Peter Tabuns feature interview

Here is an excerpt from rabble.ca's interview with Peter Tabuns. The second in a series of interviews with the ONDP leadership candidates

Peter Tabuns is widely seen as the favourite to win the Ontario NDP leadership. However, the race has tightened during the long campaign to choose Howard Hampton's successor and Tabuns, as frontrunner, has been the in the crosshairs of the other three candidates.

Tabuns' consistent focus, as the policy wonk of the leadership quartet, has been on party policy with the New Energy Economy as the centrepiece. Tabuns' vision, based on the American "Blue-Green alliance" of labour unions and environmentalists, is to create jobs and reverse the decline of the manufacturing sector through a massive program of investment in the renewable energy sector that would "reshape the economy and reshape our relationship with the environment."

"I'm concentrating on that for a number of reasons," he says. "In part because I‘ve got a background - environmental issues, climate change, and it was very clear to me in the work that I did... that unless I bring together the jobs agenda with the environmental agenda it's just not going to go where it has to go."

"We in Ontario are major importers of energy. We spend $40 billion a year on energy in Ontario. We import 90 per cent of what we use. Coal from the United States, oil and gas from Alberta, oil from the North Sea, from Nigeria, from the world market of oil production and when you actually start developing renewable substitutes that - if you do it right - have the potential to create an awful lot of good jobs and a substantial increase in the amount of money that's recycled in your economy."

In response to critics who say his platform isn't a full economic plan, Tabuns points out that "Leo Gerard and the Steelworkers have centred their economic plan around it." And, he argues, "If you look at what's going around in the world in terms of climate and in terms of energy, the jurisdictions in the next few decades that put themselves on the footing where they have affordable, reliable, clean sources of energy - those are the ones that will be left standing and the ones that are dependent on oil and gas and coal will be in deep trouble."

Tabuns also claims that his policy ideas have influenced the rest of the field, "I've found since the start of the campaign is that ... both Andrea and Gilles have started to talk more about green economics," adding that Horwath's proposals on transportation are "consistent with" what Tabuns said at his campaign's launch.

Tabuns is perceived as the candidate of the 'party establishment' and backed by party strategists and past NDP Provincial Secretaries stretching back three decades. This is a strength but, with many party members feeling frustration towards the party establishment, it is also a liability.

Other candidates have called for a change in the relationship between the party's head office and riding associations so that more money remains with riding associations. Tabuns has talked less about internal party matters and this may cost him votes from outside of NDP strongholds. Nevertheless, Tabuns has the longest list of endorsements, including one from former federal NDP leader Ed Broadbent, and has received donations from the greatest number of individual contributors.

Tabuns' support appears to be weaker among labour delegates whose vote is weighted so that it's 25 per cent of the overall total. Tabuns has the endorsement of the Toronto Steelworkers Council, the Toronto Labour Council, UNITE HERE, CUPE Local One, the leadership of the CEP union. However, Andrea Horwath has one the support of SEIU, the leadership of the Ontario Federation of Labour and, most importantly, the senior leaders of the Steelworkers union, Steel being the single largest component of the overall labour delegation.

A whisper campaign, that falsely claimed that as Greenpeace head he locked out employees, has hurt Tabuns among union activists. In fact, Greenpeace has never experienced a strike or lockout. Greenpeace spokesperson Spencer Tripp told rabble.ca that in 2002 Greenpeace ended its door-to-door fundraising because rising overhead meant the canvass was "not meeting the fundraising standards of the association of fundraising professionals." Foot canvassers were offered unionized positions as telephone canvassers. Several of them protested the move, however, according to a statement by the union, calling the dispute a lockout is "inaccurate" and "the circumstances surrounding the closure of the door canvass were amicably resolved."

For the full interview see: Peter Tabuns: Green jobs key to Ontario's future