With an election in the air, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is doubling down on how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s six-year-old government has done next to nothing to combat runaway housing prices.
The
MP for Burnaby South
would follow the B.C. NDP and bring in a national 15-per cent foreign-buyers tax on housing, a Canada-wide tax on underused dwellings and a crackdown on international money laundering.
“There are things putting pressure on housing that need to be stopped,” Singh said in a wide-ranging interview from his apartment in Ottawa. They include the way Canada is used internationally and domestically as “a safe place to drop your money into the housing market, to treat it like a commodity or a stock.”
Money laundering, Singh added, is “directly contributing to the rising cost of housing.” But the Liberals, he said, have failed to properly staff the department that is supposed to crack down on the movement of dirty money. The NDP leader wants Ottawa to subsidize more housing construction. And he’s not opposed to rent controls.
With Singh highly popular among Canadians under age 34, the ones most concerned about housing affordability, he expressed concern that “young people are faced with the reality that they are the first generation in recent memory to have it worse than the previous generation.”
Singh, 42, was loquacious and cheerful as he took on a string of tricky issues that impact B.C., Canada and the interconnected planet, which is struggling with a pandemic and what the NDP leader considers the often dubious impact of globalization.
With Angus Reid polling showing the NDP drawing the approval of 19 per cent of voters, with the Liberals at 35 per cent and Conservatives at 31 per cent, here are more things Singh had to say about some of the difficult issues of our era:
B.C.'s three contentious megaprojects
Singh is onside with B.C. Premier John Horgan in opposing the way Trudeau has poured billions of taxpayer dollars into the 1,150-kilometre Trans-Mountain pipeline expansion from Alberta to Burnaby. And, realizing that former B.C. Liberal premier Christy Clark deliberately propelled construction of the Site C hydroelectric dam “to the point of no return” he understands why Horgan “is doing the best he can” by completing the $16-billion project.
As a champion of renewable energy, however, Singh showed no enthusiasm for Coastal’s 670-kilometre LNG pipeline to Kitimat, which the B.C. NDP is pressing on with despite blockades by the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en. Singh placed himself on the sidelines of the LNG dispute, saying he’s talked directly with both the Wet’suwet’en’s hereditary and elected chiefs. Even while they angrily disagree with each other, he said the Wet’suwet’en themselves have to resolve the “complicated” conflict.
Ottawa's lack of a "made-in-Canada" vaccine policy
Recognizing the pandemic remains an overriding concern among Canadians, Singh often brought the conversation back to it — including his annoyance at the Liberals slow vaccine rollout.
Unlike Britain, which he said was no further ahead on creating a vaccine than Canada when the pandemic began, Singh suggested the Liberals are so enamoured with globalization that they failed to put effort into developing a “made-in-Canada” vaccine — or anything else.
Along with patting his own party on the back for pressing for increased social-service benefits and paid sick days for people waylaid by COVID-19, Singh is disturbed Ottawa lacks a policy on developing homegrown industry. He was stunned to learn Canada Post doesn’t even manufacture its own community mailboxes in this country:
It farms out their production to Denmark
.
Canadians who back India's protesting farmers
Singh is a staunch supporter of the
ongoing mass protests
by farmers in India against agricultural reforms attempted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
An orthodox Sikh whose parents immigrated to Ontario from the Punjab, Singh is in the unusual situation of being barred from India because of earlier complaints he made about the government’s treatment of Sikhs. While he ranked Conservative leader Erin O’Toole’s emphasis on China’s rising authoritarianism as a “fringe issue,” he was not afraid to ramp up his criticism of India’s leaders.
This spring
Indian newspapers targeted one of Singh's campaign advisers
, Vancouver advertising specialist Mo Dhaliwal, who created Singh’s “love and courage” slogan. The Indian media accused Dhaliwal and other outside agitators of fanning anti-government rage by creating a “tool-kit” that helped farmers further their protests.
Singh, however, said the “tool-kit” is nothing more than an “innocuous” document that helped protesters ask pointed questions. He charged that Modi’s “heavy-handed” and “oppressive” response led to the arrest and torture of journalists and young activists.
How racism in Canada compares
Last year Singh was removed from the House of Commons for refusing to apologize for calling a Bloc MP a “racist,” after the opposing politician declined to support an investigation of “systemic racism” in the RCMP.
A longtime anti-racism activist who emphasizes group identity, Singh was asked whether he defined racism according to the Oxford Dictionary — as “discrimination directed against someone of a different race based on the
belief that one's own race is superior
.”
Singh instead emphasized the concept of “systemic racism,” in which he said a person’s “intention doesn’t matter.” What matters, Singh said, is when “outcomes” for people of colour are “disproportional.” He cited higher arrest rates for Indigenous people and Blacks and the fact some First Nations reserves don’t have safe drinking water.
Canadians are generally polite, Singh said, which he suggested helps explain why the Gallup polling company has found
Canadians are the "most accepting"
in the world toward migrants. Despite such a positive national ranking, Singh said, “visceral” anti-Asian racism is increasing in this country.
Nonetheless, Singh celebrated Statistics Canada data that shows the
children of Chinese and South immigrants have better outcomes
than people of all other ethnicities in regard to obtaining university degrees and high-skilled jobs.
“I would say it’s an example of how immigration is good for Canada,” Singh said. “People from all different countries who come to Canada really want to make the best lives for themselves and their family. They want to contribute. They’re really happy and proud to be Canadian.”
Dtodd@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/@douglastodd
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