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MP Niki Ashton celebrates 10 years in Parliament and looks forward to more

Churchill-Keewatinook Aski NDP MP Niki Ashton, who celebrated the 10th anniversary of first being elected Oct.
NDP MPs Romeo Saganash and Niki Ashton pose in front of a mural inside the United Steelworkers Local
NDP MPs Romeo Saganash and Niki Ashton pose in front of a mural inside the United Steelworkers Local 6166 Steel Centre on Elizabeth Drive in Thompson Oct. 13.

Churchill-Keewatinook Aski NDP MP Niki Ashton, who celebrated the 10th anniversary of first being elected Oct. 17 and has been officially nominated as the party’s Northern Manitoba candidate for the next federal election, hosted fellow NDP MP Romeo Saganash in her hometown of Thompson Oct. 12-14.

Saganash’s riding – Abitibi-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou in northern Quebec – is similar in many ways to Ashton’s. 

“It’s 54 per cent of the land mass of Quebec,” he said in an Oct. 13 interview. “Our ridings are pretty much similar from all perspectives, in terms of demography and other challenges that remain for northern communities like hers ands mine. She has a lot of Indigenous communities in her riding and so do I - 14 Inuit communities in Nunavik – northern Quebec – and nine Cree communities, two Algonkian communities. Most of the other non-Indigenous communities depend on resource development – mining, forestry, hydro – so I think we’re pretty similar in that sense as well.”

Saganash, who is not seeking re-election after serving as an MP since 2011 and recently made national headlines for saying that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “doesn’t give a ****” about Indigenous Peoples’ rights, says there wasn’t any other word to adequately express the difference between what the Liberals say and do when it comes to Indigeous issues, as exemplified by the fact that the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has had to issue repeated compliance orders in an effort to enforce  its ruling that the federal government stop discriminating against First Nations children in the area of child welfare.

“I’m just so disgusted by this government on many levels but including discrimination against little Indigenous kids,” said Saganash. “That’s not acceptable. You can’t talk the talk when you’re continuing to discriminate against Indigenous kids. That’s unacceptable in a country like Canada in 2018.”

Ashton said that most of the promises that the Liberals made when they were elected in 2015 have turned out to be empty.

“We have a lot of rhetoric,” she says. “What we don’t have is action and I think we’re seeing that in the fact that the federal government isn’t really at the table with Thompson to try to find solutions to the challenges were facing right now, that the federal government isn’t working with First Nations to address the acute crisis in housing, in health care, so there’s a lot of work that remains to be done. In many ways things are getting worse because you have communities that are growing, you have many more young people and yet the housing stock remains the same, yet the schools are completely incapable of dealing with what’s needed because of the lack of funding. It is very frustrating to see the government pretend as though that’s not the reality and use the right words without actually responding to the reality that people are facing on the ground.”

When it has delivered, as it recently did for Churchill after the Northern Manitoba community’s only land link to the rest of the province and to Canada – the Hudson Bay Railway – was unusable and not being repaired for more than a year – it’s because people pressured them to.

“I firmly believe we wouldn’t be at the place [we are] right now if people in Churchill had not been tireless in their efforts to call on the federal government to take action,” Ashton says. “I think it shows really the power that people have to effect change. It’s a relief to see change but it shouldn’t have taken this long or this much stress and this kind of instability to get to this point.”

Another area in which the federal government has failed is on the environment, says Ashton, asserting that her party is the only one with a principled stand that respects Indigenous rights.

“They tell us that there’s not enough money for housing for job creation … but there is $4.5 billion for a leaky pipeline and we are the only voice in the House of Commons saying we oppose this and that this is not the way of the future, that this is not the way to respect Indigenous rights, Indigenous Peoples and that’s a stand that’s very much resonated with so many people that fight for the same things here in our north as well so I’m proud of the position we’ve taken.”

Although he will be stepping down, Saganash says he hopes that Ashton is re-elected because he thinks she is a very capable Parliamentarian.

“I ‘ve watched her over the last seven years. Any portfolio, she delivered. That’s why I supported her in the leadership race the last time.”

He also believes that the next federal election could provide the NDP with a chance to gain seats.

“What we’ve witnessed over the last couple of years since the 2015 election is not real change as they promised but pure disappointment on many levels – electoral reform, Indigenous issues, the environment, name them.”

Ashton herself believes that the outcome of the next election is uncertain but says she intends to keep doing what she’s done for the past decade.

“We are in an interesting time where the prime minister is shifting in popularity, in many ways not even because of things happening in our own country but because of what’s happening with Donald Trump or with NAFTA and so a lot can change over the next year,” she said. “My commitment is certainly to keep fighting for our north and to bring strong leadership at the federal level on behalf of our region.”

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