifying priorities for the fall Parliamentary session.

“We need to deliver on the open, transparent government we committed to,” says Chagger, who believes she will bring a “fresh” perspective to her new role in Cabinet, where she has also held the small business and tourism portfolio since the Liberals formed government last November.

Former Conservative House Speaker Andrew Scheer is concerned that Chagger, a rookie MP for the Ontario riding of Waterloo, hasn’t been around

long enough to handle a complex job in the often-volatile House of Commons.

“The job requires a great deal of expertise that you only get by experience,” explains Scheer, who served four years as speaker after spending two-and-a-half years as deputy Speaker and chair of the Committees of the Whole. “Even MPs who’ve been there for several years aren’t aware of everything that can happen in the House until something does.”

He says that he was caught by surprise at times on some of the fi ner points of Parliamentary procedure when he occupied the Speaker’s chair.

Typically, he says, “the type of people put into these roles [as House Leader] have 10-plus years of experience and have to be able to react to something on the fl y where things can happen quickly and unexpectedly. I could not imagine doing that in my fi rst year. I wouldn’t know where to begin,” explains Scheer.

“The smartest minds, the hardest-working people still need to experience things before they become experts in the matter because you’re talking about shepherding legislation from the Government of Canada,” he adds. “That’s a lot of responsibility for an MP who hasn’t yet served a full year.”

He says that Chagger’s predecessor, LeBlanc, an MP for nearly 16 years, was blindsided when the government’s Bill C-10, the Air Canada Public Participation Act, ended in a tie vote and required Speaker Geoff Regan to cast a vote in favour of keeping the legislation alive at third reading.

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P&I PHOTOGrAPH By AdAM SCOTTI

“I can’t remember the last time that happened in a majority government on government legislation,” says Scheer.

Scheer expects Chagger will receive and benefit from LeBlanc’s guidance, the “institutional wisdom” within the Liberal caucus, and much direction from the Prime Minister’s Office to carry out her task as Government House Leader.

“It will [mean] more of the PMO’s involvement in House of Commons business,” says Scheer, the Conservative Member of Parliament for the Saskatchewan riding of Regina-Qu’Appelle.

But Penny Collenette, who served as Jean Chrétien’s director of appointments during his first term as prime minister, says the Government House Leader always has to work closely with the PMO, and it is because of that fact that Chagger’s promotion to the position is significant.

“What’s key here is that she appears to have the prime minister’s confidence, and that’s huge,” says Collenette, an adjunct professor of law at the University of Ottawa. “Over the last year, she must have demonstrated competency, energy and the ability to get along with others.”

‘pErfEct for thE job’Collenette, who ran for the Liberals

in the 2008 federal election, says that by committing to be open and transparent and set a “new tone” in Parliament, Justin Trudeau was likely looking for “someone who perhaps has not been mired in a lot of past arguments” and Chagger was “perfect for the job” as Government House Leader.

“A lot of the new ministers are in the same boat as having never before held elected office, so if we say we want to have new people involved in politics and give them a chance, we can’t have everybody who’s been there forever getting senior positions.”

Collenette, who included women in more than one-third of her 2,554 appointments in the Chrétien PMO, says that she doubts Chagger’s qualifications would have been questioned had she been a man.

“She is going to have her hands full because it’s a 24/7 job,” says Collenette. “From everything I’ve heard, she’s a very open, warm person that will put in her

extremely good stead for this kind of job.”Her quick rise to assuming a powerful

and influential role in the House was no less surprising to Chagger herself, who “never thought” she would run for public office in the first place.

The second of three children born to Indian immigrants Govinder and Gurminder Chagger, Chagger’s interest in politics flowed from her father, Gurminder, an active Liberal Party member and ardent admirer of the current prime minister’s father, Pierre.

It was a heart-tugging moment when his daughter ended up in the son of Pierre Trudeau’s Cabinet. It also reminded him why he chose to come to Canada; that “anything is possible, and I’m living proof that’s the case,” she says.

Like her dad, also known as “Gogi” and who knocked on doors campaigning to get his daughter get elected last October (her mom made home-cooked meals for campaign workers), Chagger got involved in politics as a volunteer. Her first outing, at the age of 13, was helping Andrew Telegdi win the seat she now holds for the Liberals. She also “grew up watching Question Period on TV,” but her fascination with Parliament Hill did not include becoming an MP.

Chagger wanted to become a nurse, and chose first to attend the University of Waterloo and obtain a Bachelor of Science degree in 2004.

“My parents immigrated to Canada in the early ‘70s and believed that if you wanted to be successful and get a good job you went to university or college,” she explains. “My father was pulled out of school to help take care of his family, so

going to university was really important to him.”

Nursing would have been a way to “work with and for people,” says Chagger, “and I’m in that line of work, in a different way though.”

Instead of nursing, she chose politics and introduced herself to the riding she would one day represent by taking a job as executive assistant to the man for whom she once campaigned.

Chagger coordinated Telegdi’s Hill and Waterloo constituency offices until Conservative Peter Braid defeated him in the 2008 election. Chagger would return the favour in the 2015 federal election when she unseated Braid by a vote margin of 50 per cent.

But while Telegdi lost re-election, Chagger maintained her profile in Waterloo when she took a job as special projects coordinator at the Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Centre that helps immigrants adjust to life in Canada. She was also as an active volunteer in the community, and helped provide care for her ailing paternal grandmother “Suzie,” who died of pulmonary fibrosis in 2010.

Looking after her grandma allowed Chagger to partly fulfill her dream of becoming a nurse. It also reinforced for her the importance of family, based not only on blood, but also on deep personal connections.

At her campaign office last year, Chagger, who is single, occasionally drew looks of puzzlement when she referred to a volunteer as her Aunt Donna. “She’s a friend of my dad’s and looks nothing like me, but I believe you become family with people because you care about them.”

Making historyChagger is the new face of a ‘Parliament of the people’

P&I photograph courtesy of William Au


That extends to her Liberal family, to whom she has been closely connected since her University of Waterloo days, when she served as president of the Young Liberals on campus. Chagger went onto hold senior executive positions in the party, including that of president of the Liberal riding association in Waterloo, and was involved in drafting policies on issues ranging from same-sex marriage and physician-assisted dying to the legalization of marijuana.

‘thE right timE’Like her father, Chagger has also been an enthusiastic Trudeau

supporter, and helped organize the future second-generation prime minister’s southwestern Ontario Liberal leadership campaign.

When Justin Trudeau was preparing to enter his first election race as leader, Chagger’s friends came calling to get her to run as the Liberal candidate in Waterloo. She felt it was the right time, and agreed.

“It was an opportunity to give back to this nation that’s given me so much. My family always knew that better was always possible, and we were kind of living it,” says Chagger.

Her enthusiasm, along with being young, telegenic, personable, and peppering a conversation with Justin Trudeau quotes, make her, on one level, a good fit on the prime minister’s ministerial team.

Chagger is also “well-known in her community as being a hard worker and does not get tired easily,” according to Trudeau Press Secretary Cameron Ahmad. “She has been very involved in advocacy and community work, and obviously that’s very important to the prime minister in having that local connection and those relationships.”

He explains that Chagger will “build on the work of that of her predecessor [LeBlanc],” but will also have the opportunity to focus on “opening up Parliament and making it more accessible to Canadians.”

Says Ahmad: “She has talked about Parliament of the people, and through her experience of working with people on the ground—at the community centre and a constituency office—she really knows how politics works. That experience will guide her through the next session of Parliament, along with the benefit of having colleagues who’ve had the experience of many years in Parliament.”

The view from the PMO is that Chagger “has, so far, excelled” in politics and is “entirely capable of maintaining both roles as the Small Business and Tourism Minister as well as Government House Leader,” says Ahmad.

When the prime minister called her, Chagger says he asked her “to take on some added responsibilities, and he knew I’d be up for the challenge—and I am,” she says.

Chagger concedes that it is “surprising” that she’s the first woman to hold the Government House Leader post, but believes her appointment opens another door not just for women but for young people to hold high office, and wants to nurture those aspirations.

Using the knowledge she first acquired working for Telegdi, she plans to help colleagues who have no previous political experience better navigate Parliament Hill.

“I want to work with them so they know how to be part of the debate, understand SOs [standing orders], present petitions, and keep their constituents informed as to what’s happening in Ottawa and actually deliver for Canadians,” says Chagger.

“My job will be to make sure all MPs—and not just ones in my party—have the opportunity to fulfill their responsibility to their constituents,” she says. “We are all part of the Parliamentary family.”

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Chagger is ‘a hard worker and does not get tired easily.’

P&I photograph courtesy of William Au


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vIkrAM vIj-pEoplE

I had hardly settled across from Vikram Vij at an Ottawa restaurant, ready to begin what was about to be a lengthy,

and very candid interview, when he snags the chance to ask the first question: “What do you know about me?”

The tables turned, I begin recounting what I have read about the famous Vancouver restaurateur, former Dragon’s Den investor, and most notably, and the reason he was in town: his appointment to the recently-formed Liberal government’s Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments. It was late summer, just as the board was finalizing its recommendations for the next round of Senate appointees.

I finish, and then with his well-known dramatic flair, he told me he was going to tell me the better story.

it all startEd With a littlE garam masala

Vij’s journey to Canadian culinary kingpin began in Amritsar, India, almost 52 years ago.

“I’m a Punjabi from Amritsar, a Hindu-Punjabi,” explains Vij, who says his career as a chef was borne out of extinguished dreams of an acting career.

Vij says he grew up with a very strict father who told him he wasn’t allowed to pursue his Bollywood ambitions.

The chef, who is wearing brown-rimmed glasses—which he later reveals he only wore as a stylish accessory to accompany his outfits—tells P&I that he was never the brightest student in school, receiving only average marks, but always passed and never failed.

He explains that it was his grandfather who really planted the notion of becoming a chef into his head. As a youth, Vij would make snacks for his grandfather who would typically be found drinking copious amounts of whiskey after the sun set.

“After he was slightly inebriated, he would bring me to his lap and say ‘Come here, come here. When you get big, you open a restaurant. You do the cooking, and I will be the bartender. Why? Because you love to cook and I love drinking,” Vij tells P&I.

“Every evening I would make him something… so ever since… I had this thing in my head that I needed to open a restaurant for daddyji,” he says, using the Indian term for respect.

Originally, Vij applied to study engineering in India. But, he had a cousin in Salzburg, Austria who convinced him to come join him and study hospitality.

“To be honest with you, it was not that I was really interested in this career. I mean I loved it, I loved cooking, I loved eating,” Vij says, but adds that, “It was a combination of things; there was no hope for me [in Amritsar], there was nothing I could do. It only made sense to go to Austria.”

Vij reminisces that Austria was where he truly learned what the word struggle meant, adding that looking different, and not being able to speak German made his first experience living abroad very difficult. He felt unsettled.

Eventually, he came to work at a ski resort in the small mountain village of Lech, Austria.

One night, a gentleman—who just happened to be Ivor Petrak, then-general manager of the Banff Springs Hotel—came into the restaurant after skiing all day, and asked for something spicy and hot to eat. Vij’s co-workers pointed to him, as the only Indian in the kitchen, to make the dish for the patron.

“I had a little garam masala in my room upstairs in the staff room,” Vij recalls, and after fetching it, “I made him a Goulash

soup. A classic, Hungarian-European style soup, and put some [spice] in it.

When Petrak, originally a Czechoslovakian who had immigrated to Canada, asked to speak with the chef who made the dish, Vij recalls how nervous he was. The brief encounter ended up being a watershed moment that caused Vij’s life to change forever.

from linE cooK to canadian culinarY magnatE

On a whim, he applied to Petrak’s restaurant at the Banff Springs Hotel in Canada, but didn’t think anything of it until he received a letter from Petrak himself that included a one-way ticket, and a six-month visa to Canada. The year was 1989.

Once in Canada, it didn’t take long before he realized how multicultural and accepting the attitude was. “I felt something in my heart…I could see myself living here,” he recalls.

He worked at Banff Springs Hotel for about three years, starting at an entry-level position and rising quickly up the kitchen ladder, until he faced yet another hurdle: the death of Petrak, who had always taken care of his visa arrangements and work permits.

Vij then married his girlfriend from Cobourg, Ont., which granted him permanent residency. The marriage lasted two years before they parted ways, and Vij moved to Vancouver.

He has since built a business that reportedly grossed $9-million in 2014-15; including a Vancouver restaurant empire with a handful of restaurant locations, cookbooks, and gourmet packaged food products that can be cooked at home.

He also had a yearlong stint as a star on CBC TV’s entrepreneur-focused show Dragons’ Den between 2014-2015. He announced in March 2015 he wouldn’t be returning so he could focus instead on growing his business.

into the fireCelebrity chef vikram vij’s path from line chef to Senate adviser

By SHruTI SHEkAr

Out Of the pan


However, the latest step on his career path has been an unconventional one: sitting as an appointed member on the government’s Senate advisory board.

from his WEst coast KitchEn to privatE mEEtings in thE nation’s capital

Vij says he was approached by the Prime Minister’s Office “at the end of June, beginning of July,” to ask if he would be interested in joining the group that would provide recommendations on Senate nominations to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

He was in the process of filming reality TV show MasterChef India when Vij received the notice, but didn’t hesitate in agreeing to come aboard, saying he was honoured to be considered.

Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef announced his involvement on the board on July 7, the same day she launched the application process, “open to all Canadians,” for the Senate appointments.

The board’s mandate “is to provide non-binding merit-based recommendations to the Prime Minister on Senate nominations,” according to Raymond Rivet, director of corporate and media affairs at the Privy Council Office.

He adds that in order for members to be able to deliver recommendations, “the Government has appointed accomplished individuals from across the country to bring a broad range of perspectives and experiences to the selection process.”

When asked why he thought he was selected to be part of the board, Vij pauses to think and says he believed it was because he brings a non-partisan perspective and is deeply-rooted in the Indian community in Canada—but more specifically, in Vancouver.

“I come from the largest democracy in the world, but I live in the best democracy,” he says.

Vikram says he was eager to bring to the table his perspective, garnered from the mix of challenges and successes he’s experienced over his life.

“I think the PM wanted to have a little bit more of diversity,” he says, and that the desire was to have real people on the advisory board so that average, everyday Canadians felt encouraged to apply to the Senate.

“The PM wanted a nurse to be able to apply, somebody who is an RCMP officer to apply, just different walks of lives and I think I brought that perspective,” he explains. “Like, ‘oh ok if a line cook can be on that panel then I can apply.’”

His first meeting with his fellow board members was in July on Parliament Hill.

During this first meeting, Vij says he met with the other members, and the entire team went through the protocols (lots of security) and procedures governing how the new Senators would be selected.

We met during his second trip to the Capital for another meeting of the advisory board.

During the second meeting, the team went through the list of applicants in order to narrow down what each member had studied and learned, after which Vij says the group submitted their verdicts for the next round of Senators they were recommending to Trudeau.

“I think the hardest part was to narrow it down…there were such great candidates, we were surprised by the quality of the candidates that applied,” Vij says. “For us to sit down and deliberate which ones we are going to choose and submit was extremely difficult and challenging task.”

finding a nEW rhYthm The appointment to the advisory board

on Senate appointments was one of several changes in Vij’s life this year. He has a one-year term in this new role that will have him back in Ottawa off-and-on through to next summer.

This isn’t the only new routine he’s adjusting to, telling P&I he and his second wife, Meeru Dhalwala, recently separated. The pair collaborated on two cookbooks, owned and ran two restaurants, as well as a catering mobile food truck, and are raising two teenagers, Nanaki and Shanik.

As the night and conversation comes to an end, Vij yells to the back of the pizzeria that was the backdrop to our conversation: “Good night, chef—the food was delicious!”

When I ask him what is next, he responds with the same dramatic flair the interview began with. “I continue on my journey.”

vIkrAM vIj-pEoplE


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pEoplE-vISuAL Cv

Vikram Vij 1. culture challenges vij, second right, and his classmates during his time at hospitality school in Salzburg, Austria between 1984-1989. ‘I didn’t speak German at the time…as a foreigner, as a brown Indian, it was very difficult,’ he tells P&I.

3. the start of an empireA look inside of vij’s, the first restaurant he opened in vancouver in 1994. He has since gone on to open two other restaurants in the area, as well as a food truck. He has also published cookbooks and released a line of gourmet packaged food products that can be cooked at home.

2. career in canadavij, far right, standing with his entire crew at the Banff Springs Hotel. He started working there after leaving school in 1989. In the same year, shortly after being hired, he was recognized by the general manager of the hotel and was awarded employee of the month. vij tells P&I that three years after working in Canada, he knew it was where he wanted to live.

8

8

A slice of his life, from west coast restaurateur and dealmaker on CBC’s dragons’ den to Senate advisory board member.

P&I photograph courtesy of Vikram Vij



By SHruTI SHEkAr


vISuAL Cv-pEoplE

6. justin trudeau’s letterheadvij tells P&I he was in the process of filming reality Tv show MasterChef India when he heard he had been appointed to the Liberal government’s new Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments. He was in Ottawa throughout the summer for meetings discussing the new Senate appointment process. He says he thinks he was picked because of his connections to the Indo-Canadian community, as well as for his non-partisan perspective.

4. inked On his left arm is a tattoo of his two daughters, Nanaki and Shanik. He got inked in december 2015 at The Fun House tattoo shop in vancouver. ‘They’ll always be part of my life… things will come and go, but the kids will always be part of [my] life,’ he tells P&I.

88

5. becoming a dragonIn 2014 vij joined the cast of the CBC Tv show dragons’ den and stayed on for one season. He announced in March 2015 he would not be returning as a dragon so he could focus on growing his business. The show has now been running in Canada for a decade and has featured a number of prominent business people over the years, including kevin O’Leary who left the show ahead of vij’s arrival.

8



Letter courtesy of Vikram Vij


thE E ssaY-FOrEIGN POLICy


T wenty-two years have passed since the Rwandan genocide began in 1994. Over the course of about three months, more than

800,000 people were killed by their own countrymen in that small, poor, densely-populated country in the African Rift Valley; many of them were children.

Some estimates of the total death toll eclipse two million, but even the lowest estimates make the Rwandan genocide the swiftest mass murder of the 20th century with, by far, the largest popular participation. Neighbours killed neighbours, husbands killed wives and children, and the weapons were household tools, farm implements, and rough-hewn clubs.

It is often claimed that the international community did little to stop the genocide as it was taking place. This is true, and this claim ignores the role that foreigners, including Canada, played in fomenting and encouraging the paranoia and hatred which animated the genocide long before it occurred, and it fails to acknowledge that nearly everything the West did during the genocide served to prolong and encourage it.

thE historYBut fi rst, some history. The usual story is that the

two main ethnicities in modern Rwanda, Hutu and Tutsi, were not originally ethnicities but castes. Tutsis were supposedly a cattle-herding aristocracy who ruled over a much larger group of agrarian Hutus. If a person acquired or lost wealth, his caste rose or fell accordingly. It is often asserted now that, anciently, a Hutu could become a Tutsi, and a Tutsi a Hutu.

But John Hanning Speke, the self-proclaimed discoverer of the source of the river Nile, propounded the idea that Tutsis were a race superior to the Hutus over whom they ruled, and that the Tutsis were not native to Rwanda.

By the time Belgium came to possess Rwanda (1922-1962), Speke’s race theory was taken as fact by both Hutu and Tutsi; and the colonial masters had entrenched racial differences by ruling through the Tutsi king and his court, and by enforcing that Rwandan identity cards include the race of the bearer. Hutu resentment and anxiety led to a revolt in 1959, which ended in a huge massacre of Tutsis and the swift reversal of Belgian favouritism.

As Rwanda was hastily ushered out the colonial nursery in the early 1960s, the Belgian governor Guy Logiest enforced a policy of empowering the Hutu majority.

Speke’s hypothesis about the foreignness and superiority of Tutsis was now invoked to justify Hutu dominance of Rwanda. Hutus were indigenous; they were humble farmers at home in the hills of Rwanda; they were workers, not leisured aristocrats; they were unsullied by collaboration with white foreigners; and they were entitled to self-determination because they were the majority.

Belgium and Western powers connived at the formation of the Parmehutu party and social movement founded by Grégoire Kayibanda. The Parmehutu espoused an ideology of Hutu supremacy and identifi cation with the plight of agrarian workers according to socialist principles. The result was the vilifi cation of the Tutsis on the ground that they were oppressive feudal overlords, and extraordinarily violent pogroms were organized against them. Hundreds of thousands of Tutsis fl ed Rwanda and settled in neighbouring countries, mostly in Uganda.

A dangerous mixture of white guilt and then-fashionable ideas of self-determination and socialism meant that the Parmehutu party found a great deal of support from Europeans. UN missions, European clergy, and the people attached to the Belgian colonial government regularly dignifi ed and validated the most exaggerated and aggressive expressions of the Hutu supremacist movement.

They helped draft manifestos and petitions to the UN, and they solicited foreign funding. All of this advanced the cause of Hutu supremacy and linked the old Tutsi monarchy to feudal rule by foreigners. Europeans must have seen all this as a sort of affi rmative action avant la lettre, but they were really encouraging something much more sinister.

The strange brew of ethnic supremacism and socialism, which led to the foundation of the Parmehutu party, appeared to give way to reason and civility in the 1970s. Juvénal Habyarimana, another Hutu, took power in a military coup in 1973, and remained in power until 1994. But this did nothing to quell the Hutu supremacist movement, which continued to seethe below the surface of Rwandan politics and social life.

MICHAELr.j. BONNEr

Michael is a communications consultant and historian. He has a master’s degree and doctorate from the University of Oxford, and was senior policy adviser to Conservative MP Jason Kenney, who was then-minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada. Bonner is also a contributing editor of the Canadian historical journal, The Dorchester Review.

thE dEadlY problEm With a pEarsonian forEign policY

As Canada considers a revitalized role in peacekeeping in the Middle East, eastern Europe, and Africa, it’s crucial to remember the naïve and bloody mistakes of the past.

Meanwhile, Tutsi exiles in Uganda became organized in what came to be known as the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). In 1990, the RPF invaded Rwanda and a civil war began.

In the midst of this civil war, before the genocide began, a supposed intellectual of the Hutu supremacy movement called Léon Mugesera, gave an infl ammatory speech which clearly revealed the spirit of his party. Looking back upon Rwandan independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mugesera declared that the Hutu revolution was basically incomplete. The Tutsis were still present in large numbers, defi ling Rwanda; and so, to fi nish the work of the revolution, the Tutsis had to be exterminated. Mugesera then invoked the hideous image of throwing the corpses of Tutsis into the Nyabarongo river, so that the Tutsis could get back to Ethiopia (where they were said to originate) faster.

The oncoming genocide had long been taking shape within the minds of extremists in the reigning Hutu party, and Mugesera’s speech gave it impetus, and as it seemed at the time, an historical and intellectual foundation. The masterminds of the genocide, Théoneste Bagosora and his circle, organized the importation of machetes on a gigantic scale, as well as more modern weapons and ammunition.

Because of the odious system of identifi cation cards, it was easy to draw up lists of Tutsis to be murdered, and paramilitary bands were recruited and trained. All of this was quite obvious to contemporary observers, such as Canadian general Roméo Dallaire, who warned of the impending genocide. But preparations for it were portrayed as spontaneous civil defence against foreign invaders and their domestic accomplices.

FOrEIGN POLICy-thE E ssaY

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Dr. Blair Adams


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Dr. Blair Adams


Before

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Dr. Blair Adams


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Dr. Blair AdamsBSc, D.D.S. dip. Ortho

Meet the orthodontist

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Dr. Blair Adams


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Rwanda is a densely-populated country in the African Rift Valley. Illustration courtesy of TUBS, Wikimedia Commons

A power-sharing agreement, known as the Arusha Accord, was drawn up between the Habyarimana government and the RPF in 1993. Hutu extremists hated these Accords, and believed that they had been betrayed by their leader Habyarimana. And so, on April 6, 1994, those extremists fi red missiles at the airplane carrying Habyarimana and the President of Burundi and their staff. Everyone aboard died, and the plane went down near Kigali. This was the signal for the genocide to begin.

The most important and loathsome preparation for the genocide was the founding of a Hutu Power radio station known as Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM). This platform’s purpose was to broadcast instructions to paramilitary groups and ordinary citizens alike, along with incessant anti-Tutsi messages, songs, and jingles. Names and addresses of Tutsis were regularly read over the airwaves, so that listeners knew whom to kill and where to fi nd them.

However, it is an almost unbelievable absurdity that no one on RTLM ever used the words ‘Tutsi,’ or ‘kill,’ and so on. Tutsis were instead described as vermin: ‘cockroaches’ and ‘snakes’ were the usual words; and instead of killing, listeners were encouraged to ‘work,’ to ‘clean their houses,’ and to ‘cut down tall trees.’ These tactics of glossing over the gruesome instructions were effective because anti-Tutsi hysteria had been nourished for so long, and was hidden under the guises of nationalism, self-determination, socialism, and progress.

Seemingly, every stereotyped phrase pertaining to international development and popular uprising was invoked on RTLM. Listeners were told of the virtues of hard work, co-operation, and the importance of defending their own land; they were assured that the outside world approved of the progress they were making.

Despite repeated demands by Dallaire and others that RTLM’s transmissions be jammed, no effort was made to do so. For some absurd reason, the U.S. State Department considered the cost of shutting down RTLM too great, and considered doing so a violation of freedom of speech. Moreover, when UN-mandated French forces created a safe zone in south-western Rwanda, RTLM was allowed to move its radio tower within it and broadcast its genocidal instructions in safety from the advancing RPF.

canada’s connEctionsA few months before the genocide

began, an informant showed Gen. Dallaire the stockpiles of machetes and guns in Kigali, and Dallaire immediately cabled to Kofi Annan, who was then-assistant secretary general for peacekeeping at the UN. Dallaire had been told of the Hutu extremists’ plan to kill off the Tutsis, and warned Annan accordingly. Ludicrously, Annan insisted, to the very last moment of the genocide, that Dallaire remain impartial and not exceed his mandate as a UN peacekeeper.

When the genocide began, Western powers’ very fi rst move had been to evacuate all foreigners from Rwanda, leaving the genocidal government and the RPF to fi ght it out by themselves.

It may surprise readers to learn about Canada’s role in enabling Rwanda’s génocidaires. Pundits such as Gerald Caplan often assert that Canada ‘had few interests’ in Rwanda, as if to imply that our involvement there was spontaneous and without precedent. This is a preposterous assertion. Canada poured a great deal of money into Rwanda from the 1960s onward. Despite this, our enormous foreign aid payments failed to achieve any leverage with, or power over, the government of

Rwanda at any time; they merely funded the Hutu supremacist movement.

By the 1980s Rwanda had become the ‘jewel in the crown’ of CIDA’s foreign aid programmes, according to the book The Path of Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire edited by Howard Adelman and Astri Suhrke. By the time Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had left offi ce, Rwanda received from Canada more aid per capita than any other country. Bizarrely, offi cials at CIDA convinced themselves that all was well, despite ethnic fi ssures, anti-Tutsi pogroms, and Hutu supremacism. Offi cials at what was then-External Affairs refused to believe that anything was amiss, and rejected a report warning of genocide and human rights abuses by the Habyarimana government as ‘partisan, non-objective, and hysterical’, as Howard Adelman noted in his article ‘Canadian Policy in Rwanda’ within the collected volume The Path of a Genocide.

In 1962, Georges Henri Lévesque, dean of social sciences at the University of Laval, founded the National University of Rwanda at Butare. This university immediately became a hotbed of Hutu extremism—which seems to have passed without comment among the class of Pearsonian nationalists at External Affairs who eagerly funded it throughout the 1960s and onwards.

Similarly, Hutu extremists got a surprisingly warm welcome in Canada: many of the Hutu elite came to Canada for their education, and a large Hutu-Canadian network took shape known as the Rwandan-Canadian Friends. Surprisingly, in his famous book Shake Hands with the Devil, Dallaire claims to have been wholly unaware of these connections.

The most important founding member of this network was none other than Léon Mugesera. This ferocious ideologue received a grant from CIDA—according to his personal website—and completed his doctorate at the University of Laval between 1982 and 1987. As his personal website states rather absurdly, he became ‘politically active’ in 1992; a reference, no doubt, to his revolting speech advocating genocide after returning to Rwanda.

Mugesera remained in Rwanda toward the beginning of the genocide, but swiftly returned to Canada posing as a refugee. He and his family were given permanent residency alarmingly quickly, and he obtained a teaching position at the University of Laval. I wonder to what extent Mugesera’s Rwandan-Canadian Friends


Nyamata memorial site in Rwanda. Photograph courtesy of Inisheer

eased his return to Canada, and whether officials at DFAIT (as it was then called) expedited the process under political pressure.

Mugesera was successfully deported from Canada in 2012, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Rwanda alarmingly on April 15, 2016.

thE problEm With bEing thE ‘honEst broKEr’

So much for the fashionable misconception that Canada simply did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. Far from it. We funded, educated, and then sheltered the man who gave the genocide its intellectual impetus.

But to understand how Canada encouraged that genocide, we must examine the dominant ideology of Canadian foreign policy. Pearsonian internationalism was the doctrine that animated our foreign policy throughout most of the 20th century, and which established our programme of foreign aid.

The Pearsonian doctrine reposes upon some doubtful assumptions: that Canada is the world’s fixer of problems, or ‘honest broker’ as the usual jargon still has it; that it was Canada’s business to promote ‘reconciliation and peaceful settlement of disputes’ throughout the world, as former Liberal adviser Roland Paris put it; that ‘multilateral’ institutions such as the United Nations were Canada’s best hope for influence in the world; and (as former Prime Minister Joe Clark said) that Canadians were ‘multilateralists by talent and by instinct’—a typically pompous claim.

The centrepiece of Pearsonian foreign policy was peacekeeping.

What is peacekeeping? As Dallaire himself puts it, peacekeeping meant that ‘lightly-armed, multinational, blue-helmeted, impartial and neutral’ soldiers would be “interposed between two former warring factions...either to maintain the status quo...or to assist the parties implementing a peace accord.”

Pearsonianism assumes that the parties involved are equal and that peace between them is desirable and possible. Moreover, if Canada is a neutral ‘honest broker’ or peacekeeper, it must be because Canada is indifferent to the outcome of a contest between two parties whose positions are of equal value. Such a policy is rather better suited to mediation between antagonists

in a schoolyard tussle than to deciding the great contests of the modern world.

The greatest conflicts of human history involved opponents between whom no reconciliation was possible or desirable. The French wars of religion come to mind, as well as the eastern front in the Second World War, the Russian-engineered famine in Ukraine, and the warfare against the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Canada’s new Liberal foreign minister, Stéphane Dion, has promised to revive Pearsonian foreign policy after a decade of abeyance. But when we consider how much damage Pearsonianism has done, we should hope that Dion does not succeed.

At its worst, Pearsonianism is an ideology disconnected from reality, which prevents the Canadian elites who believe in it from understanding the world as it is. This ideology presupposes that both parties in a conflict deserve a fair hearing and have equally sound cases to make. At its best, Pearsonianism is naïve, because it assumes that human beings are better than they really are, and that the basest element of humanity can be transmuted into multilateralist gold with a little Canadian influence.

Even if it had not managed to committed genocide, the Hutu supremacist movement should never have been considered legitimate. But internationalists everywhere were duped by the rhetoric of self-determination, democracy, and socialism. When the Rwandan genocide was about to begin, most Canadian foreign-policy makers clung obstinately to the idea that Rwanda was a success of humanitarian aid and development. When the genocide was underway, Canada and the rest of the so-called international community were neutral.

Often we remind ourselves that we must never again allow a similar genocide to occur—especially since we had ample warning that it was about to happen. It is disconcerting that, without appearing to have learned anything, the Liberal government are once again committing to a peacekeeping mission In Africa.

Will another mission attempt to maintain neutrality between a murderous genocidal regime and its opposition? Finally, I observe with sadness and anger that some of the anti-Tutsi rhetoric familiar from Rwanda can now be heard in Burundi, Rwanda’s southern neighbour.

What will Canada and the international community do this time?

Photographs of genocide victims displayed at the Genocide Memorial Centre in Kigali. Photograph courtesy of Adam Jones

idEas-ANTIBIOTIC S

T here is much to celebrate as we approach 2017, like our 150th anniversary as a nation and initiatives by our federal government for

a more innovative, prosperous, clean and healthy Canada. One such important initiative is the commitment of Health Canada to end our current practice of routinely including antibiotics in chicken, pig, and cattle feeds.

To some, this may sound like an industry-specifi c issue, but I assure you it is not. Our routine use (or as many say ‘abuse’) of antibiotics to promote growth or prevent disease in livestock has resulted in what a growing chorus of health experts are calling “the crisis of our generation”.

Without a doubt, antibiotics have saved innumerable lives and play a critical role in providing health care to humans and other animals. However, we have entered an era where many bacterial infections are resisting antibiotic treatment, to the point that our one-time ‘miracle drugs’ become useless—no longer able to stave off infection, permanent disability, and death.

The connection between intensive antibiotic use on the farm and the practice of passing antibiotic resistant bacteria to consumers is proven science. Even back in 1988, the U.S. Institute of Medicine had concluded that “data show the fl ow of distinct salmonella clones from farm animals medicated with antibiotics in subtherapeutic concentrations, through food products, to humans, who thus acquire clinical salmonellosis.”

We continue to witness these phenomena, both in Canada and globally. Another example is the evolution of the latest superbug gene, MCR-1, which creates easily-spread resistance to colistin, a powerful antibiotic used as a last resort to treat life-threatening infections when other drugs have failed.

Initially, the gene was detected widely in China—in animals, meat, and sickened humans. However once we knew to look for it, MCR-1 was found in preserved Canadian samples; from people and in ground beef. In fact, the dates on the Canadian samples indicated that the emergence of MCR-1 in Canada predated its discovery in China. Is the safety of Canadian food little more than a dearly-held illusion? It would be important to know, but information is sparse.

The Public Health Agency of Canada estimates that approximately 80 per cent of all medically-important antibiotics sold in Canada are used in livestock. For now, there remain no rules against importing a shipping container of latest generation

antibiotics and using them to “prevent disease” on your own farm. Nor do we even track the level of such drug use. It is no wonder we have an emergence of bacteria resistant to antibiotics.

Our frightening situation is just one of many fueling government action in countries around the world and causing consumers to demand change.

This spring, a group of 54 large investors managing more than $1-trillion in assets launched a campaign to cut the amount of antibiotics used in the production of meat and poultry consumed in major American and British restaurant chains, including McDonald’s. Their call to arms suggests that the health care cost of antibiotic-resistant bacteria could approach $100-trillion, and that infection will regain its historic position as the leading cause of premature death.

In addition, a leading economist has suggested that governments collaborate to offer prizes for the development of new antibiotics—$1-billion per new drug class. A recent cover story in The Economist also spoke to the rise of antibiotic resistance, with the headline “When the drugs don’t work.” This is no hyperbole; it’s a stark reality.

Thankfully, regulations will soon come into effect to better control the use of antibiotics in Canadian livestock agriculture. The planned restrictions are a great step forward in ‘cleaning-up’ our agricultural practices. But if we don’t foster innovative alternatives, we will only encourage cheating or drive livestock production offshore.

The next policy move must be to promote new techniques and technologies for adoption by Canadian livestock farmers. If our regulations and policies enable our farmers to move away from routine use of antibiotics, we will create the opportunity for Canada to lead the world on the critical global issue of how to get animals off drugs.

Our livestock drug addictionCrafting Canada’s policy plans in a post-antibiotic era

CAMErONGrOOMECameron Groome is president of Avivagen Inc., which develops and commercializes health products that replace antibiotics in livestock feeds.

Health Canada plans to end our current practice of routinely including antibiotics in chicken, pig, and cattle feeds. P&I photograph by Keith Willer, United States Department of Agriculture


c ommon s unc orKEd

O ttawa is known for many things; Parliament Hill, Canada Day celebrations, the Rideau Canal, and extreme weather. It is not—or at least wasn’t—known for its wine. Until now.

KIN Vineyards, in the heart of the Ottawa Valley, is producing some terroir-driven, organically-made masterpieces.

You’re probably sceptical that a climate known to drop to -40C in the dead of winter is capable of growing vitis vinifera vines. But Chris Van Barr, owner and proprietor of KIN Vineyards, views the Ottawa Valley climate as an asset to vine growth, and a canvas to produce some diverse wines.

Van Barr, who has a background in patent law and a family history of farming (his grandparents were farmers in Southwestern Ontario), tells P&I that the idea of growing vines in the National Capital Region came during one of his regular bike rides with his friend Alan Krueger, now the vineyard’s viticulturist.

“Was it possible to make really good wine in the Ottawa Valley?” he recalls them wondering as they cycled along. “We had to explore the geology, the makeup of the soils, and the climate in the area. In 2011 it jelled and the ground was turned for planting in 2012,” says Van Barr.

KIN Vineyards has two locations in communities that lie in the west of Ottawa: Kinburn (from where it takes its name), and Carp, where they grow mainly Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Frontenac, Marechal Foch, and Vidal.

This year, 2016, will be the first vintage of their own: KIN Vineyard Chardonnay. Previously, the Chardonnay was made by sourcing grapes from Niagara, Ont.

By ASHA HINGOrANI PHOTOS By kIN vINEyArdS

Ontario’s next wine region is…

in Ottawa?!


c ommon s unc orKEd

“Our own grapes that we’ve been selling are Vidal and Marechal Foch, and we also have a Frontenac,” says Van Barr, noting that the end goal is to produce 100 per cent estate-grown wine.

Kinburn is where Van Barr has his farm. He bought the land in Carp after looking for something in the Ottawa Valley that faces southwest to take the most from the sun, and be a shield to the wind.

“It has this wonderful slope going south-southwest,” says Van Barr. “Underlining that is a massive limestone ridge, called the Ottawa formation.”

He adds: “The ground underneath both Carp and Kinburn is limestone and the vines have taken to the limestone exceptionally well.”

The classic limestone-loving vines are Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. In France, by comparison, the area from Beaune up to Dijon down to Mâcon is mostly a limestone landscape, and is where some of the most sought-after wines are created.

KIN grows mainly Pinot Noir and Chardonnay—classic Burgundian varieties, which are also two of the prominent varietals grown in the wine region of Prince Edward County, Ont.

“The county was a big inspiration in a lot of ways because they grow vinifera and are doing it very well. [Winemakers there are] making a bright, cool climate, very fresh style of wine, which I like and I thought: Can that be done here?” explains Van Barr.

“The growing season in Ottawa is sunny, hot, and very good. It’s a powerful growing season, and we get what you call diurnal swings: hot sun in the day and cool in the night. What we found in the Vidal, in the Foch, and in our trial plots of Pinot and Chard, is a great balance of acidity and plenty of ripeness,” he adds.

buriEd gold Van Barr explains that the challenge

in Ottawa is the winter, but notes that the secret is burying the vines.

“Interestingly, when you bury the vines, you have better protection than they do in Niagara, which is counterintuitive. But in Niagara they’ve had difficult winters in the last few years. The tense time in Ottawa is late May, when it’s bud break and you can still get a late frost,” says Van Barr.

KIN Vineyards’ secret weapon is winemaker Brian Hamilton, who has a wealth of winemaking experience. His CV includes stints as winemaker for

Above: KIN’s brightly-hued Pino Noir Rosé and the Marechal Foch, tended at the Kinburn estate. Below: 2016 will be the first vintage of their own grapes.

Below are three Ontario gems that not only blew my mind and palate, but fuelled my thirst for knowledge in the tasting room:

nomad at hinterbrook 2013, franc blanc (niagara lake shore vqa)

New World wines are not bound by tradition, so wineries can experiment with innovative techniques to create masterpieces. The 2013 Franc Blanc is a clear, white wine made from 100 per cent Cabernet Franc grapes. In the tasting room at NOMAd, the attendant poured the 2014 and 2013 side-by-side. The experience was like a tutorial on the effect of climate on a vintage, as my taste buds suggested they were completely different wines. While both vintages are unique, the 2013 was my favourite.

orange wine southbrook 2015, vidal (niagara on the lake vqa)

Southbrook is 100 per cent organic and biodynamic. Their orange wine—yes, orange—is no hippy-dippy, bug pee juice, but its taste and appearance will shock the senses. This wine has an orange-amber colour, and deposits of lees (dead yeast) floating in it. Sounds pretty awful—until you bring it to your nose and aromas of tangerine and floral bring you in for a taste. The wine is well-structured and complex, with a tropical fruit and tannic finish. It would be excellent with sharp cheese, or Asian cuisine.

between the lines 2014 chardonnay reserve (forty mile creek vqa)

Follow the wine route in Niagara and you may stumble upon a hidden gem. The Between the Lines winery does not sell their wines in the LCBO—in fact, one of the tasting bar attendants wore a t-shirt with the hashtag #LCB(NO) on it. Wine politics aside, their 2014, 100 per cent Chardonnay, is killer. The 2014 vintage was a hard year in Niagara, as conditions went from one extreme to the next. With 156 cases produced, this Chard is full-bodied with tropical fruit, vanilla, and hazelnut aromas. Spontaneous fermentation was used to enhance fruit notes, followed by malolactic fermentation in French oak for 12 months. This wine could cellar until 2018.

Asha’s Wine PicksFrankly, not all good things grow in Ontario. you may be romanced and your palate seduced in

the tasting rooms, but when you pop that cork at home, you might wonder why you spent $25.95 on

what was meant to be a delicious experience.

There is bad wine in Ontario, just like there is bad wine in France. The key is research. While in the tasting rooms, ask questions like: are the

grapes 100 per cent estate-grown? In what type of soil is your Cabernet planted? does the winery have a reputation for making a variety

exceptionally well? Ask about the winemaking process; the answers may help you make better choices and purchase better wine, instead of

letting the tasting room ambassador form an opinion for you.

Niagara-area award winning wineries Southbrook and Tawse.

“Our winemaker, Brian, has trained in California and New Zealand,” boasts Van Barr proudly. “One of the reasons we gravitated towards Brian is we are organic and biodynamic farming, which is what Tawse and Southbrook are all about,” he explains.

While he’s never bothered to certify as organic or biodynamic, Van Barr says he knows for a fact KIN is more organic and biodynamic than most vineyards that have the offi cial designation.

Biodynamic viticulture involves unique compost preparations that are placed into cow horns and buried in the soil, throughout the vineyard. Later in the year, the cow horns are dug up and reused and the compost is distributed throughout the vineyard.

Van Barr offers to dig up the cow horns to show the “labour intensive” approach being used, fi rsthand.

In addition to its production techniques, KIN’s success is also due to the people who are working in the vineyard.

“We’ve been very fortunate to have a very good group of [local] students that come through. They’re all university and some post-grads who just like the vibe and are good workers,” says Van Barr.

“If you want to go out in the vineyard and discuss quantum physics, our vineyard workers will do that, amazingly,” he adds.

Van Barr tells P&I that they are building a tasting room that is scheduled to be complete before the end of 2016, and encourages people living in or visiting the Ottawa area to come out for a visit.

“To people [who are] second-guessing a visit, I would say, 20 years ago people thought Niagara could not produce good wine and now it’s the heart of the International Cool Climate Chardonnay Conference, IC4,” says Van Barr.

“If you want an interesting and unique vibe, and [to] see an organic production in place and local wine being grown in a way that I think is really sympathetic to the land, this is the place,” he adds. “The goal is not to be a big giant vineyard, the goal is to have quality fruit.”


All you need to know about marijuana legalization in Canada

By CArL MEyEr | IMAGES By jAkE WrIGHT

Picture this: you’re driving back from a weekend at the cottage with your friends. It’s Sunday at noon, and the countryside

is beautiful. Suddenly you see blue and red flashing lights ahead; it’s a roadside spot check. You kill the music.

You tell yourself you’ve got nothing to worry about. You’re sober as a gopher. In fact, you’re kind of wired on that large Timmies coffee you stopped for an hour ago. You’re fine.

You pull over and the officer comes up to the window. He asks you a few questions, and looks around the inside of the car. Suddenly he seems to get a whiff of something. The next thing you know, he’s asking you to take a breathalyzer test.

No biggie, you think. You certainly imbibed last night by the campfire, but you got a good night’s sleep, and woke up feeling refreshed—the booze should be long-gone from your system by now.

But surprise: this isn’t a test for alcohol, it’s a marijuana breathalyzer. And you’ve just tested positive.

Now you’re panicking. How could that be? Then you remember someone was passing around a joint last night, and you took a few hits. But that was last night—now it’s noon the next day. What’s going on?

Welcome to the world of marijuana spot checks, a hypothetical place that may soon become a reality in Canada.

The thought experiment above is pure conjecture. We don’t know for sure yet, for example, whether police will be conducting regular roadside pot checks; whether

they will be using portable marijuana breathalyzers to do so; or whether, in a world of legalized weed, what kind of consequences there will be for testing positive, at any level.

But we do know the RCMP confirmed this spring that it planned on field testing oral fluid screening devices similar to breathalyzers—which could detect marijuana—at roadside stops. Plus, a new handheld device has been developed at the University of British Columbia that can detect the primary ingredient of marijuana in the breath up to 12 hours after consumption.

Lastly, the Liberals under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who have promised to introduce a bill to legalize and regulate maryjane next spring, said in their election platform they would “create new, stronger laws to punish more severely those who...operate a motor vehicle while under [marijuana’s] influence.” So the elements are all there.

The potential pitfalls are, too. After legalizing the drug in several states, Americans are grappling with the problem of how to properly police smoking and driving. There are laws on the books, like strict rules on blood-test thresholds, which mimic the ones for booze. But pot and booze are quite different.

A new study of police data by the American Automobile Association’s traffic safety foundation concluded that it’s impossible to determine how impaired someone is from the marijuana roadside testing that’s currently allowed in six states.

The foundation called the tests “arbitrary and unsupported by science.”

Canada’s cheeba-crammed future will see many new public policy conundrums just like this one. Understanding these upcoming debates is key to understanding how the legalization process will play out in Canada.

gEt to KnoW ganjaCannabis is a flowering herb. After

harvesting and curing, the dried buds are either smoked, vaporized, or turned into edibles like pot brownies or concentrates like shatter.

Cannabis contains hundreds of chemical substances. One of those is the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol or THC. That’s the stuff that gets you high.

What does psychoactive mean? Smoking pot changes your mood, your perception, and your thoughts. Usually you mellow out, your senses are heightened, your reaction time is slowed and your co-ordination is dulled. Put simply, it’s mind-altering. But while it does change your consciousness, it’s not a psychedelic the way acid is. Almost no pot smoker hallucinates. It’s mind-altering, but so are prescription medications like the sedative Ambien and Ritalin, which is used to treat a variety of disorders.

How high does an average user get, and for how long? Here’s where it gets really tricky. THC acts completely differently on your body than alcohol, the intoxicant many adults are familiar with. Alcohol is water-


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soluble and evenly spreads throughout your blood and lungs. That means a certain amount of booze is much more accurately linked to a certain level of impairment.

There are some differences, of course; think of your lightweight friend who can get buzzed off half a glass of wine. But most people are plastered after half a bottle of whiskey, and for a good long while, no matter how often they drink.

With weed, the effects are wildly different depending on the person, their history with it, and the context of when and how they got high. Unlike alcohol, there is no predictable relationship between the high and the amount of THC in your system.

And tolerance is a major factor in impairment: first-time users can experience hours of side-effects with just one hit, while chronic users can toke up and feel virtually unaffected.

There are an unimaginable number of different factors at play. There are also hundreds of different strains of marijuana, all with different potencies and amounts of THC.

fat-solublE floWErsThis is why determining who is too stoned to drive is no simple

feat. A woman in Denver, by way of example, was acquitted last year even though she tested way above the state limit, because the jury wouldn’t buy that she was impaired.

Melanie Brinegar, a medical marijuana patient, uses grass to help with back pain, which she experiences when driving, and her lawyer successfully argued that taking her medicine didn’t affect her ability to drive. A participant in Ottawa’s 4/20 celebrations on Parliament Hill.


A big reason why the high and the substance’s presence in your body aren’t directly linked is that THC is fat-soluble. THC embeds itself in a body’s fat tissue and is released slowly. It’s also a big molecule that stays in your breath for a long time.

That’s how Mina Hoorfar, a professor in the School of Engineering at the UBC Okanagan, was able to develop her handheld marijuana breathalyzer: it uses microchannels to segregate all the different volatile organic compounds in a person’s breath, and uses a sensor to detect the big fat THC molecule.

“How long [THC] stays in the body, and how long impairment will last, depends on many factors,” says Hoorfar in an interview with P&I.

“[It depends on] gender, metabolic rate of the body...it depends on the ethnicity, it depends on the diet,” she says. “It depends when you smoke, it depends not just on smoking but how you consume.”

The function of her device, she stresses, should not be confused with measuring impairment. It’s useful for providing law enforcement with a portable, handheld tool to detect THC presence, but drawing any conclusions from that presence is beyond the device’s abilities.

But marijuana does impair several brain functions that should be sharp as a whip before getting behind the wheel. Add to that the fact that marijuana is the second-most-used recreational drug in Canada after alcohol, and it’s reasonable to assume that a lot of Canadians are likely already driving while under the effects of weed; Canada is going to need a realistic framework for how to deal with that.

drug-frEE vErsus drug sprEE

A related issue for legalization is deciding which places in Canada should be 420 friendly, and which should ban the bud.

Canada’s oil and gas industry, for one, wants the federal government to block marijuana use in workplaces where safety is a factor, like, well, oil and gas facilities.

Similar to driving, many Canadians will be showing up to work with residual THC in their bodies, even if they aren’t actually showing up stoned. Instituting drug testing at workplaces with a certain threshold won’t get to the root of the issue, unless

the objective is total and complete zero tolerance, which it very well could be.

Some businesses in the U.S., however, refuse to go this route, because of the fear that their pool of applicants would shrink to an unacceptably small level, according to Occupational Health and Safety magazine.

The question of where marijuana should be allowed to be consumed is even broader. In Colorado, for example, public consumption is banned. Most hotels ban the drug, as do car rental outlets and many other businesses, the Associated Press reports. You can’t smoke up on federal property, either.

In fact, there aren’t many places where

you can burn one, outside of your own home. The marijuana movement in Colorado is currently trying to establish cannabis clubs, but they’re running into opposition.

around thE World in 80 toKEs

But let’s back up a bit. Where in the world can you smoke pot legally in the first place?

We’ve talked about American states so let’s start there. There are four that have fully-legalized marijuana for recreational use—Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington—and 25 states that have legalized medicinal use.

The District of Columbia has legalized both, although it still bans commercial sales thanks to Congressional action. Marijuana remains illegal at the federal level in the United States.

Beyond the First Four, the fight for legal weed in the U.S. is picking up speed. When Americans in five other states go to the polls in November to elect their next president, they will also vote whether to legalize recreational cannabis.

Those states are Arizona, California,

Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada, according to The Denver Post. Four more—Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota—will vote on medical marijuana, the Post reports.

One of those states should stand out to you. California has close to 39 million people, more than the entire population of Canada. The population of all the recreationally legalized states put together adds up to less than half of California’s population. That means if Californians vote to legalize, the state would triple the amount of Americans who can legally smoke dope overnight.

Outside the U.S., it’s a similar patchwork of activity. In 2013, Uruguay became the first, and so far only, country in the world to fully and completely legalize growing, selling, and consuming marijuana on a national level.

Other countries have legalized, decriminalized or otherwise loosened some aspect of their approach to marijuana. Jamaica, for example, has decriminalized small amounts of pot under certain circumstances, while Spain allows the cultivation and smoking of marijuana for personal use, in a private setting. Many people are familiar with the ‘coffeehouses’ in

Amsterdam. In all, 22 countries have some form

of decriminalization, according to the Canadian government’s very handy discussion paper titled “Toward the Legalization, Regulation and Restriction of Access to Marijuana.”

It’s worth noting that this softening in drug policy is not a global phenomenon by any means. In many countries, like China, marijuana is still highly illegal.

for salE: jazz cigarEttEs

Along with where it should be smoked, there’s also the questions of private cultivation and commercial sales.

In Canada’s most populous province, stars seem to be aligning in favour of Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s plan. She has been planting the seeds for months, trying to grow the idea in Ontarians’ minds that the LCBO, the Crown corporation that sells booze across the province, would be the natural place to sell marijuana.

Her argument is that the distribution system is already set up, the carding regime

Medical marijuana activist Russell Barth.

zEro-to-ExpEr t-MArIjuANA


already strong, and the warehouse security measures already tight. Perhaps most importantly, the LCBO idea is supported by Bill Blair, the federal justice minister’s Parliamentary secretary and one of the leading figures in Trudeau’s legalization task force.

Not everyone agrees. The head of the largest food retailer in Canada, Loblaw Companies, which also owns Canada’s largest pharmacy chain Shoppers Drug Mart, wants to sell marijuana through its pharmacies.

Even Wynne has recently begun to waver on her position, suggesting that the LCBO would handle more of the “regulation and distribution and monitoring.” That sounds more like a hybrid system, similar to how British Columbia sells liquor; a mix of private retail stores and government oversight bodies and purchasers.

Still, others think legalized marijuana shouldn’t be sold in storefronts at all, rather that it should replicate the existing medical marijuana regime by allowing Canadians to order their weed directly from licensed producers and have it delivered to them through the mail. That would be the best way to keep it out of the sight of children, they argue.

With any of these systems, there is still the question of whether individual Canadians will be allowed to grow their own. By way of comparison, you can brew your own beer, but you can’t distill your own liquor. Will weed be like the former, or the latter?

The Trudeau government recently changed the rules around medical marijuana, allowing patients to grow a small amount for themselves, or designating someone to grow it for them.

But it’s hard to tell if this is a harbinger of things to come. Trudeau has often talked about the end goal of restricting access, and Blair has seemed to come out against it, saying “it is not like tomatoes.”

blazing a trailFinally, there is the question of how,

procedurally, marijuana will become legalized.

Marijuana has been illegal in Canada for close to 100 years. You can’t produce it, sell it, or even have it in your pocket. If you do any of these things and you’re caught, you can face fines, jail time, or both.

And lots of Canadians do get caught: in 2014 there were 57,314 police-reported drug offences related to pot posession, according to the government’s discussion paper.

There is the exception of the 40,000 people who hold medical weed licenses, the discussion paper says, and as of this month, 35 licensed dealers nationwide, according to Health Canada.

Marijuana is illegal because it’s listed under Canada’s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Legalizing pot, then, means first removing it from that list of illegal drugs. But legalization also means much more. As we’ve seen, it means creating new rules for whether and how weed can be bought, sold, taxed, packaged, distributed, tested, and the like.

There are many people who believe there should be an intermediate step: decriminalization. The term means different things to different people, but generally it means that the cops will stop arresting people for just having a baggie of weed or a joint on them.

That could mean the law doesn’t change and police just look the other way, or it could mean marijuana stops being a criminal offense but is still illegal, like getting a parking ticket. Supporters of decriminalization argue that Canadians shouldn’t continue to be made into criminals for something that soon won’t be a crime.

But critics say decriminalization doesn’t solve the problem of the $7-billion weed black market in Canada. Sure, stoners will be off the hook, but the organized crime that produces and sells weed will continue to operate. Only legalization will destroy the black market, they say.

That’s how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sees it; he’s ruled out decriminalization between now and the spring of 2017, when the Liberals plan to introduce the new law.

So what will be in that law? If we scan the government’s discussion paper for clues, there are some likely factors. The paper suggests the following elements are “largely self-evident”: legalized possession of a certain amount of weed; regulations surrounding its production, distribution, quality, safety, potency and access; new criminal laws to punish those who try to keep selling illegally; support for prevention, addiction and other services; an education and awareness campaign; and data-gathering.

The paper also suggests a few broad elements of regulation: a minimum age; advertising restrictions; setting taxes and prices; banning certain types of products; and limits on possession and sales.

Beyond that, it seems the issue is largely still hazy.


pEoplE-THE BACk PAGE

17 quE sti on s

NataN Obed

Natan Obed is one year into his presidency of the national organization that represents and advocates on behalf of more than 60,000 Inuit living across Canada. Elected at age

39, the energetic head of Inuit Tapiriit kanatami (ITk) is from Nain, the most northern community in Nunatsiavut, Nfld. His campaign commitment was determinedly focused:

create an action plan to prevent suicide in Canada’s Inuit communities. ITk recently released its National Inuit Suicide Prevention Strategy. In this candid response to P&I’s lighter questions, Obed reveals the dreams of his childhood, his not-so-rebellious vice,

and the biggest challenge he’s had to overcome.

W hat were you known for in high school? I was mostly known as an athlete. I ran and played baseball, tennis, and hockey. 2. Coffee or tea? Never coffee; tea only when I’m cold. 3. What’s the best trip you’ve ever taken? I have taken a number of boat trips with my good friend Richard Pamak to the Torngat mountains in Nunatsiavut

(northern Labrador) that have all been memorable. 4. When you were little, what did you want to be when you “grew up”? I wanted to be in the NHL. I had no other aspirations. 5. If you could have

any superpower, what would it be? Flying would be pretty cool, but I think teleporting would be of greater utility in my current job. 6. What is your favourite book? The 1979 edition of

Borrowed Black by Ellen Bryan Obed 7. Everyone has a vice—what’s yours? I drink Coca-Cola sometimes. 8. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? [Inuk leader] Jose Kusugak

once told me how important it is to empathize with—but never pity—capable people who are in difficult circumstances. 9. What’s the best thing about your job? My first job out of university was at ITK, and to now holding the title of president at the same organization is a tremendous honour for me. In this job I have the ability to empower

and support others to see potential and strength in themselves, which then builds more and more success for Inuit. 10. What is the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome? It was challenging to find peace with my identity, and to openly acknowledge my personal or professional deficits without undermining my confidence to do whatever job is put in front of me. 11. You’re hosting a dinner party with three wise people; who do you invite (living or dead)? Barack Obama, Pablo Neruda and Julia Child. 12. What’s your favourite ‘tradition’? The Inuit naming tradition is one that I cherish. My son’s name is Panigusiq, which was my wife’s mother name. She died just before my son was born.

In our culture it isn’t just a passing on of the name. The namesake takes on many specific connections with the people in the community that knew the person who had the name

previously. 13. What’s your proudest accomplishment? Being a good father to my two sons. Panigusiq is 9, and Jushua is 7. 14. If you could get the answer to any question, what

would it be? How do we create an education system across Inuit Nunangat that produces Inuktitut /English grade 12 graduates grounded in our culture and ready for any post-secondary program in the world? 15. What is your most

treasured possession? My father’s copy of the 1977 Labrador Inuit Association land use and occupancy study, Our Footprints are Everywhere. 16. What is your

idea of perfect happiness? Being on the ice in a close game. 17. Who is your real-life hero, and why? Clara Hughes, for her sporting accomplishments, her humility, and

her genuine and selfless relationships with northern indigenous communities.P&I illustration by Anthony Jenkins


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