Judith Erola, née Jacobson, (born January 16, 1934) is a former Canadian politician who represented the riding of Nickel Belt in the House of Commons of Canada from 1980 to 1984. She was a member of the Liberal Party.
Broadcasting career
Born in Sudbury, Ontario, Erola worked as a radio and television broadcaster in Sudbury. At CKSO-TV, she made history as the first woman employed by a Canadian television station as a weather reporter, and also presented segments on fashion. She later became an account executive for CHNO, and married Voito (Vic) Erola, the owner of a marina on Lake Panache, in 1955.
Politics
Following the death of her husband Vic in 1977, Erola decided to pursue a career in politics. She ran in the 1979 election as the Liberal candidate in Nickel Belt, losing to incumbent New Democrat John Rodriguez. Her campaign in that year was marked in part by a stumble when her election brochure called for "nationalization of farmland usage policies"; challenged in a radio interview to clarify her position given that the Liberal Party was generally opposed to nationalization, she clarified that the word was a typographical error whose intended meaning was rationalization.
Erola defeated Rodriguez in the 1980 election. She faced some controversy during and after the election campaign, both for characterizing Rodriguez as a Marxist in her election literature and for a telephone message targeted to housewives, which appeared to suggest that electing a woman to the House of Commons was more important than having representation for labour issues, a position which starkly divided the city in the still-lingering aftermath of the devastating 1978 Inco strike.
She served in the Cabinet of Canada for the entirety of her term as a federal Member of Parliament, despite an early perception that her caucus colleague Doug Frith was more likely to be chosen as the Sudbury area's representative in cabinet. Over the course of her career, she served as Minister of State for Mines, Minister responsible for the Status of Women, Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Minister of State for Social Development.
Shortly after being named to cabinet, Erola resigned her position as director and treasurer of the marina company, in compliance with federal conflict of interest regulations for cabinet ministers.
Ministry of Mines
As Minister of Mines, her first significant piece of legislation was a change to the Canada Labour Code, placing federally-regulated mines in Ontario under the stricter provincial health and safety laws by adopting the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act as federal law. The issue had long been championed in particular by uranium miners in Elliot Lake after a number of incidents in which workers had requested exemption under the provincial law from unsafe duties for which the federal law did not offer protection, but the workers criticized the process Erola used as an ineffective one that was likely to be challenged in the courts by mining companies. The change also permitted women, who had previously been barred from working underground in mines by federal regulation even though the provincial law permitted them, to work underground for the first time.
In June 1980, Erola faced criticism for using a government flight to transport colleagues from Ottawa to Sudbury to attend a testimonial dinner for former Liberal MP James Jerome.
During the 1981 provincial election, allegations surfaced that the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives had entered into a tacit agreement in 1980, under which the PCs ran an intentionally weak campaign in Nickel Belt to help Erola defeat Rodriguez, purportedly in exchange for the Liberals similarly throwing the Sudbury riding in 1981 to help Jim Gordon defeat incumbent NDP MPP Bud Germa; the allegations surfaced after the Liberals mounted a stronger campaign for the provincial seat than the PCs were expecting, and Liberal organizers denied that there was any mutual agreement.
Erola strongly supported the development of a mining equipment manufacturing industry in Canada as a bulwark against machinery shortages, and made special efforts to reassure mining companies that they would not be the target of a policy similar to the controversial National Energy Program. In June 1981, she announced a policy under which the federal government would give a $400 grant as an incentive to owners of propane-fuelled vehicles.