The Crumbs
We’re seeing a lot of performance politics these days, particularly from our elected officials who fancy themselves progressive leaders. This allows them to evade criticism from media, would-be allies, and others in power while they remain complicit in systems of anti-Black violence.
Oumar talks to Celina Caesar-Chavannes, former Liberal Member of Parliament about her experience being tokenized, excluded, and eventually left to burn by her own party while they continued to create a performance of a progressive politics. Celina also shares advice for creating change and surviving in institutions that are designed to crush us.
Celina Caesar-Chavannes
I’m telling you right now, I’m not interested in crumbs off your table. Because I know how much food is on there. I had the courage to run and be at that table. I know how much bounty is on that table. Don’t give me the crumbs, I’m not interested in that today. Don't you dare give me the crumbs that fall off that table, because I know how much food is on it!
🎵 (Theme Music)
Oumar Salifou (Host)
Welcome to the latest episode of Is This For Real? We’re winding down the last few episodes of this season, and one of the themes of our last few episodes has been the complicity of our local leaders, specifically leaders who call themselves progressive or liberal, all while they’ve been and passive in moving forward with progressive action. This complicit inaction is coming as we see the continual rise of anti-Black racism in Edmonton among other things that negatively impact the community.
We’ve talked specifically about the failure of Edmonton’s soon-to-be-former mayor Don Iveson and city council, among other politicians, that have made decisions to keep our inflated $300M+ police budget, to clear camp Pekiwewin and its homeless residents with police force, and the continual use of clearly performative committees at the city council level to combat racism in our city.
We’re now at the point where 6 Black Muslim women have been attacked right here in Edmonton in the last few months, and politicians like Don Iveson are still giving the public the exact same lukewarm response.
Our leaders always say that “racism has no place here” or that it’s “not acceptable,” but without meaningful action or listening to our communities, they’re actually sending a message that racism does in fact have a place here.
So, performative politics and lack of meaningful action are a big part of today’s show in our interview that touches on the politics of exclusion, tokenism, and pandering with our guest Celina Caesar-Chavannes.
Recently, Celina was in the spotlight after an interview with Vice where she detailed the moment in a meeting where she called Trudeau a “motherfucker” and “fake as fuck” after receiving an angry rant from the Prime Minister, who was upset with her desire to resign from her position in government the same day as Jody Wilson-Raybould, an Indigenous woman at the centre of the SNC-Lavalin scandal. He also claimed that Celina should “appreciate” him more and that he’s tired of people talking about his privilege.
All this news is all coming as Celina released her new book, which includes more of her experiences as the only Black woman in federal politics at the time. She’s able to open up more explicitly about these experiences in book form, now that she isn’t in the political arena anymore.
Stories like in 2018, when Celina clashed with Maxime Bernier when he criticized the first time Canada’s federal government funded programs for racialized Canadians. This exchange with Bernier included Celina asking him to check his privilege and be quiet — a comment that she was criticized and called racist by Bernier for, all while she received no support from most of her party colleagues at the time.
After numerous incidents and her history with Liberal party mistreatment, Celina decided to leave the party because of increased frustration with tokenism and being consistently sidelined without the ability to implement meaningful policy changes or even work outside of representative positions as the only Black woman in parliament.
When Celina was still an MP, she pushed her party to seriously consider mandatory minimum sentencing reform which is now being tabled as Bill C-22 by the Liberals.
This Bill targets some, but not all, of the sentencing rules that force judges to incarcerate people convicted under 72 potential offenses for a minimum amount of jail time. Use of mandatory sentences has been shown to correlate directly with the disproportionate incarceration of Black and Indigenous Canadians, which is a big reason why Celina pushed to have these laws changed.
6 years after the Liberal party promised sentencing reform, now we’re seeing without a majority government, a bill being tabled as Bill C-22, to bring an end to these sentences and practices. But much later and like I said, without the approval of other federal parties, it won’t happen.
The Liberals didn’t do anything when they had the real power of a majority to enact meaningful change to sentencing laws and chose instead to opt into an almost purely performative political play by tabling the bill now without a majority government..
Since leaving the government, Celina has continued to call out government inaction and political moves that hurt the Black community. In our interview today, we touch on her struggles in Liberal politics, the potential for change in that system, and what the future of politics can be in Canada.
So with that being said, here’s today’s conversation with Celina Caesar-Chavannes.
Oumar
How did your career passion for politics begin, and what kind of policy issues were particularly important to you at the time when you first started out?
Celina Caesar-Chavannes
So before I got into politics, I owned a healthcare based research management firm. We ran clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies, mostly around neurological research, so brain research. And in 2013, the company was reaching around 10 years — we were about 8 years old at the time, and I was managing or co-chairing Canada's first national epidemiology study on neurological conditions.
And I was finding from the research that people were having to leave one province and move to another, in order to ensure that medication was covered — because it wasn’t covered under one formulary and it would be covered under another — or couples had to separate in order to get services covered.
So that was sort of the understanding of, oh my goodness, you could use policy to help change that for people or at least help make their lives better. So really passionate about the brain, really passionate about bringing equity in that system. But I would say that right at the beginning of me being in politics, I wasn't as committed to it. You know what I mean? It was going through the process…. Because I just thought, you know, you go in there and it’s politics! We have a majority government, it’s government done differently. It’s bold, transformative, sunny ways. So obviously, they’re just going to do it, right? It’s very easy! I’m not asking for anything that's not easy.
And I found that as I was in the process of the first couple of years, just some of the things that I experienced, I realized, huh, this is going to be a lot harder to fight for equity that I thought. I think the passion, the real passion, came in about halfway through my term in government. So around September 2017.
“Sunny ways.”
Source: Jason Liebregts / Metroland
Oumar
Why the Liberal party at the time, and can you maybe describe what the political culture was like when you were coming in? Because I know there were a lot of things that were, I’d say pretty historic when it comes to folks who care about equity, folks who care about diversity, those kinds of things. But how did you kind of see it from your perspective as a Black woman? What were some things that you saw as early red flags as a Liberal MP?
Celina
So why Liberal? My parents were Liberal. We have this affinity towards the Liberal party, and it wasn’t until 2 years into politics that I was like, why do we just vote for them automatically? (laughs)
But anyhow, my parents had always voted Liberal. So just based on some of their policies and stuff that they had, I had always voted :=Liberal. So I’d never thought about joining politics before December 2013. Never been interested, never took a poli-sci course, just decided in March of 2014 that I was going to run. Just a decision, very easy. Ran.
So I always voted Liberal, and decided to become a member of the Liberal party. Then I got an email on International Women’s Day that said, invite her to run — “do you know a woman who’d be interested in running in the next federal election?” And I was like, yeah, sure! Me. And then I ran. The rest is history.
However, thinking about the multiculturalism that my parents thought about when they think about Canada and coming to Canada. You know, Pierre Elliott Trudeau opening that door and letting us come into the country. It was sort of like this real, oh my goodness this is a great thing. You know?
So I was elected in October 2015. In November 2015, the month later, cabinet was announced. And Trudeau made this famous “because it’s 2015” speech. That it was a gender parity in cabinet. And then they went on to say that “this cabinet is the face of Canada.” I was looking and I'm going, okay. You know how your parents look at you when they’re going to close to the camera? I was looking, I’m like, there’s a lot of people missing from this cabinet, but I don’t see any Black people.
That smug smile was actually the first red flag.
Source: Fred Chartrand / The Canadian Press
So I publicly said it out loud that this ain’t no face of Canada, cause I don’t see me. And I guess that was my first strike against me, (laughs) because you’re not allowed to say things like that.
So when I met with the prime minister in December of 2015, after being named his parliamentary secretary, I said “look, I’m not interested in being a token in this government. I’m perfectly happy being the member of parliament for Whitby. I don’t need a title.”
The response was “of course not, you’re not going to be a token, you’re here on merit, we have a great relationship, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Cool.
Bring forward 2016. As parliamentary secretary... For your listeners who don’t know, a parliamentary secretary works with their minister — minister of finance, minister of health, whatever. I’m the Prime Minister’s parliamentary secretary. We’re supposed to work as a tag team. Any meetings and events that the Prime Minister can’t attend, I will attend on his behalf. That way we cover a lot more ground. Kay? Fairly simplistic, not that hard.
The Prime Minister in 2016 was doing a lot of international travel. Like an exceptional amount of international travel. The only 3 international travel trips that I was given — I was only given 3. In a year. The first was to the White House state dinner with Obama, in which I wasn’t invited to the dinner and I wasn’t given any meetings or any other responsibilities. I was just invited to the White House to meet with Obama, and that was it.
The second was the opening of the national African-American museum in Washington, DC. The third was the inauguration of President Akufo-Addo in Ghana. 3 events, all of them very Black-focused. And I was like, “not only am I a token. This is embarrassing!”
First of all, 3. Like, I actually am smart. I'm actually very strategic, and you send me to 3 events with no responsibility except to sit there and be Black.
The “tokenism year.”
So 2016 was the year I call the tokenism year. 2017 was the year I called the exclusion year. Where of course, everybody knows in 2018, the federal budget for the first time ever named Black communities in the budget and recognized the UN decade for people of African descent. The federal government recognized that and put Black people in the budget.
When those two things were announced, I was surprised. I had no idea they were coming. So 2017 I call the year of exclusion. I was excluded from every single meeting that had to do with the Black community in particular.
I felt, because I was really bold... I asked for very specific things, I asked them to keep their promises on repealing mandatory minimums. I was pushing them to be bold. I was pushing them to be better. There was no way that the $50M in the 2018 budget would have been good enough for me, because I would have done the math on that and said, there is no way you’re giving us $50M and calling that a victory.
So 2017 was my exclusion year, and then 2018 was the year that they set me on fire. With everything that happened with Maxine Bernier, telling a white man to check his privilege. I wasn’t allowed to do that.
And it’s one thing to have the media and the opposition gaslight you. It’s another thing to not have your own party step in to protect you. And they did not do that. So they watched me burn.
Oumar
So within the political system, do you feel like there’s a way to be taken seriously? Or is it still kind of a trap of optics and trying to do everything to protect an image without having any substance or actual policy?
Celina
Well, see, that’s the difference between performative and substantive leadership. Of course there’s a way for us to not be tokenized. That tone is set from the leadership it’s set from the top.
So, it’s not about whether or not we can be in politics and not be tokenized. That happens because leadership decides to make a performance their mandate. Performative measures part of their mandate.
Hence the reason why we did not see a repeal of mandatory minimums in the 42nd parliament. Yes, Bill C-22 was tabled a couple of days ago, but it doesn’t have any teeth.
They didn’t repeal mandatory minimums when they had a majority government. So remember, not only was I in a 42nd parliament with a bold, transformative government — do differently, sunny ways, diversity is our strength, add women, change politics kind of crew. I was there with a majority of 180+ people. If we wanted to change the name from Canada to something else, we could have done that. We had that majority, you know what I mean? So if we wanted to repeal mandatory minimums, it would have been done. It would have been done.
So in that product, of understanding where I was, of course I’m going to push them to do more. Because we have the majority, what are we going to do? Wait until we have a minority? Boom. See what happened last week? You wait until you have a minority government, and then you want to repeal mandatory minimums.
What do you think is going to happen with Bill C-22? You think we’re going to repeal them? Come on now. Like let’s make it make sense. Let’s just make it make sense for a minute. You have an opportunity. You choose not to do this. Now you’re going to continue to perform? Hey, Black people look at what we’re doing! We tabled C-22.
You tabled C-22? First of all, you didn’t include all of the mandatory minimums that have been deemed unconstitutional and that you know do not change any safety for Canadians. You should have removed them all! You put some out there, and then you want to claim some kind of victory.
(scoffs) I can’t make this stuff up! It seems like it’s not real. But the record is showing on the performative nature of this government.
Oumar
How do you feel about politics these days and whether there can still be any good done? You mentioned how it comes from the leadership, it comes from the top down. We have 3 big federal parties in Canada, we have different political cultures across the country, provincially. Municipally, that’s a whole other story.
But when it comes to actually doing good, actually passing policies that are substantive — not just performative, not just pandering — do you feel like there's room still in the future and the present to actually make things happen in a meaningful way for the Black community? Or for every community, really.
Celina
Yes. Of course. The system isn’t broken, it’s just the 2 parts of that system, the 2 major parts — which are the political players on the inside and the actual democracy on the outside.
Remember democracy comes from the Greek word demos, meaning people, and kratos, meaning power. Power of the people. The people, Canadians, Black communities have the power. We have the power to sway political wealth.
The unfortunate part of this is that what tends to happen — not just with Black communities, but with most Canadians — we are so disenfranchised by the political establishment that the only real thing that we do, if we do it, is vote. We don’t engage. We don’t push the status quo.
How many people are sending messages right now to the federal government about Bill C-22? There’s 37 million Canadians in this country, 1 million of them are Black. How many letters do you think they got about Bill C-22? Not a lot, right?
We need the power of the people to push action in between the moments when you vote. We need that to happen. We also need the responsibility of the political leadership to actually do what is right and not what is politically expedient.
Source: Justin Tang / The Canadian Press
So telling me during the 42nd parliament that we cannot repeal mandatory minimums because it won’t poll well, because conservatives are going to say that we’re soft on crime. What the heck does that have to do with anything? What does that have to do with people’s lives that you are supposed to be writing legislation for? People who are over incarcerated — Black and Indigenous people who are over incarcerated and in federal prisons. When we look at the Globe and Mail article that was done last year that looks at bias within the criminal justice system, when they accounted for all other factors, racism was the cause. Racism was the cause of why we have over-representation of Black and Indigenous people in our federal prison system.
That’s it. We’re not worse, we’re not bad people. The system is bad. The system is rigged. And this is not Celina saying that, this is a research study that went in and looked at that, looked at the variables, accounted for those variables, and said this is what it is.
Then you have a government that’s saying “well, we’re not going to get rid of that racism just yet. Because you know what? If we do then I may not get elected again next time.”
Who’s supposed to stay in that… Me being the one Black woman in government — not just in that 180, but in that 338 people. The one that’s saying no, you cannot do that, no, I will not stand for that. How many times do I want to just keep beating my head against the wall? By the end, I wasn’t at the table, they had me on the menu! By 2018, yeah I was at the table. I was on it! Why would I stay there?
But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t be there. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t run, but run in packs. You know what I mean? We need a critical mass of people who are going to push to do things differently.
When the parliamentary Black caucus put out their statement at the beginning of the 43rd parliament, it included NDP’s. It included people like Matthew Green, who was pushing to ensure that they included a number of demands.
Listening to him do a podcast the other day — he was on Black in the Maritimes saying, they would not have done this if it wasn’t for Celina. But I don’t think they would have done this if they didn’t have someone like Matthew Green there right now, pushing them as well.
So it doesn’t really matter what party we run in. We just need people in there to say okay, we need to push! Because without a critical mass of people who are going to say let’s push to do things differently, you become complacent! And that’s unfortunate for people who need our help.
Oumar
What else are you looking forward to in the future? I know you just released your new book, and you’re still working on a lot of these issues. So what I guess, can people look forward to when it comes to the kind of work that you’re doing?
Celina
Look forward to continuing to see me disrupt. The more they say that I’m attacking the government, the more I think, well good. I guess I’m doing my job.
Because anytime women — especially Black women — are passionate about anything, they’re called all kinds of names. If I was a white man, it would be that my “conviction” is pushing the government. But Celina “attacks” the government. Go ahead. They’re going to talk about me anyway, so I might as well do something historic for them to talk about, right? (laughs) So I might as well continue to push.
When you put Bill C-22 and you table that, I’m going to tell you that’s not enough. When last week, they had a round table around gender based violence and talked about a historic $2.5M commitment to Black organizations to deal with gender-based violence, I’m going to call that out.
Because in 2018 one organization, Equal Voice, got $3.7M for one program. Now you have dozens of Black organizations around the table, to deal with gender-based violence in the middle of a pandemic when we know gender-based violence is increasing and you give them $2.5M.
Hmm. I’m telling you right now, I’m not interested in crumbs off your table. Because I know how much food is on there. I had the courage to run and be at that table. I know how much bounty is on that table. Don’t give me the crumbs, I’m not interested in that today. Don't you dare give me the crumbs that fall off that table, because I know how much food is on it!
I was on the menu. Even with all the food you had on that table, you still put me on the menu. So don’t you think for one minute that I’m going to take a crumb. No way. I’ll call that out, and I’ll continue to call it out.
Sometimes they say you know, “you can't call out, you need to call in” or something like that. I’m not that good of a person. I’m sorry. I’m not at that level of finding Jesus yet, or whoever I need to find — I don’t know, Buddha, somebody. I’m not there yet.
So I’m just going to keep calling out and that’s just me. Is it everybody? No. Do people say Celina’s a little much? Yes. Do I change? Not really. No, I’m good.
I’m just going to keep doing me (laughs). I don’t know. I actually do, Oumar… I try to change. I try to be like, Celina, maybe today, you’re going to be nice about how you tweet. Then I’m like, nah, that just requires too many words and I only have 140 characters.
Source: Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press
Oumar
Okay, so I think that’s it for my questions, but I want to make sure that we cover anything else that you want to cover. So is there anything else that we didn’t talk about that you think we should talk about when it comes to any of these things? Your time in politics, some of these policy issues that you mentioned like prison reform. And this season of the show is largely about policing and defunding the police. So is there anything else that you think we didn’t touch on?
Celina
Yeah, I purposely didn't touch that because I want people to understand there’s so much more to do. So you get people who say, I don’t really like the “defund the police” thing. Fine. Pick another lane. Pick a health care lane, a child welfare lane, an education lane, like pick another lane. I don’t care what lane you pick, but it doesn’t absolve you from actually doing the work. There's a lot of work to be done, so pick a lane.
But the one thing that I’ll leave with is that, if we’re going to get involved in politics, if we’re going to show up, if representation is supposed to matter, then make sure that when you do show up, you show up as 100% your authentic self. Don’t hide parts of you to fit into a system that never intended for you to be there anyway.
Our democracy was built on a principle of exclusion where they didn’t have women, Indigenous people, Black people, we weren’t supposed to be there. And then that status quo was reinforced by racist anti-Black and oppressive policy.
The Indian Act, anti-Black immigration policy. It reinforced the status quo, and then we want to show up and fit into something? We weren’t supposed to be there! So show up as 100% yourself. Otherwise that place will crush you, as it almost did me. I’ve experienced that, when you try to fit in and they just steamroll over you.
And then you just say, no. Be yourself, show up 100%. Know that your Blackness, your intersecting identities, whatever it is that you bring — your experience, your flaws, your mistakes, your struggle, your perseverance, your determination, every single one of these things adds together to create value in you, and therefore you are an asset to any organization, institution, conversation, or policy that you develop. Period. And if they can’t see that, if they cannot see that value, then it is their loss. It is not a function of your inability. It is their loss.
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Oumar
Moving beyond tokenism and performative politics is something that I worry about constantly, especially in the state of local politics in Edmonton when it comes to action taken to create so-called reforms concerned with policing in our city. Things like the creation of new committees, boards and positions to solve a problem that simply takes political will and courage to do.
There’s still quite a bit of work to be done within a political system that’s consistently prone to taking action on a surface level, especially when it comes to issues that impact the Black community. I’m really not sure what it will take to really turn the tides on this trend in politics. But Celina’s last words on moving in a pack and bringing your authentic self to the table really left an impression on me in our conversation.
I’ve experienced my own challenges when it comes to calling out racism especially during my time in more traditional media spaces. Back then when I experienced something that was racist or patterns of behaviour that I knew weren’t right I mostly kept to myself because of the fear that I think a lot of people feel when calling things out. Progress won’t be made that way and Celina is truly right about the fact that regardless of if you try to fit in or call out the system is largely staying the same and perpetuating norms that alienate and exclude you.
Thank you for listening to today’s episode of Is This For Real?, and especially thank you to Celina for joining me on today’s show. Special thank you also goes out to the hundreds of listeners who’ve continued to support us through Patreon. When we first started the show, I couldn’t have imagined we’d continue to receive this amount of support, and I’m grateful for all the contributions we’ve received so far. Thank you again for listening, and take care.
🎵 (Theme Music)
