Olivia Chow

Back and Forth

For almost anyone who lives in Toronto or who visits the city on a regular basis, there is one question that will immediately strike up a debate: what is the best option when it comes to renewing transportation infrastructure in the city? The construction of a rail link between Pearson Airport and the downtown core, the improvement of the Gardiner Expressway, the need for better access to the Toronto Island Airport; all these ideas have their champions. For Olivia Chow, the NDP Member of Parliament for the Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina, it is crucial to consider every option carefully as the debate continues. How should the largest city in Canada look and function in the twenty-first century? With two federal election victories under her belt and more than a dozen years on Toronto City Council to her credit, Ms. Chow is uniquely placed to understand the arguments on all sides.

In the midst of an interesting week on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, during which the minority Conservative government was propped up in a confidence vote by the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, Ms. Chow met with Canadian Interviews in her West Block office to answer a series of questions, some pertinent to the affairs of the day and others more general in nature. She discusses how her party made the decision to vote with the Conservatives in order to support the Employment Insurance Bill. She also offers her insights on the transportation questions facing her riding and Toronto as a whole. Most interesting is her assessment of how successful she has been in her attempts to work with the Hon. John Baird, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure, and Communities. She asks herself the question, “is he co-operative?” Her answer is revealing. Another intriguing response involves her view of coalition politics, specifically the way in which Michael Ignatieff, Leader of the Liberal Party, is attempting to distance himself from the idea.

In replies to a few lighter questions, Ms. Chow discusses the effectiveness of social networking websites when it comes to keeping in touch with constituents, the differences between municipal and federal politics, as well as her preferred reading material. In 2005, she advocated for the Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake in the Canada Reads debate, and she mentions Carol Shields and Margaret Laurence as other favourites in the realm of Canadian literature. With a smile she also mentions a newfound joy: reading murder mysteries!

CI: On the question of whether to support the Conservatives in the House of Commons this fall, what have been the primary points of discussion between Members of Parliament in the NDP?

OC: We are not supporting the Conservatives, giving them a blank cheque like what the Liberals have done in the past. We are saying that we support the Employment Insurance Bill. It is being tabled right now. We will look at it to make sure that every clause in there is what we want. We had, in fact, introduced a Private Members’ Bill in the spring, so they are copying what we had! And that delivers a billion dollars to a hundred seventy, a hundred eighty thousand unemployed workers. That is something that we have been pushing for - for a long time - and we want to get that done. We don’t want to get it stopped. We don’t want to see it killed. We want to make parliament work, but at the same time, we also want to stand up and oppose Stephen Harper’s direction. If you heard Question Period today, we were asking a lot of questions on the Harmonized Sales Tax, which is an eight percent tax-grab in Ontario and a seven percent tax-grab in British Columbia. For students, for example, young Canadians, if you eat a doughnut, get a haircut, take your pet to the vet, by some vitamins, get gasoline, on all that you have to pay tax, which we think is outrageous, especially during this time when there is a big recession going on.

CI: Prime Minister Harper has made mention again and again of the coalition that the Liberals made with the ‘socialists and the separatists’. On the question of the coalition, going back to late last year, what did you hear from your constituents? Was there solid support for that idea, or was it tenuous support?

OC: People believed that sixty-two percent, as the majority, should have the right to govern, which is why the majority of the people in my riding think that we need to make parliament work and supported the NDP in pushing for a coalition. That is the kind of change that we really need. It is unfortunate that Michael Ignatieff walked away from it at the end of January.

CI: Did it surprise you that he did that?

OC: Well, he put his name on the dotted line and said that he supports it, and then, a month later, he says he doesn’t support it. You know, I was just talking about the HST; in Vancouver, he called this the Harper Sales Tax, and said that the Liberals were really against it. That was only two weeks ago. Yesterday we found out from Dalton McGuinty, the Ontario Premier, that Michael Ignatieff supports this HST. So am I surprised? I am still surprised. I shouldn’t be, but I’m not that cynical yet.

CI: There is one issue in Toronto that I wanted to get your thoughts on. I don’t live in Toronto, but I am frequently in the city. I know that you have been trying to engage, in some way, the Transportation Minister [John Baird], on the issue of either improving the Gardiner Expressway or figuring out a way to provide a better link from Pearson Airport to Union Station downtown. In a perfect world, what would happen on this in downtown Toronto?

OC: What I would love is to have an electric train - not diesel - that would go from Pearson down to Union. Fast, clean and efficient! That is what I would like to see. That’s number one. Number two, the Gardiner: there is now a Gardiner consultation. I went to one of the meetings. The Gardiner had been discussed even in the early eighties. There was a ‘Take Down the Gardiner’ task force, chaired by Jack Layton, a city Alderman at that time!

Are there enough funds to make that happen? I don’t know. Is that the best solution? That is what the consultation that is being conducted by Waterfront Toronto is doing right now. I don’t want to preempt their consultation.

CI: Recently I had a chance to interview Elizabeth May. I read her book [Losing Confidence] and her claim that there is almost a complete absence of dialogue between the Conservatives and the other parties. On this particular issue, what has your experience been in trying to discuss the Gardiner Expressway, or the island airport, or the airport link, with the Transportation Minister?

OC: Well, I’ve mentioned it to John Baird at least four times in private, and three or four times in public in the House of Commons during Question Period. Each time that I talked about, ‘hey, where’s money for the streetcars’, for example, John Baird said, ‘oh, Ms. Chow, I have a bridge for you!’ - i.e. the Island Airport bridge.

Is he co-operative? In some things, not in all things. I went to him two years ago on the Nahanni [the Nahanni National Park in the Northwest Territories] – why the Nahanni, which is a beautiful river, a UNESCO site, needs to be expanded [the Park, not the river]. The entire vast area should be protected. He said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to do that.’ Mind you, it took two years, which is fine. They had to go through the consultation. Good things take time, and it is now done. It was done as of June.

There are some things that we are able to cooperate on with John Baird. Others, in terms of priority – I wanted the streetcars, he didn’t want the streetcars – we wanted still some money for the City. I went and did this ‘Screwed out of our Share’, a big public art event. Lots of people came by. We used up three thousand screws! And we made a statement. Two weeks later, and the reason that I didn’t bring it up here, is because he announced a two hundred million dollar investment to Toronto’s infrastructure. Is it enough? No. We are due three hundred thirty million. But still, I see it as a first installment, and I want to see the rest of the hundred thirty million to Toronto.

CI: There is one question that I always like to ask politicians just because it comes up prominently in the press. You have the different social networking sites as part of your website - Facebook and Twitter. Do you find these effective? Are you using them often?

OC: Yeah, if you saw me last night, how many tweets did I do yesterday, nine or ten? At twelve-thirty I was still at it - so sometimes, yeah. It’s not the be all and end all, but it’s a good way to connect with people.

CI: I get the impression sometimes that certain politicians feel that, if they’ve at least got that going on their website, then they are addressing the idea of engaging young people.

OC: Oh no, you have to really do it properly. You can have a Twitter site, and if your assistant put it up, it’s not genuine. You have it, and if in a month you put in one or two tweets, you might as well forget it. I go in bursts. We just had a consultation on copyright, so it was non-stop. Every ten or fifteen minutes I was putting one up. Then there will be a period of two or three days when I won’t be doing it. It has to be meaningful engagement. It’s important: whether it’s the website, Facebook, or Twitter, it’s a way to communicate. Or by basic mailing! Paper!

CI: You spent many years obviously on Toronto City Council, and served several years now as a Member of Parliament. On issues like transportation in the City of Toronto, do you feel that you are in a much better position here as a Member of Parliament to bring about change on an issue like that, or were there certain things that you could do as a municipal politician that you miss being able to do as a federal politician?

OC: It’s different. It’s a different arena. In the City I was the vice-chair of the TTC [Toronto Transit Commission]. When we said that we wanted to make sure that the student pass for universities in Toronto was made permanent, we were able to do that, sign the contract with Bombardier. Yes, we did that. Now, that’s fine, as instant gratification, but without senior level of government funding support, the Toronto Transit Commission won’t be able to survive for long. That’s the same thing all across Canada. Here on Parliament Hill, the magnitude of the issues is much bigger, a bit more complex. What my specialty is: to make sure that citizens from Toronto in my riding and across Canada understand what is happening here. Often there is an Ottawa bubble, and people don’t feel that connected with what is going on. I think one of the key roles for a Member of Parliament, aside from making policies and doing questions in the House of Commons and interacting with Ministers, is to make sure that the people you represent understand and are connected with decisions that are made here every day. I enjoy doing that. I think I am good at doing that. It is important that it be done. If not, you would see more and more a sense of alienation. ‘Why do we need Ottawa? Ottawa won’t listen. They won’t work for us.’ In my books, we want to make sure that Ottawa listens, Ottawa acts, and delivers results for us.

CI: But there is that alienation settling in, right?

OC: Oh absolutely, because a lot of MPs just say ‘okay, you elected me, trust me, I’ll go do it’. Then they leave all their constituents behind and don’t tell them what’s going on. That doesn’t quite work. You will see, you will notice, that I put a lot of time and energy into communicating with my constituents. In my riding, with universities, with the downtown, a lot of young families and young single people, there is a very high turnover. I would be communicating with one person, and within six months that person is gone and there is a new person coming in. You will notice that I spend a lot of time and energy getting the mail out to people, explaining what is going on, soliciting advice, and using the very traditional mailing method, plus all the other social networks.

CI: One quick last thing: in 2005 you supported Margaret Atwood’s book Oryx and Crake in the Canada Reads debate.

OC: Yes, I still love that book. It came in second. I didn’t win!

CI: This new book that she has out [The Year of the Flood] is a sequel to it.

OC: Really? I have to get it. I haven’t read it yet. I would love to.

CI: Do you get much time to read?

OC: Yes, I just finished a Louise Erdrich book. I read lots of novels. I read non-novels too. I love to read. I’ve never, ever, ever read any murder mysteries, just not in my universe. I read Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence, Carol Shields, all the Canadian female writers, even male writers, Robertson Davies – and not just Canadian. But recently I’ve been reading Henning Mankell, a Swedish novelist, murder mysteries with a real social democratic edge. He has a series of books of a cop that tries to solve murders. He does it in a way that the message, the moral of the story, of social justice, comes through, which is quite astonishing. … He also spent a lot of time in Africa. He has a few stories also about African kids. He has a very progressive way of looking at what is going on in Africa. You know, white people tend to be fairly paternalistic, but his approach is very community-based. It is very interesting.

Date of Interview: 09/16/2009
Location: West Block, Parliament Hill, Ottawa, ON
Link: www.oliviachow.ca