Canada's first openly gay MP ready to take on country's two major 'crisis' points

Svend Robinson just turned 67 years old, but he’s not ready to retire. Instead, he wants to make a political comeback 15 years after his public fall from grace.

Canada’s first openly gay MP says he’s running for office again to tackle two of the biggest issues facing Canadians today as both having reached “crisis” points.

The first is climate change, a problem that didn’t really exist when he first entered Parliament as a 27-year-old New Democrat representing Burnaby, B.C.

“This next election in October really is the last chance we have to turn things around,” Robinson told Yahoo Canada. “For me, that’s the biggest issue.”

Robinson says he’s spoke of the need for a Canadian “Green New Deal,” which would be Ottawa’s version of the proposals introduced by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aimed at addressing climate change.

The other major issue is one NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has heard a lot about while he running for office in British Columbia; the high cost of housing spurred by growing inequality.

“It’s absolutely shocking,” Robinson said. “There’s no question, the market has failed, totally, in housing.”

Robinson notes it doesn’t matter if you want to buy or rent, it’s become unaffordable for many people to secure a property in Burnaby North-Seymour, the riding he’s running for with the NDP.

How Parliament has changed

Climate and housing aren’t the only things that have changed since Robinson was elected to Parliament in 1979 — the same year Singh was born.

“He’s the first racialized leader in Canadian history,” Robinson said of Singh. “Parliament back then was very white and very male.”

Robinson also points to social issues such as abortion and gender equality that have evolved over time.

“Back in ’79, abortion was still very restricted then,” he said. “Women were unequal in the workplace in many different ways.”

In 1988, Robinson became the first MP in Canada to come out as gay. At the time, he said he had a sense he wasn’t being fully honest as a politician by keeping his homosexuality hidden from the public. Fast forward 30 years and the former parliamentarian says gay people are seeing a “night and day” difference compared to how things used to be.

“It’s a sea change,” he explained. “When I came out in ’88, it was in the middle of the epidemic of HIV/AIDS. There was incredible homophobia. It was legal to fire people from their jobs, to throw us out of our homes. And there was virtually no visibility.”

In 2019, there are several openly gay politicians serving in Ottawa, including Indigenous Services Minister Seamus O’Regan.

“Today, I think we can say with pride that Canada is a world leader in recognition of the rights of LGBT people,” Robinson asserted. He acknowledges that young people have made a tremendous difference when it comes to moving the needle on social issues.

“Young people don’t care,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s just not a big deal. They celebrate people for who they are, and that includes trans people.”

‘Political slugfest’ in the forecast?

Robinson served 25 years as an MP, but some remember his best for the way in which he left politics. In 2004, he admitted to stealing a valuable ring, and incident he describes as a “terrible mistake.”

“I will regret that for the rest of my life,” Robinson told reporters when he announced his candidacy in January, as reported by CBC News. “Both the prosecutor and the judge accepted that I was struggling with mental illness at the time. I took full responsibility for my actions, I gave up the job I loved, I did community service here in Burnaby.”

This isn’t the first time he’s tried to make a political comeback. In 2006, Robinson ran in Vancouver Centre and finished second to Liberal MP Hedy Fry, who is currently the longest-serving woman in Parliament.

This time around, it appears he will be trying to unseat Liberal MP Terry Beech, a man who wasn’t even born when Robinson was working in Ottawa.

And it seems the locals in his Vancouver-area riding are already excited for the race. An opinion blog published in January on Burnaby Now called the showdown “a political slugfest for the ages.”

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