Watch: The full broadcast of The West Block with Tom Clark, aired Jan. 4, 2015.
Host: Tom Clark
Guest Interviews: Princess Mabel, Employment Minister Jason Kenney, journalists Jennifer Ditchburn and Mark Kennedy
Location: Ottawa
*** please check against delivery. The broadcast is available above and audio is available below.
On this Sunday, the fight to end child marriages: how this one movement could have an impact on poverty, health and education in developing countries.
And, looking into the political crystal ball, what lines will we be reading out of Ottawa in the coming months: reporters Mark Kennedy and Jennifer Ditchburn with their predictions.
And then, we go back into the sky for a little “plane talk”. Employment Minister Jason Kenney answers that burning question: does he want to be prime minister?
It is Sunday, January the 4th, 2015, happy New Year everybody. I’m Tom Clark from the nation’s capital, and you are in The West Block.
Well every year, 15 million girls worldwide are married under the age of 18. Ending this practice has become a priority of the Canadian government. In developing countries, one in nine girls…one in nine is married before turning 15 years old. Some are married off as young as eight or nine.
Audio of Jan. 4 episode:
A global partnership, Girls Not Brides has brought together hundreds of organizations from 60 countries to try and end this horrendous practice. Canada recently committed $10 million dollars to the cause.
Joining me now, her Royal Highness Princess Mabel of the Netherlands. Thank you so much for being here. You know, I’ve spent a lot of time in Africa myself and I’ve seen this problem up close, but I’m interested, curious what got you involved in this?
Princess Mabel:
For me it was the moment…I’ve been active in promoting human rights and development issues for, at the time, more than 15 years and I had no understanding how big this problem was. We’re talking about 15 million girls getting married every year before they are 18. That means, one girl every two seconds. I mean, one girl, another one, another one. And the implications for development are so enormous. Think about it. We say as a global community that we want to bring every girl into school but how can we ever achieve that if girls are pulled out of school in order to get married. Or we say that we want to end maternal mortality, but how can you do that if girls are forced to get married at a very young age and then have babies when they are themselves still children. So I was surprised about the magnitude of the problem and I realized we need to do something about this.
Tom Clark:
So let’s go to the causes of this though because I guess there are multiple. They are based, I guess in culture and religion in many places. And let’s start with that for a second because you are up against a cultural wall, if you want in many countries. How do you breach that wall? How do you change literally centuries of culture around this area?
Princess Mabel:
Well these are social norms that have developed over time, either driven by poverty or by security concerns for the girls, or indeed by tradition, or by the inequality of women. Now I’m convinced every father and every mother want the best for their child but sometimes, child marriage seems to be the best solution. But what we also know is that often it comes with ignorance. And so if trusted people interact with the community, with religious leaders in a community, with traditional leaders, with the teachers, with the fathers, and talk about the damage that child marriage does to the girl, but also to the community as a whole because it keeps the community trapped in poverty. And if you then talk about the alternatives that are out there, you see that actually the men and the boys in the community understand that it is better to end child marriage, which is why I’m so hopeful that we could actually change this in one generation.
Tom Clark:
So it’s not just educating the young women or the young girls in these countries that getting married early is not a really good option for their future but it’s educating the men and the boys particularly.
Princess Mabel:
It is indeed, both are needed because girls also need to learn about their rights. They need to be able to dare to stand up if they find out that they’re being married off to say no, that’s not what I want, but you need to educate the parents. And then you need to make sure that you have alternatives available. So you need to make sure that there is actually quality secondary education for the girls. You need to make sure that there is health services so that the girls don’t have to get pregnant. And what you ultimately need is also, most countries have laws that say no marriage before the age of 18 but the laws don’t get implemented. So what we would like to see is that these laws get implemented and that governments make national action plans. And that’s where Canada’s involvement is so great because Canada has really helped to put this issue of ending child marriage on the global agenda, and is really playing a leadership role. And what I very much hope is, as we see now more and more attention to this issue and as we see more and more money going to the issue and more and more change happening on the ground, that whatever happens in elections in Canada, whatever happens in funding cycles, that this global leadership of Canada in this field will actually continue.
Tom Clark:
You know, I want to pick up one thing that you’ve said a number of times now because you keep on referring to poverty, and we’re still dealing with the causes and how you get over that. It seems to me that in a lot of places, poverty is really at the root of all of this. You don’t basically sell your children into marriage unless you need the money, in many cases. Security, you know, saying it’s a better option for you to marry that 60-year-old than to be on the streets by yourself. I mean it’s a horrible choice to have to make. But at the root of it, if poverty is such a huge part of this problem, how do you attempt to deal with that?
Princess Mabel:
Well imagine a girl who is not married at the age of 13 but who can stay in school until the age of 18. That is going to have a tremendous impact on poverty because we know that every additional year that a girl stays in school her earning power later in life increases by 10-15 per cent. So image what six years of schooling does. That’s almost a doubling of her earning power. And we also know that girls and women are very good in making sure that the money they earn gets invested back into the community. So if you have half a nation, all the women in marriage and not in school and not earning, that keeps a country trapped in poverty, but if you actually make sure these girls stay out of marriage until they are 18 or even older, that they get proper education, that they are safe and secure. It will have a tremendous impact on the wellbeing of countries.
Tom Clark:
You know, I noticed one thing just recently in the last couple of months, I guess it was you were talking about how states react to this. And here we have Bangladesh brought in this oddly named bill called the Child Marriage Restraint Act that actually lowered the age of consent for marriage down to 16. How frustrating is it for you in the work that you are doing when you’re confronted by not only cultural things, but when states themselves start engaging in this type of activity?
Princess Mabel:
You know, I was surprised when I saw the proposal to lower the age of marriage from 18 to 16, but the wonderful thing is that because in the last four or five years, the issue of ending child marriage is getting so much more visibility, as a world community, we were immediately able to react. So my organization, Girls Not Brides helped to issue protest. There were a lot of people who intervened and so it seems that Bangladesh has decided not to go ahead with lowering the age of child marriage, which is a smart thing.
Tom Clark:
So that’s a success.
Princess Mabel:
Definitely and hopefully many, many will follow.
Tom Clark:
Okay, Princess Mabelof the Netherlands, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to talk to me. Thank you so much.
Princess Mabel:
Thank you and thanks to Canada for everything it’s doing to tackle this harmful practice. It’s really appreciated.
Jason Kenney:
The right pedal is?
Tom Clark:
The right pedal takes us to the right.
Jason Kenney:
Okay, that’s where I tend to go.
Tom Clark:
It’s…
Still to come, we go to the skies with Jason Kenney for a little “plane talk”. Why he regrets sometimes getting caught up in the political fray. Stay with us.
Break
Tom Clark:
Welcome back. Well there is a lot on the political agenda this year, a federal budget, the trials of at least two former senators: Mike Duffy and Patrick Brazeau. And of course, a federal election scheduled for October 19th. But, as always, there are other things on the political agenda, like events. Joining me now to take a look at this, the senior parliamentary correspondent for Canadian Press, Jennifer Ditchburn and the parliamentary bureau chief for the Ottawa Citizen, Mark Kennedy, welcome to you both.
Okay, so looking back to last year for a second, give me what you thought was either a highlight or a low light of what we witnessed last year, Jen?
Jennifer Ditchburn:
Wow, well a definite low light would be the handling of Veterans Affairs file and that of course led by Julian Fantino, and I think that case is something that Canadians can really wrap their minds around, especially that footage that was captured of him sort of in a confrontational conversation with a veteran. I think that really sticks in people’s minds and it’s been a file that’s been pretty mishandled over the last year.
Mark Kennedy:
You know for me, if I’m thinking highlights, and I’m thinking if I’m Stephen Harper, what was my highlight of the year?It’s probably that moment across the ocean, far, far away from here, he met up with Mr. Putin and had the opportunity to say, yes, I’ll shake your hand but get out of Ukraine. I think that in his mind, that is what he believed but I think it paid off immensely for him and it really fed into the notion that he now is moving in this year 2015, that it’s best to have an experienced leader at the helm who can stare down people like Mr. Putin.
Tom Clark:
And both those instances are interesting because they are really easy to understand. We’re not talking about billions of dollars and regulations and so on. Okay, I want you to cast your minds ahead now, think of three months from now, and Jen when you sit down at your computer to write that lead story three months from now, what’s that story going to be?
Jennifer Ditchburn:
Well, basically I think that the election campaign has already begun and we’re really going to see that in the New Year. We’re going to see the leaders going and spending a lot of time in the areas the country they think are important and especially the prime minister is going to be spending a lot of time in the greater Toronto area. And I see myself, I mean it’s hard to guess what’s going to happen, what big news is going to break, but I see myself focusing a lot more attention on the GTA, what are the Conservatives doing there, what are the Liberals and the NDP doing there, and what is this going to mean for the October election?
Tom Clark:
And I guess in a way too it’s a bit of…you know the GTA is, with the new ridings that are going to be created in the next election, the suburban ridings of Toronto are going to be mimicked in other places like Calgary and Vancouver and it really is going to become the fight for the suburban vote in Canada.
Jennifer Ditchburn:
Suburban and urban vote and I mean I think connected to that is the NDP and what’s happening to them. Are they going to continue to lose some of their support and that will be a critical issue for the Conservatives over the next year.
Mark Kennedy:
You know within three months from now, we will have had presumably a federal budget that I will be paying a lot of attention to because it’ll put a lot of pressure on the prime minister. I mean my question to them will be, are we really in surplus position or have oil prices dropped so far that can you really assure us all that as we head to an election campaign, we’re not back into deficit even though you’re proclaiming otherwise. The other thing it’ll do, it’ll launch the debate if it hasn’t already been there, which we’ll see over and over during the campaign, which is tax cuts versus targeted spending. What’s more important to you as a Canadian, as a voter, money in your pocket or a program that a Liberal government might bring in or an NDP government might bring in on everything from improving infrastructure, health care, child care, that sort of thing.
Tom Clark:
And of course, one of the other issues out there is there are the personalities: Justin Trudeau, Tom Mulcair, and Stephen Harper. You know if you take a look at the polls, and I know polls change all the time, but if you look at them right now, I think we could all agree that there doesn’t appear to be a majority in those numbers for any party right now, and that’s got to be galling news for the Conservatives who finally got into majority territory in 2011. But I’m wondering if you look down the road to the next election, so 10 months, what is the best case scenario for the Conservatives? Can, in your view, can they get themselves back into majority territory or are we inevitably looking at a minority government?
Jennifer Ditchburn:
I never underestimate Stephen Harper, but I think the best case scenario for him would be that Justin Trudeau trip up and not meet expectations, although I think the Conservatives are pushing the expectations on him very low which might not work out. And also, another best case which I referred to is if the NDP can be propped up or can rise in the polls which ultimately will be good for the Conservatives because it splits the vote.
Tom Clark:
Splits the anti-Conservative vote…
Mark Kennedy:
You know I’ve been thinking about this in so many ways, this year 2015, in this election really is about…it’s a referendum on one person. It’s not the guy who is now at 24 Sussex. It’s the guy who wants to be there, Justin Trudeau. And the question will be can this guy meet expectations? Expectations are high in many quarters. Canadians will ask themselves because Stephen Harper will ask them to ask themselves, can you trust him? If he convinces them, voters, that he’s up to the job, to coin a phrase, he can come in and it could be a large majority. If he stumbles and he stumbles badly, watch for it, the Tories could easily come back in. The question becomes though, is it a minority or a majority because if it’s not a majority for Stephen Harper, he’s got trouble down the road.
Jennifer Ditchburn:
But I mean on the expectations thing, I would argue because their latest moto is that Justin Trudeau is a risk, right? In the latest radio ads that I keep hearing, but if he exceeds that, then I think that’s trouble for the Conservatives. For example, and I might have said this before, but if you get to a debate for example, and he rises to the occasion and then all of sudden Canadians are like, wow this guy’s not so bad. That’s a definite risk for the Conservatives.
Mark Kennedy:
Absolutely, that could be a strategic mistake, couldn’t it? I mean if the Tories have essentially left the impression with Canadians that this guy is a dunce, a dummy who you shouldn’t have in 24 Sussex and he actually suddenly comes out and he impresses people by his capacity to speak in paragraphs and not in simple sound clips, they might say, he’s actually up for the job.
Tom Clark:
In just 30 seconds that we’ve got left, let’s talk about what happens to Tom Mulcair in this situation. If his numbers don’t improve, if he ends up being the third party in the House once again, what about his political future?
Jennifer Ditchburn:
Wow it would be seriously in doubt. It’s a weird situation because I mean both of watch Question Period and he’s real good on his feet. He’s actually, compared to Justin Trudeau, they’re one of the only parties that actually listen to the questions and they actually come back with a question based on the answer. So it’s a bit mystifying what’s going on.
Mark Kennedy:
He’s a smart politician, there’s no doubt. Jen you’re right, I mean when you watch him in the House, he’s not scripted. He knows what to ask and how to respond. He’s good at it.
Tom Clark:
And behind the scenes too, I’ve got to say this he’s actually a very, very decent guy. Anyway, Jen Ditchburn, happy New Year by the way. Mark Kennedy, great to have you here.
Jennifer Ditchburn:
Happy New Year.
Mark Kennedy:
Thank you.
Tom Clark:
Coming up next, Employment Minister, Jason Kenney joins us for a little “plane talk” on his biggest regrets, his Liberal past and his political ambitions.
Break
Tom Clark:
Welcome back. Well he’s a heavy hitter in Stephen Harper’s cabinet but he wasn’t always a Conservative supporter. Employment Minister Jason Kenney agreed recently to get into the plane for a little “plane talk”. Take a look.
Rockcliffe traffic, it’s Charlie, Golf, Bravo, X-ray, Papa (CGBXP) holding on Alpha, lining up 27, immediate take-off Rockcliffe.
Tom Clark:
Jason Kenney, good to have you in the plane.
Jason Kenney:
Great to be here, Tom.
Tom Clark:
I’ve got a few questions for you that we’ve got to go through. Who is your biggest political hero?
Jason Kenney:
Living hero or at any time?
Tom Clark:
At any time.
Jason Kenney:
My biggest hero, I’ve got his picture on my wall, is a guy called William Wilberforce. He was a British parliamentarian for 40 years, most of his life actually in the British Westminster Parliament and he’s the guy who led the campaign that ended slavery in the British Empire.
Tom Clark:
You used to be a Liberal.
Jason Kenney:
Yes, I did.
Tom Clark:
What changed?
Jason Kenney:
I was brushed by reality. You know what, the Canada that I grew up in, in the ‘70’s and ‘80s, it seemed to me that when I look back on it, the political debate ranged all the way from the left to the centre left. I mean there was not a lot of diversity of thought in the Canadian political culture at the time. And when I got to university, I started to read more broadly, both in terms of political philosophy but also contemporary politics and I started to realize that actually my thinking lined up broadly with Conservative thinking.
Tom Clark:
Do you ever want to be prime minister?
Jason Kenney:
Tom, you know, I don’t get fixated on those long-term things. I think the politicians that do, do a terrible disservice to themselves. I’m running the largest department of the Government of Canada and I’ve got two or three full-time jobs.
Tom Clark:
You’ve never thought about it.
Jason Kenney:
I’ll tell you this, if I were fixated on it, I wouldn’t be able to do my job properly.
Tom Clark:
Under what circumstances do you lie?
Jason Kenney:
Well, I got some training from the Jesuits at university. You know they know how to parse words, but I would say probably like a lot of people, probably if I lie, it’s probably to myself generally, like I’m going to get up a couple of hours earlier than expected tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’m going to start my exercise and diet regime. Those are probably my fibs.
Tom Clark:
If you had one regret in your professional life, what would that be?
Jason Kenney:
In my professional life?
Tom Clark:
Professional and personal life.
Jason Kenney:
Well, the personal regret, one comes to mind, I had a phenomenal grandfather who was like a mentor to me. Mark Kenney was his name. He was the biggest big band dance band leader in Canada in the 1930s and ‘40s. He was a superstar in his time and he was also a really passionate Canadian nationalist, a lifetime member of the Liberal party, I should add. And he had so much wisdom, such a gentle and wise man. I wish I had spent more time with him. I think when you get to a certain age, those are the kinds of regrets you start to have. Professionally, yeah I guess if I have a regret it’s that sometimes I’ve allowed myself to get caught up in the fray too much. I try to … if you watch me in question period, you’re generally going to find me quietly working at my desk and actually not getting into the hooting and hollering and cat calling.
Tom Clark:
That’s true.
Jason Kenney:
And I think I need to be even a little bit more disciplined about that.
Tom Clark:
If you weren’t doing politics, what would you want to do next?
Jason Kenney:
Honestly, when I was younger, I always had this idea about going out to the third world and doing development work but I don’t think they’d find me very useful. One thing that I absolutely love, I may perhaps take after my father, who was an educator, a teacher, is I love going into school classrooms, be it elementary, secondary or even university classes, and I just love connecting with young people. I’m very passionate about transmitting ideas. So I’d also love perhaps something in the teaching vocation.
Tom Clark:
Look, I asked this question to Justin Trudeau when he was in the plane and just so I’m completely balanced, I’ll ask you the same question. What product do you use in your hair?
Jason Kenney:
Oh, come on. You know, that’s the most absurd comparison, comparing my hair to Justin’s. Now come on, I know why you asked Justin, but whatever I pick out of the shoe box that is filled with those little hotel shampoo containers. Call me a cheapskate.
Tom Clark:
What’s the nicest thing you could say about Justin Trudeau?
Jason Kenney:
He’s a nice guy. He’s obviously passionate about this country and his family. And obviously growing up as he did, had a pretty unique perspective on Canada that most of us will never have.
Tom Clark:
Tom Mulcair?
Jason Kenney:
He is obviously super smart. He is a very effective parliamentarian in the sense of orator and rhetorician and he knows his issues. I do think he’s a great performer in question period. I think he’s…I mean don’t quote me on this…
Tom Clark:
Oh no, I won’t, it’ll stay between you and me.
Jason Kenney:
Ha ha, but I think he’s a strong leader of the Opposition in the sense of opposing. I think the other side of … I mean in the sense of holding the government to account, I think he does a good job.
Tom Clark:
Listen, I wanted to give you the opportunity to fly the plane. Have you ever flown a small plane before?
Jason Kenney:
I have not.
Tom Clark:
Well let’s give it a shot. You ready?
Jason Kenney:
Sure.
Tom Clark:
OK, so put your feet on the pedals.
Jason Kenney:
All right.
Tom Clark:
Okay, now I’ll just take you through a couple of manoeuvres. So, if we push on this pedal here, the right pedal, it just sort of yaws over.
Jason Kenney:
Sorry, the right pedal is?
Tom Clark:
The right pedal takes us to the right.
Jason Kenney:
OK, that’s where I tend to go.
Tom Clark:
Ha ha, well let’s do a full left turn then. If you want to go up, just pull back a little bit. Sit and pull back with me.
Jason Kenney:
Woah.
Tom Clark:
And if you want to do down…
Jason Kenney:
Woah…ha ha.
Tom Clark:
You OK?
Jason Kenney:
That’s great.
Tom Clark:
Not too high because now we’re in the clouds.
Jason Kenney:
Oh yeah, now we’re in the clouds.
Tom Clark:
It’s foggy enough in the business that you and I are in, we don’t need any more.
Jason Kenney:
This reminds me, my dad was a fighter pilot in the RCAF and he always talked about the kind of mystical experience of flying, especially by himself you know. And I now have a little taste, touch of what he was referring to. Yeah, I’m getting a little more self-confident here at the wheel.
Tom Clark:
I’m getting worried. I may not get the plane back from you now. It is a great sight isn’t it?
Jason Kenney:
Yeah, it’s brilliant.
Tom Clark:
Well that is our show for today, the first of 2015. Thanks very much for being here. And please join us again next Sunday right here for another edition of The West Block.
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