We are people first and foremost. We're mothers, fathers and children and siblings, … we care, all of us, regardless of our political stripes, we care about our communities.
Selina Robinson, veteran politician and current Minister of Post-Secondary Education met with me in late February to talk about what motivated her to became a politician. We met late the same afternoon Melanie Mark, a former Minister of the portfolio, resigned from office citing, among other reasons, the toxicity of provincial politics. I have the sense that if all MLA’s were like Selina Robinson the toxicity of legislative interactions would go way way down.
Selina’s political interventions are motivated by care and compassion. Professionally she is a family therapist. The political issues she has been vocal on, such as homeless shelters, social justice and gender identity, and LGBTQ2S rights, originate from a sensibility of concern for human wellbeing.
I asked Selina to talk with me because she is the current Minister of Post-Secondary Education. But I wasn’t really interested in talking shop. I wanted to learn about why she cared enough to get involved and how she ended up in the provincial government working with other caring people like David Eby.
High School and Undergrad
I began our conversation by asking Selina if in high school “she ever dreamed she would be a politician?”
“Never in a million years. But when I reflect back, I was already doing leadership. I was very active even before then. I think back to grade six, grade seven, doing youth leadership stuff, sport leadership stuff. I was the captain of the Cheerleaders when I was in high school. I also ran for student council. So those were the activities [I was engaged in]. I didn't think I would wind up here.”
Selina, like me, did an undergraduate at SFU. It turns out we were both there during the same time frame for our BA’s. Selina from 83-87; myself from 83-88. We had different majors though and by all accounts never crossed paths.
“I have to ask,” I said. “1983 was such an auspicious year with the neoliberal agenda in Victoria, were you at the AGM that voted to go on strike at Simon Fraser?” I had been at that open air AGM (it reached quorum) that voted to support the Solidarity Coalition strike action. I was also on the picket line that aimed to shut SFU down during that period in 1983.
“Nope,” Selina said. “I wasn't an activist. It's really interesting. I didn't see myself as an activist. I'm not a protester sort of person. Some things have captured me, certainly more recently, but my style of leadership historically has always been if you want to change something, you need to get in. You need to get into the system to bring about the change that you want, which has been my traditional way of working.”
Learning that her BA Major was psychology I asked: “were you involved in the Psychology Student Union at SFU?”
“No, I didn't get involved at all in student activism and student politics. I was there to get an education. I focused on education.”
“I was on the picket line in 83,” I shared. “In the fall, I was in the 100,000 person demo that marched downtown as well.”
“Did you work at the peak?”
“I even wrote at the peak for a little bit,” I said. “I mean, it wasn't my forte, but I was doing that. So that’s kind of funny with this sort of overlap. But, I mean, it's a big place even though UBC & SFU were much smaller in the 1980s. I think the average age at SFU, was around 26 in that period of time.”
“Well, I had a two year break. I did one year at UBC, and it was a miserable year for me. I was too young. I was 17. It was so big. I was lost. And then I took a gap year, and I lived in Israel for a year.
“Would you consider that a formative experience?”
“Going to Israel for a year? Oh, yes. It was the right thing for me to do. I will say that my parents were freaking out because they were worried I wouldn't go back to school.”
“I knew that I would go back to school. I love learning and I love education, and I like a formal education, but I needed to grow up a little bit, frankly. When I reflect back I probably should have gone to college. I probably should have gone to a local college first. I was 17 and thought I had things figured out, but I really didn't.”
In those days the UBC profs would say “look left, look right, look back, they won't be here when we're done with you.”
“I remember that speech, too.”
“Yes, that was a very UBC speech of the day.”
“It terrified me. I'm never going to get through.”
“Yeah. It put the fear of God in me, and it made me doubt my abilities to get through. It made me just, it was already isolating. And I will say I really liked SFU's model of the Socratic smaller discussion group. More my style, and it worked for me.”
“I don't think SFU has that anymore. I think they have the same large class sizes that we do, where it's 100, 200, 300 or more students and all that.”
Into Civic Politics
The conversation shifted. In my background research for our conversation I had found an item in the TriCity News quoting Selina talking about how she gave a speech about cold weather mats and was then convinced to run for municipal office. I asked Selina to tell me a little bit about that story.
“I'm a family therapist. I've worked in the private sector, the not for profit sector, the public sector. I always kept coming back to the not for profit sector, multiproblem families -as they were characterized- and trying to find ways to support them.”
“The local church around the corner from my house was going to host a cold wet weather mat program. So the homeless people who we hadn't seen in Coquitlam until I would say 2004, 2005, we were starting to see them, and the church said, ‘well we'll invite them in through the winter months, give them a warm place.’ I just thought, that's great. Like, how fabulous is that? My neighbours were losing their minds. … So it's a very privileged neighbourhood, middle class and so suburban in every characterization possible.”
“I felt that that was a good thing.”
“My neighbours were up in arms and sending around letters, and the whole discussion was, how could ‘those people’ come into our neighbourhood? ‘Housing prices are going to drop.’ ‘This is terrible for our children.’ ‘Our children are at risk.’ ‘Those people are to be feared.’”
“I really felt like I needed to use my voice. It was the first time that I really felt an activist sort of position, that I needed to say something because it felt morally wrong. So I went to the city council. Now, I've always voted, and I've always voted for the most part, New Democrat, for the most part, but I just felt like, but I'd never been to City Hall in my life. I never actually stepped foot inside City Hall. You pay your taxes, you throw it in the mail, right? So I went in there, and the other thing that's interesting is my daughter was taking a course, a new course called social justice in high school. I just felt like lead by example was something that I learned at a very young age, going to a summer camp and working at a summer camp, and it really resonated. I need to teach my children by example.”
“I said, I'm going to go and speak out, and do you want to come with me? She did, and we went, and we sat at that public hearing at City Hall to support of this program and it changed everything for me.”
“Within ten years I was BC's Housing Minister. So I went from finding my activist voice saying this is wrong, and speaking at a council meeting, and I was very nervous and wrote up my speech. Then ten years later, I was BC's housing minister.”
“It wasn't like my plan wasn't to become BC's Housing Minister. I just kept taking the next step. I said, well, it was Finn Donnelly who was on council at the time, who said, Selina, you should run for council. I said Why would I do that? People like me. Why would I become a politician?”
“I got myself elected and then he went and became an MP, and then I was invited to run for the New Democrats in 2013. And then he quit. He left politics and I convinced him to come back. So now he's my colleague here in provincial government. So it's also come full circle.”
K-12 Parent Politics
Before our allotted time drew to the close I had one more question. I wanted to know if Selina had participated in school-based Parent Advisory Councils when her children were in school.
“Sure,” Selina said. “I did the very early years, and it's again interesting. I remember parents being upset. I'm trying to remember exactly what was happening with the curriculum, but I think it was the very introduction, and I want to say this was mid nineties, and I don't remember the exact curriculum change, but I remember parents being up in arms that children were going to learn about gay sex in kindergarten. I'm looking at this parent thinking, are you crazy? It was just the beginning of talking about acceptance of sexuality and all of its forms. I just remember feeling so embarrassed that there were people thinking that was going to happen to our kids in kindergarten.”
“Yes, there's such a persistent socially conservative mindset on this that is just so distressing,” I said. “As an anthropologist, who basically studies global humanity in its multiple facets, one realizes there is just no normative universal gender expression.”
“That's what makes us unique and special, right?
“That [social conservatism] irritated me to no end. I had to make the decision, do I want to sit every month with these parents who don't get it, like don't get it?”
It was the same thing, because I'm Jewish, which has been very informative for me as a politician in leadership. I'm very particular about who my leaders are and I look to Moses, for example, as a fabulous leader. That's a whole other story.” I think about back when my kids were in school and being very vocal because they were doing Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus scenes as part of their Christmas activities.”
“I remember saying, my son is the only one qualified in this entire school to be baby Jesus. I want to be really clear about that. But it's not appropriate. Like, no, there are so many other ways to celebrate winter festivities and I don't need you to do Hanukkah necessarily, but I don't want you to teach these kids that Christmas is the only thing that is celebrated around the world. You're not doing a good job as educators and was pretty vocal around that.”
“I found other ways to push the system as a parent. So now they do, Kwanza, they do Hanukkah, they do all of the above.”
I offered that “I'm of the mind there should be no religion in the schools period.”
“My perspective,” Selina said, “is information doesn't hurt. If we inform children there are many different ways that the solstice gets celebrated; that there are many holidays that happen over the winter and different cultures and different religions. This is how they practice their culture. Exposure, I think is fine.”
How we care
There are a lot ways people get involved in politics. I suspect that even the most power hungry do care in some fashion. What is impressive are those people who in a sense fall into politics because they care so much about others. Selina Robinson is that kind of politician.
Very informative, as usual. I wondered what Selina Robinson thought about David Eby not naming the highly regarded Fin Donnelly to even a parliamentary secretary position when the new premier's first cabinet was unveiled. Fortunately, Eby has since put Fin in a position for which he's well suited: watershed management. But I couldn't help but wonder if the initial decision was made by Eby to punish Fin for his proximity to Selina Robinson. We'll probably never know if Fin was one of the very few NDP MLAs who did not endorse Eby's leadership candidacy. Fin has certainly been an underutilized NDP asset since he moved from Parliament to the B.C. legislature.