Leaving Drake and Kalyeena behind SINCE 1918
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January 12, 2012 | VOL. XCIII ISS. XXX
Local pros give the lowdown on Vancouver’s best mountains
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THE UBYSSEY
PEELING BACK THE
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SHRUM
BOWL
ON ICE P5 UBC loses home at home series with SFU
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FILMS We begin our look at the leadership candidates
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UBC prof Ernest Mathijs covers the top 100
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6 | Feature | 01.12.2012
In the last election, the NDP came closer to forming t Now its members—many of them university students— Managing editor, web Arshy Mann profiles all e
Who will lea The party president
A BC boy with big dreams
Brian Topp
Nathan Cullen
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hen Brian Topp’s name began circulating as a possible NDP leadership candidate after Jack Layton’s death, few Canadians were familiar with his name. But within New Democratic circles, Topp is no unknown. For 26 years, Topp has worked in nearly every facet of the NDP—in both labour and party politics, provincially and federally, in campaigns and in government—with one exception. Topp has never before run for office. But despite his lifelong career in politics, Topp didn’t start out that way. “I spent four years as a union building rat at McGill working for the McGill Daily,” he said. “It was quite a lot of fun and quite distracting from my studies, but worth it.” It was only after finishing university that Topp was slowly pulled into the world of party politics. “When I left the McGill Daily, I didn’t want to stop working in alternative journalism. So I got together with a bunch of friends of mine and started a city magazine in Montreal. [It was] a little like the Georgia Straight, but much less successfully implemented.” In order to finance the magazine, Topp and his friends opened up a small typesetting shop that often catered to leftist organizations. “One of our clients at the shop was this political party that had never really been active in Quebec, but was suddenly getting really involved.” That party was the NDP. Topp worked on his first campaign in 1985, and slowly worked his way up in the party, including stints as deputy chief of staff to Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow and the national campaign director for two federal elections. Most recently, he worked as party president; he had figured he was out of politics, but Jack Layton called him and said, “I wonder if you could help out a bit...” If elected leader, Topp said he
would continue to fight as an NDP partisan, rejecting the proposal by Nathan Cullen to hold joint nomination conventions with the Liberals and the Greens. “I think to adopt the agenda and perspective of our opponents when we’re winning would be defeating ourselves…People are looking at us for a real alternative.” During the campaign, Topp has been best known for his many high profile endorsements from NDP stalwarts such as Ed Broadbent and for his plans to roll back corporate tax cuts and increase taxes on the richest Canadians. “I don’t think we get elected by making spending proposals without explaining how we would pay for them…If you want to be credible for office, if you want to make the transition from an opposition party… you’ve got to show how to pay for things.” When discussing the hardships faced by youth when first entering the labour market, Topp adopts much of the language made popular by the Occupy protests last fall. “[There is] an unacceptable gap between the top one per cent earners and everyone else,” he said. “More workplaces in Canada are heading towards two-tiered [systems] where young people are paid much less than their colleagues for doing the same work, and don’t have the same pension and health benefits.” On post-secondary education, Topp, like most of the rest of the NDP field, pushes back against a “student aid model that is predicated on getting people into debt. “We need to move away from a debt model and more towards a grant model to help those who wish to go to university [do so].” But at the end of the day, Topp believes that the only way the NDP will be able to form government is if they build on Layton’s “hopeful and optimistic approach to politics.” “Every time we challenge Stephen Harper, we’re going to present a positive alternative. Because that’s the difference between the Conservatives and us.” U
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n a campaign that has largely consisted of candidates competing to agree with each other, Nathan Cullen hasn’t been afraid to be controversial. “I have a small ambition,” said Cullen. “And that’s to change politics in this country.” The MP for Skeena-Bulkley Valley—a northern BC riding roughly the size of Norway—Cullen is probably best known for his proposal that the NDP hold joint nomination conventions with the Liberals and Greens to take down the Conservatives in the next election. It’s an unpopular position amongst New Democratic stalwarts, who see it as selling out in the wake of their greatest election victory at the federal level. “I’m attached to my party,” said Cullen bluntly, “but I’m more attached to getting things done.” “We had very mixed emotions on May 2, as a party. We had this incredible breakthrough, but we also, for those of us who are very involved, knew exactly what a majority meant for this country. “So for people who say, ‘These last eight months under Harper have been terrible,’ I say, ‘Imagine eight years.’ Because in a short amount of time we’re going to go back to the polls, and I don’t want to hope that we’re going to win, I want to know that we’re going to win.” Cullen maintains this is a “oneoff opportunity” and that once elected, his first priority of business would be to move for a change to a proportional representation voting system. This isn’t the first time that he has bucked the party orthodoxy. For years, Cullen had been a critic of the long-gun registry. “I’m a pro-gun control candidate, and I can show you the record. I think it’s a mistake to say that the gun registry was perfect and immaculate in its form.” He does, however, oppose the government’s bill to scrap the registry. “It has incredibly dangerous loopholes that will allow
sniper rifles and urban assault weapons onto the street with no tracing or tracking at all.” Cullen points to his experience representing a northern, rural riding as one of the reasons that he favours cooperating with other progressive parties. “If I just ran on a deep, partisan campaign, I’d get about 17 per cent of the vote,” he said. “It’s not a safe seat. There’s not a lot of safe seats for the NDP.” Despite his independent streak, Cullen remains a strong advocate in NDP approaches to most issues, including the environment, Quebec and the economy. On post-secondary education, Cullen argues that institutions such as colleges and vocational schools often get ignored. “Often when we say post-secondary in this country, we’re talking about universities explicitly, and that’s got to change. Because there’s been a bit of snobbery over the last generation or two. When I went to high school, it was success to go to university and failure to do anything else.” A former small business owner, he also wants government to provide more support to individual risk takers. “We can diminish those risks. We do it for big business all the time,” he said. “[But] I meet young entrepenuers all the time that are frustrated. They can’t get a $5000 line of credit. Meanwhile, they’re watching a business write off a $15 million loss.” Cullen says that regardless of what happens on March 24 when the party picks a new leader, it won’t change his disposition. “My identity isn’t wrapped up entirely on the idea of me being a politician. I see these guys, we call them the ghosts, [who] wander around Parliament Hill, former MPs and ministers, and they don’t know what to do with themselves,” he said. “And that’s never going to happen.” U
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the government than any time in its 50-year history. —are electing the next federal leader of the opposition. eight candidates in the first of a two-part series.
ad the NDP? At 29, a rising star
A labour stalwart
Niki Ashton
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or all of the young NDP MPs that marched into Ottawa last election, Niki Ashton acted as a vanguard. When she was first elected in 2008, Ashton was the youngest NDP MP and the youngest female member of Parliament, two distinctions she lost after the Orange Wave hit Quebec. Not that she minds. “I’m very happy to be joined by other young people,” said Ashton. But even before her 2008 election, Ashton was making splashes amongst the New Democrats. In 2005, she ran against incumbent NDP MP Bev Desjarlais for the party’s nomination in Churchill, the federal riding for all of northern Manitoba. “[She] was the only NDP MP opposed to same-sex marriage,” said Ashton. “So we decided to get involved and organized and ran in the nomination.” Ashton won. She was 23 years old, and though she lost in the federal election that year, she came back in two years time to take the northern Manitoba riding. Ashton maintains that she has always seen her age as an advantage. “When you have young people’s issues being raised at the top level, that engages our generation.” During her leadership bid, Ashton has been running on a platform that emphasizes the growing inequality in Canadian society. As a demonstration of the types of changes she would champion, she points to her desire to create a Minister of Equality that would address issues such as gender and racial discrimination. “The way to [combat inequality] is to have a real presence in government at the ministerial level,” she said. “That involves looking at legislation, but also, of course, programs that create a level playing field and truly aim to put an end to discrimination.”
Peggy Nash
Ashton, who served as the NDP’s youth critic, said that reducing tuition fees is an essential plank of her economic plan. “I know firsthand how much of a challenge and a setback the rise of tuition fees…is to our generation,” she said. “This is not a charitable commitment, this is about making a real difference to young people.” As a northerner and a former instructor at the University College of the North, Ashton has often advocated for increased commitments to northern and First Nations education. “That’s the pinnacle of the kind of inequality we see in our country and it’s unacceptable in a country as wealthy as Canada, that First
I know firsthand how much of a challenge and a setback the rise of tuition fees…is to our generation. This is not a charitable commitment, this is about making a real difference to young people. Niki Ashton Nations receive a lower level of funding ultimately because they are First Nations.” She also points to Canada’s foreign policy as a place where young Canadians are being excluded from decision-making, but then forced to live with the consequences. “It’s our generation that pays the ultimate price when soldiers die,” said Ashton. “If I’m elected leader, my message would be keep the troops home.” Ashton uses a simple slogan to encapsulate her leadership bid: “new politics.” “New politics is about engaging young people and engaging the issues that young people are raising,” she said. “Harper’s practicing old politics.” U
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t’s become political cliché to say that people trust the Conservatives on the economy. But Peggy Nash believes she can convince Canadians that when it comes to their wallets, they should vote NDP. Running on a message of New Democratic economic stewardship, Nash argues that she has a resume that can back up her words. She’s worked as a labour negotiator, community activist, party president and, until she decided to run for the leadership, the opposition finance critic. “We’re seeing a dramatic decline in the number of good-quality jobs,” said Nash, arguing that this can’t be fought with Harper’s hands-off approach. “They leave it to the market and [what] the market decides… and where that has gotten us is the highest level of inequality in Canada since the 1920s.” If elected NDP leader, Nash argues that she would give Canadians a real choice when it comes to the economy. “I believe that government has to work with the private sector, with labour, with communities, in order to ensure that we’re creating jobs.” Nash argues that Canada needs to emulate countries like South Korea, Germany, Brazil and Finland, which she argues have not allowed global corporations to dictate policy. As a former labour negotiator for the Canadian Auto Workers’ union, Nash emphasized that she’s faced off against top CEOs and wouldn’t have a problem doing it again from the prime minister’s office. Like most of the other leadership candidates, Nash decries the fact that Canada simply exports raw materials instead of processing them at home. She also places a strong emphasis on the need to move to a green economy. “We’re behind many other countries in the world at transforming our infrastructure and transforming our production to renewable energy and
better energy efficiency,” she said. “Nobody’s going to turn off the tap on oil and gas production. They’re going to be part of energy strategy for the foreseeable future, but we can massively reduce our dependence…rather than just digging stuff or pumping stuff as quick as we can, and exporting it anywhere we can, as quickly as we can. It’s not a good strategy.” Nash argues that the Harper government has a shoddy record when it comes to post-secondary education. “I think that’s a disgrace in a country that purports to be a modern democracy, that we’re not ensuring that post-secondary education is affordable,” she said. “We need to increase the transfers from the federal government to the provinces with strings attached to ensure that the money is used to lower tuition fees.” She went on to say that “for somebody to apply to university, and then hope that they’re going to get a loan or grant, and some will and some won’t, I don’t think is right.” According to Nash, she’s a candidate that truly represents NDP values. “What they get with me is someone who’s connected with the grassroots of the party,” she said. “If we’re going to grow, if we’re going to build, if we’re going to inspire people to work with us, we’ve got to stay connected with the grassroots. “Those aren’t just words to me. It’s my life’s work.” U