The Charlatan (TC): As a Carleton graduate, what motivated you to run for NDP leadership?
Niki Ashton (NA): Actually, my time at Carleton is part of the journey that led me here. I’m from northern Manitoba and I . . . got accepted into the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. It’s partly because of that that I headed in this direction, because I was interested in international issues around development and human rights at the global level.
Even my assignments at Carleton show that I was beginning to see the need to really connect with the same issues that we fight for globally to what we need to be fighting for here at home.
TC: How do we get youth involved in a real way? How do we make them feel like they are a part of the system going forward?
NA: I do think that young people are involved . . . whether it’s through Occupy or the kind of conversations we see going on through social media. Our generation does care about a number of things locally and globally and we’re making our voices known. But we’re not always connecting them to the electoral system and that definitely has to change.
In the House of Commons, when I was the youngest woman . . . I was shocked by how little we hear about the debilitating cost of post-secondary education or how the employment situation facing our generation is a pretty challenging one, or the environment, climate change — it’s our generation that will have to deal with it more than anybody else.
You know our role on the global stage? You know, it’s our generation that pays the highest cost in war and we certainly saw that more recently in Afghanistan.
These kinds of questions are rarely heard in terms of their impact on our generation and it’s been important for me to . . . spend time listening to what people, to what our generation is saying on the ground and making those connections, to bring our voices to the issues in the House.
I come from a part of Canada where young people have something to say and . . . we need to build that bridge and ultimately, at the end of the day, with the Harper government or any government, the biggest gift we can give them is not voting, because they will continue doing exactly what they want to and avoiding our issues, our voices.
TC: In terms of tuition fees, how do we get the federal government involved in a way that doesn’t take away from the provincial government’s responsibilities, but at the same time ensures we’re helping students?
NA: We need new politics. I’m actually in a PhD program back home in Manitoba and when I was post-secondary critic I brought forward the post-secondary act . . . the federal government needs to allocate funding specifically for post-secondary education. You know the amount of money it has allocated towards transfers to the provinces has decreased especially since the 1990s.
The reality is we increasingly need to access post-secondary: trades, college, university education and the costs are going up.
We’re hearing about how student debt is now prohibiting young people from getting out in the workplace the way they’d like to, from investing in a home, from maybe getting a car, from making real decisions that our parents made a lot more easily and that’s not right.
We should be getting better, we should be supporting people to become educated, to give back to our society, to do what we want. The reality is that we need a federal government that says the status quo is not OK.
TC: How do you balance doing your PhD, your leadership campaign and all the work you do with your constituents?
NA: I remember when I was at Carleton, there were definitely a lot of people that balanced a million things, so I like to think I just carried that forward.
My decision to go forward in the leadership . . . [I] wanted to bring forward the idea of new politics, really taking about issues that our generation and many Canadians are talking about — the fact that we, as Canadians, are losing our say over political and economic decisions so important to us.
Stephen Harper and the Conservative government have really approached their work by dividing different regions of our country, pitting us against each other based on identity, region, background, all of those things.
Learning about Canada, growing up with our diversity . . . our ability to work together is our real talent and we should hark back to those values and build on those going forward.
I think it’s critical to reach out to those of us that don’t usually get involved. Many of us are young people and there’s an urgent need for our voices to be heard and to be heard at the top level — at the leadership level.
TC: There are some big names in the NDP running for leadership — Thomas Mulcair, Brian Topp, and so on — what can you do that they can’t? What makes you stand out as a candidate?
NA: It’s definitely an open race. I mean there are nine candidates, so there’s a lot of choice for people to pick from and . . . it’s a one-member, one-vote so it’s a really cool chance for people to get involved and have a say in who they want to see be the next leader of the official opposition and the next prime minister.
It’s important to talk about new politics, to bring forward the fact that we need to deal with a positive and progressive vision for Canada that looks at tackling inequality, that looks at the environment, at diversity, at engaging the disengaged, engaging young people and also this idea that a 33-year-old woman can become prime minister if she can get the support of the people.
They say you can’t run because you’re not this, you’re too this, you’re too that, you’re not enough or whatever it might be, but in new politics . . . there is a different way of doing things.
Young people, we have something to say, and I would say in many ways we have the most to lose if our country doesn’t go in the right direction.
TC: Do you have any advice for Carleton students about getting engaged in politics and making youth feel like they matter?
NA: I definitely say we need you. I would say it's important to stand up [and to speak up] for our generation. We already do it through so many venues but we need to build that bridge with electoral politics and we need politicians to reach out and spend the time listening to young people, listening to students, listening to our generation and some of the real challenges we face.
The greatest gift we can give to some is not voting, disengaging. The answer isn’t get involved for the sake of getting involved, it’s getting involved to be heard and as more and more of us get involved, we will be heard.
If you look at what happened in this election, people elected a record [number] of young NDP MPs and you can tell. The kinds of stories that are shared in the House, the kinds of issues in the House are different. So, it is possible to make that change and as we go forward, it’s critical for us to be heard both outside of Parliament and inside Parliament. That’s the kind of thing [I’m] talking about in [my] campaign — new politics.
