Category: Chairman’s Desk

This column originally appeared in the Toronto Star on Sunday, October 13.

As we all gathered around to celebrate thanksgiving this weekend, I felt especially grateful for my incredible family and so lucky to have with us my amazing mother, a woman whose view of the world and commitment to the service of others has so profoundly influenced me and the person I have become.

Sadly, in recent years, my mother’s cognitive facilities have declined with a swiftness that is both devastating and unspeakably heart breaking.

As our family, like so many others, talked about the election together this weekend, I began to think about the role played by Canadians — approximately 500,000 Canadians — with cognitive impairments in our most basic democratic tradition. How, I wondered, do individuals like my mother participate in our democracy and what supports are in place for them to do so?

By the next election in 2023-2024, nearly 1-in-5 Canadians will be older than 65, and with that demographic shift will come increased rates of Alzheimer’s and dementia. We also know that older voters turn out to the polls in disproportionate numbers.

Having reached her eighth decade, my mother lives in a country almost unique in the world where there are no restrictions on her ability to vote regardless of how much her mental condition deteriorates. In a survey of 62 countries, only four lacked a mental capacity requirement on the right to vote. (The others are Ireland, Italy and Sweden.) Within Canada, only one province or territory, Nunavut, has such a restriction on the eligibility to vote.

South of the border, by contrast, such restrictions are the norm. More than 30 U.S. states have laws limiting those with mental disabilities or cognitive impairments from voting if they have been ruled legally incompetent.

These restrictions do not only impact the elderly, as many illnesses or conditions can result in cognitive impairment including multiple sclerosis, strokes, traumatic brain injuries, Parkinson’s or Huntington’s disease, as well as Alzheimer’s and dementia. In cases where successful legal challenges have been mounted against mental capacity requirements, the plaintiffs are often autistic.

As with so many of the battles over voting rights, the argument in favour of restrictions boils down to a defence against voter fraud. Proponents fear that people will use the vulnerable and the elderly to harvest their ballots.

Until 1988, this was the basis of the law in Canada, as dictated by the mental capacity provision of the Canadian Elections Act, which excluded from voting any person who was “restrained of his liberty of movement or deprived of the management of his property by reason of mental disease.” That year, Madam Justice Reed held that the provision was in violation of the Charter, which guarantees to every Canadian citizen the right to vote.

“It simply does not follow that people who are declared incapable of managing their financial affairs are necessarily incapable of understanding the nature of the right to vote and of exercising it in a rational manner,” wrote Justice Reed.

While subsequent blue-ribbon panels recommended a narrower restriction, Parliament opted simply to repeal the law in time for the 1993 federal election. Nothing has yet replaced it, and so far, our democracy has gotten along just fine since then.

What’s more, a number of informal approaches have developed to ensure abuse does not take place. U.S. surveys have shown that in nursing homes, where this kind of challenge is a perennial problem, staff have figured out a gatekeeping system, quizzing residents on political questions to assess whether they are in a state of mind to vote.

The approach that forbids anyone in a long-term care home or anyone with a cognitive impairment from voting is rooted in an outdated view of mental health. Where once we sought to institutionalize those with mental disabilities to be cared for and saved from themselves, today, the prevailing view favours integration with the community. Today, the goal is a meaningful life lived as much as possible like everyone else. And there is no more meaningful contribution to our society than voting.

This article first appeared in the Toronto Star on October 6, 2019.

Watching the first French-language leaders’ debate this past Wednesday, I was struck by the increasing banality of our current election campaign. Over the course of my career, I’ve seen — and been involved in — many elections. I have seen promising candidates brought down by the pressures of the campaign, I’ve seen parties unexpectedly soar, only to fall again and, through it all, I have learned that no two elections are ever the same.

True, there are always similarities. Some unexpected development will always shift the spotlight away from policy discussions, one candidate will always have something dredged up from their past and the media will almost always decide that a performance in the leaders’ debate has “changed the game.”

That being said, as the leaders unveiled their platforms in recent weeks, I have been struck less by what is new and more by what is missing. Frankly, I find myself asking: where is the “moon shot” designed to capture the imagination of Canadians? Whatever happened to sweeping, bold ideas that would serve to unite our country?

Whether it’s the result of too many focus groups or an overreliance on polling, this election has seen the major parties put forward suggestions that are small, incremental, narrow-minded and focused on the short-term. It has resulted in a series of platforms that are concentrated on the lowest-common denominator.

Gone, it seems, are the days when voters were challenged to think about “What’s in it for Canadians?” Instead, our parties have settled on “What’s in it for you?”

In elections past, parties sought to capture Canadians’ imaginations with a vision of what the future could be.

Lester Pearson rallied Canadians in 1963 with his “60 Days of Decision,” a pledge that his government would do more on key issues in mere months than the Diefenbaker government had. His vision ran from universal health care to the Canada Pension Plan and he pressed a serious debate about our national identity and its symbols.

In 1988, Brian Mulroney championed the possibilities that would come from free trade. Whatever you might think of the issue, it served as a mission, something for Canadians to fight for, together.

In 2015, Justin Trudeau offered a different kind of vision. In contrast to the balanced budget orthodoxy of the Chretien-Martin-Harper years, Trudeau suggested Canadians should embrace deficit spending. For a country that had fared comparatively well in the 2008 recession but was nonetheless still feeling its aftershocks, the Liberals’ vision was a welcome — and in the minds of many Canadians, well-deserved — reprieve from a long period of austerity.

All of which asks the question: what would happen if our parties were focused not just on giving things to the middle class, but instead giving something for the middle class to believe in?

Some say national pharmacare is just that: a vision for a changed society in which no Canadian goes without the medication she or he needs. It’s clear that Canadians are hurting and simplified access to medication could provide help to families and individuals who desperately need it.

But, in my view, pharmacare is an incremental change, not a revolutionary one. And, as any economist or policy wonk will tell you, the problem is that it’s near impossible to capture the imagination with incremental change.

And it is certainly not a big enough idea to serve as a rallying cry for our country as a whole.

So, what would a sweeping policy vision look like in this election? Well, given that we know stable housing is a key determinant of social and health outcomes, how about a pledge to provide stable housing for every single Canadian?

This article originally appeared in the Toronto Star on September 29, 2019.

In a week with no shortage of international political theatre, from the launch of impeachment proceedings in Washington to the showdown between Parliament and the Supreme Court in London, I found myself returning again to watch a clip of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg in tears, excoriating delegates at a United Nations summit for their inaction on climate change.

On Friday, thousands of Canadians participated in a movement of rotating strikes and protests inspired by Thunberg. It seems that more and more of us are thinking longer and harder about the environment than we ever have before.

In the run-up to the election, pollsters told us that voters ranked the environment higher than ever before as a ballot issue they cared about. What’s more, in some polls, it edged out the perennial leading concerns: health care and the economy.

These findings mark a public opinion sea change from 2015, when barely one-tenth of voters were prioritizing the environment and climate change.

And the parties are paying attention. For the second election in a row, each has addressed environmental issues and climate change in their platforms. But given the increase in interest Canadians are showing toward these policies, it will be the first election where voters now claim to actually care about this issue. This sudden scrambling of priorities means that now we might put to the test once and for all the question of whether Canadians truly care about the environment.

The Liberals are certainly hoping so. Much as in 2015, they have embraced environmentalism as not only a core platform plank, but as a fundamental generational obligation.

They have sent the prime minister out canoeing and hiking to illustrate his commitment to the land and have gone further by pledging to protect 25 per cent of Canada’s land and oceans by 2025.

They have gone to the mat defending the carbon tax (or “price on pollution,” as they prefer to call it), even as it has contributed to a wave of right-wing victories at the provincial level. Yet for some voters, their message has been muddled by their simultaneous backing of pipelines.

The Conservatives are offering a business-friendly plan of their own that relies on innovation and the encouragement of the adoption of new technology, such as capture-and-storage. They promise to repeal the carbon tax and help other countries lower their emissions.

The New Democrats have largely been missing in action, proposing to tinker with the carbon tax and complete the move to zero-carbon energy by 2050.

Stepping into the breach, however, has been Elizabeth May’s Green Party, who have the most to gain from this apparent surge in environmentalism. The party has occasionally pulled ahead of the NDP in the polls, and their provincial counterparts have consistently exceeded expectations.

With an entire platform that revolves around an issue that Canadians suddenly profess to care deeply about, this election represents a golden opportunity for her and her colleagues.

May is the most experienced federal leader, no longer a novelty on the debate stage. She may well be an attractive alternative to disaffected Liberals, who often rank climate change as a higher issue than voters in other parties.

To be that alternative, May will need to be more disciplined during the balance of the campaign. She, and her party, will need to avoid such embarrassing sideshows as a rolling controversy this week over a photoshopped image of her, altered to include a reusable cup instead of a disposable one.

So, does this all represent a once-in-a-career harmonic convergence for May?

While Canadians tripped over themselves to tell one pollster just how much they cared for the environment, another poll quietly released last week by Ipsos found that while nearly half of Canadians wanted action on climate change, that number fell to barely a quarter if the cost were to be even a single cent.

Not unlike their prime minister, Canadians fall sometimes into the habit of virtue signalling. The environment has always been a victim of the gulf between voters’ intentions and their behaviour. This election will once again test that trend.

The article originally appeared in the Toronto Star on September 22, 2019.

This week, the federal election campaign was thrown into chaos when years-old pictures emerged of Justin Trudeau dressed-up in a way most would deem highly inappropriate.

Commentators around the country, indeed around the world, have weighed in with comments on the prime minister’s conduct and the sincerity of his apologies.

For a country that all too often rests on its laurels when it comes to issues of discrimination and race, it is an important conversation to have. We like to smugly contrast ourselves favourably with our southern neighbours and sing the praises of our multicultural society.

We hear it all the time: “Canada is a mosaic, not a melting pot,” and, “Toronto is the most multicultural city in the world.”

Well, yes, but that multiculturalism did not come without a price paid by many Canadians — especially racialized and Indigenous groups — who still face prejudice every day of their lives.

Their experiences are their own and not only do I do not presume to speak on their behalf, I can’t. As a gay man, I can, however, share some of the pain and humiliation of having had to endure painful and haunting episodes of discrimination in my own life. It is about more than political correctness — it is about lived experience.

So, when I first saw those images on Wednesday evening, I was of course taken aback. Sitting at dinner with my colleagues, I began to wonder, “how will the prime minister respond to this? Will Canadians ever forgive him?”

Forgiveness in the public sphere need not be a complicated thing. Over the course of my career I have had the privilege to meet with and learn from Canadians, literally, from all walks of life. And I have come to learn just how decent and understanding they are. If Canadians feel that someone has made a mistake for which they are genuinely contrite, they have an astounding capacity for forgiveness.

The key to that forgiveness, however, lies in the word genuine. A sense of authentic penitence is the essential starting point of public reconciliation. Without it, an apology is not worth the paper on which it’s written.

But there is more. The apology itself matters. A lot.

Trudeau’s hasty apology on Wednesday night missed the mark. His focus was on himself. Not on those he hurt and harmed.

On Thursday, Trudeau tried again. And this time he got it right.

“I was blind,” he said, “to the pain that I may have caused at those times and that I am now causing to people that count on me to defend them.”

He spoke as someone who understood he had made a mistake. As a man who deeply regretted his actions and had only recently come to understand their significance.

Time will tell whether this incident has shifted the dial of his electoral fate.

Asked why he should be allowed to stay in office, I was struck by the Liberal leader’s response: “I’m going to be asking Canadians to forgive me for what I did.”

His answer stood in stark contrast to his unequivocal non-apologies in the SNC-Lavalin affair and it spoke to a comprehension of the severity of his actions.

But, what does it really mean for Canadians to forgive a public figure?

In a practical sense, forgiveness at the polls would mean allowing Trudeau to return to Ottawa and begin, in earnest, to reconcile the hurt he has inflicted.

On a deeper level, the prime minister may wish for Canadians to view his past transgressions as the starting point of his transformation into a devoted public servant.

Is it not a testament to his “different” vision for Canadian politics that the obliviously ignorant man in those photos could, 20 years later, become a champion for the rights of minorities and the oppressed?

Forgiveness is a journey and Trudeau will have to continue working to prove that those photos do not represent the man who wants to be our prime minister today.

The process will be drawn-out, uncomfortable and, at times, painful. Perhaps that is a fitting penance, given the very real pain that has been caused.

 

Executive Chairman Jaime Watt joins CTV’s Your Morning to discuss Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s scandal this week and subsequent apology.