‘CLASS IS A FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE IN THIS COUNTRY’
To start, do you want to give us a sense of how the campaign is going?
I see a growing sense of economic uncertainty. I have a sense that people don’t believe the politicians speak for them. I think people of all political parties have become more disconnected. And I think that the role of a social democratic party in 2017 is to say: ‘We have to restore some level of believability for people who are (being) left out of the game.’ And that’s been my approach.
I think the issue of class is a fundamental issue in this country. The fundamental divide in this country is economic. And that divide is cutting across a different kind of class strata. It’s no longer the traditional blue-collar class. The new working class is white collar.
The day I launched, I met a university professor that I know. And she started to cry when I was asking about her work. I mean, she’s on perpetual contracts, she can’t pay her bills. Our kids pay enormous amounts of money to universities that are more like corporations, and they treat their faculty like they’re more like Tim Hortons workers. Fifteen years ago, that was the cream of the middle class and that’s gone. And so we’ve got to start calling this out: the issue of class.
But despite this emphasis on class, you don’t have much of a tax plan, in terms of tax reform, and tax surely is a major tool for redressing inequalities. Where’s your tax plan?
We need a proper tax plan in order to address the fact that corporate Canada doesn’t pay their share anymore. We were told this myth — this was Paul Martin’s myth, this was Jean Chrétien’s myth, this was Stephen Harper’s myth: You keep giving them corporate tax breaks and they’ll reinvest and create good jobs, and we’ll have a great new economy. And (instead) we’ve got the KPMG scandals. They don’t pay their pension benefits anymore. We’ve got them walking away on Sears. And so, tax overhaul is crucial.
Coming up with a coherent tax policy is something I do with the party, with our electoral team. Not as a leadership candidate trying to say I’m going to get this point versus that point raised. It has to be a coherent strategy. So I’ve talked about the general principles, which I think is what a leader does in a leadership race. You talk about your values and your principles, but I go back to the party and say ‘OK, how do we make this credible?’ That’s my focus.
Are you in favour of any of the current pipeline proposals?
Right now, no. I got into politics to fight the Adams Mine. And I got involved in that because that was such a bogus, broken, fraudulent system for review. And when I look at what happened with the National Energy Board, it is much more bogus and fraudulent than even Mike Harris’s Ontario system was . . . So if you’re going to have a megaproject, you have to have a credible process for public input.
Are there any circumstances under which you could support new pipelines?
In a low-carbon future, we need copper, we need aluminum . . . and we will need oil. So we have to talk about transportation. Certainly trains are a very, I think, unwise way to move heavy bitumen, particularly since they move through so many urban areas. So we have to look at a review process.
If a First Nation is opposed to a resource project, should they have an absolute veto right?
That’s complicated, but the fact is without social licence, projects are not going to go ahead. But I’ll tell you, when I was working for the Algonquin nation before I was elected, we were having to run blockades all the time because nobody was coming in to talk to a First Nation.
Now they do . . . If government was at the table the way industry has been at the table, we would probably be in a much different position than we are right now. Industry understands that they need social licence on the ground.
I’m just wondering if you think that splitting Indigenous Affairs into two is going to solve the problems, or what would you be doing?
I don’t care how many ministers you put in that broken system. When you have an attitude that it’s up to the federal government to decide what money they need to spend, and how to spend it, it is a black hole of in-accountability.
This is a system that was built to destroy the Indian people, it has done a damn good job for 150 years and it has to be dismantled.
All of the stories you tell, on Indigenous, NAFTA, losing all our jobs, unaffordable housing, why aren’t Canadians revolting? Why isn’t there a revolution? Why aren’t they flocking to the NDP?
Canadians are very patient. They’re enormously resourceful, but more and more are working full out.
They’re just trying to get by . . . I think what you need to do is offer a vision where we say it doesn’t have to be this way.
Your notion of class: how is it different from Justin Trudeau’s notion of supporting the middle class and those attempting to join it?
I think Justin and I grew up in a different middle class. Because, I mean, look at his middleclass tax credit, right? If you make $40,000 a year and less you get nothing, and if you make between $150,000 and $250,000 you get the whole bang for your buck.
The middle class that Justin Trudeau’s talking about, it’s disappearing. And I find it really insidious to say, ‘and those wanting to join it.’
My notion of the working class is that it is blue collar and white collar.
There are people who’ve been downsized, professors, people who are working for the federal government on perpetual contracts at 12 bucks an hour when they have masters and PhDs in international development and can’t pay their bills. That, to me, is the new working class. It’s shame on us that we are not being the voice for those communities, and if we’re not being the voice for those communities, political arsonists like Donald Trump step in. And I am not, on my watch, seeing the Andrew Scheer’s of the world pretend that they represent working people. I don’t believe they do. So that’s my mission.