Rob Ashton, Longshoreman Vs Canada’s Political Class

Canadian ILWU president Rob Ashton is running for New Democratic Party leadership, arguing that the party has lost touch with its base. His campaign aims to put workers back in charge.

Jacobin spoke with Rob Ashton, a candidate for the leadership of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP), about where the party — and the country’s politics more broadly — have gone wrong, and what he plans to do about it.

A veteran longshoreman, Rob Ashton is president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada, where he already presses elbows with power. But the kind of political competence he wields is qualitatively different from the polished insider class that dominates Parliament.

The Canadian legislature is disproportionately drawn from the backgrounds of law, business, and bureaucratic