Greg Fergus was elected as the country’s first-ever Black Speaker of the House of Commons, Uzoma Asagwara was chosen as the Deputy Premier of Manitoba, becoming the first Black person and the first non-binary person to hold that position, and after less than a year in office and becoming one of the Progressive Conservatives’ first Black MPPs, Patrice Barnes was chosen as Ontario’s Deputy Speaker of the House. Kristin Murray made history in 2022 when she was appointed the acting mayor of Timmins but she told Ron Fanfair she didn’t run formally because “I don’t want to lose who I am in the sense of staying connected to the people around me.”

They’ve all faced racism, they’ve all felt the internal and external pressures that come with being a “first”. But above all, they all remarked on the immense honour they feel being elected officials and the importance of diversity and representation when it comes to democracy.

Interviews were conducted separately and have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

 

BB: How and why did you get into politics?

 

Kristin Murray, Timmins City Councillor for Ward 5 since 2018, acting mayor June-Oct 2022

I saw the election candidates and I was like, “Wow, these are the people that are running our city? None of them look like me or my children. They more than likely haven't had the same struggles.” Something overtook me and I decided I was going to run. I have no knowledge of politics or any experience, and quite honestly, some people told me I had no business running.

It's not like I was watching politics and thought “That's what I'm gonna do one day”, it was more so feeling compelled to make change and for others in the community to see someone like themselves in that space.

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Uzoma Asagwara, Deputy Premier of Manitoba, NDP MLA for Union Station since 2019, Minister of Health, Seniors and Long-term Care since 2023

I didn't grow up having any interest whatsoever in politics. I grew up with an appreciation and understanding of the importance of understanding politics and being politically engaged as a citizen. That’s something that my parents instilled in our family.

I didn't see politics as a path for myself until 2016. I was asked if I would consider running in the 2016 election. At that time, I said no, I also reflected on the fact that to that point, there’d still never been a Black person elected at the provincial level of government in Manitoba. I think that not seeing that kind of representation had an impact on whether or not I could see myself in that role. But post the 2016 election in the States, there were a lot of changes here in our province that directly impacted the work that I did as a psychiatric nurse and healthcare started to see the impacts of the Conservative government's cuts very quickly and harmful narratives that were coming out of the Conservative government. Coupled with harmful narratives coming out of the States, it became increasingly clear to me that maybe there was an opportunity to bring my lived experience, my activism, my perspectives and learnings from healthcare into politics to try to make a difference.

 

BB: What was campaigning like for you?

 

Kristin Murray, Timmins City Councillor for Ward 5 since 2018, acting mayor June-Oct 2022

After I got the guts to fill out my paperwork…as a racialized individual running that campaign, when I submitted my paperwork, I made sure I had more than 25 signatures because I thought to myself, “There are people that actively work against what we try to do in our spaces.” I know that it was not a place for me and if there's one little error in someone's address or maybe they filled out the paperwork incorrectly…I went above and beyond what was required of me so that there wouldn't be one technicality where I was stripped away of my role.

I started door-knocking on my street because I thought these are people who have seen me around, they probably know me. So, I knocked on the door of a neighbour but before I even got the “H” of Hello out of my mouth, she slammed the door in my face. So I sort of sauntered away with my daughter, trying not to be too embarrassed because my child was with me.

Then somebody riding by on a bike said, “What are you doing?” and I said that I'm running for city council. They said, “Well, you're not from Timmins, you have no business running, you don't have family here, you're not connected.” That was a common message I received in the first few months and I thought, “I'm just going to take this away…it's early, people probably don't even know that an election is happening in the months to come. So, I'm just going to just re-strategize and refocus.” Maybe door-knocking is not good because someone who's Black showing up at someone's door is threatening to individuals. I don't know what it was – I don't look like a threatening person – but I just needed to shift gears and try a different approach.

 

Patrice Barnes, Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP for Ajax since 2022, Deputy Speaker of the House since 2023, Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Education since 2022

Well, people sort of give you “the look” and those interactions, oftentimes are defensive ones for me because I'm always sort of having to defend my beliefs. I have an additional layer of complexity because I'm a Conservative Black person. Sometimes at the door with Black people, that was something I had to get over first. To be able to try something outside of the norm, something that's not traditionally Black, I think that is important as well. And I know there's a safety in doing what’s traditionally Black.

A lot of time in our community our political beliefs are just sort of passed down from family, you know this and this happened or “it was the Trudeau Government that got me here I and I will vote Trudeau for the rest of my life” or whatever it is. So, the conversations are often one-on-one as to why.

If we look at the traditional values, the core values of not all but the majority of Black people as a culture, the core values of who we are are oftentimes conservative. And I’ve said that with a lot of immigrants that come to Canada, you often have conservative views or conservative values but the story that’s told about liberalism is different. So I say we can agree to disagree in the end but I always like having those particular conversations as long as it's respectful.

In this role I’ve been called the N-word or gotten emails with the N-word or those types of those things and one of the hard things for me is that I’m very open and I’m very welcoming so one of the things I'm trying to learn how to do is pull that back a little bit, it’s not always easy but it’s a work in progress.

 

BB: Can you tell me about instances of racism you’ve experienced or witnessed as a politician?

 

Kristin Murray, Timmins City Councillor for Ward 5 since 2018, acting mayor June-Oct 2022

I have so many examples. I’m laughing but it’s a nervous laugh because it’s so uncomfortable.

For instance, there was a young lady who reached out to council and shared an experience about her son who was five, at a park when a woman approached him with a toy gun and started shooting him but the gun looked realistic. She then proceeded to call the little boy the N-word and said there's no place for Black people at the park and that the family was not allowed since it was just a white space. So he’s traumatized from this instance. Mom emailed and I completely understood what she was saying because that’s happened to my children. “It shouldn't be a coming of age [experience] where every Black kid is called the N-word. Other people who aren’t Black should be held to task and do better.”

Nonetheless, what really sparked a bit of anger was a response that the woman got from one of the councillors. I was outraged by their lack of sensitivity to what she shared. It was just a “Oh here’s our policy on such and such, we don’t tolerate racism,” it was really out-of-touch from reality. So, I met with the woman and had a great conversation about it and I said I was going to bring it up at a council meeting and I’m going to make sure that people know racism isn’t tolerated here.

People attack me if I'm going to call out racism because their privilege comes to the forefront and that's been my experience many times on council, I cannot speak up for Black or Indigenous people without others getting upset.

There are other things that certainly happen in the community but I can't grasp every single one of them. I was telling the mayor recently about the amount of racial trauma that I've experienced and to even just try to have conversations with other councillors and they not even check-in or they get it but they don’t, you know? They will never connect with the experiences I'm going through. But when I have the ability to speak up and say, “Hey, if I get another racist email, I don't know what my response is going to be.” And not to [have them] say, “Hey, our comms people will assist you, no big deal, we'll put supports in place.” So it's been an interesting go, especially in the north where there are fewer Black people, so my circle is small and there's not a lot of support.

I can't have these conversations with the colleagues around the table because they don't understand and then when you speak about race, they get uncomfortable, so then you're kind of like, “well, why do I even bother.”

 

Patrice Barnes, Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP for Ajax since 2022, Deputy Speaker of the House since 2023, Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Education since 2022

The first time I walked up the stairs to the legislature was a very emotional time for me, there were tears in my eyes. But what was even more impactful for me was as I walked into the legislature for the first time, every guard that I met, every person that I met knew my name. That was a feeling of acceptance for me.

Having been there almost two years, yes I’ve experienced visitors coming in and calling me by every other name but my own. They might call me, Andrea [Hazell], they might call me Charmaine [Williams], that has happened. I've had my executive assistant who travels a lot with me, who’s white, I've had him be called the MPP over me going to events. I've been in a room and the assumption is that you’re staff rather than an MPP. So, the usual things that happen and you wonder sometimes, “Is it because I'm female or because I'm Black?” I say to people, if we as a people always find those microaggressions it would be exhausting to exist. But I recognize some of the things that have happened that are just soul-breaking sometimes.

But I will tell you that I was serving as the Deputy Speaker of the House on a day that there was an advocacy group that came in. And that person was also the first Black person to head their organization. The moment of him sitting in the gallery, watching me be the Speaker was very emotional because we both thought to be the first even in 2023, the significance of that is still impactful. It was a really beautiful moment and I think that will probably impact me for a very long time.

 

Uzoma Asagwara, Manitoba NDP MLA for Union Station since 2019, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health, Seniors and Long-term Care since 2023

I definitely deal with microaggressions, I deal with full-on aggressions. I deal with blatant and overt racism, transphobia, homophobia. People in recent years have been emboldened to express hateful and harmful rhetoric and to believe that they are entitled to do so without consequence. That’s due in part to people with massive platforms, political leaders, including former premiers in Manitoba, who espouse hateful, harmful rhetoric and do it unapologetically because they believe it advances their needs politically. They believe it speaks to a demographic of people who will support them as a result.

But I am comforted by the fact that the vast majority of people wake up every day, wanting to go out in the world and do good. The vast majority of people don't wake up in the morning thinking about how can I go out today and be homophobic. For most people, that's not their agenda. The loudest people are not the many and I remind myself of that and I see those reminders all the time. So, I choose to focus on the many, people who want for our communities to be unified. The people who recognize that racism is wrong, that systemic racism is real and needs to be dealt with, the people that recognize that queer, trans and two-spirited people deserve to exist peacefully and with dignity. The people who recognize that our diversity is our strength and should be celebrated, I choose to put my energy on focusing on that.

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What did you make of the censure and removal of Sarah Jama from the NDP, how was it seeing it unfold as a fellow Black politician?

 

Patrice Barnes, Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP for Ajax since 2022, Deputy Speaker of the House since 2023, Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Education since 2022

I will say there was sadness because as a Black person, you see that that's another Black person that’s in your space to make change and to contribute. This one is difficult because, if she wasn’t Black, would the thought be the same? Because I'm mindful of always being Black and always recognizing that the integral values of who I am are important but also that the intricate pieces around my responsibility as a politician, as an elected official, and as somebody who is also representing a diversity of views and cultures and beliefs. How do I walk that line and what are the consequences when I take the positions that I take? So there was sadness but my reality too was that she was standing on her principles and willing to take whatever consequence came with that.

 

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BB: How would you convince a young Black or Indigenous person who may be disillusioned by politics or not involved in the political process?

 

Kristin Murray, Timmins City Councillor for Ward 5 since 2018, acting mayor June-Oct 2022

I came from nothing; I came from two very oppressed family groups being Black and Indigenous, they united to create me. And I grew up in the ghetto, I used education and just a willingness to make something of myself to get ahead. And the reason why I share the fact that I come from nothing, and it's not any disrespect to my parents but it's more so because people feel like they have to be rich or they have to be from a family that's well-established but all of the experiences that I've had good and bad, have formed who I am, and I've always stayed true to myself. These are the things that some of the Black, Indigenous youth in my area can relate to. But just talking to them about the fact that we need voices at the table.

I served as mayor for about six months last term and the amount of people and young ones who reached out and connected and were wowed and took pictures; it meant something to them. I didn't take on the task because I thought, “I want to take on this role and give myself stress,” it was more so people could see themselves in that space. Now when they look around City Hall in our council chambers, they'll see that there once was a Black mayor, although it a blip in time, still.

 

Patrice Barnes, Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP for Ajax since 2022, Deputy Speaker of the House since 2023, Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Education since 2022

They say that representation matters and that’s still very true but is it exhausting and does the system wear us down, yes. But if we check out where does that put our kids, our grandkids, what change gets made? If I checked out, would I have had that moment with that gentleman, if I checked out would the kids that come in and see me in the House, as a parliamentarian, politician, Speaker, the impact that is felt in their lives, it might not be immediate but at some point, they might make a decision based on that.

But it is exhausting for sure because it's a balance between being your authentic self and being able to be a part of the system and if you're not a part of the system, I don't think you'll make change. Some people say, “No, we haven't made any change,” but I think we have incrementally, if we look at where we were and where we’ve come, I think we have made a lot of change. Is there a lot more to do, definitely. But I also think one of the places that we fall down with our younger generation is volunteerism. I cannot say enough about the power of volunteerism.

 

Asagwara was one of the politicians who couldn’t attend the meeting. But I asked them what the significance of a meeting like that was?

I think that it's important for people broadly to understand that there's incredible diversity within Black communities, including politically. That doesn't mean that we can't find ways to work collectively to advance the well-being of Black communities, which ultimately benefits everybody. We were never meant to be politically involved here.

The Manitoba legislature, like many Parliaments and legislatures across the country, was built without the consideration that Black people would be elected within it. Certainly not queer Black people, not women, there is a reality of how recent it is that Black people have been officially elected in these roles in varying parts of the country.

It was 2019 here in Manitoba, it was historic but also important to reflect on why it took so long for that to happen? So, those moments where Black people, Black legislators can gather is important for many reasons. It's also important because it speaks to how far we have come and it also speaks to how far we have yet to go and what we need to do to make sure that we make it much easier for other Black people to be engaged in politics in whatever capacity they desire.

 

Read part 3 of the series here:

Beyond Partisan Lines: These Black Politicians Can Still Agree On One Thing