OTTAWA — Former environment minister Catherine McKenna says federal security agencies initially refused to offer her protection — and wouldn’t even show her the risk assessment they’d completed — as she faced a rising tide of threats and harassment online and in person.
McKenna was the Liberal MP for Ottawa Centre from 2015 to 2021 and served in cabinet the entire time, first as environment minister and later as the minister of infrastructure.
She has previously discussed the years of abuse she endured in politics — particularly as the minister responsible for the Trudeau government’s climate policy — but describes her experiences in far more detail in her new autobiography, Run Like a Girl, which is being released next week.
In the book, she says the attacks on her expanded over time from social media swipes to people hurling abuse and harassing her and her staff in person — at work, outside her home, even when she was on outings with her kids.
“Many of the tweets were violent,” she writes. “One popular meme featured a Barbie doll being crushed by a sledgehammer. Another one had the message, ‘Tick Tock, Barbie Bitch.’
“And it didn’t stop with me. The messages threatened my family as well and described different ways we would be attacked and how my kids should contract fatal diseases.”
Strange men showed up at her Ottawa home and took selfies outside, then posted the videos online later as “trophies,” she writes. A man in a truck pulled up beside her and her children as they walked past an Ottawa movie theatre and hurled profanity-laden abuse while he filmed her reaction.
Just after the 2019 election, her constituency office was defaced with graffiti depicting a degrading word for a woman, and she says her staff repeatedly faced harassment and attacks when they answered the office phone.
“We would get disturbing threats in letters or packages with bizarre contents,” she writes.
In August 2020, she writes, a man walked into her constituency office and verbally assaulted her staff while recording the encounter. She says her staff reported the incident to the RCMP but didn’t get a call back.
McKenna says that when she found out, she contacted the Ottawa Police, who did launch an investigation. The next day, she says, she asked her chief of staff to tell the Prime Minister’s Office it must immediately hold a meeting with everyone responsible for MPs’ security.
“I said, ‘We’re not doing this anymore. I’m on my own with my kids, and I’ve got some guy screaming at my staff and he’s looking for me. It’s time the people responsible for my safety took it seriously,'” McKenna writes.
But when that meeting happened, McKenna writes, it felt like she “wasn’t even there.” She says security agencies were “passing the buck” on who was responsible for her safety at different times and places, and the RCMP told her they only provided security when they saw a significant risk.
“I asked for my risk assessment which they refused to disclose and cited security clearances. I reminded them I was a minister and had top-security clearance. Then more excuses,” McKenna writes.
“I was furious. ‘If anything happens to me or my family, family, I’m holding all of you responsible,”‘ McKenna recalls telling the agencies. “‘So let’s just get real. Do you know where this guy is currently? The one hurling abuse at my staff? Do any of you know?”‘
McKenna says someone replied the man could have been in Calgary for all they knew.
“’He’s here in Ottawa,’ I exploded. ‘The Ottawa Police know where he is,'” McKenna writes. “At some point the RCMP increased security and took the protection of ministers, including myself, more seriously.”
She says former defence minister Harjit Sajjan — who was often seen with a tight protective detail during his time in politics — was also denied access to his risk assessment.
“I was like, ‘Look, I’m just one person who’s just trying to do my job. And the only reason I’m getting these is because I’m a cabinet minister working on climate change,'” McKenna recently told The Canadian Press in an interview ahead of her book launch.
The RCMP has not yet responded to a request for comment from The Canadian Press about McKenna’s allegations.
Only the prime minister and governor general are provided round-the-clock security by the RCMP’s VIP protection branch. In recent years, however, cabinet ministers and some higher profile opposition MPs have been seen with security details — including Liberal minister Mélanie Joly, Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman and former NDP leader Jagmeet Singh.
In 2024, the RCMP reported the budget for protecting parliamentarians, excluding the prime minister, had increased to $2.5 million in the nine months from April to December 2023. That was 40 per cent more than the $1.8 million budget in the full 12 months before that, and 86 per cent more than the $1.4 million spent in 2021-22.
McKenna told The Canadian Press she wrote her book to inspire young women and help them feel supported — though she said some of her friends and family, after reading the book, asked why anyone would want to get in politics.
“The security situation involving politicians is not OK. And what I went through, the reason I tell this is because it was bonkers, and we need to do better,” McKenna said in an interview.
“I’ve talked to a number of women politicians, including this week, not even at the federal level, at the local and provincial level. And they are facing extreme threats, not just online, but offline. And that’s not OK. I know most Canadians don’t think it’s OK.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2025.
Nick Murray, The Canadian Press
