Elaine McCoy, the last Progressive Conservative in the Senate, remembers the former Alberta premier
As published on MacLeans.ca on September 18, 2012, By Dale Smith

Progressive Conservative senator Elaine McCoy remains a Progressive Conservative to this day, in large part because of former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed.

“There was an honesty and a decency to Peter Lougheed, and certainly in the way he conducted himself,” McCoy says from her home in Calgary. “Before he was elected–and in fact I have that document–they had made up rules for themselves on how to behave, and the one that strikes me so powerfully these days is ‘never attack the person; only attack an idea.’ That’s a message or a policy or a practice that is just not being honoured these days. I think people need to be reminded of it.”
McCoy first met Lougheed when she moved into his riding, around 1980, and volunteered with his constituency association.

“That was my first memory of him being my MLA, and watching him looking after his constituency,” McCoy says. “I didn’t realise it then quite so much, but he was an example of all of his MLAs. He never forgot his responsibility as an elected representative. He would do things like hold town hall meetings at least twice a year; he’d go door knocking twice a year. Of course he had an annual meeting, he regularly met with his constituency board. He was on top of it all the time.”

McCoy ran to replace Lougheed in the provincial riding of Calgary West after he announced his resignation. As someone who had been chosen to go door knocking with Lougheed on a few occasions, she had apparently impressed him.

“He said to me ‘I’d like you to consider running next time,’ and my response to him was ‘oh no, Peter. You can’t leave – we need you’,” McCoy recalls. “And he said ‘No, no – I would have left last term, but I couldn’t leave in the middle of the NEP debates,’ and he said ‘it’s time – nobody should hang around too long’.”

“That’s what he told me – ‘I think you’d work hard, and you would work for the people of Calgary West and Alberta.’ So then I thought about it,” McCoy says.

After deciding that she could go from a lawyer’s salary to that of a backbencher, she ran and won, and was surprised to have immediately been made cabinet minister in Don Getty’s government, especially considering that she didn’t really know Getty or anyone in the party hierarchy. Later, when Getty resigned, McCoy ran in the leadership race to replace him.

“I was very policy oriented,” McCoy says. “I had a plan to get the province out of debt – it was called the McCoy Plan, and that would have been something I would have learned from Peter – think through what you’re going to do. He always used to say people will vote for something, not against something, and so I had something for people to vote for. They didn’t, but I had something for people to vote for.”
McCoy lost to Ralph Klein in the leadership, and in 2005 was appointed to the Senate by Paul Martin as a Progressive Conservative. She is the last representative of that party on the federal stage, where she still carries forward the Lougheed’s legacy to Ottawa.

“Peter declared, and proudly so right from the get-go, that his would be an activist government,” McCoy says. “He strongly believed that the government has a role. He totally believed that the private sector had a major role, as of course did the not-for-profit sector, but the government was there to help.”
As an example, she recalls going door-knocking with Lougheed at a time of severe recession, and when mortgage rates were in the mid-teens at the time of stagflation.

“Door after door after door, what I was hearing and feeling, and so was he, was fear – fear for their future,” McCoy says. “He went back to Edmonton, and within two or three weeks, he announced a new program, which was a mortgage relief program. So the government issued cheques to people to help them pay their mortgages. He saw that need and he stepped in, and that was his view of what governments should do to help.”
And while it did mean the government took on more debt at a time when royalties were down, it was because Lougheed also understood that governments could weather those downturns better than individuals could.

McCoy has no trouble listing some of Lougheed’s other long-term investments – the grain hoppers the government bought because the railways didn’t have enough to get the province’s crops to tide water; the research and development that led to the exploitation of the oil sands; and the establishment of the petro-chemical industry in the province.

“He took risks,” McCoy says. “But they were well-considered risks.”

H/T to Vance Rodewalt for the Calgary Herald editorial cartoon that says it all.

A month ago, the governments of Canada and Alberta announced a $50 million program to monitor environmental impacts of the oil sands.  The ministers boasted that this effort would prove we have a world class regulatory system whose hallmarks signify scientific versimilitude, transparency and credibility.

Their boasts are doomed to failure.  Federal scientists have now been thoroughly discredited in international circles, and all because political message suppression has effectively muzzled them. 

The independent panel that designed the monitoring program strongly urged the governments to create a stand alone commission free from political interference.  They chose instead to keep it in-house, controlled by assistant deputy ministers who are, like it or not, subject to the whims of their political masters.  No amount of self-righteous rhetoric will insulate monitoring results from the suspicion that they’ve been subjected to spin doctoring.

Yesterday, the Globe and Mail issued an editorial that declared “Federal scientists must be able to speak not only with their professional peers, but also with the public and with journalists, without vetting and preapproval from communications staff.”  Well said … except that the editors justified their position by citing current US moves to promote scientific transparency.  They missed the essential point.  Without it, Canadians will continue to be mired in an endless cycle of reputation mismanagement.

UPDATE:  the full transcript of last night's debate can now be read here ... scroll down to Orders of the Day / Safe Streets and Communities Bill. 

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As warranted I will offer remarks tonight on Bill C-10 to keep interested Canadians up to date on the final stage of debate.      

5:20pm:  The standing vote on the time allocation motion to limit debate of the report and third reading to 6 hours.

Yeas: 50     Nays:  37 

Conservative Senator Nolin voted against the motion.  That's the first time I have ever seen a Conservative vote against his party.  

6:30pm:  Senator Cowan (NS) concluded his speech strongly ... "Our motto should be: Do no harm.  Because Bill C-10 will harm Canadians, I cannot vote in favour of it." 

Senator Runciman (ON) tried to skewer him during questions ... "Didn't former Liberal gov'ts impose minimum sentences?". Weak, a very weak tactic ... the old schoolyard defence ('other kids do it') just doesn't cut it. 

7:25pm:  Senator Fraser (QC), who was credited by Senator Wallace for her knowledge and leadership on handling the witnesses in committee,  says many provisions of Bill C-10 are, quite simply, mean and nasty.  The worst example, she says, is lifting publication bans on children as young as 12 years old.   

She has voted with portions of this bill in the past, and would love to vote freely this time; however cruel aspects, such as the above, far outweigh the benefits of this legislation.

She also refutes some myths perpetrated by the gov't.  Bill C-10 WILL apply to "small fry" as well as to organized crime.  It WILL cost more.  It WILL extend sentencing discretion ... albeit to cops and prosecutors instead of to judges.  And she goes on ... the cruelest myth of all, Senator Fraser says, is the government's promise to help victims.  Witnesses testified that this will not happen because we do not have the resources to implement the bill. 

7:30pm:  Senator LeBretton (ON) is now addressing the bill.  After praising Senator Boisveneue, she continues to say that because the Cons have a majority in the HofC; therefore Canadians agree with them.

She goes on to say that the bill has been criticized because it is hard to understand…I hardly think that is the problem, it is all too easy to understand!  The Leader of the Government in the Senate then turns her attention to a repetition of the provisions which even the Liberals are not disputing. 

8:15pm:  Senator Joyal (QC) claims that five parts of Bill C-10 are unconstitutional. The first is mandatory minimum sentences (MMS).  Apparently the courts have already struck down MMS in previous Criminal Code amendments.  He concludes that we should not proceed without providing for a safety valve allowing judges to opt out of a MMS.

The second area is that of sentencing aboriginal peoples. The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has ruled that they deserve special consideration.   Bill C-10 will eliminate or severely restrict application of this principle.

Third, youth justice ... the SCC has said young people can have diminished capacity because of age and must therefore be dealt with separately from adults.

Fourth, the Federal Court has struck down a Con Minister's refusal to bring prisoners home 13 times.  So that piece of the bill is vulnerable.

Finally, Senator Joyal raises a technical point regarding compensation for victims of terrorism.

8:35pm:  And now we have Senator Carignan (QC).  He claims that Quebecers support safety and protection against crime and that because the Cons won more seats in the Commons, they are acting for most Canadians.

He dwells on allegations that the Cons have been accused of relying on ideology rather than evidence.  Now he is listing all the Liberals in the House of Commons who voted in favour of MMS.  He seems to want to prove that it's a Liberal idea ... not a particularly helpful line of debate, to my mind.

9:05pm:  Senator Tkachuk (SK) speaks to the victims of terrorism portion of Bill C-10.  He's been trying to get this bill passed for seven years. 

9:35pm:  Senator Jaffer (BC) concludes her remarks by saying. "It takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community to keep a child safe and it takes a country to protect all its citizens."

9:45pm:  Senator Nolin (QC) addresses Part 2 of the bill dealing with Controlled Drugs and Substances.

The UN has said that the drug trade around the world is a $450 billion industry.  Profits are being used to support human trafficking and terrorist activities, but none of the profiteers' activities are regulated in any way.  And the problem is getting worse as drug cartels use violence to maintain their hold on the lucrative trade.

Tougher drug laws will not succeed in reducing the crime and violence associated with their illegal status.

Senator Nolin says he had a number of amendments but he has been prevented from putting them forward by the procedures enforced by the motion to curtail debate.  He will, therefore, vote against the whole bill. 

10:15pm:  Senator Campbell (BC) is a member of Stop the Violence BC ... he's against the drug parts of the bill.

10:45pm:  Sen Eggleton (ON) criticizes C-10 because of the disproportionate effect this bill will have on some of the most vulnerable people in our society.  He says that judicial discretion would accommodate appropriate circumstances in each individual case.

12:00am:  Amidst sirens in downtown Ottawa and the Peace Tower striking midnight, the Senate passes Bill C-10 -- 48 in favour, 37 opposed.  Conservative Senator Nolin did as promised and broke party ranks.

The Senate’s Legal Affairs Committee yesterday adopted the ‘Cotler’ amendments to Bill C-10.  In addition, its report made a number of useful observations, but it remained obstinately silent about mandatory minimum sentences.   Voting at the Committee, as predicted, followed party lines. 

In the meantime, The Global Drug Commission today sent an open letter to Prime Minister Harper stating once again that “tougher drug law enforcement tactics such as mandatory minimum sentencing for minor drug law offences will put a huge strain on Canadian taxpayers, will not have the intended effect of creating safer communities, and will instead further entrench the marijuana industry in the hands of organized crime groups.” 

The Commission’s plea will in all likelihood go unheeded, along with the testimony of the Canadian Bar Association and others whose experience has led them to conclude that the government is pursuing a counter-productive course of action.  Instead, I’m told that the Conservative majority in the Senate is planning to limit debate on Bill C-10 to a total of six hours in order to force a final vote tomorrow.  Not that the controversy will end there … it may take several more attempts, but ultimately the preponderance of expert opinion will surely succeed in gathering sufficient public support to put Canada back on the right track.

Mr. Harper's "kind of nationalism requires state-driven conformity," said Lawrence Martin this morning.  Far from maintaining our freedoms and liberties, his policies are leading us in the other direction.  For "a small sampling from the march of audacities", click here.  

Mr. Martin concludes that it’s "the new Canada".  Is it?  Only if Canadians do not continue to speak out in defence of our treasured traditions.

Canadians continue to speak out against the proposed mandatory sentencing provisions of Bill C-10 (see, for example, this video, sent to me by a fellow Albertan).  They do so even knowing that Conservative senators hold a majority in both the Chamber and on our Legal Affairs committee which means that the likelihood of amending the bill in any significant way is virtually nil. 

Many of my correspondents have started asking: What next?  and What is the chance that a future government will reverse the mandatory sections?  In some ways, the answer to both questions is the same.  The fact is that governments and politicans rarely proceed in the face of widespread community opposition.  What is needed, then, is to ensure that opposition to mandatory sentencing becomes widespread. 

That task becomes somewhat more difficult when we all agree, at some level, that getting tough on crime is a good thing.  However, when the law becomes overly simplistic (as it does with mandatory sentencing), we run the danger of resurrecting the truth of the old adage that said 'you might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb'. 

So, what to do next … the important thing is not to give up.  Continue the conversations at all levels – with coworkers, friends, family members, and others in your community.  Regularly support websites and organizations that seek to bring back the balance we used to have in our criminal justice system.  Be sure to include provincial politicians in your correspondence, since they're the ones who administer the jails etc.  And also make sure you know who you're voting for next time.

Unfortunately, there's no quick fix.  I firmly believe, however, that citizens do make a difference in the long run.  So, please, keep the flame burning.  We'll get there in the end.

At lunch today, I was asked when the CPP changes would come into effect in order 'to avert the fiscal crisis'.  "What financial crisis?" I replied.  "No such pension-related crisis exists – the PBO proved it just the other day."   But the conversation continued as if I hadn't spoken at all.

Instead, everyone started saying how old they are.  Anyone aged 58 or older gloated; anyone younger grimaced.  They'd all calculated where they stand vis-à-vis an expected cut-off date.  And none of them questioned the government's storyline – everyone just seemed to take it on faith that, sooner or later, senior citizens are going to bankrupt our national government.  

So here we go again.  The government promotes policies based on fantasy rather than fact, and everyone else, be they politicians, pundits or the public, gets drawn into a pseudo-debate that all too often spirals downward into a round robin of vituperaton and demonization.  

So far, not even the PBO has been able to get the debate back on track.  Perhaps what we need is a Canadian version of FactCheck.org.  The American website says it's devoted "to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics."  It's a kind of do-it-yourself democratic institution meant to counter the proliferation of politically motivated fantasies.  We could do with something similar here in Canada.

Four former BC attorneys-general have joined the call to legalize marijuana.  They cite the usual evidence – escalating crime, unconscionable profits for gangsters, lost opportunities for legitimate entrepreneurs and an imbalance in social costs and benefits – all of which provide cogent support for a change in Canadian policy.

I say, yes – let's do it! 

If you wish to support Senator Larry Campbell and others in their efforts to bring Canada into an enlightened 21st century, click here.

Invest $21 million; save $128 million … really?  That sounds a bit fantabulous given today’s marketplace.  Nevertheless, a recent study by C3, Alberta’s independent climate change agency, demonstrates we can readily achieve these results in just one province.  How?  Energy conservation is the answer.

Furthermore, if Albertans undertook all options available to convert residential, commercial and institutional buildings into highly energy efficient technology partners, we could save almost $700 million on an investment of just $326 million.  The results would be even more positive if industrial applications were added to the calculations.

What C3 has done is prove Walt Patterson’s assertion that the “first strand in reducing our dependence on fuel ought to be upgrading existing buildings and other user-technology – the top priority for real energy policy around the world.”  Yet politicians continue to shy away from paying little more than lip service to the potential for real productivity gains in the realm of energy efficiency programs. 

In an effort to persuade policy makers to take a more aggressive approach, C3 is preparing a best practice planning framework.  Stay tuned … if we’re serious about adopting a comprehensive national energy consensus, C3’s framework could very well provide us with a critical piece of the roadmap we need to succeed.

Amidst all the palaver over the past few weeks about US foundations investing in environmental advocacy groups which have lambasted Canada’s oil sands, I find myself decrying both the overwrought emotional hyperbole of some Ministers, and the highly emotive, unconscionable factual distortion of some NGOs.  Neither brand of rhetoric can be condoned.  Happily, Rick Mercer recently weighed in on a few of the absurdities being bandied about.  Click here, if you’re in the mood for a moment of much needed comic relief.

Six and a half years ago, I co-chaired an evaluation of K-12 schools operated by First Nations (FN) on reserves.  We concluded that FN education was significantly under-funded and lacked adequate institutional and data support systems. We recommended immediate action to remedy this sorry state of affairs.

Yesterday, a high profile government panel came to the same conclusions.   It called for an instantaneous funding increase to bring FN schools up to par with their provincial counterparts.  The panel also outlined a number of institutional and data upgrades that would provide long-term foundations for an adequate education system.  The Minister is making no promises, however.  He trotted out the usual anodyne statements and was reported as saying the panel’s timelines are “aspirational”.

Enough.  As the Honourable Bill McKnight, Treaty Commissioner, Treaty Commission of Saskatchewan said a couple of years ago, “It’s not that we don’t know what to do.  It’s that we don’t do what we already know.”  *  If Mr. Harper were serious about giving First Nations the tools they need when he spoke at their joint meeting 15 days ago, his government’s immediate adoption of the panel’s report – including more money – should follow without further ado.

* Quoted at page 60 of the Senate’s Aboriginal Peoples Committee Education Report (December 2011).

Alberta’s Throne Speech may have included few blockbuster announcements yesterday, but its overall tone is surely a breath of fresh air.  Partnerships, reaching out, inclusion, teamwork, helping others in Alberta, Canada and beyond … all 12 pages of the Speech resonate with a new collaborative spirit that reflects well on Premier Redford and her leadership style.

Perhaps one of the clearest expressions of the new approach comes at pages 6 and 7:

Albertans expect government to work together on their behalf and your government will not let you down. … A Canadian Energy Strategy will play a major role in this effort. Energy is critical to our prosperity, but Alberta must diversify its customer base to achieve the greatest returns. Your government will actively design initiatives to access global markets and assist Canadians and our trading partners in understanding Alberta’s energy goals. The infrastructure necessary to get our resources to new markets must cross other jurisdictions, so any expansion will involve various partners at the provincial, national and international levels. The more we work together to coordinate our efforts, the greater our success and the more prosperity for everyone involved.     

H/T to Andrew Coyne for setting the record straight today on the issue of Caterpillar’s alleged rape and pillage of intellectual property and tax breaks.  According to his research, the company (Electro-Motive Diesel or EMD) has always been owned by Americans, conducted all its design and engineering work at its long-standing plant in Illinois, and has never received a subsidy from the current government.

Therefore, although criticism of Caterpillar’s appalling labour relations is more than valid, accusations that it committed some form of national property theft do not pass muster.  Mr. Coyne deserves credit for upholding what should be a basic professional standard amongst journalists (not to mention others, including pundits, public servants and policy wonks) – validate the facts first, please.  

Another long-term senior analyst has left Statistics Canada, citing political interference with freedom to conduct his job in a professional manner.  He leaves behind him an agency contemplating program cuts and openly discussing the challenge to maintain its integrity.  Any bets that crime statistics will be one of the first candidates for the axe?  After all, as Justice Minister Nicholson said flat out last September, the Harper administration is “not governing on the basis of the latest statistics.”

Amidst the bad news, however, shines a beacon of hope.  StatsCan officially opened up access to its main database this month.  CANSIM (Canadian Socio-economic Information Management System) is a collection of data tables on various social and economic aspects of our nation that includes over 36 million time series.  For the past couple of decades, researchers were required to pay a fee for each segment of data requested.  Now the data can be downloaded free of charge. 

Alberta and Canada have just announced a multi-year plan for monitoring the oil sands.  Boosting the program from $20 to $50 million a year, the governments promise more and better data, as well as public access to the monitoring results.  The increased costs are to be funded by industry, according to the Environment Ministers who made the joint announcement.  So far so good.  But will it pass the sniff test of credibility? 

Without wanting to sound too pessimistic, I have my doubts.  Last year, the Government of Alberta commissioned a panel to make recommendations for a new, world class monitoring system which reported out at the end of June.  One of its key recommendations was to create an independent monitoring commission.  Under the heading ‘Legitimacy’, this is what its co-chairs had to say (at page 28):

Governments must deal with the inherent conflict of being the resource owner, regulator and revenue taker. For the new monitoring system to have the requisite legitimacy and scientific credibility, the system must operate at arm’s length from all affected parties, including governments, regulators and those being regulated.

Ignoring this advice, the governments have chosen to initiate a program that reports to two assistant deputy ministers, one federal and one provincial.  Although they say that data “will be made public on an ongoing basis”, the only independent review that is planned is not scheduled for another three years.  That’s a very long time, given the rapidity of our contemporary news cycles.  In the meantime, anyone who cares to interpret the monitoring results in whatever way best suits their own agenda (whether it be political, corporate or contrarian) will have free rein.  Without an authoritative, independent third-party to provide definitive statements on the state of the environment and human health in the oil sands region, Canadians and others around the world still won’t know who to believe.

I’ve been waiting for RCMP Chief Commissioner Paulson to assert his independence from political interference.  When he told Senator Kenny he could not meet without ministerial permission, I thought perhaps he’d misunderstood the policy.  Not so.  Yesterday, at a Commons committee meeting he declared he agreed with the rule imposed by Minister Toews, although he still didn’t appear to have a very clear idea of what the rule is.

Now, I’m concerned.  The Chief Commissioner should have absolute discretion to meet with whomever he chooses.  By the same token, we as citizens and parliamentarians should be able to trust in his discretion, as well as his acumen, to conduct his meetings appropriately.  If something arises in the course of his meetings that he feels the Minister should know, of course he should share that information, particularly if the Minister is likely to be asked questions about whatever issue is under discussion.  But he should not need permission to meet anyone, for any reason, and he should not be required to include other participants according to ministerial dictates.

Mr. Paulson’s difficulty seems to centre on the meaning of ‘political’.  He correctly stated that it is not his role to comment “publicly on legislation or matters of the government.”  However, he has complete responsibility for running the RCMP which is not, and should not be, a political issue.  As such, he should be fully free to choose with whom he meets, including parliamentarians.

Mr. Toews, on the other hand, obviously assumes that all parliamentarians would automatically talk about the government and its ministers (i.e., politics) rather than issues and policies within the purview of the RCMP Commissioner’s remit.  That attitude reflects more on his own world view than on reality.  Moreover, it simply reinforces what we’ve come to expect from Conservative cabinet ministers who routinely interpret everything in the light of their partisan interests. 

It’s always sad to watch doors being slammed shut on programs that help accelerate a brighter, more sustainable future.  Suspending the EcoEnergy Retrofit program is one case in point.  Buried at the bottom of a press release issued on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, the government’s announcement still reverberated loud and clear.  No more funding for homeowners trying to get ahead of the energy productivity curve by upgrading their homes with better insulation and higher efficiency furnaces.

To be sure, ending the residential grant program won’t mean that retrofits in that sector cease.  They just won’t go forward as quickly as they might otherwise have done.  However, they constitute only one part of the overall EcoEnergy program;  altogether it comprises something like 15 components, including grants, mentoring and training sessions for the industrial and commercial / institutional sectors as well as for homes. It would appear from Natural Resource Canada’s departmental plan that all the grant components are slated for termination. 

Leading thinkers in the field of energy policy have long advocated aggressive action to increase energy productivity in the way we deploy our resources.  Walt Patterson of the UK’s Chatham House, e.g., is of the firm view that “The first strand in reducing our dependence on fuel ought to be upgrading existing buildings and other user-technology – the top priority for real energy policy around the world.”  Limited in its scope though it was, Canada’s EcoEnergy Retrofit program was doing just that, as a recent evaluation of the program concluded.   Backing out of these activities means that the federal government has once again committed itself to mediocrity.  One can only shake one’s head in mournful regret for what might have been – namely, an enlightened, multifaceted and proactive commitment to a truly sustainable clean energy future.