Interview with Svend Robinson, MP

February 5, 2004

Svend Robinson has been a member of the Canadian Parliament for 25 years, having been chosen to represent his riding of Burnaby-Douglas for seven straight elections. He is also a prominent member of the New Democratic Party of Canada,a leading figure of the Canadian left, and a staunch advocate of gay rights. Mr. Robinson agreed to sit down to an interview with the Other Press.

OP: Good afternoon Mr. Robinson and thank you for agreeing to this interview. As you're no doubt aware, there were numerous protests across this province this week, with students demanding an end to tuition fee increases. Under the NDP we had a freeze on tuition fees, which although popular, is now being argued as impractical. What is your stance on this issue?

SVEND: Well I think it's absolutely appalling that tuition fees have been skyrocketing in British Columbia since the Liberal government took over, and the reason for this is a combination of cuts by Paul Martin to transfer payments to the provinces when he was Finance Minister and decisions that have been made by the provincial Liberals. I mean, they decided to give a trillion-dollar tax cut to their wealthy, corporate friends and that means other programs like post secondary education are suffering. But what it also means is that not only is tuition going up far too high, but there's a lack of space for students that are qualified, that should be able to continue their studies. The most recent figures that I saw were at over 2000 qualified people were denied access to post-secondary education in the Province of British Columbia. So you've got a combination of huge debt loads and growing for students that are graduating, tuition fees that are increasing and affecting directly accessibility. And requirements for entrance which are in some cases totally unacceptable. Now to get into UBC, for example, UBC Sciences, I think you have to have an average of something like 89%. To get into arts at SFU it is something like 80%, and that's not acceptable.

OP: What's your opinion on BC's new NDP leader Carol James, do you realistically think she can beat Premier Campbell?

SVEND: Absolutely. I supported Carol in her campaign for the leadership. Both Libby Davies and I, the two New Democrat MPs from British Columbia, we both supported Carol James. I'm very proud of the fact that we're the first party to have successfully elected an Aboriginal woman as party leader in Canada, but more importantly an articulate and strong woman. I think that more and more people are getting disgusted with some of the most distrusted policies of Gordon Campbell. His cuts to health care, closing down hospitals in New Westminster, with St. Mary's, cutting funding for school meal programs for poor kids, cutting funding to post secondary education, and absolutely disastrous environmental policies- he's talking about lifting the moratorium on oil and gas exploration off the cost of British Columbia, for example. I think we have a real opportunity to come back.

OP: A lot of media pundits have been predicting that your party may make significant gains in the next federal election. How do you explain this renewed optimism in a party that many were already ready to write off three years ago?

SVEND: Well, it certainly feels good to be back on the political map. We were in the wilderness for far too long, and I think a great deal of the credit has to go to Jack Layton, the new leader of the federal Democrats. He's really put us back on the map. He's been tirelessly traveling across the country, speaking out on issues that Canadians are concerned about, whether it was speaking out against the American invasion of Iraq, speaking out on environmental issues like Kyoto, taking a strong clear stance on equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples, speaking out against Star Wars, and Canada's contribution to Star Wars, and supporting the Romanow recommendation on health care.

I think more and more we've got a big political space opening up for New Democrats because the Liberal Party has moved so far to the right under Paul Martin that a lot of progressive Liberals are saying "this isn't my party anymore," and they're looking for a new home and coming to the New Democrats. Then you've also got Progressive Conservatives, who see their party as now abandoning the word "progressive" and again becoming more right-wing, and they're looking for another home. And even a lot of populist British Columbians that voted for the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance Party to "take on the power of central Canada" are now discovering that their party's been taken over.

OP: You are obviously a fairly popular figure in British Columbia, or at least very well-known. However, as an individual member of parliament, do you feel you have any power? From an insider's perspective, just how serious is our government's "democratic deficit"?

SVEND: There's a huge democratic deficit. But fixing a democratic deficit isn't tinkering around with the powers of 301 members of parliament the way Paul Martin says. If you're serious about the democratic deficit you look at things like our electoral system, and you change the electoral system to make it more representative of Canadians by moving to proportional representation. That's seriously addressing the democratic deficit. If you're serious about the democratic deficit you tackle head-on growing corporate concentration and convergence in the media. If you're serious about the democratic deficit you replace undemocratic trade deals like NAFTA that take away the power of elected representatives to make decisions about healthcare and the environment. If you're serious about the democratic deficit I think you've got to do an awful lot more to empower members of parliament to be able to play a meaningful role in the political process and Paul Martin's not doing that.

OP: Moving outside of Canada now, I want to ask you about some foreign issues, which I know you have a lot of interest in.

You were one of your party's leading voices of opposition to the 2003 Iraq War. Now that the Ba'ath party has been deposed, Saddam Hussein has been captured, and his two sons have been killed, do you still feel confident you took the right side of that debate? Many would argue the Iraqi people are a lot better off now.

SVEND: There's no question that Saddam Hussein was a ruthless and cruel dictator. You just have to ask the Kurds in Northern Iraq who were the victims of gas attacks in Halabja in 1988. But I think we have to remember that in the 80's Saddam Hussein was propped up and supported by the Americans and they were silent about the gassing of the Kurds. Now George Bush's rationale for going into Iraq was to get rid of weapons of mass destruction, and to break the ties with Al-Queda. Well, both of them are lies, absolute lies. There were no weapons of mass destruction and there was no connection to Al-Queda. So now he pretends that he's concerned with the Iraqi people. If he was so concerned with the Iraqi people why was his government part of an inhumane regime of sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children? They don't give a damn about the Iraqi people. This is about oil, and geopolitical power. It was wrong, and it remains wrong.

OP: Do you see the United States as generally force for good or a force for bad in the world?

SVEND: Bad.

OP: Did the United States deserve 9-11?

SVEND: Of course not. No innocent civilian deserves to die. I mean, how could anyone seriously argue that a restaurant worker, or a woman who was cleaning the floors of the 91st floor, or an investment banker for that matter deserved to die? Of course not.

OP: What, if anything, should Canada's role be in the war on terror. Are we doing enough?

SVEND: No, we're not doing nearly enough. I think that we have to identify what are some of the conditions of those who promote terror can use to recruit new supporters, and we have to address some of those conditions. I mean, abject poverty, the profound injustice of what is happening to the Palestinian people in the occupied territories, the terrible lack of democracy throughout the Middle East. Those are some of the issues that have to be addressed. We also have to recognize that terrorism can also be terrorism at the hands of a government: state terrorism. When I see for example, Israeli planes and helicopter gunships shelling crowded apartment buildings in Gaza I think that's terrorism just as much as it is terrorism to strap on a suicide bomb and go into a bus in Jerusalem. Both of them are wrong and both of them have to be condemned.

OP: Do you consider yourself a socialist?

SVEND: Absolutely.

OP: Do you think socialism is still a vital political force?

SVEND: More than ever.

OP: A lot of countries seem to be moving away from it these days.

SVEND: It's never really been given a chance. I certainly don't describe the political structure, for example, of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as being my vision of socialism. My vision of socialism is one which celebrates diversity and is democratic and respects fundamental human rights.

OP: What do you think of Fidel Castro?

SVEND: He's the ultimate survivor. I think that Castro has defied countless attempts to assassinate him and to destroy the accomplishments of the revolution in Cuba. I think he, and the Cuban people deserve enormous credit for keeping alive a vision of an alternative system. At the same time, clearly I think there are concerns, serious concerns, about some of the most fundamental freedoms within the context of the Cuban Revolution, and I've spoken out on those concerns and will continue to speak out.

OP: Moving on to gay rights, what is your response to the accusation that left wing politicians such as yourself have essentially "politicized" homosexuality. That is to say, the public perception among a lot of Canadians seems to be "if you're gay, that means you're also a left winger who supports everything Svend Robinson says"?

SVEND: I think that's ludicrous. All you have to do is look at who an awful lot of gay people voted for in the west end of Vancouver, which is one of the areas that has one of the biggest concentrations of gay people. They voted for a right-wing Gordon Campbell clone in Lorne Mayencourt. You don't vote with you genitals. Sexuality is sexuality. Gay people, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people are very diverse. What I would hope is that because we have, as gay people experienced varying levels of oppression and denial of equality, that that would in turn make us more sensitive to issues with respect to minorities, for example, and more open to progressive arguments. But that hasn't been the case so far, by and large.

OP: Obviously you have been a big proponent of gay marriage. Why are civil unions for gay couples not enough?

SVEND: Well civil unions are second-class citizenship. Civil unions are saying it's okay to be separate but equal, and that's not equality. If I chose to marry my partner Max, who've I've shared my life with for almost 10 years, how does that weaken the insitution of marriage? It should strengthen it, surely. It allows more people to be able to celebrate their relationships in front of their families and their friends and their community. To say that you can have a civil union and you can't have marriage is saying that for some reason marriage has to be fenced off from gay or lesbian couples and somehow if gay or lesbian couples were given access to marriage it would weaken or diminish marriage, and that's just a false argument.

Besides, when I go to speak to a group of elementary school students in Burnaby, at a local school, and they ask me about my family, and what I do, and I talk about my partner, one of the first question kids will ask is "oh, are you guys married?" And then I have to go into this long convoluted explanation about how "no, I'm not married because I'm not allowed to get married." I'm not going to go through and say "Well no, but we actually have this thing called a 'civil union' though, and that's okay." Kids know that that's not fair, in fact that's their response- it's not fair.

OP: Always controversial. Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Robinson. Good luck in the future.

EPILOGUE:

In April of 2004 MP Robinson confessed that he had stolen a $21,000 ring at a recent charity auction. He announced he would resign from politics and not seek re-election.

In August he pleaded guilty to theft charges. The judge sentenced him to 100 hours of community service with no criminal record. Robinson now works as a union arbitrator.