Isaac Phan Nay
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Tyee
Rob Ashton has been learning French.
A well-used edition of 501 French Verbs sits on his desk next to a spiral-bound copy of the “black book” — a collective agreement for longshore and marine workers on Burrard Inlet and in Howe Sound.
The walls of Ashton’s office are cluttered with memorabilia he’s collected over nearly a decade as president of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada.
Framed on the wall is a poster-sized sepia photograph of the Bows and Arrows, a union of Indigenous and racialized dockworkers that organized on B.C. docks in the early 1900s.
Draped across the back of a mottled brown couch is a black and white scarf of FC St. Pauli, a self-proclaimed anti-fascist football club in Germany’s Bundesliga league. Tucked into one corner is an ostensibly life-sized Yoda plushie — a gift from his daughter.
Ashton has worked as a dockworker for more than 30 years. He served as business agent for ILWU Local 500 for five years and as vice-president of ILWU Canada for four. Ashton was elected president of ILWU Canada in 2016 and has represented 17,000 workers in B.C. and Saskatchewan ever since.
Now, Ashton joins the race for the NDP leadership against Edmonton Strathcona MP Heather McPherson and documentary filmmaker and climate change activist Avi Lewis.
He announced his bid last Wednesday in Toronto. The next day, I sat down with Ashton at the Maritime Labour Centre in Vancouver.
“Yesterday was a very emotional day for me,” he said. “I’m an emotional guy. I’ve been in this office for 10 years now, and now I know my life’s moving into another chapter.”
We spoke about the start of his campaign, the NDP’s relationship with trade unions and what he’s hoping to bring to Ottawa.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Tyee: Low-hanging fruit first. Why head into federal politics?
Rob Ashton: I never thought I’d do it. I’m not a politician. So why now? I’m tired of Conservatives and Liberals lying to workers, telling them that they’re going to make their lives better. All we see happening is our lives getting worse, the working class.
We’re all getting screwed, and we’re all getting lied to, election after election after election. I’ve had enough of it. This is a time where workers — Canadians — need a true voice in Ottawa.
I called my dad and went over for a chat. I told him I have this crazy idea. And he looked at me and just said, “Son, you have to put your money where your mouth is or you have to shut up.”
I’ve never been the one to shut up. And that’s why I’m excited that we’re going to try to do something really big.
On Wednesday, you told other reporters you’re the “first working-class labour candidate” in this leadership race. Tell me more.
Every day of my working life, I’ve represented workers. I’ve represented my members, and I’ve supported workers across the globe through our work with the International Transport Workers’ Federation.
I’m the one that knows what workers want. I’ve lived this life. I wear boots every single day of my life. I’m not trying to slag the other candidates, but I don’t think they’ve been there.
I don’t think they’ve lived the life that I’ve lived, representing people that are feeling that their voices aren’t heard in this country.
Would you share some of your policies? Or tell me where you’re hoping to get a seat?
Nope.
All right. In what ways are you hoping to help Canadians?
We’re working on our policies, and they’re going to slowly roll out. But I can comment on jobs.
There are no jobs in Canada. When a university student comes out of school after paying tens of thousands of dollars, they’re coming out with a shitload of debt, but they’re coming out to no jobs. That’s disgraceful.
We have to look at how to create industries in Canada that are survivable, because if you create a strong enough industry, the effects roll into other industries in this country. Everybody talks about housing and I’ve talked about housing.
There are tens of thousands of houses that the Canadian government can build, because that supplies jobs to the Canadian building trades. The building of those houses now supplies jobs to the United Steelworkers out there in the lumber mills. It will produce more job opportunities for all these students that are going to university to become architects or engineers.
The same thing can be said about shipbuilding. Building ships produces more jobs in steel mills.
That’s what I want to see, because without jobs, people have no way to feed their families or feed themselves.
What other issues do you see as working-class issues that you’re hoping to address?
There are a lot, because we’ve been ignored for so long. Our medical system is in a tough spot right now.
If you look at every government that is run by Conservatives or Liberals, every party like that cuts medicare and cuts the medical system. They cut it, in my humble opinion, so that they can say in a few years, “Look, our medical system is failing. We have to switch to some type of for-profit medical system.”
The NDP’s precursor, the CCF [Co-operative Commonwealth Federation], created publicly funded medical care. If our medical system was funded appropriately since then, we wouldn’t have these issues right now. But because certain governments choose profit over the lives of Canadians, we’re in this situation.
We have to fix our medical system, because there shouldn’t be lineups like there are. We should be building schools for doctors and nurses and X-ray technicians and medics and pharmacists. Canadians deserve a medical system that works for them. And that doesn’t mean cuts; that means investment.
Something that keeps coming up is this idea of workers being ignored. Tell me more about how you see that happening.
We’re seeing job losses and wages stagnate with less benefits.
When a Liberal government gets elected, they promise they’re going to do all these beautiful, wonderful things, and when they don’t, then the Conservatives go, “We need change.”
When people vote Conservative, they get into power, and nothing changes. The rich get richer, and us regular Canadians just stay there, or start to fall off. What you see is inequality — we start to get further and further away from each other.
Now, housing is atrociously expensive. Food is atrociously expensive. Medicine to make you healthy is atrociously expensive.
But when we ask for more, we’re told we’re greedy, that we’re asking for too much, while these corporations are getting millions and billions — even trillions now — in profits every year. They’re stealing our money. And when we complain or demand better, we’re deemed the bad ones. That’s unacceptable.
It seems to me that a large portion of people who might vote NDP are also very aware of the realities of climate change. How do you hope to appeal to them?
I have a good example about this. My union ships coal out, both metallurgical coal, that makes steel, and thermal coal, which is burned. We’re supposed to phase out coal by 2030.
If we were to end coal shipping today, probably about 100 of my members would be out of work. But by giving us five years to phase it out, our union and employers can transition to shipping other products mined in Canada.
That’s a perfect example of identifying a product that is harmful to the environment and moving gently and safely so that workers are protected. The environment is going to be protected.
Is action moving fast enough for everybody to be happy? I would imagine, no. But if we move too fast, that might put people out of work and we have to be cognizant of that.
We have to figure out a path forward, and this party can figure out that path forward because of all the differing voices in our party.
How has the NDP’s relationship with workers evolved over the years?
The NDP was created by the working class, by merging the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Canadian Labour Congress. That’s what it’s meant to be.
Over time, I don’t know if we’ve really strayed away from that, but I think we’ve lost the ability to communicate effectively over the noise of hate, the noise of greed that comes from the other two political parties.
But if we go back to what we were in the beginning, we were loud. We were unapologetic for being loud and demanding better. We can rise above the noise in society, the noise that’s drummed up by conservatives, by Pierre Poilievre and his divisive ways. We can rise above the banker that runs our country now. We could do good things for Canadians. That’s what we are as a party.
What do you see as the NDP’s role in the House now?
We have seven MPs that are there, and — like Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, says — they’re kicking ass for the working class.
Our role right now is to be the social conscience of this country and to push back on anti-worker issues.
If I’m elected leader, my job will be to be meeting with Canadians, finding out how they see this country and having honest conversations with people, even if they’re hard. We’re going to build this party up to be a movement, not just a political party, because that’s where we belong.
We have to inspire people. We have to push people, and we will. Maybe not tomorrow, but maybe the next day, we’ll be running this country. Not “we” as in the NDP or Rob Ashton; “we” as in Canadian people running this country through the NDP, because that’s how government should be.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
I’ll say this, and then I’ll shut my mouth. We’re at a very important time in Canadian history. We, as Canadians, have to be better. Some of us have bought into the hate that Pierre Poilievre pushes. Some of us have bought into our prime minister’s language that we have to accept economic aggression from other countries.
But as Canadians, we don’t have to accept hate. We don’t have to accept economic aggression. We should demand better from our politicians and from every political party. As Canadians, we should be demanding that our government start creating industries that give us good jobs. We should demand it finds new trading partners that will protect human rights and lift up their citizens, not push ours down.
Canadian citizens should be starting to kick their politicians in the ass, because that’s their right.
