Front Burner - Charlie Angus on leaving politics, NDP’s future

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

After 20 years representing Timmons, Ontario, federal NDP MP Charlie Angus announced last week that he’s leaving politics. Angus has also spent much of his career fighting for indigenous rights, particularly for Indigenous children. He’s also served in the critic role for labour, agriculture and digital issues.Today, Charlie Angus on his career and departure from politics, as well as the future of the NDP and the popularity of Pierre Poilievre.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. After 20 years representing Timmins, Ontario, federal NDP MP Charlie Angus announced last week that he is done with politics. Some people say, well, that's just the way things are. with politics.

Angus, who actually used to be in a punk rock band, has been this fixture on Parliament Hill. It doesn't hurt that he is a little bit loud and very outspoken. There is no reconciliation in Canada without justice for St. Anne's. So will the minister stand up and tell us he will meet with the survivors and establish a credible mediation process? Look at me when I'm talking to you about these St. Anne's survivors. He has also spent much of his career fighting for Indigenous rights, particularly for Indigenous children. And he has served in critic roles for labor, agriculture, and digital issues. You may remember that he tried to take over the NDP in 2017,

but lost out to Jagmeet Singh. Charlie Angus is here with me today to discuss his career and departure. But I also want to talk to him about the future of the NDP and the popularity of Pierre Polyev. Okay, here we go. Mr. Angus, thank you very much for coming on to FrontBurner. Well, thank you so much for having me. And congratulations on, I guess, I want to say making it 20 years. 20 years is the, well, I'm going to say at the outset that becoming a professional politician was, or any kind of politician was never on my life list of things to do and to have made it 20 years. Yeah, I'm very

grateful. It's been quite the experience. But as the great political writer, Kenny Rogers said, you got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them. And I just felt the time had come. It's time to move on and do other things, including politics. Why do you think that time is now? My politics has always been rooted in the communities I represent. And again, I know people really think of politics as the Ottawa bubble and the drama. And I actually get really bored talking about the drama in Ottawa. To me, that's not where it's rooted. It's always been in the communities. And the latest decision by the Electoral Boundary Commission to really rip apart the communities that I represented and add in a whole bunch of new communities on a much larger territory. My riding was already bigger than the United Kingdom. I actually laughed when I saw the headline in the local paper that

said they were giving me an extra 20,000 square kilometers of territory. And I just thought, thousand square kilometers of territory. And I just thought, I don't want to spend my next four or five years just driving that road relentlessly, trying to build relations that took me 20 years to build in the rest of the writing when I could probably be doing other things and other things that I think that could help people. That was really interesting to hear you reflect just now on the Ottawa drama and how you think it's a bit boring. And I wonder if I can get you to expand on that a bit later in the conversation. But first, you have always been a pretty outspoken parliamentarian. I think that's fair to say. I remember you being particularly outspoken on is Indigenous issues. I remember the speech that you gave back in, I was just looking it up today, 2016, about the suicide crisis in Attawapiskat. I want to thank the minister for positive words on Attawapiskat.

But as the community said to me this morning, it shouldn't take a state of emergency to get mental health workers to fly into a region where we've had 700 plus suicide attempts. There was no money in the budget for mental health services for Indigenous children. I want to ask the minister, what's it going to take to end this cycle of crisis and death among young people? What are the concrete steps for the long term that they're going to put on the ground, not just in Attawapiskat, but all the Indigenous communities of this country?

Well done, Charlie. And I wonder if you could reflect on the time that you've been an MP. And do you think that real progress has been made to improve the lives of Indigenous people in this country? What I've learned is that there's no such thing as standing still on Indigenous issues in Canada. The relationship between the settlers, the government, the settler people, and Indigenous people is the primary relationship. And it'll be the primary relationship 100 years from now. And we can't change the past, but we can decide what kind of relationship we're going to have. And up till now, it's been a very toxic and systemic against our the people who've been on the land from them forever um and

this is a moment of change and opportunity so i i've seen some you know the very first thing i ever saw was flying into kishetchewan i remember going in there and i'd never seen brutal poverty and negligence in the community, like the denial of basic services we took for granted. And a woman came up to me and said, how would you like to raise your children in a prisoner of war camp? And that's what it looked like, this crappy little broken down shacks behind a dirt dike wall because, you know, it was being flooded out.

What I've seen change in that time is I've seen young Indigenous leaders stepping forward. We've certainly fought big battles on the suicide crisis. Shannon's dream, that's the thing that matters more to me than anything else, the right of children to have access to education. But let me tell you about the fire that I saw in the eyes of 13-year-old Shannon Kustashin when she vowed that the little brothers and sisters of James Bay would have a safe, comfy school to go to. I was honoured to know this young warrior and if she were here today, she would say that the systemic

discrimination against this young generation of First Nation children must end now because every child has the right to hope and dream for a better future. That was Shanna's dream. We need to make it a reality. The demands are greater, but I'm hopeful that what I've seen in 20 years is that a way forward is there. And, you know, it's been great to be part of it. And I would like to find maybe in the future to be continued to be part of it, because that's certainly where my heart is. I was a child. She had a dream. She looked to you. And she looked to me.

There are still 26 communities with long-term drinking water advisories from 2009 to 2021. The homicide rate was six times higher for Indigenous women and girls than their non-indigenous counterparts. There is, as you know, this massive need for adequate housing. Indigenous people in urban centers are 11 times more likely to be unhoused than non-indigenous people. And so, you know, what would you say to someone who feels like just almost no movement has really been made? Well, I think those facts remain, and those facts remain because of the systemic nature of how Canada has denied basic services and rights. I've always said that what we end up with, you know, with these boiled water advisories is if your idea of getting rid of problem water on reserve is a press release and a slap on the back and a cutting of the ribbon, the systemic issues won't be changed because it's the chronic underfunding

of not just you can have a water plant, but all the pipes that get to the community are damaged and broken. Nisgandaga, 28 years without water, actually has a new water plant. There's just no way to get clean water to the houses. So you have to have a systemic approach, and we're failing on that. But other areas where I've seen extraordinary change, the awareness that came out of the residential schools apology, that was one of the most moving moments that I've seen.

I see young kids today, I go to schools, and they understand what happened in the attempted destruction of Indigenous people. We never had those conversations before, and we're having them now, and they're tough conversations, and they're probably going to get tougher in some ways, but that's where I see hope. I want to spend some time with you today talking about your party, the NDP, present and future. And so the NDP has been in this supply and confidence agreement with the liberals for two years now.

And the promise was essentially that the liberals would push forward goals that the NDP shared in an exchange. And in exchange, the NDP would, you know, prop them up in votes that could bring down the government. Do you think entering into this deal was like a good idea? You know, in 2019, 2021, I knocked door to door in communities like Elk Lake and Timmins and Larder Lake and Virginia Town, all these little northern communities. And people came to the door and said, why should I vote? And some of them would say to me, I can't afford to get my teeth fixed. Look at my daughter. I can't take her to a dentist.

I don't have that kind of money. Why should I trust? And the idea of a national dental care program came from those conversations at the door. And we said, if you vote for us and we get a minority parliament, we're going to go back and we're going to make that happen. And we went back in and we were laughed out of the room when we said we wanted a national dental care strategy. The Liberals voted against it.

The Conservatives ridiculed it. But it's going to happen. The Liberals voted against it. The Conservatives ridiculed it. and who's going to fire first and hope to get to shore. But we knew if we brought the government down now before dental care became a reality, we would have failed. And this is what we promised people we were going to do and we were damn well going to deliver it. And I look at the recent vote on Gaza. I mean, that was a historic moment. By replacing paragraph I with the following, quote,

work with international partners to achieve, to actively pursue the goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, including towards the establishment of the state of Palestine. And we went into that vote expecting that the government was going to try and shut us down. And one by one, liberals started coming to us because we took the decision to say,

we need to speak out against what's happening in Gaza now. Canada needs to step up. We were the fourth party and we did that. So I think this has been an extraordinary moment. It'll be looked back years and studied. And from the get-go, people told us, you're making a mistake, you know, be in opposition. That's what your job is. Well, if we were only there to throw rocks, which I've thrown a lot of rocks over the years, we weren't responding to the people at the door who said, show us that you're going to go and do something. So that's what we did.

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listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couups. I want to just pick apart a little bit of what you just said. So the Gaza vote, for example. The NDP was criticized for essentially watering down its original position. The original position was, Now, now is the time to recognize Palestine. The United States, the United Kingdom have both signaled that they're looking at ways to formally recognize the state of Palestine. That didn't end up passing, right? You negotiated something else. And you mentioned diabetes medication. This is part of the

pharmacare talks. But, you know, that has been criticized for not going nearly far enough. You know, of course, you also got birth control. And the dental program has been criticized for not going nearly far enough. You know, of course, you also got birth control, and the dental program has been criticized for not going far enough either. And then also, not enough dentists have signed up to help program at this point. And so, do you really still call these all wins? Oh, yeah. I mean, no matter what we do, someone's going to say, well, it didn't go far enough. We knew we were not going to get universal dental care. There was no way we could get the sign off.

But to get the millions of people who don't have access to dental care, who can't afford it, that's a huge win. There will be dentists who want to do high-end, rich practices. We can't make them, but there's going to be a lot of dentists who will. And I've talked to a lot of dentists. So that's going to make a practical difference. You know, on pharmacare, the thing that we really learned in this parliament in all their negotiations is like, we can't wave a magic wand and make pharmacare happen overnight. So this was the stages of getting it into action. It's like, let's get something practical with a commitment in the long term. Will the liberals stab us in the back back screw us over in the long term maybe you know that's that's

politics but let's get something we we can do on the Gaza vote this was a really amazing moment because it was the Palestinian community that in Canada that said to us like when the liberals showed up at the 11th hour, they suddenly wanted to work. We went in thinking, well, they made it clear they were not going to support us. But one by one, their ranks started to break. They were having lots of problems. So we could have, you know, in the old strategies of politics is you get a wedge issue and you drive it and you make the other side break and then you score victory.

and you drive it, and you make the other side break, and then you score victory. And the Palestinian community in Canada said, like, we need some message that Canada's standing together. And so we were willing to make those compromises, but we got serious, serious changes. I mean, cutting off arms supplies to Israel, never we could have had that conversation before. Talking about the issue of searching for war crimes.

We could never have gotten that before. And we knew that we couldn't, an opposition motion doesn't unilaterally recognize the state of Palestine. It's not how it could happen. We wanted to put that on there as a marker. And so the fact that the government's willing to look at it, always said, okay, we'll take that. And we knew that some of what the liberals brought in about stronger language on Ham okay, we'll take that. And we knew that, you know, some of what the Liberals brought in

about stronger language on Hamas, we were, that was good too. So, you know, people are not used to Parliament actually being functional. And this was a moment when we were functional and I'm really proud of that. Just looping back to the confidence and supply agreement that you have with the liberals, party stalwart Ed Broadbent, before he passed away earlier this year, he told my colleague Rosie Barton that he thought the deal was set to go on for too long.

Essentially, the argument he was making is that the liberals would get credit for anything popular. I wonder how you think it is working and whether the NDP is getting enough out of it. Never gets enough. Never. I mean, the other guys always get the credit. Yes. Most of the credit.

That's a problem. But I think we are getting it. Do you agree with that sentiment? Well, far be it for me to cross Ed Broadbent, who was always like my schoolmaster. He used to call me out of the blue and say, Charlie, what's going on with your caucus? And I would have to tell Ed everything because Ed always paid attention to the end of his life. I think what Ed was speaking was the longstanding feeling that the Democrats have had of being very wary of getting into

agreements because we're always afraid, well, we're not going to get the benefit. It's going to hurt us in the long term. But we realized in order to get dental care, we couldn't get dental care passed and then bring the government down. It would fail. I mean, Polyev would kill dental care tomorrow. So we did lock ourselves in to get this agreement in place to actually make the program survive. It would take, you know, a longer term commitment. I was reading a piece today from some of my colleagues, and they were quoting NDP caucus members who were privately saying that they're worried about the NDP deal because it sort of links them so closely with the liberals. And do you think that the NDP identity is too closely tied to the liberal identity right now? And, you know, could that be a real problem for you guys? You know, when you're the New Democrats, there's always two trains coming at you, and they are always saying you're going to get run over. I mean, I don't know how many times I've been at caucus meetings going back to 2004, where, you know, it was always us that they

figured was going to get wiped out, and we always managed to find our way. I think what we sense is that Justin Trudeau has really disengaged and people are frustrated and they're tired with him. I'm feeling that one of the dangers that the Polyev machine is doing is amping up the opposition, the extremism, that I think will scare a lot of voters at the end of the day. And I think we just got to keep playing our, you know, we can't decide what the other teams are going to do. We got to focus on what we do and how we engage with people and take it to the voters. So I think we're in a transition moment. So I'd say, you know, talk to us in a year and see how

it goes. You know, it's interesting because, you know, you're right that they're leaving Justin Trudeau and the Liberals in droves, but they aren't coming to you, right? To the NDP. They're going to the Conservatives. And just elaborate for me a little bit more about why you think that is. Because it's not just the extreme, right?

It's a lot of young people. It's a lot of working class Canadians. I've been to his rallies. I mean, these are people who normally would be kind of sweet spots for the NDP. Well, I think there's a different kind of politics being played and we haven't read this. I don't think anybody's really read the cards about how some of this is being played. And I think some of it is very concerning in the long term in terms of who's coming to us. I've talked to a number of liberals, and I've talked to a number of old school progressive conservatives who are very worried.

So, you know, when Pierre Polyev doesn't disengage from people like Alex Jones. And yet on Thursday, the conservative leader was tweeting that the government wasn't going after the AR-15, but hunting rifles. The government wasn't going after the AR-15, but hunting rifles. So little wonder he gets endorsed by Alex Jones, who's notorious for taunting families of children murdered by the AR-15. It may not pay much attention in the short term, but it starts to paint a picture in the long term that I think will have an effect. But there are some troubling signs in terms of how Canadian dynamics of politics are changing.

And I think those are things that will affect all of us in the long term and not in a good way. The rising level of political anger and rage and also blame politics that works really well with the bumper sticker politics of Pierre Polyev. But we need to find a way to break through that and talk to people because it's our ability to talk with one another at stake right now. Do you think that's what's happening? That it's primarily blame politics? Let us primarily blame politics. You know, I ask you this in part because when I'm at these rallies and talking to his supporters, I'm not hearing a lot about like what Alex Jones said. No, but.

Right. I'm hearing a lot about how they can't afford a house. And this is the guy that seems to be speaking. Well, yeah. I'm hearing a lot about how they can't afford groceries. And this is the guy that they think is going to fix that. And do you think that the NDP should wear that? Do you think that's a failure on the party's part to grab those people? Traditionally, they have grabbed. Well, I think it's a really good conversation. I mean, in terms of whether or not the working

classes always voted NDP, I wish they did. 20 years ago, we were having the conversation about why was it that Otto Townsville could serve all their members want us to, you know, so these are these are ongoing things. registering on the larger scale but something broke in the canadian uh psyche during covid and around the third lockdown we began like we dealt with people on the phones we dealt with them emails facebook uh concern fright uh wanting answers by the third wave, there were people who were really antagonistic and blaming us as, you know, the libtard Nazi commies, like a language that we hadn't seen before, much more threat, much more violent. Now, is that the people at Pierre Polyev's rally? It's very small percentage, but what we've seen is the rising level of intimidation as a democratic tool. So what it means for new Democrats or probably liberals, like we always built our base by, you know, announcing. I was told if you don't announce five times you're going to a town, don't bother going. We used to always do that.

So people would come out and we built a base in conversations. And even people who are angry, you know, angry about guns or whatever, sit down, you talk. But then after COVID, something happened where you started to do these things and people would show up threatening. One of my colleagues was holding a disability tax benefit form for seniors, and people showed up wanting to physically fight them over carbon tax. It's a much more militant machine, and where the conservatives work into it, I took on Pierre Polyev in the House the other day, and by the time I sat down, they had an attack meme on me. I had probably by the next morning. Like a meme online?

Yeah, a meme online uh like by the time i sat down polyev's attack on me was online but it was also i was getting messages of like like a lot of swearing you know anger and some of them were from my constituents man they never paid attention to parliament before ever so there's like the power of the digital machine the right-wing digital machine is something we don't have a capacity yet and we haven't thought about that it's a new kind of politics it's a very american politics but it works really well when you use bumper sticker slogans when you blame the carbon tax when you're going to axe the tax and build the homes and the blah blah blah it really It really works in sort of this digital realm where a lot of people who are much more militant on politics live in that realm. And

they don't live in the realm that we used to deal with, which is you'd meet them at the doors, you'd meet them in the coffee shops. The conservatives are way, way further advanced on that than liberals or New Democrats. And so we're going to have to rethink how we engage. You know, listening to you right now, given what you just said, I can't, I couldn't help but think that what you're describing does not really sound like a very enticing career, potentially, right? Like it sounds difficult. And I know six NDP MPs are leaving your party. And do you think that politics is a good career for someone to get into right now? Well, I, you know, I've always loved engaging with people. I've always loved the positive nature of it.

I think there is what's appeared in the last few years is a small percentage who believes that attempts of intimidation and swearing and hate is a legitimate vehicle to make change. And that's not something I would say that wasn't Canadian before, but that's the reality now. And what you end up doing is you block those people. You block them because there isn't conversation possible. So you cut yourself off from that kind of threat rage. I mean, nobody,

I'd never heard of a death threat to a politician before. I mean, we have a file of them now. How many of them are serious? How many were actually going to drive from Calgary and shove a barrel of oil down my throat? I don't know. But we never had that before. And I think it again, so when I'm talking to young candidates, it's like, don't lose time online. Like I lived online because I thought that was a great way to be. It's like, yeah, you're just going to end up drawing a lot of hate slides. Do your work, stay focused, and stay grounded at the grassroots with people because you can make a lot of great change.

But we are at a moment where this kind of dark intimidation does need to get called out and it's not. And so it's something to reflect on. All right. Mr. Angus, thank you very much for coming. Boy, I don't want to sound negative. No, that's how a lot of the conversations on this show end, I guess. But it was really thoughtful and insightful and I appreciate it very much.

So thank you for coming on and the best of luck in whatever you choose to do next. Well, I'm not going too far. I'm going to cause a lot of trouble. Don't worry. Well, I look forward to seeing what it is. Okay. Take care.

Thank you so much. Okay. Bye. All right. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you tomorrow.