Episode Transcript
ANTIFASCIST DAD — Episode 23, Part 2 (Patreon)
The Future of Socialism in Canada
with Jasmine Peardon
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MATTHEW: Welcome, Patreons, to part two of Episode 23, "The Future of Socialism in Canada," with Jasmine Peardon.
I'm really grateful for your support. I hope this project brings some joy and hope and utility to your ears and to your works and days. For housekeeping: you can find me on Bluesky and Instagram under my name, and I'm on YouTube and TikTok as AntiFascistDad. And if you're listening to this in its early access form, you know that the Patreon for this show is AntiFascistDadPodcast — and if you're not, that's where you can find this the day that it's published. And I'll also direct you to the pre-order link for my book, which is out April 26th. It's called Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times. You can click the link in the show notes for that.
So continuing today with my conversation with socialist activist Jasmine Peardon, who's running for NDP party president. That vote might have already taken place if you're listening to this on the main feed, so you can check in and see the results.
We opened with a look at Canadian political economy in general at the moment — focusing, well, at least we pinged what Mark Carney's Davos speech tells us and doesn't tell us about the elite political class. We traced the NDP's founding merger in 1961 and how there's always been a struggle between the radicals and the reformers. We compared it to the same struggles that we see with the Bernie-AOC progressive establishment in the US, and we talked about the concept of movement capture — where radical elements of social movements get absorbed into more reformist movements.
Jasmine also talked about the convention-only presidential vote structure that she's navigating, and some undemocratic access barriers that she and other grassroots people face in their candidacies. We also talked about the kind of old guard paternalism that young activists get targeted with — the "be reasonable" sentiments that so many older people, let's just say it, boomers, have as the world burns around them — and the dual campaign Jasmine is running, one for the presidency and one for internal democratic reform of the party.
Now, one of the last points we touched on has haunted me for a bit, and it's regarding a tension that I've been exploring between anarchist and communist tendencies, or the extent to which you create your world inside versus outside the establishment. Jasmine has obviously thought a lot about this as someone committed to the paradox of doing both — running for party president on an anti-capitalist platform.
What she said was that all of our solidarity economy projects — community gardens, food co-ops, childcare collectives — are funded by us out of our own disposable income and personal time, on top of whatever taxes we already pay. I don't think this was obscure to me, but I think she really drove home the implication of it, because those taxes are directed toward the things that these projects are trying to compensate for: war, corporate subsidies, agribusiness, and other priorities of the capitalist state.
So regardless of how helpful that mutual aid project is, it doesn't just add a labour and time burden to the lives of good people — it subsidizes state neglect. It allows the state to offload the cost of social reproduction onto already stretched working people while continuing to grab funding for its actual priorities without disturbance.
I have heard this argument before. I've lived it. I was just discussing it with my dad last month about how we've oriented ourselves toward it over the years. But I didn't really understand this double-tap problem clearly until Jasmine spelled it out.
Okay. So here's part two. And in the coda I'm going to look back on the founding document of Canadian socialism — the Regina Manifesto of 1933 — which points directly to the policy book that Jasmine helped author for the Yves Engler campaign, and which she'll be carrying in her back pocket to the convention in Winnipeg next week.
I need to ask about how you got to where you are so early. I don't know how old you are, but you're a lot younger than me. Tell me about your education. Did you have mentors? Did you come up through community? How did you do this? Because I just think it's a lot that you're taking on pretty early — and I know that you feel you have no choice — but you've had a pathway to get there. So what did that look like?
JASMINE: Yeah, I think I'm older than most people think. I'm 28, so it's still young, but I've had a whole career. I did my degree at UBC in Vancouver, and I went abroad for a year to France, and I did a year and a bit of full-time travel as well. In that period I definitely had no understanding of what I was seeing in the world, and I had no goal for why I was traveling. I just kind of wanted to see things. But I think that made me see true injustice, which I'm able to use as motivation today because I know what the rest of the world looks like. That has definitely helped. And then I worked in public policy for three years with the federal government and got to see what an actual career in public policy would look like as a public servant. And I always say it was the least democratic place I've ever worked in my life. Like, you have no autonomy, and everything just gets passed up. And when you see it finally published or in its final form, it's nothing like what you recommended or gave them.
And now I'm doing my master's at Concordia here in Montreal. And yeah, I just decided — I have a pension, I had a great job with great pay and everything — but I was like, okay, I understand what that life is like, and I understand that I can just close my eyes and continue with it and enjoy my nice dinners and my weekends off. But it was just extremely unfulfilling. Psychologically, I just didn't feel connected to myself or my community at all.
And now I'm so in the activism world, and I've never felt more connected to my city. I have such fulfilling conversations that go across generations. Whereas before I was hanging out with a lot of people my own age, now on Sundays I'm at the Palestine protest, walking with 70- and 80-year-olds who are telling me their life stories. It's a way more fulfilling life to live.
But I think — to answer your question — October 7, the Al-Aqsa Flood, really changed everything for me. At that point there was just no going back. I already knew enough about Palestine and Israel. So when I started watching the news and seeing what they were saying, and knowing it was just so much propaganda, I was like: what else are they lying about?
MATTHEW: It sounds like — and you didn't say this specifically, but I'm assuming — you traveled through the Global South and were able to develop a kind of internationalist perspective. Is that right?
JASMINE: Absolutely. Yeah.
MATTHEW: I had a similar experience when I was about the same age. And it's kind of interesting because I was not on the same kind of career path as you at all. And I wasn't able to convert that understanding of what I had seen — oh, what are material conditions like in the post-colonial situation of India, for example — into any kind of action or work. As I carried those experiences back into my own life, I didn't really have any sort of way of putting that political awareness to work. And that's kind of how I veered off into pursuing religious studies and ending up in two religious groups. I didn't really have the context to put my political awareness to work. And I think there's a lot of luck at play in that — a lot about what time period you're in in history and what's happening in the economy. But yeah, I had a similar experience. I was haunted by what I saw. And then when I came back to North America and into my regular life, I felt this feeling of: oh, we are kind of being sheltered from the consequences of our actions constantly. We can't really see what capitalism is doing to the world. And that just haunted me for decades.
JASMINE: No, I had the same experience. I didn't really understand what I was seeing. I guess when I was traveling, and even when I came back, I would reflect on it a lot, but I just didn't have the words to understand why they lived like that and why I lived like this.
MATTHEW: Yeah.
JASMINE: But especially — you know, I was in India as well for a few months. And when you travel through India, everywhere you go, people ask you: can you get me a visa? Can you help me? I want to move to Canada. And it's a very strange experience also when you're in India — I'm mostly white-passing, and everybody treated me like I was a princess. And while I was there it's pretty uncomfortable. But then you're like, okay, this is the caste system actually playing out, and now I'm a part of this. So there are a lot of things where you're just like, oh, wow, everybody's so nice to me here. But then you come back home and you think about it and you're like: that was colonialism and racism.
MATTHEW: You know what's interesting about that — and it's actually really grim — is that people like me, who wound up being kind of white spiritual tourists, we took that deference as a sign of the holiness of the motherland. We just did not understand that we were the beneficiaries of a power differential that we had no context for. And of course India is a wonderful place, like every other place in the world, filled with wonderful people. But we had this way of fetishizing the good attention that we received, not really recognizing that there are hundreds of years of imperial history involved in making that happen.
JASMINE: Yeah, that's it exactly.
MATTHEW: What would you say the obstacles are that Gen Z — and maybe even Generation Alpha — have structurally and psychologically to becoming as politically active as you've become?
JASMINE: The obstacles are obviously just capitalism and all this psychological propaganda against you. But at the same time, it's a decision to become politically active, and it's a decision that you have to make. I mean, it's a really hard one to answer, I think, because they grow up in a world where they're very connected to the rest of the world and can see everything that's going on, but there's also so much psychological operations online that you can just get sucked into.
And I think also, as I was saying before, it's very paralyzing. I remember when I was younger, I knew that climate change was real, but I felt very uncomfortable with the opportunities to remedy it. Like, I really don't think this paper straw is that impactful. But that was the only solution presented to me. So then you're kind of stuck on: is climate change real? If this is the only way to solve it, this is ridiculous. And I remember watching a video on YouTube talking about reusable bags — this was way before reusable bags were 100% the thing — and it was talking about how one reusable bag takes the same energy and material as a thousand of those tiny plastic bags. And I'm like, this doesn't make sense.
MATTHEW: Right, yeah.
JASMINE: And I'm like, what are we doing?
MATTHEW: I've never heard anybody talk about the absurdity of the paper straw and the reusable bag as provoking the question: are you actually lying to us about the whole thing? That's a step farther than I took it, which was: oh, this seems really hopeless, and you're also making me responsible for this thing that I seem to have no control over.
JASMINE: I mean, a lot of costs get pushed onto consumers — the carbon tax as well — where it's like you're immoral if you don't. If you're already struggling to pay rent and put food on the table, you're not a good person if you don't agree to give away more of your money. And I grew up quite poor, with drugs and alcohol and the whole thing. So for me it was just a bit more acute — this doesn't seem just.
MATTHEW: I mean, you're saying this is a hard question to answer, but I think you've also indicated that even right now, as you're contemplating this run for president of the party, you go back and forth between demoralization and will. And so far you're continuing to plow forward. So if you had to identify what are some core features of your character, your training, or what you've been given from mentors that allow you to continually make that choice — to put the next foot in front of the other — what would that be?
JASMINE: I think mentors is a huge one. Growing up I didn't necessarily have mentors in the same way that I have them now. But now every week I meet with people who are much older than me, who have been fighting for socialism for a really long time, and we talk about our campaign, or my campaign, or whatever is next. And these people are all coming at it from slightly different angles. When we really get into the theory, some are Trotskyists, some are more Bolshevik in orientation, and some are just more pragmatic. So even though we all coalesced around this policy book and all believe in the same future, there are different strategies to get there that people have identified through history or through their own experience. And I very much discuss things with this group and use them, and I'm not afraid to ask them questions because I've developed a very trusting relationship with them.
Even though I feel really good about where my politics are, having people remind you of certain lessons and certain things is just invaluable — especially older activists. I've learned so much through this campaign and through my activism otherwise. But I just don't have the historical memory. So a lot of things seem like they're happening for the first time, and they very much are not.
MATTHEW: You know, a big focus of what I try to do with this programming is to try to break through that feeling of generational isolation, because I think it's really heavy. There are so many forces of fragmentation that we have to deal with and plow through anyway. But anti-capitalism is intergenerational — there's 150 years of it, many different communities working and compiling literature in many different areas, full of debates and conflicts and endless arguments. But it's not like people haven't been here before. The stakes are changing, they always heighten, crises deepen — but there are older people who have walked the walk.
JASMINE: That's why when I read Marxism it just seems so current. I mean, it's an old text, but it's describing exactly what we're going through right now. And lessons come up through it as you keep going back to it — it's not just a one-time read. You have to kind of learn these lessons, and every time you read another text you pick up on another part of what they're talking about.
To give an example: when we were developing our policy book last year, a lot of the text says we're against capitalism, we're anti-imperialist — and these can be kind of big, vague terms for a lot of people. So one piece of advice we got during consultation, I believe it was Kshama Sawant — she's a socialist in the US — she said: you need to be way more specific in your demands. Way, way more specific.
And I took that in. And then just a few weeks ago, when we were making a statement about how our campaign is not endorsing any of the NDP leadership candidates, when I first wrote it up I said: because they're not anti-capitalist and they're not anti-imperialist. And as I went to my mentorship and campaign leadership group, they said: Jasmine, we need to clearly write what they are, what we're fighting for and what they don't advocate for, because that exposes them. Like, if you go into the Transitional Program, if you read history, this is exactly what Trotsky writes, exactly what Lenin writes. We don't need to reinvent the wheel — it's all there for us to use. So now in our statement we say: none of the candidates are saying they're going to pull out of NATO. Now we can go to them and say: you're not going to pull out of NATO — why? And they have to defend why they are going to stay in this imperialist, capitalist organization. That is way stronger than saying they're not anti-imperialist, because that implies they see it as a spectrum.
MATTHEW: You have to name the behavior — the specific commitment that has become normalized and completely invisible, that nobody ever talks about. You're committed to this organization. This is what it actually does in the world. This is how it polices geopolitics. You've got to justify why you want to continue to participate in it. That's a real challenge.
JASMINE: And it's really impactful. That's what our campaign has done well, and it's under the leadership and guidance of Yves Engler's career — where he's gone up to politicians consistently and asked them very pointedly: why do you still have relations with Israel when they just killed 250 people yesterday? That's different than saying: are you upset about the violence?
MATTHEW: Should there be an end to the violence?
JASMINE: Yeah. You know, we support a peaceful resolution. Okay — how are you going to do that?
MATTHEW: One of the things you've learned to do through this is cut through the moralizing language of liberalism — which is: how do you personally feel about this tragic thing in the world? And would you, if you had the power, will it otherwise? Which is about all we ask of these leaders, for the most part, and which is very unspecific.
JASMINE: You really cannot listen to just what they say. You have to look at their actions. And if we're talking about Mark Carney's speech — at the same time as he made that speech, he was accepted to go on the board of Peace for Gaza.
MATTHEW: Yeah.
JASMINE: So there's a contradiction there. And if you only listen to what they say, you're never going to understand politics and you're never going to get anywhere.
MATTHEW: Last question, Jasmine: what advice would you give to, first of all, your 12-year-old self, and then secondly, to any 12-year-old thinking about acting politically in the world?
JASMINE: 12 is so young. I would just say: keep reading. That's all. Just be a kid and keep reading. I think if you want to go volunteer for an organization or something, of course you can. But I feel like you would do better just by making connections in your community — whether that means going over to your neighbour's house and having lemonade with them and keeping them company. I don't think little kids need to be volunteering their time for some giant organization that's just using them. So maybe that's the wrong answer here. But I think kids need to be reading consistently — that is the most important thing. And then gaining the skills that are going to help you later in life. My dad, when I was younger, would always make me order at Subway by myself. And that was just the worst thing ever, because I didn't want to tell them what I wanted — I wanted to just whisper it to my dad. But you have to start gaining these skills. So I'd say: at 12, go out, live your life, do the things that build you up. And then later you can become more militant and give up your time and learn within the system. But as a kid you have a unique freedom. Just keep reading.
MATTHEW: I think one of the things you're implying here — and you can correct me if I'm wrong — is that it's important that a political consciousness develops on its own, in a certain amount of freedom, and that if possible it should not be compressed and claustrophobic with worry or concern or a sense of time closing in or having to get something done. It sounds like you're really advocating for a kind of free development of political awareness.
JASMINE: Absolutely. I just think if you can build up the skills — and those skills come through being creative in your drawings, or selling hot dogs at a ball game, whatever it might be — those are huge skills that are going to help you later on to go talk to strangers, to knock on people's doors, to design pamphlets. You need to have concrete skills. But if as a little kid you're just clocking into a place and sweeping the ground, that's great, but I don't think it's going to help you that much.
MATTHEW: Jasmine, thank you so much for your time, and I wish you luck at the convention. I'm really happy you're doing the work that you're doing.
JASMINE: Yeah, no problem. Thanks for reaching out. It's nice to be able to talk about it and think a little more philosophically about the relationship of parents and kids and antifascist dads. It's an interesting concept.
MATTHEW: Well, if it helps your campaign and morale, I'm really happy about that — because I can imagine you're spending all of your days in the weeds of how this is actually going to work out. But having an overview sometimes can be a lot of relief.
JASMINE: Exactly. Yeah.
MATTHEW: Thanks, Jasmine.
JASMINE: Thank you.
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MATTHEW: Let's take a journey back to July 1933, Regina, Saskatchewan, to the founding convention of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation — during the Great Depression.
Saskatchewan's net farming income had collapsed from $363 million in 1928 to just $11 million by 1933, which seems hard to fathom. The per capita income in the province had dropped by 72% over that same period — the sharpest decline of any province. In March there were dust storms, and by the time summer was rolling around, grasshopper swarms were gathering to strip whatever remained in the fields.
Nationally, 30% of the labour force was out of work by 1933, and one in five Canadians was on the dole. In Saskatchewan's very rural population, it was two thirds of people on welfare. One in four men in Regina was jobless. There was no unemployment insurance, no federal welfare system, no social safety net of any kind. The federal government under the Conservatives had established work camps paying men 20 cents a day for manual labour, but was otherwise insisting the crisis was a local and provincial matter.
Now, among the 130 delegates who gathered for this convention were the core figures who went on to shape the Canadian left for the modern era. And the policies that trace right back to them are kind of incredible: universal healthcare, the NDP structure itself, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the basic architecture of the Canadian welfare state.
So who was at this convention?
Tommy Douglas was there — the architect of Canadian universal healthcare. Back then he was a Baptist minister in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. He would go on to lead the first socialist government in North America in Saskatchewan in 1944, introducing Medicare to the province, and then later bringing it to the national stage as the first leader of the NDP in 1961.
J.S. Woodsworth was there — he was elected party leader at the convention. He was a social gospel minister and lifelong pacifist who would later be the sole MP to vote against Canada's entry into the Second World War.
Agnes Macphail was there — Canada's first female Member of Parliament, elected under the Progressive banner in 1921. She was part of the founding circle of the CCF and went on to lead the Ontario chapter.
Also there was the 23-year-old David Lewis — a Russian Jewish immigrant who brought his political education from Bundist Jewish socialist politics in Russia, via a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford. His family had settled in Montreal, and now he was in the prairies where the real organizing energy was happening.
David's father, Moishe, was a tanner, born and raised in the shtetl of Svisloch in Belarus. He had led his local Jewish Labour Bund. Back in the old country it was socialist and anti-capitalist, but also anti-Bolshevik, because the Bundists were committed to democracy, to Jewish cultural autonomy, and to the Yiddish language.
The Jewish Bundists were targeted by both the Soviets — who suppressed independent socialist organizations — and by nationalist forces that saw Jews as inherently suspicious. But the Lewis family, known as the Loszs then, were also anti-Zionist. Their philosophy of doikayt — in Yiddish it means "hereness," to be right here where you are — was the idea that Jews should fight for justice where they lived rather than flee to Palestine. It was a core value. And it meant that the Bundists stayed and fought until the staying became impossible. Does this all sound familiar?
Staying and fighting became impossible for Moishe by 1921, and he fled to Montreal. He changed the family name to Lewis, sent for the family, and continued his organizing in Canada. David would later become national secretary of the CCF and then federal NDP leader from 1971 to 1975. His son Stephen Lewis became leader of the Ontario NDP. And Stephen's son is Avi Lewis, who — if he wins the federal leadership he's running for right now, and if Jasmine wins the presidency — they'll be working together and surely revisiting the core tensions that socialists have struggled over in this long history.
How fast should we change things? How much patience do we need? Do small changes delay or obstruct larger changes? Or are we all on the same road?
What did these people come up with in Regina? Well, here's the opening of the Manifesto:
We aim to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a social order from which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated, in which economic planning will supersede unregulated private enterprise and competition, and in which genuine democratic self-government, based upon economic equality, will be possible. The present order is marked by glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity, by chaotic waste and instability; and in an age of plenty it condemns the great mass of people to poverty and insecurity. Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small, irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists, and to their predatory interests the majority are habitually sacrificed. When private profit is the main stimulus to economic effort, our society oscillates between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic depression, in which the common man's normal state of insecurity and hardship is accentuated. We believe that these evils can be removed only in a planned and socialized economy in which our natural resources and principal means of production and distribution are owned, controlled and operated by the people.
The new social order at which we aim is not one in which individuality will be crushed out by a system of regimentation, nor shall we interfere with cultural rights of racial or religious minorities. What we seek is a proper collective organization of our economic resources, such as will make possible a much greater degree of leisure and a much richer individual life for every citizen.
I have to say, it's kind of extraordinary to read that and then have to check my calendar to see what year I'm actually in, because it seems timeless — every single phrase appropriate and fresh and new again. Including that caveat at the end about making sure that individuality in the new social order is not crushed out by a system of regimentation. I think this is a very sober nod to the downstream effects of the Russian Revolution and what people were suspecting might arise in the Stalinist era. Super interesting.
But here's something cool as well — just to scramble the timeline a little bit more. Here's a core passage from Capitalism Can't Be Fixed, the policy book that Jasmine and her colleagues worked on for the Engler campaign:
We are fighting for a socialist future where working and oppressed people hold real political power, and the repressive capitalist state, which is built to serve the few, is replaced by democratic institutions controlled by and accountable to the people. Until that transformation is achieved, we push for immediate demands that defend the rights and interests of those exploited and marginalized under capitalism.
It's like the same core document. Of course, Peardon and her colleagues had to address all of the contemporary issues as well — but the backbone of the stance is just consistent through time.
I'm well aware of what Jasmine is up against and what the party is up against. And she is too, of course. But I have to say it gives me some kind of joy and hope to see these threads of history survive so much tension and fraying, and continue to weave themselves into the fabric of possibility.
It also makes me a little melancholic as a Gen X person who — like many in my generation, I think — grew up during the socialist wasteland of the Cold War. There were antifascist communities and action groups who held the line on the streets against racist bullies in the 80s and 90s. And when I went to protests back then, there were plenty of weirdo friends to make. There have always been activist cells working on anti-racism, immigrant rights, and pro-reproductive rights feminism.
But there was no universe in which I imagined gathering with 130 others to hammer out a manifesto that would commit us to national influence. That kind of discipline and planning just wasn't on my radar. Our organic, hereditary resistance to capitalism and empire had kind of gone underground — reduced to the marginalized transcendence of counterculture.
But yeah, talking with Jasmine gives me a sense that that old energy is still alive and kicking.
Thanks for listening, everyone. Take care of each other.
