‘There can be a cost to acting on one’s principles’
Politician, MD passionate about every role
Last Thursday, Jane Philpott gave an impromptu speech at the announcement of the federal government’s new Indigenous child welfare legislation. It was an unusual choice, given she was recently moved out of the Indigenous Services portfolio to become Treasury Board president. “I think by convention ministers don’t generally speak on their previous portfolio, but I will sneak in the opportunity just to say a few words to express my deep, deep joy at seeing this day come and seeing this bill tabled,” she said. Philpott went on to give a candid, heartfelt speech about the new law, intended to reduce the number of Indigenous children in foster care.
“We’ve done some really, really important things that I’m tremendously proud of as a government, but I don’t think there’s anything as important as this,” she said. “This bill is going to change people’s lives.”
The moment highlighted the qualities Philpott brought to her role at the helm of some of the government’s most challenging files, including health and Indigenous services — soft-spoken candour, acknowledged competence, and fierce dedication.
On Monday, Philpott announced her sudden resignation from cabinet in the wake of the growing controversy over allegations that the Prime Minister’s Office pressured former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to negotiate a deal with engineering firm SNC-Lavalin to avoid criminal prosecution. It is an absolute rarity in Canadian politics — a resignation born of principles rather than for anything scandalous done or said. “Unfortunately, the evidence of efforts by politicians and/or officials to pressure the former attorney general to intervene in the criminal case involving SNC-Lavalin … have raised serious concerns for me,” she wrote in her resignation letter. “There can be a cost to acting on one’s principles, but there is a bigger cost to abandoning them.” Such a boldly stated resignation of any minister would be a blow to any government but for it to be Philpott gives it a particular sting as she was regarded as one of the Trudeau government’s most competent and respected ministers.
Philpott spent most of her early years in southern Ontario.
Her father was a Presbyterian minister, her mother a teacher. She once wrote of the lessons she learned on public service from her father, Wallace Little, who fielded calls and made pastoral visits at all hours of day and night. She studied medicine at the University of Western Ontario and the University of Ottawa and did a Tropical Medicine fellowship in Toronto. She worked briefly in Kenya during medical school, then, in 1989, travelled to Niger with her family. Staying until 1998, she practised general medicine and helped train village health workers. Less than two years into her stay in Niger with her husband Pep, who became a CBC Radio journalist, their two-year-old daughter, Emily, contracted bacterial meningitis and died.
Rather than scare her out of Africa, she embraced the loss and dedicated herself to Africa’s health, founding an AIDS charity and helping set up Ethiopia’s first family medicine training program. Once back in Canada, she worked as a family physician and headed the family-medicine department at Markham-Stouffville Hospital, north of Toronto, for almost six years before becoming the Liberal MP for the riding of Markham-Stouffville in 2015. After her win, even though she was a new MP and new to politics, Trudeau named her federal health minister, becoming the first medical doctor to fill the post.
Her former medical colleagues described her to the National Post at the time in glowing terms: engaging, focused, selfless.
As health minister she displayed a remarkable empathy and was able to personalize and connect the concerns of government to the problems citizens face. In 2016, she emotionally recounted her father’s struggle with dementia and the challenges it posed for her mother, who cared for him, when discussing government plans for dementia support.
It was the same passion she brought to her role as minister of Indigenous services, a position she was moved to in 2017.
When Philpott was minister of health, one of the delicate files she was handed was creating an assisted-dying legislation. It was a project she work on closely with the attorney general, Wilson-Raybould. Philpott was not shy with her public admiration for Wilson-Raybould, even as other colleagues, in what appeared to be a concerted government effort, suggested Wilson-Raybould wasn’t up for the stress and pressure of the job.
Within hours of Wilson-Raybould quitting cabinet, however, Philpott tweeted a photo of the two of them together and thanked her for teaching her about Indigenous history, rights and justice. “I’m proud of the laws we worked on together,” she said. Just a few hours before her own bombshell resignation, Philpott stood at a podium in Ottawa, smiling and seeming to be at relative ease, telling her audience she was “thrilled” to welcome folks to an Artificial Intelligence conference.
If her decision had been made by then, she gave no hint.
“As I take on this role as the minister of digital government,” she said, the power and potential of artificial intelligence “is something that is very much on my mind.” She said AI invokes an image of the future.
A few hours after stepping down from the podium, she stepped down from cabinet, creating a new image of her own future.