Niki Ashton confronts elites, except herself
MP Niki Ashton is the latest populist seeking to save us from “the elites.” In announcing her bid for the federal NDP leadership she said “We need strong leadership to stand up to the elites in Canada and the elite politics ... that are holding us back.” Drat those elites.
Incidentally Wikipedia says Ashton is the daughter of a provincial cabinet minister who studied at the Li Po Chun United World College in Hong Kong as well as Carleton for an MA and the University of Manitoba, where she is getting her PhD, and speaks four languages fluently and is learning five others. Drat those elites.
Of course Ashton is not necessarily being hypocritical. On the contrary, from those to whom much is given, much is demanded. And if she has noticed that people like herself have been leading this country in the wrong direction, she has every right and indeed the duty to speak out and try to use her privileges to bring about real change. (As the son of two university professors with a PhD from UT Austin I know whereof I speak.)
The problem is, she has ludicrously misdiagnosed the situation and herself. If you go through her list of positions, every single one of them is smack dab in the centre of trendy orthodoxy, right down to believing the two main challenges facing Canada today are inequality and climate change. Find me an “elitist” willing to dis- pute either, if you please. Including in the Trudeau administration she seems keen to oust.
In announcing her leadership bid, Ashton said “What we need is a progressive agenda for system change.” And you certainly don’t find that attitude among our elites … unless you count politicians, academics and the business community, along with artists, philanthropists and other marginalized outcasts.
I actually have a habit of collecting examples of elite institutions pledging allegiance to constant change. And I bump into them everywhere, from HSBC airport ads promising “Tomorrow will be nothing like today” to Saint-Paul University’s bus shelter ad “This is the face of change” to U of M’s newspaper “I am a rebel” ad over a smirking prep school kid to Google’s “Will your idea change the world?” to U of O’s “Defy the conventional” on all its in- classroom computer screens and as the branding for the donation “Campaign for uOttawa.” Ironically, defying convention is now conventional and those of us who uphold tradition are the true rebels.
Not Ashton. After promising system change she offered the slogan “You privatize it? We nationalize it. You deregulate it? We regulate it.” I appreciate the directness. But the plain fact is that like most leftists everywhere today she bitterly distrusts “the system” and wants the government in charge of everything and everybody.
In what sense is this a pushback against the elites, especially given the size of government today and the privileged position of its employees? If Ashton cares to examine the numbers, she will discover that those in public life are paid far better than their private-sector counterparts even before you include the lavish pensions they’re making somebody else pay for. In return Ontario teachers’ unions, for instance, are absolutely crucial to the re- election of the regime that treats them so generously.
It is hard to find a more classic example of an elite backscratching pact. Yet I do not believe the brave MP for Churchill- Keewatinook Aski favours disrupting such arrangements by contracting out, school vouchers or other ways of giving ordinary people choices at the expense of the comfortable lives of public-sector insiders.
Even her call for tuition- free post- secondary education at government institutions, which the Post says garnered “roaring applause,” is classic pro-elite pseudodemagogy. Presumably it includes colleges. But it particularly subsidizes university, which costs more, lasts longer and generally attracts those with reasonably affluent parents. How is it progressive to give them an extra boost at the expense of the working class?
If the goal here is more accessibility, it makes sense to offer means- tested support not subsidize the well- off. And while I’m at it, can one imagine a more complacent elite institution than a government- funded Canadian university with its six-figure salaries, tenure, generous pensions and underpaid sessionals doing about half the teaching, as though feudalism had been restored while no one was looking? Does Niki Ashton want to privatize universities or abolish tenure to shake up the elites? Hoo hah.
Who, one wonders, are these naughty elites that haunt Niki Ashton’s dreams? Transnational corporations? The gnomes of Zurich? The patriarchy? And what exactly are they “holding us back” from? Massive deficits to stimul ate the economy? Socialized medicine? Turning our backs on any sort of war- fighting capacity? Gay marriage, abortion on demand and gender equity in cabinet?
Drat those elites. They’re everywhere. Including her mirror.
IRONICALLY, DEFYING CONVENTION IS NOW CONVENTIONAL.