Sam Goldstein

After months of campaigning, the federal NDP is currently choosing a new leader and will announce the winner of its contest on March 29.

Our newsroom interviewed the five candidates currently in the race.

Read on to learn more about NDP leadership candidate Rob Ashton:

Ashton is a lifelong union man.

He is a dockworker, and currently represents the International Longshore Workers Union as National President.

Union-centred policies play a big role in Ashton’s campaign, as well as policies to expand transit systems across the country, and reform the tax system to address wealth inequality.

“I’m trying to bring us back to our working class roots,” he says, on being asked where he hopes to steer the conversation in the leadership race.

“We lost quite a few members of the working class not only to the Conservatives, but also to the Liberals. I’m trying to get us to the point where we can have those conversations again with workers… that feel like we fell out of touch with them, that don’t see themselves in us anymore.”

Ashton says the NDP has forgotten how to listen to its constituents, and failed to successfully sell its brand even when it has achieved success.

He points to the NDP’s supply and confidence agreement with the Trudeau-era Liberals, which succeeded in pushing for dental and pharmaceutical care legislation, and anti-scab legislation.

He says the Liberals took all the credit for those wins: “The Trudeau government ate our lunch on that.”

As a union leader, Ashton is highly critical of Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code, which allows the federal government to intervene in strikes — a clause the Liberal government has employed several times over the past few years.

“It sways the balance of power towards the employers, because employers then go, ‘we don’t have to bargain with our employees anymore. We’ll just sit back, wait ’till they go on strike, then the government will enact Section 107 and send us all to binding arbitration.'”

Ashton goes so far as to question whether the past NDP should have ended its agreements with the Liberals.

“When the federal government started hitting all of us unions with the Section 107s, the NDP, in my humble opinion, should have brought the government down almost instantaneously,” he argues.

Ashton is not opposed to future agreements with the Liberals if it furthers NDP goals, but maintains that any agreement would operate on a case-by-case basis: “Every bill that gets put in front of us will be looked at as, ‘does it help the working class?’ If it doesn’t help the working class, then we can’t support it.”

The longshoreman wants the focus of the NDP to be on universally appealing issues: housing, jobs, and affordability.

He is proposing deep reforms of the tax system, under the slogan “tax wealth, not work.”

Ashton says our tax system was “created by the ruling class. Period. It was created to take money from the working class, and to keep the working class in a state of flux, fighting for our survival.”

He is proposing eliminating tax brackets below $40,000 annually (meaning those making less than that would pay no income tax,) and making up for it with higher taxes on large fortunes over $10 million.

He also calls for closing tax loopholes which allow large corporations and the wealthiest of individuals to park their money in offshore accounts.

Ashton is the only one of the five candidates to have never sought public office, prior to this race.

He presents his newcomer status in politics as a point in his favour.

“Politicians always want to talk at you, not with you. I’ll listen first, ask questions, and then we’ll work together to create the solutions.”

After months of campaigning, the federal NDP is currently choosing a new leader and will announce the winner of its contest on March 29.

Our newsroom interviewed the five candidates currently in the race.

Read on to learn more about NDP leadership candidate Tanille Johnston:

Johnston is the youngest candidate in the race, and the only Indigenous candidate in the running — she is actually the first Indigenous person to appear on a federal party leadership ballot.

Johnston is a social worker and a City Councillor in Campbell River, British Columbia.

Among her campaign focuses are democratic reform, Indigenous reconciliation, and fighting poverty.

She wants to see a renewed NDP empowered at the local level, and reaching out to new constituencies.

“I really want to see us have a strong relationship with our student movement,” says Johnston. “There are hundreds of thousands of students across this country that are very active in political spaces, and our party doesn’t have solid relationships there yet.”

Johnston says the student population will feel the decisions of present governments for years to come, and should be treated less as a constituency of the future, and more as one of the present.

She wants to see access to voting expanded for remote first Nations, with ballot boxes available closer to home.

Johnston argues that Indigenous communities already vote for chiefs and councils, so elections bodies could “utilizes those spaces that already exist in communities, so that we can really see that voter turnout increase.”

One way a Tanille Johnston NDP could mobilize voter turnout is through her proposed Guaranteed Livable Basic Income (GLBI,) also sometimes known as a Universal Basic Income, which could attract young and old voters alike.

Canadians experienced something close to a GLBI with CERB (the Canada Emergency Response Benefit,) a basic income program that millions of Canadians received during the COVID-19 Pandemic to make up for job and income losses.

“We had a guaranteed income that was coming into homes to support people to get through that pandemic,” Johnston explains. “And we saw crime rates go down. We saw poverty go down across the country.

She jokingly describes her GLBI plan as “the NDP’s tough on crime approach, because it does have a dramatic impact on lowering crime rates.”

As a wealthy G7 country with vast political and economic resources, Johnston is highly critical of Canada’s poverty rates (Canada’s child poverty rate is particularly high at 18 per cent.)

“Why are we sitting here allowing that to continue day over day, when there is a very easy, simple mechanism that can look at families across the country and offer support where support is needed?”

Johnston suggests that fighting poverty with universal programs can actually save the country money, as well.

“When people aren’t living in poverty, they’re not showing up in our healthcare system as much. They’re not showing up in our child welfare systems, our child services systems. They’re not appearing in our criminal justice system,” she remarks.

Johnston has made Indigenous reconciliation and empowerment a major plank of her campaign, with calls to bring basic services and infrastructure into remote communities,

She also wants to see a greater commitment to the principle of free, prior, and informed consent practiced by all levels of government in their dealings with Indigenous communities.

“We often show up to nations with our big projects and our big ideas and say, ‘hey, we want to do this with you, and we want to do it on your land,’ versus approaching nations and saying, ‘hey, where are you at? What are your major projects? And where do you need us as partners in that work?”

Johnston acknowledges a need to develop, for example, critical mineral mines and other infrastructure, but questions the way they will be used.

“If we’re not using those opportunities to bring forward a renewable industry, then what are we doing?”

She also suggests that critical resource projects of national economic importance ought to be treated more as public projects, rather than privately owned enterprises to enrich a select few — especially when billions of dollars are made extracting resources from First Nation territories.

Sleepless in Thunder Bay, a new campaign by United Way of Thunder Bay, will invite participants sleep in their cars for one night in March as a way to keep the challenges of being homeless in the public conversation.

Albert Brulé, CEO of United Way of Thunder Bay, is under no illusions that the new event will solve homelessness.

“It is an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the realities that so many people face,” he says. “We see it as an opportunity to come together as a community to do something that helps raise awareness, and also will raise much needed funds.”

The event has currently registered about 15 teams of participants, but Brulé hopes to see more enroll in the campaign before the Sleepless event on March 28.

Kyla and Ray Jarvinen, of ITEC Equipment, were the first to sign up.

“As business owners here, we believe it’s our responsibility to give back,” says Kyla.

The two are encouraging other businesses to partake in the event.

Brulé describes the event as a way to develop empathy in the community.

“Even though it’s one night of stepping out of your comfort zone, sleeping in your vehicle, imagine if you had to do that every night,” he says.

Grade 12 student at St. Ignatius High School Olivia Kembel is the only high school student currently signed up for the event.

“This is an issue that also really includes and impacts youth,” Kembel explains. “We can kind of see when a student or a youth doesn’t have a stable place to sleep, a stable home somewhere… this shows up in the rest of their life. It impacts their education and their social connections.”

She feels that youth need to be a part of the conversation on homelessness.

Kembel is challenging some of her teachers and other people in her life to take part in the event as well.

While the event is free to participate in, United Way is encouraging those who sign up to fundraise, with a goal of raising $30,000 for the charity’s Pathways to Home initiative, which aims to address the root causes of homelessness.

Those wishing to take part can find more information at United Way of Thunder Bay.

The provincial government plans to introduce new legislation that it says will modernize its privacy laws, to bring them into the modern era.

The new rules promise better data protection and protection for children.

But the new rules will also exclude the premier, cabinet ministers, and their staffers from Freedom of Information (FOI) rules granting the public access to behind-the-scenes discussions and records.

The changes were announced at a press conference on Friday led by Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement Stephen Crawford.

“We’re moving forward with a clear, balanced, and future-ready package of reforms, starting with protecting the integrity of cabinet decision-making,” Crawford announced.

The minister framed the changes as a way to bring the province’s rules in line with the rest of the country when it comes to cabinet confidentiality.

Asked by reporters if the government had something to hide, Crawford insisted that “this government has probably one of the most transparent governments in the history of Ontario.”

The new changes will be applied retroactively to past records from cabinet ministers and the premier, which raises questions for ongoing court proceedings involving the Ontario government, such as the Greenbelt scandal.

At the press conference, Crawford repeatedly pointed out that the law had not been updated in 40 years, stating that when the old provincial privacy laws were written, smartphones, cyberthreats, and cloud computing did not exist.

When reporters asked Crawford of the connection between smartphones and cabinet confidentiality, he replied that “smartphones have everything to do with cabinet confidentiality because smartphones didn’t exist when the legislation that we’re changing today was written.”

On being asked to elaborate, Crawford simply repeated that smartphones, cloud computing, and cyber threats did not exist in the 1980’s.

The Thunder Bay Police Service (TBPS) has declared 62-year-old Daniella Nekuliak missing.

Nekuliak is a 5’4″ woman with a medium build, medium-length grey hair, and brown eyes.

She was last seen in a white coat around the 400 block of St. Patrick Square on Thursday, March 12.

TBPS is asking the public to review surveillance footage, as well as to check yards, sheds, and vehicles for Nekuliak.

Anyone who sees Nekuliak should call 9-1-1.

Those with information that could assist in the search should contact TBPS at (807) 684-1200.

The Thunder Bay Museum has a new exhibit on its second floor.

Small Scale: Tall Tale offers Thunder Bay residents a chance to learn about Lake Superior’s maritime history though the use of model ships.

The exhibit will also tell the story of ship modelling, and look at how modelling interacts with the wider world of ships and shipbuilding.

Models of particularly notable ships for the region, such as the HMCS Port Arthur, will be on display.

Through the exhibit, attendees will be able to follow the region’s seafaring stories from Indigenous canoes and the fur trade, to the industrial revolution, to the city’s wartime shipbuilding tradition.

The exhibit will run until October 11, 2026.

Ornge, the emergency transport provider, is sending vehicles, stretchers, and medical equipment to remote First Nations in northwestern Ontario, for use by members of the Emergency First Response Team (EFRT) program.

EFRTs are a relatively new addition in the remote communities of Deer Lake, Wapekeka, Sandy Lake, Bearskin Lake, and Keewaywin First Nations.

Alisha Makila, an Advanced First Response Lead (AFRL) in Deer Lake, says prior to a year and a half ago, the situation for emergency first response was more disorganized, with no dedicated equipment or staff.

“People from the band would respond, or people from the nursing station being security with limited medical training would go to these calls,” she says. “And we didn’t have a vehicle, so most of the time would be the van that they were using, or the back of a truck.”

Wade Durham, Chief Operating Officer (COO) for Ornge, explains that before the EFRT program, these communities relied on a volunteer-based system, and there were few options for transporting patients in medical emergencies.

“We made an early determination that [the EFRT program] had to be community-led, community-run, and it had to have some paid positions in the community.”

Beyond new equipment, Ornge also provided training to the new crop of first responders.

Makila says the new equipment is already making the process “so much safer for patient transport,” and is also speeding up the medical evacuation process.

“Before, Ornge would have to come in every single time. Now we have the ability to meet them at the airport, drastically changing the response time in those really, really difficult situations where people need care right away,” she explains.

In Deer Lake, the EFRTs were getting about six calls a month when the program first started. Now, Makila says the teams are answering 60 to 80 calls a month, though that number also includes non-emergency situations such as home care.

Ornge plans to expand its program to more remote communities in the future.

Durham says the five communities currently involved in the program were selected in part because of their remote nature, with no road access, and in part because they already had active first response teams.

In the next phase of expansion, Ornge will provide training and equipment to remote communities with no active response teams who are interested in taking part.

“I’d say the next phase is about 13 other communities that we’ll be focused on in the next year,” Durham says.

Ontario’s Ministry of Health is providing funding for Ornge’s first responder training.

Ornge is using its own funds for the equipment.