INTRODUCTION

Who are these politicians that rule our national parties? Behind all the TV sound bites, baby kissing and ribbon-cutting photo ops, we would like to know them as human beings. They want us to vote for them but are they letting us know who they truly are, what they think and, most importantly, what they will stand for if we elect them?

To help reveal more about the private side of people who live very public lives in Ottawa, Common Ground has invited the leaders of all federal parties to be interviewed. We are launching this new series with Stéphane Dion, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, in a sit-down interview with publisher Joseph Roberts. Next month will feature NDP leader Jack Layton and invitations have been extended to Green Party leader Elizabeth May, Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. We are presenting this series in a cooperative, non-partisan spirit, hoping to find common ground with each party leader as a fellow Canadian.

In order to have healthy people, we need a healthy environment. In order to have a healthy country, we need to have a healthy government actively protecting our environment and in order to have healthy leaders, we need to have leaders of conscience who embody the courage to enact healthy legislation. We expect leaders to act in ways that nurture democracy, encourage trust, and live up to the wishes of the people who elect them to office.

We hope our quarter-million readers enjoy these intimate interviews. May spring surprise you with many wonders and much wisdom.

Joseph Roberts: How was Burns Bog?

Stéphane Dion: It was wonderful. Beautiful, such a great area so close to Vancouver. We need to protect it.
JR: Thank you, yes. I’d like our readers to get to know more about who you are as a person, so I think I’ll first ask what got you involved in politics?

SD: My love for my country and the sense that it’s better to keep all your fellow citizens instead of dropping them and changing them. In other words, I’m Canadian and a Quebecer and I don’t want to choose between these two identities. I had some fellow Quebecers with a different view and I wanted to convince them to share this great country with other Canadians. It’s much better than to create 10 separate republics and a northern United States.

JR: What are Canadians most concerned about right now?

SD: I think they have a good sense of the challenges we’re facing in this century that we need to change into opportunities. They have a better sense of that than the current government and Prime Minister.

People realize we have an aging population, that our children will have to pay for our pensions, that all of a sudden the baby boomers will go into retirement and we need to prepare the country for that.

People realize the global economy is moving towards Asia, and that China and India will become as big as the G-8 countries pretty soon and we’ll need to adapt, and to count a lot on British Columbia for that.

People are aware that we need development because there’s too much poverty in this country, too many people left behind – children, aboriginals, new Canadians, seniors – and we cannot succeed if we don’t tap into the talents and skills of everyone.

People are well aware that we need to reconcile our way of life with the capacity of our planet, to have a healthy environment if we want to pass a better quality of life to the next generation, they want to make this right. They’re aware that we’re citizens of the world and that Canada should do its share.

JR: Some say Vancouver is one of the best places on Earth but there’s a serious problem with homelessness here. What do you see yourself doing to affect positive change for those people?

SD: It’s awful to think that tonight so many Canadians are without homes in a country that is so cold. It’s impossible to accept. When I was Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, I helped my colleagues, especially one particular minister at the time – her name was Claudette Bradshaw [former Minister of International Cooperation – ed]. She was from New Brunswick and had a big heart and she said, ‘We’ll do something about housing and homelessness.’ She asked me to help because we need to negotiate that with the provinces – it’s mostly a provincial jurisdiction, as well as municipalities, mayors –and the federal government needed to become a partner. We came up with programs that have been praised around Canada and even the United Nations.

They were good programs, helping people who have no home and who are struggling to find social housing. I certainly intend as Prime Minister to continue that. In broader terms, I think we need to tackle poverty generally in this country: We have 800,000 children in poverty in Canada. A lot of newcomers who don’t speak English or French have a lot of difficulties to catch up and reach the standard of living we have here. Aboriginal Canadians are also left behind.

We have a plan to decrease poverty in Canada by a third – by half for children – over a five-year period. It will require some investments and some income support – help for communities for social housing and home business, urban transit, which is very important in the fight against poverty.

JR: There are some people who can’t afford to take the bus to look for a job.

SD: Exactly. And childcare. So these kinds of services plus a strong income support for people in need is what we’ll provide.

JR: There’s a number of people who don’t vote because they don’t trust the process. They’ve felt ripped-off in the past – such as with David Emerson in Vancouver-Kingsway who was elected as a Liberal but crossed over right after the election. He’s responded to the people in his constituency who have been demanding a by-election ever since by telling them to just get over it. That really undermines trust in the whole process.

SD: First, we’ll make sure Mr. Emerson will not be re-elected. We have a great new candidate [Wendy Yuan] and we’re sure she will win the riding with strong support. Secondly, it’s not our style to do that. Someone who has campaigned against us would not be welcome in our cabinet the day afterwards. Mr. Harper did it. I would not do it.
But your question is deeper than that. It’s about how can we convince people to vote. How can we increase the turnout in our country?

JR: How can we actually give them something worthy to turn out to support, because in fact 80% of the people in that riding actually voted Liberal. I think Mr. Emerson had to cross over to the party in power because he’s the representative for the Shared Security & Prosperity Agreement to merge Mexico, Canada and the US. That was his agenda.

I’d like to think Canadians are intelligent enough to hear the truth, and I think Emerson treated them instead like children.

SD: You are expressing an indignation that I share. Let me tell you that we intend to win this riding and be sure that Mr. Emerson understand that politics is not like business. In business, you may switch from Coca-Cola to Pepsi. In politics, it’s possible to switch, but you don’t do that the day after a vote and after campaigning so harshly against the people you then join.

JR: Has that ever happened before, crossing over before Parliament even met, no issues, nothing?

SD: I don’t think so.

JR: So it can’t be compared to other situations.

SD: No. If he had good reasons to say he doesn’t feel at home in his party any more, he can’t support a particular issue and feels closer to his colleagues on the other side of the House, that’s one thing. But he did it immediately after an election for no given reasons. I agree with you.

JR: Do you think the future could include a referendum on our political process? We have proportional representation as one possibility.

SD: Our party does not have a position as a whole; we’d need to have a public debate about the electoral system as you did in BC. But certainly, personally speaking, I like the transferable ballot system – when you rate the candidates from most to least preferred – because it’s richer as information about the preference of the people. At the end of the day, the one that is elected has at least 50% of the support in the riding and is close to the second choice of everyone. I think it would be better for the country.

As a candidate and a leader, I know I need to convince the voters of the other parties to make me their second choice, so I need to be nice. I cannot be negative. I cannot be, as Mr. Harper is doing, a bully insulting everyone else. He’s doing that because he’s trying only to seduce his core vote to win, but the moment you have to convince everyone that you can at least be their second choice, you are more respectful and the debate in Canada would be more civilized.

JR: Aeschylus, the ancient Greek playwright, said that in war truth is the first casualty. We’ve had many such incidents. I’m thinking that if truth is the first casualty, perhaps it could also be the first assistant in bringing peace. Do you support the idea of educating Canadians as to what’s actually going on, rather than covertly supporting the wishes of the US in their empire building around the world?

SD: It’s important to be transparent. Some information cannot be released for security reasons, but the current government has exaggerated that a great deal and has a secretive approach that can’t be accepted any more. And, yes, you’re right – not only that they’re secretive but also that they lied to the population many times. When you don’t tell the truth about something like the risk of torture in Afghanistan, then when will you tell it?

JR: The invasion of Iraq was based on the lie that there were weapons of mass destruction. Knowing they have been lied to also affects people’s interest in participating in the process of governing and voting.

SD: We must keep in mind that Mr. Harper wanted us to be part of the Iraq war.

JR: Well, we have given support through naval vessels and personnel like generals in charge of other troops. Canadians don’t really know this. And I think it’s partly because the US is forcing our hand. If for political purposes we can’t be part of the “coalition of the willing.” then we’ll help out in the background by supporting and training various different agencies, or even RADARSTAT.

RADARSTAT was supported by the Canadian government with millions of dollars to create the best satellite imaging technology which can also be used for targets in Afghanistan. That was then given to MacDonald-Detweiler Associates in Richmond and just recently sold to an American company that builds landmines and believes there should be weapons in space. According to the information I have, David Emerson was on one of the boards of directors that made that deal happen.

So right now it looks like Canada’s in a quagmire in Afghanistan, which is a very difficult position for you to be in, but I think the majority of Canadians don’t want to be there and that our friends to the south are twisting our arm. I believe Peter MacKay is actually the salesman in NATO right now pitching everybody for the latest fashion of the day and the latest thousand troops. I strongly sense that MacKay, Emerson and Harper are working for the best interests of their friends in the US rather than Canada, and that if you were to take a strong stand against that war, you’d have the majority of Canadians behind you.

SD: Our position is that the combat mission in Kandahar should end in February 2009. It’s important to understand that’s not a timeline that we invented. It’s an official one, and if a country cannot end the mission when there is a timeline, this is a big problem. So we’re very firm about the date because the prime minister committed us until then and we must honour that commitment.

JR: What’s closest to your heart right now?

SD: I would insist on the environment along with the issues we’ve discussed. I think you have a great candidate in Vancouver Quadra with Joyce Murray. She helped save the Burns Bog that I just saw. She’s the kind of member that would be a great help for the country. The challenge of our century is nothing less than to reconcile the people and the planet. It’s a huge task. We are six billion human beings now. We were 1.5 at the beginning of the 20th century. We’ll be nine billion in 2050. We are industrializing ourselves as high speed. The Chinese have 10 cars to our 600 per 1,000 inhabitants, but they don’t want bicycles any more so they’re buying more cars and each week there’s a coal power plant being built with a lot of dirty coal. Twenty percent of the mercury in our lakes and rivers is coming from China through that coal.

The world is a big village now and Canada must be one of the countries that finds the solutions for sustainable development. I want Canada to have a green revolution – not to kill the economy, on the contrary to have a strong economy – but one of the 21st century, not one of the 19th century.

Another issue close to my heart is water. Fresh water is becoming more and more a problem in many countries and climate change will make it worse. If we don’t learn how to be better water managers than we are now, I’m concerned about the future. I don’t want us to be the first generation since Confederation to pass on to our children a quality of life not as good as the one we currently enjoy.

So that’s why I want to become prime minister of our country: to reconcile economic growth, social justice and environmental sustainability and to be a good citizen of the world.

JR: Why should people choose you over the others?

SD: The choice is between Mr. Harper and me. If you want to choose who will govern, it’s one or the other. He’s very right wing. I may think of the US as an ally and a friend, but not as a model. For Mr. Harper it’s different. He’s so close to Mr. Bush in terms of ideology and the way he sees the world. He said to a very right wing US think tank that they were an inspiration for us as a socialist state that needs to learn from them. It’s the way he thinks. When, for instance, he decided not to advocate against the death penalty in Montana for a Canadian who will be a victim of that policy if we do nothing, it’s because he thinks the death penalty is a good thing. He or his ministers think that.

He said a couple of years ago that he doesn’t believe in climate change. Now, he pretends to believe. He also said he doesn’t believe in multi-culturalism and now claims to believe. I think we see a lack of sincerity in what Mr. Harper is doing.

I will provide sincerity. I’m telling you what I believe in. I will provide openness and respect. I think we Liberals have identified the challenges of this century that need to be seen as opportunities on the environment, social justice, economic competitiveness, the consequences of an aging population and how to be a good citizen of the world. We’ll campaign on that and I’m confident that Canadian views about what to do with this country will be close to what we propose rather than to the very right wing approach of Mr. Harper.

The series continues in the next issue of Common Ground.