Elaine McCoy

Senate of Canada

McCoy was appointed to the Senate by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, on the recommendation of Prime Minister Paul Martin, on March 24, 2005. She sits in the Upper House representing Alberta as an Independent. Unless she resigns, McCoy will continue to sit in the Senate until March 7, 2021. She currently sits on the Senate Committee for Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament, and previously, on the Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

Initially a member of the Progressive Conservative caucus, a rump caucus made of Tory Senators who had refused to join the new Conservative Party of Canada in 2003, McCoy was ultimately the last Progressive Conservative in the chamber following the retirement of Senator Lowell Murray in 2011. She changed her designation to Independent PC in 2013 and then to non-affiliated in 2016, following the decision by the government of Justin Trudeau to make the Senate a non-partisan institution and appoint independent Senators. In September 2016, she and fourteen other non-affiliated Senators formed the Independent Senators Group to advocate for the rights of non-affiliated Senators as the upper house was still organized around partisan lines resulting in non-affiliated Senators being underrepresented on committees and not receiving the funding given to party caucuses. McCoy was elected facilitator of the new group for the 2016-2017 parliamentary term. In December 2016, the Senate agreed to recognize the ISG and granted it funding and also agreed that non-affiliated Senators would be appointed to Senate committees in numbers proportionate to their numbers in the Senate.

Initiatives in the Senate

Since being appointed to the Senate, McCoy has been an influential voice for the role of the individual Senator, for effective Senate reform, for an inclusive federation and the role of Alberta in Canada. McCoy broke new ground with her website, www.albertasenator.ca, and was one of the first members of the Senate of Canada to blog and tweet on her experiences in Ottawa and the political issues of the day. A feature article on McCoy in Maclean's magazine calls her a "symbol of defiance" as one of only two Progressive Conservative Senators then remaining in federal politics and someone who "defines herself as socially progressive and fiscally conservative."

During her tenure as Senator, she has launched two web-based projects. Savvy Senate, provides precis of several dozens of landmark Senate reports organized alphabetically by topic, highlighting the context, import and public reception (positive and negative) for each report, with hyperlinks to the report and media follow up.

In April 2014, McCoy launched a new web-based initiative on energy and the environment for the Canadian context: Your Energy Story. According to the site, it was designed "to make linkages between energy end uses and energy sources" and provides raw data on energy consumption and generation for both renewable and non-renewable resources, organized by provinces and territories across Canada. It employs one common energy unit for all types of energy – the gigajoule – in order to make comparisons between energy types possible for the average consumer. It also provides greenhouse gas emissions for the production of each energy type and end use.

McCoy is an important part of Calgary's environmental and charitable communities. She currently has or has had held memberships and leadership positions in many organizations, including:

Macleod Institute

A lawyer by profession, McCoy is President of the Macleod Institute, affiliated with the University of Calgary, which is known for its expertise on program evaluations and environmental management. In this position, she authored the influential Bow Corridor Regional Mobility Strategy. Other highlighted achievements while at the Macleod Institute include:

Alberta Right-to-Work Joint Review Committee

In 1995, McCoy was asked by the Alberta Government to Chair a Joint Review Committee (JRC) into whether or not Right-to-Work (RTW) legislation would be beneficial to the province. The study defined RTW legislation as ‘legislation that would prohibit employers and employees from agreeing to any form of union shop, closed shop or dues check-off arrangement.’ The Committee was formed on March 14, 1995 and had both labour and management representatives. It delivered its unanimous report in November of the same year. It received 225 written submissions from Albertans on the issue.

The JRC ultimately did not recommend RTW legislation for Alberta, as it found no evidence of economic advantage to it, and that it may well disrupt Alberta’s strong and stable labour relations of the time.

Alberta Government

From 1986 to 1993, McCoy was the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Calgary-West in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. In 1986, she was named to the Executive Council of Alberta as Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Minister responsible for Women’s Issues by Premier Don Getty. As Minister, McCoy was responsible for creating the Insurance Council of Alberta, restructuring the Alberta Securities Commission, and for introducing a variety of new policies to protect consumers. She was also involved in developing foreign credentials recognition for immigrant professionals.

In 1989, McCoy was appointed as Alberta’s Minister of Labour and Minister responsible for Human Rights, in which portfolio she was responsible for Alberta’s personnel administration office. She set up an Alberta Human Rights commission inquiry into the Aryan Nations which was responsible for investigating and eliminating supremacist activity in the province. McCoy also shed light on violence against women and spearheaded the Lake Louise Declaration, which was Alberta’s first action plan designed to fight violence against women, and the first all-Canada declaration on the subject.

The McCoy Plan

At the 1992 Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta leadership convention, McCoy ran for the leadership of the party against the eventual winner, Ralph Klein. She ran on a platform known as the McCoy Plan, points of which were eventually co-opted by the Klein government.

Key points of the McCoy Plan:

Prior to entering provincial politics, McCoy pursued a career in law as senior legal counsel for the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board and as counsel for TransAlta Utilities Corporation.

McCoy is an alumna of the University of Alberta, and holds an LLB (1969) and Bachelor of Arts in English (1968). She is married to Miles Patterson, QC (deceased, January 2011).