Grand bargains and running like a girl with Catherine McKenna
Description
Catherine McKenna joined me in person for a live recording of this episode at the Naval Club of Toronto here in our east end. We discussed her new book ‘Run Like a Girl’, lessons learned from her six years in federal politics, the reality of political harassment, the tension between party loyalty and telling it like it is, and why we should be wary of “grand bargains” on climate with oil and gas companies.
Catherine served as Environment and Climate Change Minister from 2015-2019 and Infrastructure Minister from 2019-2021. She’s now the founder and CEO of Climate and Nature Solutions and chairs a UN expert group advising the Secretary General on net zero commitments.
Read further:
Run Like A Girl - Catherine McKenna (2025)
https://www.catherinemckenna.ca
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction & Run Like A Girl Book
05:32 Lessons from Politics: Hard Work & Balance
08:52 Climate Barbie & Political Harassment
15:26 Running for Office in Ottawa Centre
23:17 Being a Team Player vs. Speaking Truth
32:05 Leaving Politics
40:30 Climate Policy & the Oil & Gas “Grand Bargain”
48:24 Supporting Others in Politics
52:56 Carbon Pricing Communication Failures
59:13 Gender Balance, Feminism & Cabinet
01:04:04 Final Thoughts & Closing
Transcript:
Nate Erskine-Smith
Well, thank you everyone for joining. This is a live recording of the Uncommon’s podcast, and I’m lucky to be joined by Catherine McKenna, who has a very impressive CV. You will know her as the former Environment Minister. She is also the founder and CEO of Climate and Nature Solutions, a consultancy focused on all things environment and nature protection. And you may or may not know, but she’s also the chair of a UN expert group that gives advice to the Secretary General on net zero solutions. So thank you for coming to Beaches East York.
Catherine McKenna
It’s great to be here. Hello, everyone. And special shout out to the guy who came from, all the way from Bowmanville. That’s awesome. Anyone from Hamilton, that’s where I’m originally found. All right. Nice, we got a shout out for Hamilton. Woo-hoo.
Nate Erskine-Smith
So I ran down a few things you’ve accomplished over the years, but you are also the author of Run Like a Girl. I was at, you mentioned a book launch last night here in Toronto, but I attended your book launch in Ottawa. And you can all pick up a book on the way out. But who did you write this book for?
Catherine McKenna
So, I mean, this book has been a long time in the making. It’s probably been five years. It was a bit of a COVID project. And you’ll see, it’s good, I’ve got my prop here, my book. But you’ll see it’s not a normal kind of book. So it has a lot of images of objects and of, you know, pictures, pictures of me getting ready to go to the state visit dinner that was hosted by Obama while I’m trying to finalize the text on climate. So it’s got like random things in it, but it’s intended for a much broader audience. It’s really intended to inspire women and girls and young people. And I think that’s particularly important right now because I work on climate and I think it’s really hard. Do people here care about climate? Yes, I imagine here you care about climate. I mean, I actually think most Canadians do because they understand the wildfires and they see the smoke and people are being evacuated from communities and you can’t get insurance if you’re in a flood zone. But I do think in particular we need to bolster spirits. But also it’s a book, it’s really about how to make change. It’s not like people think it’s like a political memoir. So I think, you know, fancy people in politics will look at the end of the book to see if their name is there and maybe be disappointed if it isn’t. But it’s not really that kind of book. It’s like I was a kid from Hamilton. I didn’t want to be a politician. That wasn’t my dream when I grew up. I wanted to go to the Olympics for swimming. And spoiler alert, I did not make the Olympic team, but I went to Olympic trials.
Nate Erskine-Smith
You’re close.
Catherine McKenna
I was, well, closest, closest, but, but it wasn’t, I mean, you know, life is a journey and that wasn’t, it wasn’t sad that I didn’t make it, but I think it’s just to hopefully for people to think I can make change too. Like I didn’t come as a fully formed politician that was, you know, destined to be minister for the environment and climate change. So in particular for women and young people who are trying to figure out how to make change, I think it’s a little bit my story. I just tried to figure it out. And one day I decided the best way to make change was to go into politics and get rid of Stephen Harper. That was my goal. He was my inspiration, yes, because we needed a new government. And yeah, so I really, really, really am trying to reach a much broader audience because I think we often are politicians talking to a very narrow group of people, often very partisan. And that’s not my deal. My deal is we need everyone to be making change in their own way. And I want people who are feeling like maybe it’s a bit hard working on climate or in politics or on democracy or human rights that you too can make change.
Nate Erskine-Smith
And you were holding it up. I mean, it’s a bit of a scrapbook. You’ve described it. And it’s also honest. I mean, there was some media coverage of it that was sort of saying, oh, you said this about Trudeau, calling him a loofer. And there’s a certain honesty about I’ve lived in politics and I’m going to call it like it is. But what I find most interesting is not the sort of the gotcha coverage after the fact. It’s when you go to write something, you said you’re not a writer at the launch that I saw in Ottawa, but you obviously sat down and were trying to figure out what are the lessons learned. You’ve had successes, you’ve had failures, and you’re trying to impart these lessons learned. You mentioned you sort of were going down that road a little bit of what you wanted to impart to people, but you’ve had six years in politics at the upper echelon of decision-making on a really important file. I want to get to some of the failures because we’re living through some of them right now, I think. Not of your doing, of conservative doing, unfortunately. But what would you say are the lessons learned that you, you know, as you’re crystallizing the moments you’ve lived through, what are those lessons?
Catherine McKenna
It’s funny because the lessons I learned actually are from swimming in a way that actually you got to do the work. That, you know, you set a long-term goal and, you know, whatever that goal is, whatever you hope to make change on. And then you get up and you do the work. And then you get up the next morning and you do the work again. And sometimes things won’t go your way. But you still get up the next morning. And I think it’s important because, like, you know, look, I will talk, I’m sure, about carbon pricing. We lost the consumer carbon price. There’s a chapter. It’s called Hard Things Are Hard. I’m also, like, really into slogans. I used to be the captain of the U of T swim team. So I feel like my whole life is like a Nike ad or something. Hard things are hard. We can do it. But yeah, I mean, I think that the change is incremental. And sometimes in life, you’re going to have hard times. But the other thing I want people to take from it is that, you know, sometimes you can just go dancing with your friends, right? Or you can call up your book club. I would sometimes have hard days in politics. And I was like, oh, gosh, that was like, what? happened. So I’d send an email, it would say to my book club. So if you have book clubs, book clubs are a good thing. Even if you don’t always read the book, that would be me. But I would be SOS, come to my house. And I’d be like, all I have is like chips and wine, but I just need to hang out with regular people. And I think that’s also important. Like, you know, life is life. Like, you know, you got to do the work if you’re really trying to make change. But some days are going to be harder and sometimes you’re just trying to hang in there and I had you know I had I have three kids one of them they’re older now one of them is actually manning the the booth selling the books but you know when you’re a mom too like you know sometimes you’re going to focus on that so I don’t know I think my my lessons are I I’m too gen x to be like you’ve got to do this and I
Nate Erskine-Smith
learned this and I’m amazing no that’s not writing a graduation speech I’m not I’m not writing a
Catherine McKenna
graduation speech and I don’t know that you know the particular path I took is what anyone else is going to do I was going to I went to Indonesia to do a documentary about Komodo dragons because my roommate asked me to so that led me to go back to Indonesia which led me to work for UN peacekeeping and peacekeeping mission in East Timor but I think it’s also like take risks if you’re a young person Like, don’t, people will tell you all the time how you should do things. And I, you know, often, you know, doubted, should I do this, or I didn’t have enough confidence. And I think that’s often, women often feel like that, I’ll say. And, you know, at the end, sometimes you are right. And it’s okay if your parents don’t like exactly what you’re doing. Or, you know, people say you should stay in corporate law, which I hated. Or, yo
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