Jagmeet Singh’s life experience is one of wealth
At a campaign stop at the Cowessess First Nation in southern Saskatchewan, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh expressed his commitment to Indigenous issues by way of contrast with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. In particular, by contrasting life experiences.
“I’m not Justin Trudeau,” Singh said. “I’m not like him. I’ve lived a different life. I understand the pain of being someone that’s not valued, not worth anything. And Indigenous people have been made to feel that way for so long. And I promise you, I’ll be different.”
What Singh means by that, on one level, is clear. He is the son of immigrants to Canada; his father, a trained physician, worked as a security guard to make ends meet while he was completing his Canadian medical certification. He is not Justin Trudeau, born to a sitting prime minister just two years after his father, Pierre Trudeau, released his white paper advocating the complete assimilation of Indigenous Canadians.
But on another level, it is not obvious how Singh’s life experience — or more broadly, the life experience of immigrants from India and other Asian countries — directly affects his position on Indigenous issues.
Singh argues that as a member of a racial minority — and a more visible one, given his distinctive Sikh dress — he is more sympathetic to other racial minorities. That would seem to follow, and Singh points to incidents from his own life when he encountered racial prejudice.
Yet his experience may have an ambiguous effect on his thinking on Indigenous issues.
It is easy enough for a trust-fund baby like Trudeau, a third-generation millionaire — the family money comes from the dreaded fossil fuel industry! — who never had to worry about making ends meet, to feel guilty about his privileges vis-a-vis Indigenous Canadians living in squalor on reservations. Indeed, he could even feel that his family, present for generations in Canada, many have profited indirectly from injustices visited upon Indigenous Canadians. Certainly Trudeau’s rhetoric about Canada indicates that way of thinking.
Do Asian Canadians such as Singh’s family think the same way?
Singh’s family faced an initial struggle while his father was getting his Canadian medical certification. But after he qualified the family became very wealthy very quickly. A psychiatrist in a government-funded fee-for-service system has a very high earnings potential.
The family relocated to Windsor, Ont., and the young Jagmeet was sent to a private school in Beverly Hills, Mich. Current annual tuition at Detroit Country Day School is US$26,000 for the elementary grades and $34,000 for high school (books and uniforms not included).
The immigrant experience of the Singhs — and so many Asians like them, including my own parents — was not that of, say, the Irish immigrants of the 19th-century. “No Irish Need Apply” was commonly enough added to job postings. Father of Confederation George Brown, for example, founder of the The Globe newspaper and namesake of today’s George Brown College, was a leader in ensuring that Irish Catholics in Toronto remained second-class citizens.
Irish immigrants to Toronto in the 1870s had a much more difficult time than Asian immigrants in the 1970s. In terms of legalized and cultural discrimination, the 19th-century indigent Irish experience would be more akin to what Indigenous Canadians suffered than what the Singhs and other wealthy families have experienced.
Is Jagmeet Singh more sensitive to Indigenous Canadians because of his race, despite the fact that his rich father sent him to an elite American private school? Does being a visible minority put Singh in solidarity with poor Indigenous Canadians, even if his bespoke suits — featured in every magazine profile — cost more than many might spend on food in a month?
Singh claims that his experience of growing up rich in Canada makes him more qualified to deal with Indigenous issues than Trudeau, who grew up even richer but did not have to deal with racial prejudice. But both Singh and Trudeau grew up as part of the one per cent — private-school educated with plenty of money to spare. Life experience separates both of them from the Indigenous experience in Canada.
Consider the poor Irish Canadian, descended from those who died destitute in the fever sheds of Toronto, and whose family tree has never included the wealthy fathers that both Singh and Trudeau had. Is he especially precluded from understanding the Indigenous peoples of Canada, solely on the grounds of race?
The complexities of the immigrant experience mean that it is lazy thinking to assume that racial minorities are somehow more sympathetic, for that reason alone, to Indigenous Canadians, or to the view that Canadian history is one long story of brutalization.
A recent immigrant from India, where religious and racial discrimination is more overt and onerous than in Canada, and where Indigenous peoples (“tribals” in local parlance) are at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, is likely less sympathetic to the claim that Canadian history is one of continuing oppression. He may instead see a welcoming history of expanding opportunity, a story of more lights than shadows.
It’s why the Singh family and mine came to Canada to begin with.
THE 1% — PRIVATE-SCHOOL EDUCATED WITH PLENTY OF MONEY TO SPARE.