‘There’s huge opportunities’
Catherine McKenna embraces new portfolio
When Catherine McKenna got the news that she was moving into a fresh portfolio, she started thinking about her next triad of priorities.
“I work in threes,” she said in an interview this week after her swearing-in as Canada’s new infrastructure and communities minister. She did the same thing four years ago when she was appointed, as a rookie MP, minister of environment and climate change. (She also had three themes for her 2019 re-election campaign in Ottawa Centre.)
Her three primary objectives in the ECC post were implementing the country’s first carbon-pricing climate plan, “better rules for major projects,” i.e. the new Impact Assessment Act, and increasing parks and protected areas. They became defining policies of her tenure — loved by some, loathed by others.
Of course, there are countless other action items in a ministerial portfolio. “But I think it is useful to have pretty clear deliverables in your head so you wake up every morning thinking, ‘How am I advancing those three files?’” said McKenna. “You know that these are the things you absolutely want to do.”
She’s waiting to get better acquainted with her new portfolio and its $180-billion infrastructure plan before saying definitively what her new priorities will be. But it’s safe to assume one will be climate-related, she said.
Even as McKenna moves on to a new challenge — one she says she’s “really excited” about — she’s keeping an eye on the portfolio she held longer than all but one other environment minister in Canadian history.
“I feel like it’s in great hands,” she said. Her former parliamentary secretary, Jonathan Wilkinson, is taking on the job. But she’s also vowed to keep pushing for climate action at the cabinet table.
At the same time, McKenna is looking forward to a change. Working on infrastructure and communities, “there’s huge opportunities, and I think it’s a much more positive space with provinces,” she said.
As environment minister, she clashed publicly with Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his Conservative counterparts in the West on climate policy. Asked how she was going to work productively with Ford in her new role, considering her frequent public critiques of the premier, McKenna was optimistic.
“Ultimately we’re all here to serve, in this case, Ontarians, and to get things built that we need,” she said. “It’s incumbent on us to figure out a path to move forward, get shovels in the ground, get these projects going.”
Unlike her previous post, she explained that this new role deals in the realm of tangible things. “When you think about having a national climate plan and a price on pollution, it’s a bit abstract,” McKenna said. “This is a Flora Footbridge, it is LRT, it is fixing up the Boys and Girls Club, it’s the renovation to the National Arts Centre, it’s the new central library.”
This list goes on. There happens to be considerable overlap between the infrastructure portfolio and McKenna’s priorities as the member of Parliament for Ottawa Centre.
McKenna announced during her re-election campaign that she’ll advocate for the transformation of the Prince of Wales bridge into a pedestrian and cycling link.
She’s already preparing for a conversations with the mayor and the province about LRT. Flood mitigation will be an area of focus. So too will future of transportation between Ottawa and Gatineau — a contentious topic involving various infrastructure proposals, from a truck tunnel to a new (or two) interprovincial bridges.
McKenna will also have to work closely with the minister responsible for the National Capital Commission on many of these projects. The new appointment to the job is, once again, a minister from outside the NCR