On June 28, long-serving Ontario NDP MPP Peter Tabuns was announced as the party’s interim leader. He replaces Andrea Horwath, who had held the job since 2009. Tabuns will serve as interim leader for an as-yet-undetermined period; the party has not yet announced plans or timelines for the selection of the next leader. On his first full day as interim leader, Tabuns spoke with TVO.org’s Matt Gurney about how the promotion feels, what he hopes to achieve, and what he thinks happened earlier this month.
Matt Gurney: Peter, you were elected in 2006; Horwath became leader in 2009. You’ve been in elected politics for a while and under the same leadership for most of it. Does it feel weird to wake up today, on what I assume is a really busy day, and realize, huh, I am the boss?
Tabuns: [laughs] Matt, first, yes. It is a busy day! But, no, not really. It doesn’t feel weird. It may sound strange to you. But, no. I’ve always played a role in the caucus as a leading voice on environmental and energy issues. What I want to do is more important than the role that I play. So being a leader and being in a position to help the party get through this leadership period ... I find it interesting. I can’t tell you anything else. I’m really glad I have the opportunity. But it doesn’t seem that weird. It’s fascinating. And it’s one of the things I’ve always liked about politics: you’re constantly confronted with new and unique situations; you deal and talk with just a broad variety of people. I’m curious about the world around me. I’m interested in new things. And so this is a lot of fun — although I’m sure there will be days that will not be fun.
Gurney: Ha! Well, I’ll try to call you on one of those days. So let me ask you this: you just referred to the things you “want to do.” You’ve got two jobs now. One of them is leading the party itself, just weeks after a disappointing election. Now, I’ve been poking around a bit already, talking with some of your people, and my understanding is that the party itself is in okay shape. No major personnel or money crises, and you’ve got a solid lock on opposition. So that’s a relief, I guess. But what is your goal here? As party leader, what’s the top priority?
Tabuns: Really, there are just two things. One, as you say, is making sure we have a platform that the leadership candidates can work from. We want them to be successful. We want whoever comes out on top to be able to just step into their role and continue doing the work that we need to do in Ontario. But I think the other part, which is what our party expects, what our caucus expects, and what I think people expect, is to defend the people of Ontario against the backward policies of the Ford government. That’s pretty critical. If we weren’t taking them on, if we weren’t being the people holding them to account and trying to defend Ontarians, people would ask serious questions about what are we doing. We’re pretty clear: we are going to take them on.
We know the impact of his agenda on health care and education, on housing, on the environment. We expect to be able to fight. Overall, I still have a variety of conversations that need to be had, but we seem to be in good shape financially. So I think I just need to make sure we are in the right place. When the house comes back, we have to carry on the fight and be as ready as we can be. That’s my job. I’m determined to be ready.
Gurney: Let’s talk about that, then. The legislature coming back. And let’s do this in two parts: short-term and long-term, I guess, or as long as you’re interim leader. We’ll get the house back soon enough. The government has said it wants a summer session of some sort. So what’s your first priority on your first day in the house as opposition leader?
Tabuns: In the end, it’s all defending against the agenda that the government is going to be bringing forward. We’ve got a health-care system that’s really badly stretched. A lot of the workers are demoralized by this, and the pandemic is not yet over, although it’s a lot better for most people than it was before. People expect us to fight to make sure the health-care system is as good as possible so they get the care they need when they need it. It’s the same with education. A lot of kids got left behind the past few years. They aren’t getting support, and they need to catch up. People expect us to fight around that. I have to say there’s a constellation of issues rather than one single issue. And it’s all trying to deal with the fact that people who have had a very tough time continue to have a tough time. And they want us to fight to take that on.
Gurney: Same question, Peter, but from a broader perspective. A strategic perspective, I guess. As I said above, you guys are in pretty good shape, all things considered. As interim leaders go, others have had way bigger problems. Our friends in the Ontario Liberal Party, for example, have some real existential issues to ponder over the summer. What do you think the Ontario NDP needs to be? What do the people of Ontario want it to be? Are you guys offering the Ontario public the kind of party they want and need?
Tabuns: I can’t dismiss that thought. I think it’s always advantageous to rethink if you haven’t achieved your goal. In the immediate term, it’s always worthwhile thinking about what you can do better. So in the long-term, are we effective? I would say that our goal for a long time has been to change politics and change society in Ontario, make life better for working people, for middle-income people, for people who are not getting the fairness and the equity they deserve.
And part of that is going to be effectively pushing forward issues. And part of it is you’re going to be fighting Ford’s government. Those are underlying agenda items that every leader of this party is going to have to grapple with now. I’m the interim leader. I don’t know yet how long I’ll be the interim leader. So it’s the permanent leader who’s going to have a lot more impact on that. But I would say, speaking as a member of the party, those things are central for us. And what I think you’ll see over time is variations on that theme: people trying to figure out better ways to deliver on those goals that I just outlined, but not a real change in what those goals are.
Gurney: There’s one more question about that I want to ask you, but I actually want to jump on something you just said there. You’re talking about what the role of the party is, and I just have to ask about the last election. I’m not even talking about you right now as interim leader, Peter — just as a guy who has had a bunch of campaigns and won a bunch of campaigns. You’ve fought a battle or two. What did you feel like in the last election? What do you think happened? Because I’ve got to say, that was the weirdest election I’ve ever covered. And probably the weirdest one I’ve ever experienced, period. People were just not engaged.
Tabuns: Yeah. Well, personally, having talked to a number of my colleagues, different people in different regions of Ontario experienced different realities.
So my colleagues in the north, dealing with much tougher push from the Tories? They had a very different experience than I did in my riding, where the Tories get, like, 12 or 13 per cent. They’re a minimal factor in Toronto–Danforth. So it really differed based on where you were.
But what I found was that, when people came to the conclusion that the Ford government was not going to be defeated, they just tuned out. I would say about two weeks before the election, when you started seeing headlines like “Ford coasting to win” or “Tories way ahead,” people started expressing to me at the door this feeling of “nothing’s going to happen here.” And then in the last few days before the vote, I had people saying to me, “I know it’s important to vote, I know I should vote, but I just don’t see what I’m going to get out of it. What I want to get out of it.” And I’d say to them, for the people of Toronto–Danforth, what they want — the goal — is an end to the Ford government. This is a government that is not friendly to Toronto and certainly very unfriendly to downtown Toronto. So I think my sense of things was skewed by that. They just didn’t feel that they’d get much out of it or get what they really fundamentally wanted. And they turned away. You’ve seen the numbers. They turned away right across the province.
Gurney: Again, just asking you this as a political veteran. Was that because of this race itself, the features of it? The issues, the leaders, the policies? Or was this just exhaustion after two years of hell?
Tabuns: [pause] I don’t know how to separate those two things.
Gurney: [laughs] Peter, I know exactly what you mean. I don’t either. I just don’t know how to explain it. I keep trying.
Tabuns: I don’t think there’s any doubt that, yeah, people were tired. I mean, they went through hell these past two years. I would say that, in the postwar era in Canada, these past few years were the most difficult experience. We Canadians have dealt with crises and challenges, but other generations had major wars, and we’ve never had anything like that. This was hard. This was really hard. So I think, to some extent, you’re right: they’ve gone through hell, and they have other things on their mind. The election was not a big part of it. So for a big chunk of the population — I’m not saying the whole population, because obviously a lot did turn out and made it clear to me at the door that they were following things closely — you’re right. Fatigue was definitely part of the mindset of the electorate.
Gurney: Okay, one last question, about adapting. You’re neutral in the leadership race. You have said you won’t be running. And we don’t know the details yet. But what do you want to see? What do Ontarians need from this? What does the NDP need?
Tabuns: A vigorous race. A lot of debates. Candidates who develop a profile. We want to be noticed; we have a lot of useful things to say about the important issues on the table. And my hope is that the debates that we have within the party will become debates that happen in the larger society. Watch any leadership race in any party. Everyone wants their race to be noticed. When Jack Layton ran for the federal leadership, he was noticed. That race was noticed. And his approach was one that I think really caught the imagination of Canadians, and I’m hoping that this leadership race will catch the imagination of Ontarians, too.
This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.