'It's not okay': Former Liberal cabinet minister Catherine McKenna reflects on harassment facing women politicians

Catherine McKenna, a former Liberal cabinet minister who was often the target of harassment during her time in office, responded Sunday to a video of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland facing verbal abuse in Alberta, stating that intimidation and attacks need to be addressed.

“It’s not okay,” she told CTV News Channel, adding that, too often, it is women and racialized politicians who face heightened vitriol.

McKenna herself had previously been given the misogynistic and patronizing nickname of “Climate Barbie” by critics when she was Environment Minister.

“I don’t want women, I don’t want racialized Canadians, members of the LGBTQ+ community, Indigenous Canadians, to think they can’t go into politics because they’re going to have to stand against this.”

On Friday, a video was shared on Twitter, showing Freeland and several staffers approaching an elevator in the lobby of Grande Prairie, Alta.’s city hall.

The man filming followed Freeland to the elevator, hurling insults and curse words, all while telling her to get out of the province.

“She’s literally stuck in an elevator with all-female staff, I can’t even imagine how they felt,” McKenna said.

“The Deputy prime minister is tough. She can stand up to Putin. But some big guy thinks it’s hilarious to start yelling at her and physically intimidating the Deputy Prime Minister with no security — [it’s] not okay.”

In a statement posted to Twitter on Saturday, Freeland, who was born in Alberta, condemned the “threats and intimidation” and said she was “going to keep coming back because Alberta is home.”

McKenna said when she watched the video of Freeland facing a barrage of insults, she remembered the feeling all too well.

“It’s that feeling where you turn around — someone calls out to you, and you’re open, so you say, ‘hey,’ and then you just get attacked,” she said.

“This is why I’m speaking out, because I remember that feeling of being scared, but I also don’t want other people to go through it.”

During her career in politics, McKenna was frequently subjected to misogynistic harassment, both online and in person, admitting in 2019 that she had begun to need a security detail on occasion — something that ministers generally aren’t equipped with.

A similar situation to Freeland’s encounter occurred outside of McKenna’s office in Ottawa in 2020, when a man approached the office while filming, and shouted expletives at a staffer who answered, at one point referring to McKenna with a misogynistic slur.

On other occasions while she was a politician, McKenna had misogynistic words spray-painted on her campaign headquarters and was confronted with curse words and shouting while in public with her children.

“There were some really high-profile incidents that were really worrying, not just for me, but for my family,” she said.

“But I’m not alone in this. High-profile politicians, especially women, especially if you happen to be racialized, you get attacked.”

McKenna left politics in 2021 after six years as an MP, stating at the time that she wanted to spend more time with her family and focus on tackling climate change from outside of the government.

She said that harassment isn’t how we should deal with conflicting views, stating that it’s clear in the full video of the harassment against Freeland that the situation was humorous to the man who shouted at the deputy prime minister.

“He thinks this is really funny, that he’s tracked down someone who got in politics, may have different vision, but just did it because [they] want to get things done,” McKenna said.

“If you are mad and you have a different vision, go volunteer on a campaign. Use the ballot box, that’s what a democracy is about.”

McKenna had a message for her former colleagues in the House of Commons.

“You have to call this out,” she said. “We need all politicians across party lines to say this is not acceptable.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and numerous politicians have spoken out to condemn the treatment Freeland received in the video, including several Conservative MPs such as leadership candidate Jean Charest.

“What I’d like to see, one, is that there’s a press conference with all party leaders, they stand up and say, ‘This is not okay. This is not okay in Canada, we stand against this kind of abuse [and] harassment, and we’re going to step up security for politicians,’” McKenna said.

“Because it becomes, very quickly, a politicized issue. I remember when I spoke up, and some people would say, ‘what, you can’t take it?’ Yeah, guess what? I can take it, but it’s not okay.”

She added that when politicians engage in personal attacks themselves, it emboldens the behaviour shown in the video with Freeland.

“We can have different views, but we can’t be doing politics like this,” McKenna said.

“We need a conversation here in Canada, and politicians, if you’re going to be in politics, you owe it to behave responsibly. To actually talk, not attack people, but present ideas.”