It’s no secret that member of Parliament Olivia Chow is popular with the kids.
The veteran Toronto city councilor lost in the previous two elections to Liberal Tony Ianno in U of T’s Trinity-Spadina riding, which were held in late spring. This year, when the vote was held while students were in class and on campus, Chow won.
Coincidence? Not likely.
As a councillor for Trinity-Spadina for 14 years, she put post-secondary education high on her long list of social justice crusades. Combined with her attention to the environment and other student-friendly issues, it’s no shock that Chow has many young supporters.
“I hope it’s not just one vote. I hope it’s the beginning of a process,” said Chow last Thursday, audibly relaxed after a workout at U of T’s Athletic Centre. (She and her husband, NDP leader Jack Layton, spend weekends near campus with her mom, Ho Sze Chow, when they’re not in Ottawa.)
But it hasn’t been easy. One of Chow’s fundraising activities for her first campaign in 1997 was auctioning off one of her own watercolours.
“Do you know what the painting’s content was?” she asks, her tone briefly nostalgic. “It was students standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square.” Human rights is just one of those issues Chow said she keeps bringing up, simply because it hasn’t gone away.
“When I ran in ’97, I talked about child poverty. It was the first thing that came out of my mouth,” she said. In her victory speech last Monday night, it was “still the first thing that came out of my mouth!”
That was the same speech where a radiant Chow-draped in a fiery NDP-orange scarf-mentioned U of T students by name, “who had to work and fight so hard just to get the chance to vote in this election.” She was referring to the campus voting stations that were shut down by Elections Canada after complaints from Ianno’s office. Many feared the problems would alienate students from the voting process.
Yet it actually had the opposite effect. Students almost seemed to take the closure as a challenge. Voter turnout rate in the riding hit 73 per cent, far above the city average.
“I think young people don’t want to be taken for granted,” Chow said, laughing at the suggestion that Ianno’s move might have worked to her advantage. “I think the students judged accordingly.”
Chow is incensed that many students were still turned away from the polls on election day. Elections Canada workers were forbidden to mention the special “dean’s lists,” which confirmed students’ residence on campus, to students who weren’t aware of them.
“I can’t believe it,” said Chow. “No Canadian should be turned away. You would think that the common sense thing to do would be to say, ‘Oh yeah, we have this list that proves that you [live on residence]’.”
There is no reason why students shouldn’t be able to vote in their residence buildings, said Chow, because condo residents can.
Though she and her party might have to work harder than ever to effect changes to post-secondary education with a Harper minority in power, she’s optimistic, as long as the Tories don’t devolve all power to the provinces, she said. The NDP election platform included an education act that would ensure that funding for post-secondary education has standards attached, like an upper limit to tuition fees.
“It’s unfortunate that we are a few seats away from the real balance in power,” she said.
Chow said she hardly celebrated after her win-“I gave Jack a hug,” she said. She’s more likely to pop a cork when she gets legislation passed.
“People keep saying, ‘Aren’t you so happy?’ Yeah,” she said. “But put it in perspective. You do this because you want to get things done.”
