The Hon. Anne McLellan, Senior Advisor at Bennett Jones and Former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, joins the Hon. Lisa Raitt to discuss the upcoming summit hosted by the Coalition for a Better Future. The summit will bring together international leaders to provide thought leadership about inclusivity, sustainability and economic growth.
Lisa Raitt: Thank you for tuning in to the Raitt Stuff. I'm your host Lisa Raitt, former cabinet minister in Stephen Harper's government from 2008 to 2015. I'm here now at CIBC Capital Markets and in this podcast, I'm going to share insights on current hot topics in the areas of public policy, politics and business with some guests along the way. Hello and welcome back to the Raitt Stuff where we talk about the intersection of public policy and politics. Now I have somebody well versed in both public policy and politics. From a little bit ago, though, with me today to discuss something that she and I are working on together called the Coalition for a better future. I'm so pleased to have with me and McLellan, the former member of Parliament from Alberta, former minister, former deputy prime minister, lots of formers, but currently a fantastic director and also a senior advisor at Bennett Jones. Hi, Anne. Thanks for joining me today.
Anne McLellan: Hi, Lisa, how are you? Good to see you.
Lisa Raitt: I'm doing well, I'm doing well. We've been spending a lot of time with each other lately.
Anne McLellan: We have.
Lisa Raitt: That's a good thing.
Anne McLellan: It's been great.
Lisa Raitt: Anne I'm wondering, just before we start, we're actually recording this the morning of the cabinet shuffle or the announcement of the new cabinet just really quickly just to give a flavour. What's your memory of your first time being sworn into cabinet?
Anne McLellan: Well, my my first time, I did not know I had won my election until the night before the cabinet swearing in. I was holed up in a hotel, in Ottawa waiting and I thought the PM Mr Chretien had made another decision because you can only wait so long as prime minister. But I got the call at 11 o'clock the Wednesday night. The cabinet was sworn in on a Thursday that Mr Chretien had waited and that I was going to be the Minister of Natural Resources show up at the gates of Government House by nine 30 the next morning. And I mean, the whole thing was a blur and honestly, you would remember as well, you know, your first swearing in, your first cabinet position. It's a combination of just being scared and wondering, whether you can do the job but also great anticipation and and you know, Awe. Awe, in a way, walking up that driveway.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah, it's so true. And my first swearing in, I had my kids with me. There were seven and four at the time. I'm trying to wrangle them as we get out of the car. And Rosemary Thompson grabs my seven year old, not physically, but she gets his attention and interviews him for CTV before we go in and I'm thinking, Thank goodness my kid does not know how to say Enercan because that was my first portfolio as well, too.
Anne McLellan: Oh, right. Yeah, of course no.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah, and ironically, we now have Rosemary Thompson working with us on Coalition for a Better Future, which is pretty exciting.
Anne McLellan: So absolutely which is great since you've raised the coalition, which is about one hundred and ten organisations from all across the country. Rosemary, I call her the Coalition Wrangler going forward in the best sense of that word in that we have this big group of people from all organisations, from all over the country and we want to keep them together to talk to each other, sharing their aspirations so that we can get momentum behind an economic growth agenda.
Lisa Raitt: She does. So if I were to ask you, what's the elevator pitch on what we're trying to accomplish as a coalition for a better future?
Anne McLellan: I think to build momentum behind a strategy that focuses on economic growth, which will in turn ensure shared prosperity and the two words shared. And prosperity are equally important.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah, I agree with you. For me, the reason why I well, I agreed to get involved because of the fact that you were involved and we'd worked previously together on, I thought, a very exciting initiative. Yeah, very much. And was deliberative democracy. But the real reason for me was I watched two elections go by. I was involved in one not involved in the second, and they just seem very transactional. And it all seemed to be focussed around just getting the the hearts and the vote of the Canadian taxpayer with with minor, if not smaller than minor tweaks to a system in order to help them feel a little bit better and really lack a vision from all the parties mine included in terms of what economic growth would look like. So I'm hopeful that what we come out of this with is at least some kind of you said momentum, but as well just a gravity and a realisation that this is an important thing and
Anne McLellan: Maybe some encouraging governments and business and civil society to think about what is that long term coherent plan now? The plan will change over time. Look, what's happening geopolitically? No plan is static, but you have to have the frame and you hope that the frame doesn't change every 18 months or even with a change of government, right? You hope that that frame is one that people can count on for at least, you know, a decade, let's say climate change, if we're going to meet our targets, that plan can't change every 18 months, two years or even in every four year election cycle because business is making big, long term investments right to capture GHGs, to apply to implement green technologies. And if governments at whatever level keep changing their incentives and targets, it makes it very hard for good capital deployment and reaching those targets that we all hope the world reaches. So I think the Coalition is about saying we we have a shared outcome here, right? And in fact, the poll that we did of our coalition members, Lisa spoke to the fact that at least that big frame, the issues that would be part of that bigger frame are pretty clear. There's a huge well, there's a very high level ninety seven percent. I think it was Lisa of agreement around the fact that the three top issues for all of us going forward economic growth and employment inequality and climate change. Right. So treat those issues as the big frame. They would be an important part of a framework.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned the poll, the survey that we did with coalition members. Can you give us a sense as to what the other things were that we did in order to build to the conference? This isn't just about having a conference in a lot of talking heads. There's been a lot of effort put in so far. It's different than what you're anticipating, I think if you're listening in.
Anne McLellan: Absolutely. Well, first of all, you and I participated in five regional roundtables organised by the Public Policy Forum, and those roundtables were deliberately organised to feed into both the summit but to feed into the knowledge base for the coalition and for all of us. We in fact surveyed all of our coalition members, not only in terms of those top issues, but in terms of their overall thinking about what they think is missing what we need to help drive economic growth going forward.
Lisa Raitt: We also put together a scorecard.
Anne McLellan: Yes, absolutely, which will be released Thursday afternoon with a statement of principles. And that scorecard we worked on very hard, actually, and looked at what scorecards have developed into in other parts of the world. So it's not a traditional scorecard where you've only got per capita GDP and, you know, things like that, productivity gains or not. This scorecard is going to speak to quality of life issues, standard of living issues, as well as traditional scorecard metrics, and we are going to track those metrics over the coming years, right? We are going to hold people responsible and accountable, and we are going to evaluate on an annual basis whether those metrics are being met by all of us as a country. And some of those metrics will belong to the private sector. Some of them will belong to governments. Some of them will belong to civil society, for example, the non-profit sector, and some of them will focus on, for example, education and who's in the workforce and who isn't. And that speaks directly to inclusion and equality. So, you know, I hope people see the scorecard and think that we have captured those big pieces that we will need to be working on to get the economic growth we need.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah. And the Nova Scotia based roundtable that was held, I thought there was a very interesting comment made, which is Canadians are ready to read statistics because look at what happened during COVID. Everybody understood the numbers, they understood the ICU beds, they understood the percentages, they understood efficiencies of vaccines. So Canadians are they can do this work. We just got to provide them the information on a continuous basis. And that's the goal, right, is to reach through the politicians to the people so that people will start having conversations about economic growth themselves. The one last thing I wanted to mention and the interesting part about the coalition to me as well was not a directive, but a wish that the table stakes of coming in was that you put aside your own advocacy in order to think about what the bigger picture is. Do you think we succeeded in getting people to do that?
Anne McLellan: I think so far, I'm cautious here. I think we'll see coming out of the economic summit where in fact, some of our coalition members will be putting forward their views, their aspirations. We've got a number of case studies from various coalition members doing interesting, exciting things across the country. I think we'll see. I think to a large extent, yes, the goodwill is there. Everybody knows how important this is, and everybody wants to put aside their shorter term specific self-interest to talk about the national interest and what is going to be required for all of us to share in prosperity and succeed going forward. And you know, it will be too Lisa. It's going to be a really important exercise, almost an experiment. It is an experiment because nobody has done this before. As far as we can tell to see coming out of the conference and the scorecard, whether we can keep talking and working as a coalition and pushing and keeping the momentum building around the scorecard metrics. And that is going to be a challenge. And at times, as I've already said, it might be a little messy, but we shouldn't be afraid of that. I think you always talked about the fact that it's important for coalition members to talk to each other and talk past, you know, elected officials at whatever level. And it's not that you don't talk with elected officials, of course you do. But the coalition can be powerful by talking to each other and then talking to their members, talking to people who live in their communities about why this matters.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah, there have been a number of really good solid reports that the government has commissioned over the years. No question about it, but in each and every case, the audience was the government and the members of our coalition would have made submissions to the government on their own. And in this case, there's no government to present to. We're presenting to each other and trying to come up with a plan forward that Canadians can buy into, as well as the government can buy into.
Anne McLellan: Yeah, I would say presenting to each other and to interested Canadians, right? And we would hope to build that group of Canadians. Sometimes, you know, you talk about economic growth or if you talk about productivity, people say, OK, what you're really asking me to do is work harder for less, right? That's why productivity is a word that not a lot of people out there embrace and want to talk about.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah, I think you ended it perfectly there. So let me just do a closing question. Sure. So the summit is happening on Wednesday, starting at 1:30 in the afternoon Eastern Time. There's going to be people both in person, but people can tune in as well, right?
Anne McLellan: An absolutely yes. And we have hundreds of people joining us virtually, Lisa. But there's always room for more. I guess that is one of the benefits of the virtual world. We can have people, we can have hundreds, thousands of people and not only from Canada, but from around the world. So we would encourage anybody who wants to join us virtually. Please register. It's free. And the other thing I would say, I'm not sure whether we have any spaces left in the conference centre in Ottawa, but please people in and around the Ottawa region for sure. If they'd like to register and come in person, please check and see if there's still room.
Lisa Raitt: Absolutely. And the website is. Canada Coalition U.S.A. and as well, we encourage you to tune in, if only to hear these amazing speakers. We're kicking it off with Carolyn Wilkins, who is going to be making the case for economic growth and why it's important to our country. Yeah, it's going to be a very exciting. I'm looking forward to it and I'm really pleased, that we're partnered up on this again. Two Nova Scotians, although they think we're from Ontario and Alberta, we'll we'll just keep that under cover. Thanks for joining us.
Anne McLellan: absolutely. And thanks so much, Lisa and I look forward to seeing you soon.
Lisa Raitt: Thanks so much for tuning in. Now, if you have any questions or comments or even requests on topics to discuss. Drop me a line at Lisa Raitt at CIBC's. Your interactions actually will make this better. I'm your host, Lisa Raitt, and this has been the rate stuff I'll talk to you next week.
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