Amber Hockin Interview: Health and Safety, Labour, and Politics

Interview: Amber Hockin (AH)

Interviewer: Rod Mickleburgh (RM)

Date: May 8, 2024

Location: Victoria, B.C.

Transcription: Jane Player

 

 

RM [00:00:05] Here we are with Amber Hockin and just been telling us about her most recent work history, but we’re going to go back to the beginning and sketch it all in—your family and how you got into working and just stuff like that.

 

AH [00:00:21] Wow. Okay, so just like how I started to get—

 

RM [00:00:25] Oh, whatever you want to tell us really, because it’s your story.

 

AH [00:00:27] Wow. Okay. It’s my story. Okay.

 

RM [00:00:29] Where are you from?

 

AH [00:00:31] Well, I was born in Brantford, Ontario, and then, by the time I was four, I was in Kitimat. A lot of my early years going to school, and that was in Kitimat, B.C., and I think that’s probably where I took a love of B.C. in the mountains and the B.C. people are wonderful. Then went back to Ontario for the latter part of my school, high school. Back and forth. I had sort of a mixed family kind of thing, and (as lots of people do) and sometime with Social Services deciding who I was going to be with and that kind of stuff, back and forth. I had lived with my dad, for a period of time, and then when I was 13, I had left and went to live with my mum and, various high schools back and forth, that type of thing. Then I thought I would do better on my own at 16, so I left. (laughter) But—

 

RM [00:01:41] Wow. We’re already amazing. Okay.

 

AH [00:01:45] So, yeah, and tried to work and go to school and that type of thing, and then decided that I really liked to travel. So, I applied and got a job as a flight attendant. That started sort of my whole career in the labour movement—

 

RM [00:02:07] Who, with who?

 

AH [00:02:08] I worked for Worldways [Canada]. So, that was a small charter company. My first flight was on a Boeing 707, and then the other—yeah, you may know what those were, but—and then DC 863—

 

RM [00:02:23] Oh, my goodness.

 

AH [00:02:24] We did, we did DND [Department of National Defense] flights. Trenton, Ottawa, Shearwater, Trenton, all of that stuff. We did Europe in the summer and Caribbean in the winter, and I just thought it was the best damn job ever—like it was fabulous and met lots of people. So, I flew for seven years but during that time, I also got very much interested in health and safety and—

 

RM [00:02:51] Were there specific things about health and safety that you felt needed to be improved?

 

AH [00:02:56] Well, there was a lot of—we were a small charter company. I mean, we had to fight for our first recognition, collective agreement, where it had to be awarded by the labour board. I mean, you know, bad labour practices. That was just—it was just a tough company, you know, it was the one that—there were lots of good things about it, too, but you didn’t make a lot of money. I think I made $13,000 a year at the time—

 

RM [00:03:23] When was this Amber?

 

AH [00:03:24] This was in 1985, ’86, ’87. That was when I—when we became unionized. I think it was in ’87.

 

RM [00:03:34] Were you involved in the organizing and so on or—

 

AH [00:03:35] Just coming in at the end of it. So, yeah. I got involved in health and safety because there were a number of women that I was flying with that were having miscarriages. And there was some information coming out at the time that, it, you know, indicated that it might be because of solar flares or being, you know, just the altitude. There were a number of pilots who were also coming out with brain cancers and things like that. So, you’re sort of sitting there going— so I asked, we were with CUPE [Canadian Union of Public Employees] Airline Division, and I asked, the Health and Safety National chairperson some questions about it, and she said, ‘I’m not going to give you any information about that because you wouldn’t know what to do with it anyways.’ (laughter) So, I said, ‘Oh, is that right?’ I did a whole bunch of research on my own, and then I started talking to the union more about, like, we need to do more with, like, do you know, we should have health and safety committees? You know, we should have. Because that’s what I found out about. Then, the Airline Division said, ‘You know, maybe you should be involved in health and safety and maybe you should start to devise a plan for us as the Airline Division to have health and safety committees and training and all that type of thing.’ So, I signed up and went to [Ontario] Workers Health & Safety Center and got my accreditation. The union paid for the courses and that, and I did it in between flights, and then I just got more and more involved. We had two really horrific airline crashes that I was involved in investigating, on behalf of the union. One was the Air Ontario Dryden, the F-28 [Air Ontario Flight 1363, a Fokker F-28 crash 1989] that went in—

 

RM [00:05:30] The frozen wings or something, wasn’t it?

 

AH [00:05:33] There was ice on the wings. Yeah.

 

RM [00:05:34] Icing, ice on the wings. Yes.

 

AH [00:05:35]  Katherine Say the one flight attendant passed away, didn’t survive her injuries. Sonia Hartwick was the flight attendant that survived and gave some very compelling testimony at the Dryden Commission of Inquiry into airline safety [Commission of Inquiry into the Air Ontario Crash at Dryden, Ontario]. It wasn’t just that crash, it was the whole airline industry and what was happening in health and safety, and then, from that, the Dryden Commission of Inquiry, the government felt compelled because of this—there was a huge report and a number of recommendations around airline safety. They felt that there needed to be an implementation. There was a way, we were very much politically involved. CUPE—Richard Bowness at CUPE was amazing. As a staff and researcher that was working with the airline division and myself and the president, Richard Nolan at the time. We were really pushing to do a lot with—especially the recommendations that affected flight attendants. There was this commission of inquiry, implementation task force. So, there was a number of — so I was asked by the airline division to then move to Ottawa, which meant I had to walk away from being a flight attendant. That was the hard part of it—

 

RM [00:07:01] Because you loved it, right?

 

AH [00:07:02] I loved it, but I felt like there was a lot to be done, for health and safety for the whole industry, all the workers in the industry. We got involved in a number—I was sat on a number of task force, and we were—I was the advocate. I was really young at the time, too. I was still having children and, you know, like, I was—anyways, balancing babies and union work, as you know, lots of women do. We had a number of things to do on the implementation task force in implementing the number of recommendations, but the one that stands out the most for me—so the F 28 aircraft had flight attendant jump seats. One flight attendant would sit in the galley and have the harness on, but when the—so when the flights weren’t full, the one flight attendant seat that didn’t have the full shoulder harness on—when they weren’t full, the flight attendant could sit in the cabin, but when the flight was full, they had to sit in the jump seat, without the harness on. There was clearly evidence that these seats should have had a harness on.

 

RM [00:08:27] Yes. My goodness, it seems basic.

 

AH [00:08:31] Anyways, at the inquiry, at the implementation, we were talking about requiring rules that would require flight attendant jump seats to have harnesses on. This was, you know, in the 90s, early 90s that we’re still having these conversations about how to keep, you know, you have a shoulder harness on your car for goodness sakes. So, and the argument—and I just couldn’t believe this—but the argument that was in the Dryden Commission report said that it was going to be like $90,000 for this harness, which to me, okay, it’s the cost of doing business, put it in. But the industry was so powerful, it was like $90,000. That’s just way too much, this type of thing. I was sitting beside this old guy named Ken, and he represented manufacturers in the industry. He said, ‘That fact is wrong’. It was never challenged, during the commission of inquiry and actually to put a jump seat on that, on that flight attendant—sorry, put a harness on that flight attendant jump seat would cost $4,000.

 

RM [00:09:51] Yeah, I guess—when you said $90,000, I thought, ‘How could they possibly got cost that much?’

 

AH [00:09:57] I grabbed that fact and I just rammed it. I just kept driving it until we got the recommendation that all of the flight attendant jump seats would have to have shoulder harnesses on. I said, ‘Catherine Say died for $4,000, you bastards, you bastards.’ So, anyways—so that was one of the things that I thought, we did lots of really good things for working people, but that was one of the ones that really stood out to me as something that we—

 

RM [00:10:26] This is a permanent job, not temporary. Right? In Ottawa.

 

AH [00:10:30] No, it was temporary.

 

RM [00:10:35] Temporary for this implementation?

 

AH [00:10:38] Yes. Yeah. I represented the airline division of CUPE. Yeah.

 

RM [00:10:44] Then what happened?

 

AH [00:10:48] Well, the other air crash that I investigated was the Nationair aircraft that went in—they took off with tires that were smiling. That means that they were flat on the bottom.

 

RM [00:11:00] Oh my god, I don’t remember this one.

 

AH [00:11:02] Went down the runway, retracted, they caught fire, and everyone perished. I worked—there was a Transport Canada investigation that they kept secret. They felt that if they had a secret investigation that they would get more information out of everybody that was involved, and then they would be able to—, but the quid pro quo was that then nobody would be charged or held accountable. Everybody died.

 

RM [00:11:34] How convenient.

 

AH [00:11:34] Oh yeah. Anyways, I worked like crazy, and I got a copy of the report and got it into the Ottawa Citizen so that we could make sure that all of that information was public, and they were held accountable.

 

RM [00:11:52] You were happening.

 

AH [00:11:53] I was. I was driven. (laughter) And then—I really liked—during that time, Marilyn White worked for the airlines. Yeah.

 

RM [00:12:08] Married to Bob White.

 

AH [00:12:09] That’s right, and I was a huge Bob White fan. I was just oh, I just thought he—

 

RM [00:12:13] Oh that made you rare.

 

AH [00:12:13] No, I really, man, yeah, he was something else. So, when Marilyn would—who was also assigned to the airline division as a staff rep, she would come to Ottawa, and Bob was there as the Canadian Labour Congress rep, so quite often we’d have dinner. I think I was just sort of the meat in the sandwich because the two of them would go rar, rar, rar, rar (laughter) right. Anyway, so, they had a national health and safety position open up at the CLC [Canadian Labour Congress], and the commission was winding down, and I thought, ‘Do I go back to Toronto and my life there, or do I stay in Ottawa and do something else?’ But, you know, because I had all these connections with government. Bob White give me a chance and hired me as the CLC national health and safety rep.

 

RM [00:13:09] Wow, what a job.

 

AH [00:13:11] It was fabulous. I got to negotiate health and safety regulations for Part II of the Canada Labour Code. I was involved in negotiations for Part III and Part I as well, which were the equivalent of our labour standards and then the Labour Code kind of thing.

 

RM [00:13:31] Was that a steep learning curve for you? Like, because you were pretty focused on this one element and now you’ve got a, you know, this huge umbrella that you’re sort of looking at.

 

AH [00:13:40] So, yes and no, more subjects. So, worker’s compensation was thrown in. Broader elements of labour law. More policy and then—but a great opportunity to also expand in labour education and to do more health and safety. I rewrote all the health and safety courses and, to do all of that. Then from there I went to the national coordinator of education, so I got a chance to then—

 

RM [00:14:14] With the CLC?

 

AH [00:14:15] With the CLC. Yeah. I stayed with the CLC for 22 years.

 

RM [00:14:18] Wow.

 

AH [00:14:19] So, yeah, I was—it was funny when—they had no idea how old I was because I had done a lot. Right. I’ve been active and had done a lot of things, so they had no idea. I got hired and I was just before I turned 27.

 

RM [00:14:35] Oh, my goodness, because thinking you were in your thirties.

 

AH [00:14:38] (laughter) No.

 

RM [00:14:40] (laughter) Must’ve been one of their youngest hires ever.

 

AH [00:14:41] It was, and they didn’t know. Right. It was at that time where people were going, ‘We need a youth representative.’

 

AH [00:14:48] And so—

 

RM [00:14:49] (laughter) Appeal to the young people.

 

AH [00:14:49] Yeah. I had a birthday, and one of the support staff said, ‘Oh’—Jan was her name, and she brought me in a cake. I never usually tell anybody about my birthday or that kind of thing. Dick Martin and Bob White came down and they said, ‘It’s your birthday. How old are you?’ And I said, ‘Twenty-seven.’ (laughter) And they said, ‘We need a youth rep.’ And I said, ‘You didn’t hire me to be a youth rep.’ Anyways, I dodged that bullet. (laughter)

 

RM [00:15:23] So, Bob White eventually, moved on or retired, I guess.

 

AH [00:15:28] He did. Yeah. And Dick Martin as well before he passed away.

 

RM [00:15:33] Who did?

 

AH [00:15:33] Dick Martin.

 

RM [00:15:34] Oh, I keep forgetting about Dick Martin. I didn’t really know him. Was he from the Steelworkers?

 

AH [00:15:39] Yes. Steelworkers or—

 

RM [00:15:43] Anyways, it doesn’t matter.

 

AH [00:15:44] Yeah. He was Steelworkers.

 

RM [00:15:45] And is that when [Ken] Georgetti came in?

 

AH [00:15:47] Yup.

 

RM [00:15:48] And I keep being told that you had disagreements with brother Georgetti.

 

AH [00:15:53] I was—

 

RM [00:15:55] I don’t know if you want to talk about that, but, I mean—

 

AH [00:15:59] I was probably one of the —well, he’ll say to you that I was one of his strongest reps, one of his strongest directors. Probably because I was okay with—but also trusted—to have disagreements, but in a way that was productive and, you know—

 

RM [00:16:21] Well, you were really competent.

 

AH [00:16:22] Yeah. So, he was also quite open to listening to, you know, things. But yeah, we could have some disagreements at times from the—from being a— from being the, well, a staff rep and then as a Pacific region director, but where I had the nose to nose stuff was when I was elected as the president of the staff union.

 

RM [00:16:48] Oh.

 

AH [00:16:49] And that’s where, yeah, we had some we had some major disagreements. But you know what, to this day, it’s still, you know, we still have a healthy degree of respect for one another. But there were times when, yes, absolutely, we would be nose to nose on things and he’d say, ‘You’re wrong, and I’m going to do this’, and I’d say, ‘You can’t do it.’ (laughter) He’d say, ‘But I’m going to do it. And I’d said, ‘But you can’t.’

 

RM [00:17:16] It’s always the funniest thing when the union people become the boss, and sometimes they turn into the boss.

 

AH [00:17:22] Yeah, well, I’ve sat on both sides of the table. Yeah. Right. You know, in retrospect now, he had a tough job to do, and as I’ve been there myself, but when you know yourself, when you’re a local president, you’ve got to stand by your members, and you’ve got to try to find the right way to find agreement.

 

RM [00:17:45] What were the issues that, you know, sparked so much disagreement.

 

AH [00:17:52] Oh, there were—he had cases where he wanted to discipline people. The big one that we had was—actually, I was responsible for, taking the CLC staff out on strike at one point, and it was a three week strike, and I was trying to find an agreement. It was—a lot of it was over pension, and changes to the pension plan. But the treasurer is—I mean, we all—the president’s ultimately responsible, but it’s the treasurer that in the CLC structure that takes over and runs the finances, including the pension plan. So, we had some disagreements there—

 

RM [00:18:26] They were trying to stiff you?

 

RM [00:18:28] They were—the issues were funding, and the issues were what we would do with the surplus and—but more importantly how do we make sure that the plan was adequately funded.

 

RM [00:18:39] What was that like, striking the CLC. I guess the media had a field day, but three weeks strike. So, what was that like?

 

AH [00:18:46] It was challenging because you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? So, you want to—the membership felt that they had some really significant issues, and that they needed to have addressed. It was challenging. I ended up doing a couple of media interviews with CBC, but I kept it to, you know, ‘we need to find an agreement at the bargaining table. We don’t negotiate in the press.’ I think that goes a long way in terms of how you maintain a strong relationship. You can be—you can vehemently stand to your side, but at the same time, you’ve got a job to do and finding an agreement.

 

RM [00:19:30] Sometimes staff unions go on strike and really bad mouth their employers.

 

AH [00:19:32] Yeah, that’s not my style.

 

RM [00:19:36] What happened with the picket line?

 

AH [00:19:38] Oh, we had one up. Yeah.

 

RM [00:19:40] Did they cross?

 

AH [00:19:43] No. It was a three week strike. It was very—I mean it’s never good to go on strike. And it’s, you know, reality is that 98 percent of collective agreements are settled without a strike. Right? So, that’s why unions are so damn good at what we do.

 

RM [00:20:01] What union were you part of?

 

AH [00:20:02] We were with the CEP [Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada], which is, you know, became Unifor.

 

RM [00:20:08] All right. So, then at what point you became the Pacific region director? Where did that all fit chronologically?

 

AH [00:20:18] I came out in—transferred from Ottawa to Vancouver in 2005.

 

RM [00:20:27] When did you start—I guess I missed—when did you first go to work for the CLC?

 

AH [00:20:31] 1992, ’92, I think.

 

RM [00:20:35] You’d already been there 13 years in Ottawa, I guess if my math is right?

 

AH [00:20:42] Ninety-two, 2002. Yup.

 

RM [00:20:44] Okay, before we go up to B.C., I mean, is there any—looking back in those 13 years, stuff that you’re proud of or legacy or, you know, issues that you really took on apart from health and safety, and so on?

 

AH [00:20:58] Yeah. We did a few things around health and safety. Training—that I really think—I look back at it now and I think it really it, it really prepared me for what I was going to do with the Pacific region director position and the CLC Winter school. We really refocused our labour education on sort of meat and potatoes. These are the kinds of things that we need to do to like, in terms of modernizing the way that we are, our approaches to labour education, making them more interactive and adult focused, but at the same time also integrating an anti-racism lens. At the time—we do a lot more work now around all oppressions— but at the time, anti-racism was also a significant, building area within the labour movement. People were becoming much more engaged, and there is the CLC anti-racism task force that was put into place, which had a number of recommendations around labour education. We put this—the director at the time was David Onyalo an amazing, trade unionist. We put together this sort of approach which would integrate through the two committees. We had to—the whole point of—the CLC is only as strong as its affiliates and their engagement. One of the things that I have always worked very hard on is making sure that we build the tent bigger. We engage people. We build a sense of wanting to belong to something because people are excited about it and feel like they have a piece of something, whatever it is we’re doing. So, bringing together the National Education Committee and the Anti-racism and Human rights committees to develop an approach to labour education that integrated an anti-racism lens into everything we do. To give you an example, because I know that sounds like very theoretical stuff. So, a lot of collective agreements, for instance, have built-in pieces of the collective agreement that are overtly racist if you know what you’re looking for. Examples would be being precluded from being able to bid on a shift if you were hired from this year to this year, or this month to this year, in these years, and it just so happened that those months and those years were the years where a certain, ethnic group were hired to come in or—

 

RM [00:24:18] Those were actually in contracts?

 

AH [00:24:20] Oh, yeah.

 

RM [00:24:20] And the unions signed off on?

 

AH [00:24:22] Yeah. Negotiated for, and usually membership driven. Right, because—

 

RM [00:24:28] Yeah. Of course.

 

AH [00:24:30] As there are still many collective agreements where, applying for a job, people with national credentials are hired before international credentials. We’re still dealing with that today. Right. So, you know, there’s all kinds of examples of things that are there. And just, you know, understanding, when you go out to develop proposals, how do you make sure that you’re getting proposals for bargaining that meet, you know, that—you don’t just listen to the loudest.

 

RM [00:25:12] Yes. Exactly.

 

AH [00:25:14] It’s just different approaches and things like that. I think one of the key things for me was we did all of this work, and we had a lot of guts to put together into significant proposals, and so David said to me, ‘Okay, well, you take the pen, and you write first,’ and so I put a ton of work into writing this and getting it ready to take back to the committee. I said, ‘Okay, so let’s go through this again.’ He took it away for a couple of days, and he came back, and he put it in front of me, and he said, ‘This is written like a white person.’ ‘Okay?’ ‘Uh-uh.’ So, I went back and had to rethink of how—

 

RM [00:26:06] That’s funny that he— because I was just thinking sort of what was it like to be spearheading anti-racism as a white person?

 

AH [00:26:13] (laughter) As a white woman?

 

RM [00:26:14] Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Just it’s a fair question.

 

AH [00:26:18] Yeah, absolutely. I was doing it because there was only two of us and he had a lot on his plate, and I could manage to do it, but rightfully so, because—

 

RM [00:26:30] And he was not a white person?

 

AH [00:26:30] No, he was not.

 

RM [00:26:31] Where is he from?

 

AH [00:26:35] Nigeria, I believe. So good learning on my part to say, ‘Okay, how do I write this in a way so that it’s not white woman centric?’ (laughter) Yeah, so those kinds of things are the kinds of things that you don’t think about, you know, in terms of—but those are the things that I feel are big accomplishments. Overall, we did great work in coming up and changing the whole way that labour education was done right? With an integrated analysis into everything.

 

RM [00:27:14] Was there resistance?

 

AH [00:27:16] We did a lot of work. Of course, there was a resistance. We did a lot of work in instructor training, and of offering upgrading training to existing instructors. At some point, you just—and this is one of the discussions that David and I had at the time because I was like, I can change the world and everybody in it and, you know, all of that kind of stuff, right? And he’s like, ‘You know what? You go but,’ he said to me, ‘I’m going to focus on the ones that I can change, and you can continue to change the’—

 

RM [00:27:52] To change the world.

 

AH [00:27:56] He just said, ‘For some people, I’m just going to move on because that’s where they’re at, and I’m not going to bother with it.’ We would always agree to disagree, although there are moments where I think he was absolutely right. It was great. It was great working with him, great learning with him. The CLC had so many, amazingly talented people in them that the—yeah, in the organization and such a resource for many of the affiliates. If the affiliates were so inclined to work with them, and in many cases they were stronger for the labour movement overall.

 

RM [00:28:40] Well, it’s good to hear that about the CLC because it’s sort of off the wavelength. Way out here, you know. We don’t hear, you know—

 

AH [00:28:44] Yeah.

 

RM [00:28:45] Hear much about it or what—no labour reporters that cover it.

 

AH [00:28:49] Yeah, absolutely.

 

RM [00:28:50] So, you came out to B.C. and a lot—you know, it wasn’t Ottawa. So, what was that like?

 

AH [00:29:00] David Rice was amazing.

 

RM [00:29:02] Oh, David Rice, yes.

 

AH [00:29:04] Really, just helping me settle in and—

 

RM [00:29:11] He was the guy there before you?

 

AH [00:29:13] Yes, he was the Pacific region before me. Yeah. So, I had to learn B.C. It was kind of funny because at times he would say to me, ‘Ottawa’s saying this. What the hell does that mean?’ I’d say, ‘Well, it means that da-da-da.’ He’s like, ‘Okay, why don’t they just say that? I’d say, ‘Well, it’s Ottawa, you know, it’s like’—but I had to learn B.C. and how B.C. folks think.

 

RM [00:29:36] It’s different.

 

AH [00:29:37] The politics are totally different.

 

RM [00:29:40] Do you want to elaborate on that?

 

AH [00:29:41] Yeah, well, there’s no gray, right? There’s all sorts of shades of gray. That’s what I had to learn at first. People are like, ‘I’m here and I’m only here’, and—yeah, there’s. Yeah, there’s. The pace is different, and people are—they work just as hard and that, but people in Ontario and especially Toronto centric folks, they tend to a lot of running around and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And, it takes probably twice as long to get something done as somebody from B.C. (laughter) In some ways, you know, it’s just like it’s a different energy kind of thing. So, trying to learn to slow down a little bit and not slow my pace of work, but slow my approaches down. And, because people were like, no, I, you know, yeah. I just need you to (laughter)—

 

RM [00:30:43] Slow down.

 

AH [00:30:43] Slow down. Yup. (laughter) And, so I learned to do that and then, you know, work back up to—

 

RM [00:30:51] B.C. likes to style itself. I’m not sure it’s true anymore. Probably. In fact, it probably isn’t, but there was a militant labour, organization in Canada. You know, respect for the picket line—

 

AH [00:31:05] It is, it is.

 

RM [00:31:06] And every now and then we’ll threaten the general strike and stuff like that.

 

AH [00:31:10] Yeah. It’s a different history. I mean, you know, that historically was B.C.’s history. You’re right. I don’t know if it is now.

 

RM [00:31:26] Yeah, I’m with you on that.

 

AH [00:31:30] And then then you have Ontario—

 

RM [00:31:32] The big resource Industries just sort of vanished.

 

AH [00:31:34] Yeah.

 

RM [00:31:34] And that was always the strength of the B.C.

 

AH [00:31:36] That’s right.

 

RM [00:31:37] Yeah. Anyway. Keep going.

 

AH [00:31:40] In Ontario you had the Mike Harris days of action and all of that type of thing to, which brought some militancy in. You had a very strong steelworker presence in Ontario at one point. That again, like our resource industry here is, you know. Unions like Unifor, the Steelworkers [United Steelworkers Canada], the private sector unions, have a different kind of energy and strength than the public sector. Those things are the same in Ontario and here.

 

RM [00:32:14] Well, that’s the strength of the B.C. labour movement now is the public sector unions. You know, it certainly wasn’t the case. I was the labour reporter.

 

RM [00:32:23] So, how long were you head of the Pacific region? Just director. How long were you director for the CLC?

 

AH [00:32:33] Probably, 2008, 2009, maybe.

 

RM [00:32:41] All right. Was that a good experience?

 

AH [00:32:44] Pacific region director?. Yeah, it was great. It was great. You know what? Georgetti, Ken Georgetti, had a campaign and—which I thought was really great for the labour movement. It was the campaign, and people were slow to come around. It was the popsicles and the ads on TV, and they were meant to build the presence of an union pride, and show good things about what unions are about. It was just hitting its stride in terms of, you know, really the public loved them, and union members loved them. It’s like, ‘Yeah, my union does that.’ Yeah. You know, like, ‘That’s really cool.’

 

RM [00:33:43] The folks that brought you the weekend.

 

AH [00:33:45] Yeah, and it was great. and it got cut short. I think because he wasn’t successful in the last election, his last election, and so it didn’t go any further. It was unfortunate because I think it had an ambitious timeline, but it was really plugged in to what people need to see in terms of positive things that the labour movement can do.

 

RM [00:34:12] So there was a new guy at the top.

 

AH [00:34:14] Yeah.

 

RM [00:34:15] Did that affect you?

 

AH [00:34:17] Not really. He was the treasurer before, you know. He had some different ideas about how things are going to be run, as you would expect any president to.

 

RM [00:34:29] Yeah. Well, he ran against Georgetti.

 

AH [00:34:32] Yeah. And that. That’s. Yeah. (laughter)

 

RM [00:34:37] Yes, where were we now. (laughter) So, what did you do after Pacific director?

 

AH [00:34:43] I went to MoveUP [Movement of United Professionals] and became their director of operations.

 

RM [00:34:51] So, what prompted that?

 

AH [00:34:55] I ran against—I ran for president of the B.C. Federation of Labour.

 

RM [00:35:00] That’s true. You did.

 

AH [00:35:03] And was unsuccessful, and then it wasn’t so very pleasant to be at the CLC anymore, and so I thought it was a good thing to move on.

 

RM [00:35:15] Well, let’s look at that. Your decision to run is for president of the B.C. fed. You’re not the first Pacific regional director of the CLC to do it. Brother Kube [Art Kube] (laughter). Or, as Jack Munro said about Art Kube, ‘Art Kube is the best education CLC education director we’ve ever had out here, and he should continue to be.’

 

AH [00:35:37] Yeah, exactly. (laughter)

 

RM [00:35:38] Anyway, so what—

 

AH [00:35:40] Yeah, he could have said that about me too. (laughter)

 

RM [00:35:42] What prompted you to run because that’s a pretty bold step for someone working for the CLC?

 

AH [00:35:50] I was finding ways of working with unions. I’ve done that in Ottawa and getting unions to really engage with the CLC—see value in the CLC. It was a pretty divided federation of labour.

 

RM [00:36:11] It’s fair.

 

AH [00:36:11] People wanted to find a way of working together. I felt I had the strength and the qualities—the strength of relationships and the qualities of leadership to be able to do that. So, I decided to throw my hat in the ring and do it. You know, it’s one of those things where I felt like I had plateaued in terms of what I could do at the CLC and, you know, stare down another 10 or 12 years of doing the same thing. I just wasn’t there. I just said, ‘I’ve got more to offer,’ and I was offered other, you know, I could go into other staff roles, but it would be the same thing.

 

RM [00:36:55] Got a great CV.

 

AH [00:36:57] Yeah, so I decided to take a chance and run. So, yeah.

 

RM [00:37:02] It was better, wasn’t it?

 

AH [00:37:04] It was close. It was a very close race, and, yeah, it was pretty divided. You know, people like, Ken Georgetti and a few other people said to me, ‘Is there not a way you could work it out and maybe come to an agreement?’ Maybe I should have. I’m not sure, but there were so there were so divided in camps that I’m not sure I would have been able to be effective.

 

RM [00:37:32] Well, there were personality clashes. Right?

 

AH [00:37:35] Yeah.

 

RM [00:37:37] Steve Hunt, you know, hated Sinclair and Sinclair didn’t get along with Steve Hunt, and, you know, the industrial unions sort of—

 

AH [00:37:44] Yeah.

 

RM [00:37:44] It was it was not fun, I guess. Did you find that it was difficult to campaign because things were so polarized, you couldn’t convince anybody to vote for you or what was the campaign like?

 

AH [00:37:56] The campaign was weird because BCGEU [British Columbia General Employees’ Union] was in, but not quite in. Their members had questions, and so I spent a lot of time off the floor, which probably in the long, you know, well, in hindsight, might have been better for me to be on the floor. It was a campaign; you know, you can’t change it now. Then people do what people do at conventions when they decide that their side has to win, and so there was busses of people brought in and—

 

RM [00:38:33] Yeah, of course, has been since time immemorial.

 

AH [00:38:36] That’s what happens. (laughter) Right. All that said, it was like, one percent difference. But yeah.

 

RM [00:38:44] What were the issues? I mean, you mentioned the split, so but were there were other issues. What were the issues that you campaigned on?

 

AH [00:38:53] I wanted to bring people together to move away from screaming at outside of buildings and start having a more cohesive plan in terms of a labour strategy—one that the affiliates would buy into because there was a lot of one type of issue after another coming up, but there was no buy in, in terms of any campaigns or any strategy in terms of achieving things. You know, you couldn’t have said to even any of the folks at the second levels or, you know, on the executive, ‘So, what’s our strategy? What do we want to do? What do we want to achieve? What are the three top things that are working issues today?’ There’s like, well, maybe this or maybe that. I wanted to bring people together to develop that and come up with a more cohesive strategy. Some of that would have been, you know, involved developing a keener, or stronger interest within the labour movement, way more politics in terms of being more strategic in how we support and change government. At the time we had Christy Clark. Right. Then develop, a legislative strategy that was going to make change. Those are the kinds of things that I felt I could do, like, I could really—I had the background to do it. I could really, you know.

 

RM [00:40:30] It’s hard to get a slogan around that though.

 

AH [00:40:32] It is hard. Yeah.

 

AH [00:40:34] (laughter) I was just thinking, you know, these are all things that really make a lot of sense, but ‘oh, for me, it will get worse.’ That just, you know—

 

AH [00:40:40] Yeah.

 

RM [00:40:41] But, I mean, you embraced all that and probably would have been pretty good at it. (laughter)

 

AH [00:40:47] Yeah, I was—I am far more effective now in terms of doing speeches and things like that than I was at the time, too.

 

RM [00:40:57] Well, I covered that, and I remember you being—I was—I didn’t know you, but you seemed hesitant. You know, you seemed, I don’t know, what does this guy want? You know? I mean, you weren’t out there, I didn’t think.

 

AH [00:41:13] Yeah. I definitely, at the time, could have used some media training and could have used some, things like that that I didn’t have.

 

RM [00:41:23] So, you lost were you’re disappointed?

 

AH [00:41:26] Yeah. I was—

 

RM [00:41:27] People kept telling you you’re going to win?

 

AH [00:41:32] Oh, I didn’t know if I was going to win or not. But, you know, you just sort of pick yourself up and say, ‘Okay, what am I going to do next?’ So, that’s what I did.

 

RM [00:41:45] What attracted you to MoveUP?

 

AH [00:41:48] Well, I actually applied for a staff job, and then David Black came out and said, ‘Well, we don’t want you for a staff job, but we have a director of operations where we want you to actually help us run staff and help us with working with staff.’ So, it was a new role for me, and I loved it. I love the people. They’re just fabulous.

 

RM [00:42:19] What did you like about it besides the people?

 

AH [00:42:23] What was interesting, because they have a lot of—they have a lot of processes and procedures, and they were bringing in some new systems and that type of thing as well. I had to figure out what it is that they wanted to achieve with all those things and then try to be sort of the buffer and the—find ways of getting the staff on the same page as what the officers were at, and get the officers to understand what the staff were facing, and those types of roles that—

 

RM [00:42:58] Was there a MoveUP strike at some point?

 

AH [00:43:00] Not while I was there.

 

RM [00:43:03] Okay, confusing with another union. Anyway, keep going.

 

AH [00:43:09] Yeah, just getting them to sort of work more effectively together and understand one another and resolve some of the differences between them and—yeah. So, it was a great job. I really like working with everybody there. At the same time, I was then becoming more and more involved and engaged with the party [BC New Democratic Party]. I’d been elected as the treasurer in 2014. That was at a time when the party had no money and a lot of debt, and a lot of debt—

 

RM [00:43:50] The disaster of 2013.

 

AH [00:43:53] Yup, and so they asked me to run, and I’m like, ‘Okay, sure,’ and so I did. Then I went, ‘Holy crap’. (laughter).

 

RM [00:44:03] Yes, exactly.

 

AH [00:44:05] ‘We’re in big trouble here.’ So, worked to—part of it was with the party stuff is that the labour movement had sort of, in large part, disengaged from the party.

 

RM [00:44:21] And is that bad?

 

AH [00:44:23] Yeah, I think so.

 

RM [00:44:25] Why?

 

AH [00:44:26] Because there’s a lot of ability for strength in connecting with working people. The NDP has always been—I mean, we’re integral in the party. We’re part of the Constitution. To have the labour movement integrated into the party. The strength is in having a political party understand working class issues and working class values, and so when the labour movement disengages from its political party, it means that the political party is a bunch of wonks that don’t know anything about what’s, you know, like, you just get this disconnect. They’re talking one language, and we’re talking another, and you’re not going to get any votes out of that.

 

RM [00:45:21] How did that happen?

 

AH [00:45:23] Well, it happened way before I got involved.

 

RM [00:45:24] Yeah. You found this when you arrived?

 

AH [00:45:27] I found, yeah. I mean, I had a great deal of respect for and was respected within the labour movement. I knew what people were saying in the labour movement about the party, and I could, on the other side, work with the party. I knew, you know, the party was like, ‘What the heck do we do with this?’ I was able to be that intermediary and actually start to bring folks together, and the turnaround, right. Because getting ready for the 2017 election and actually having the labour movement put their shoulder in and use the opportunity to really support—not just monetarily, but actually get into the levels of the labour movement—

 

RM [00:46:18] Was that under Irene [Lanzinger] as BC Fed president or was it still [Jim] Sinclair?

 

AH [00:46:21] Sinclair.

 

AH [00:46:24] No, no, it would have been Irene. It was Irene.

 

RM [00:46:28] Yeah, Irene. Which might have made it easier, but—

 

AH [00:46:32] Yeah. No, she was very much supporter of the party, but, I mean, the teachers’ union [BCTF BC Teachers’ Federation] doesn’t usually get that much involved in. Right?

 

RM [00:46:45] No. That’s true.

 

AH [00:46:46] So, I mean, that’s her background. She had been treasurer—not treasurer, sorry—had been engaged at the party, you know, and played—the treasurer role is to always be that connection, and she was, but we needed more than that. So, it’s nothing on Irene. She did a great job for what she was asked to do, but we needed to do a more fulsome engagement of the labour movement and particularly the private sector unions.

 

RM [00:47:21] You know, it’s always a conundrum for the labour movement, though. I suppose it is exactly from the opposite side the NDP is because, you know, you have to put union interests first. You can’t put allegiance to the party first and vice versa.

 

AH [00:47:36] Right.

 

RM [00:47:36] You know, so there’s always that tension, I think, and that’s played out—I can remember, you know, back in 1976, one of the most bitter, perhaps the most bitter. You thought your convention was bitter. You ain’t seen nothing, you know, because the Barrett government had ordered 50,000 people back to work, which probably actually, he whispered, was probably the right decision. But you can imagine, they had this whole debate over the role of the party and the BC Fed and whether the BC Fed would take what they used to call it, the trade union position and be independent of the NDP in terms of the positions they took. It was a really, you know, the Jack Munros and all—a lot of the resource unions supported, were much more supportive of the NDP. Jack would say it was Len Guy’s fault that we lost the election in ’75. That tension has always kind of been there—

 

AH [00:48:33] Yeah.

 

RM [00:48:33] And on both sides because as you alluded to the labour movement would really irritate the NDP at times. Whose side are they on, you know. You tried to bridge that?

 

AH [00:48:48] Yeah. We’ve got a—let’s not forget that we have a lot of elected MLAs that come from the labour movement, have connection, strong connections to the labour movement. As a result, when you look at discussions that happen in caucus and in cabinet, and part of the party platform, you see that understanding that intrinsic connection to working class values that’s there. I mean, it has been so, that’s why you’ve got things like getting rid of Bill 93 and repatriating thousands, hundreds of thousands of health care workers, you know what I mean? It’s just the things that an NDP government can do. Card check, five days, paid sick days.

 

RM [00:49:44] CBAs [Community Benefits Agreements].

 

RM [00:49:44] CB— yeah, all of that. That’s the connection. If you want to think back to where we were in 2014, 2015, we were leading up to 2017, we needed to get that understanding of if we elect an NDP government, we can have some of these key issues addressed. They’re not—there’s not going to be the largest mass firing of mainly women of colour. You know, that’s not going to happen under an NDP government. You can have your disagreements. We had disagreements while the NDP has been in power with—in the forestry industry with the Steelworkers going out on strike here on the island. Those are some massively uncomfortable times for some aspects of the labour movement and government. We’ll have our disagreements, but at the end of the day, the NDP is a party that’s going to understand working class.

 

RM [00:50:50] I wanna just—I realized there’s a question I want to ask you about the BC Fed campaign that you ran. Was there a lot of behind the scenes, kind of—I mean, was there sexism in—because you would have been the first woman to lead the BC Fed? Did you find any kind of backlash that way at all?

 

AH [00:51:15] There was, yeah, I don’t know if I would say—maybe there was, probably there was, but I—Rod, I’ve spent my entire career being one of the only women in the room. In many cases the only woman in the room, and interesting my new career most of the time, I’m the only woman in the room. (laughter) All the men— they’re all cooks. They’re all male cooks and chefs. So, I don’t know, maybe, but I don’t think it had any turning on it. I think, at the end of the day there was two sides, and the other side had a little bit more votes.

 

RM [00:52:03] Yeah. It’s interesting you made that—so, what’s it like being the only woman in the room so often? Did it toughen you up? Did you learn how to work effectively? Do you want to talk a bit about that? It goes to your character.

 

AH [00:52:18] Yeah. I’m not shy or afraid to be in those rooms where I’m the only woman in the room. I have had many amazing career opportunities as a result of me just being a hard worker. Someone that can be part of a team and effective at what I do. Get the job done. Those are sort of the things that I’ve always—it’s always been me. It was interesting, my first few days in—when I was hired to be the deputy chief of staff to John Horgan. Geoff Meggs is an amazing person. Geoff has this incredible quality of—the way that he speaks and the way that he puts things out. Now, you’ve been friends with him for many years, so you know—

 

RM [00:53:17] I know, it’s unbelievable.

 

AH [00:53:18] You either get Geoff Meggs or you don’t. It’s like 50-50 out there sometimes. (laughter)

 

RM [00:53:26] I know there are people that can’t stand him. I don’t know where it comes from.

 

AH [00:53:29] I don’t know if it’s they can’t stand, but they don’t understand him. His mind works so fast, and so you either get him or you don’t. I’m lucky I get him. So, he asked me to apply for this job. Called up and said, ‘We’d like you to interview.’ So, I did. I didn’t really have a job description, so I wasn’t sure what it was that we were doing.

 

RM [00:53:59] Were you still at MoveUP then?

 

RM [00:54:00] I was at MoveUP. Yeah. So, I’m like, well, you know, when somebody calls you to say, ‘Hey, will you interview?’—go for the experience. I interviewed, and then I got called in. Knock me over with a feather. He said, ‘You did the best interview, and we’d like you to start. Can you be here in, like, in a week?’ I’m like, ‘What?’ So, I managed to be there within two weeks, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing. I had no idea what the job was, so I just figured—I show up and I’m in this legislature, I’m in the West Annex, and I’m like, I still can’t figure out how to get from one end of the building to the next. The first few days, I couldn’t—it’s so confusing.

 

RM [00:54:46] I could never figure that out.

 

AH [00:54:47] I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing, but I know that this guy I’ve got to be, I got to learn from. Geoff would go and he’d, you know, he’d have to have these conversations, right? He’d go in, and he’d go to have a conversation. I’m like—so, I just jump in. (laughter) I just literally, I attached myself to his—our arms are like this, side by side, [touches her arm] because that’s the only way I could learn was to just—because he wasn’t going to tell me. He didn’t know really what it was he wanted.

 

RM [00:55:18] It’ll be fine.

 

AH [00:55:19] Yeah, exactly, and I’ve got to learn how to work with this guy and figure out what it is that he needs so that I can be helpful. I literally just [moves shoulder side to side to indicate following closely] and he would be over here, and I’d be back in here. (laughter) That’s the way we do it. I quickly sort of started to figure it out. Then about three weeks into the job, we’re at some sort of social event, and I get a glass of wine, and I give him a glass of wine, and he looks at me and he goes, ‘You know, I really like working with you. Do you like working with me?’ (laughter) I go, ‘Yeah. This is great.’ (laughter) But it was just wild. It was so interesting to be in that role and able to do the things that I was able to do, work with him. Horgan was just amazing.

 

RM [00:56:12] So, I wanted to, since you’ve touched on this now, you know, your whole background basically had been in the labour movement, and so did you bring that with you to the job or was it—

 

AH [00:56:24] Yes, I brought every ounce of experience right from being a flight attendant, problem solving right through to everything that I’ve done in my whole career. I feel like, when I look back, like it was all of that gave me the training to do the job that I did. Like it was, I needed every ounce of knowledge from the labour movement, from the legislation that I would work on, understanding how the labour movement work was extremely valuable. Knowing people, being able to pick up the phone and have somebody’s number already, when you need to problem solve. And then, just all the people skills, all of the understanding of industry. I know the building trades. I know how they how they work. I know private sector unions. I know public sector unions. I know, and interestingly, most of the time I would also know the counterpart on the other side—of the table. So, it brought everything that I had to that job. And so, it was very much—

 

RM [00:57:37] Would you also bring the issues of the labour movement? Do you come in like with—I mean, I don’t know, do you consider yourself working class?

 

AH [00:57:45] Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s where I came from.

 

RM [00:57:47] You know what I’m saying? You bring a trade union consciousness in addition to all the skills you’ve developed in the labour movement. You bring that to the job or is the job just different?

 

AH [00:57:58] Understanding the labour movement and, working class values is part of who John Horgan is. I mean, you wake him up in the middle of the night—he’s a trade unionist at heart, like absolutely 100 percent. And, you know, Geoff Meggs is. It’s just—so that was already there. I didn’t have to park mine.

 

RM [00:58:24] Good point.

 

AH [00:58:25] You know.

 

RM [00:58:25] You’re probably third. (laughter)

 

AH [00:58:28] Right? Then the opportunity to work with someone whose immensely talented as Don Bain is just incredible as well, and all his intrinsic knowledge of Indigenous issues, all of the different nations. It was just incredible. What was really interesting is when Geoff and John Horgan decided in 2020 to make Don Bain deputy chief of staff as well. It brought a real friendship there, an opportunity to develop, which Don and I are still—I still consider him one of my best friends. As he said to me once, which I just took to my heart, he said, ‘I’ll sit on the curb with you any day.’ Yeah. So, he is amazing.

 

RM [00:59:23] If you’ve been kicked to the curb. (laughter) Another thing that I guess maybe I should have—I mean, you were in B.C., I guess 2006 you started. These were not the gravy days for the labour movement. There were a lot of tough times for the labour movement in the 2000s. Could you talk a bit about that, about just how tough it—maybe it’s a bit better now—but how tough it was for the labour movement and how, you know, you worked to sort of make it better. Is that just too broad a question?

 

AH [00:59:57] Probably because, I mean, what you will see—

 

RM [00:59:59] About the percentage of unions, people belonging to unions is going down, and all that kind of stuff. Were you worried?

 

AH [01:00:06] Well, that was happening in B.C., but it was also happening across the country.

 

RM [01:00:09] Of course, but B.C. had this tradition of —in fact, we probably—actually we fell behind PEI [Prince Edward Island]. I’d like to point out there’s a reason for that because it’s all public sector workers. Still, it’s pretty embarrassing that B.C., of all places, in percentage terms was lower than PEI. So, I mean, the difficulties of the labour movement that it faces and faced when you were involved.

 

AH [01:00:37] Yeah. I guess my role at the Canadian Labour Congress was to run national programs and to work with labour councils and to do labour education. So, it was more hands on, less, I mean, in the way that the labour movement in B.C. Was structured, is the BC Fed would run the campaigns for the things that we would see happening in B.C., and the CLC would take care of things municipally and federally. I would have a different perspective than—just with the work that I did when I first came out. I also worked far more hands on because of the labour education piece that I did. I would travel around the province meeting with and training with people, your rank and file trade unions that are learning to be stewards, that are learning to be—so it gives you a different perspective. You’re far more—

 

RM [01:01:38] Positive and encouraged?

 

AH [01:01:40] Yes, because I could help somebody understand how to file a grievance and win it without having to go to arbitration because you’re going to spend a lot of time before you get there. Let’s find solutions. Let’s do, you know, like so let’s train people on how to be effective and working with management and working—you know, so you’re always solutions oriented, and you’re always looking at building people’s skills up, giving them confidence to be able to do what they need to do. You build the strength of the labour movement that way, one person at a time. So, it’s a different approach. So, you’re right. I was probably way more positive about it, but I also saw results on a regular basis for people that develop. They’ll always be strong trade unionists.

 

RM [01:02:35] Look at the Steelworkers. I consider the IWA [International Woodworkers of America]. I mean, when I—it’s 50 years ago, but like there were over 50,000 IWA members in B.C. Now the Steelworkers in terms of the forest sector have (I don’t know) 8,000, 10,000, whatever it is.  We’re in the same building, the Labour Heritage Centre.

 

AH [01:02:59] Oh. Oh are you there now? Yeah.

 

RM [01:03:01] You know, it’s just it’s kind of disheartening. Nothing anyone can do about it. It’s not the fault of the union.

 

AH [01:03:07] Yeah, their mining is still going quite strong.

 

RM [01:03:09] It is. And the building trades, I guess, or sort of.

 

AH [01:03:13] The building trades are doing very well. Yeah. Building trades are very doing very, very well.

 

RM [01:03:19] Anyway, that’s me giving my take, but to pick up on something about the only woman in the rooms often and stuff, you must have seen change in that?

 

AH [01:03:29] Oh, yes.

 

RM [01:03:31] Can you talk a bit about the changes that you’ve seen in the labour movement in your time in it, more in the white woman’s version of anti-racist. (laughter) I mean it’s changing, isn’t it?

 

AH [01:03:43] Yeah, I think it is, and it will just eventually over time. Our population is changing. If you look at the demographics here in B.C., it’s probably changing more slowly than in Ontario, for example. The demographics are different too. The ethnic makeup is different, but it will eventually, I believe, and this goes back to David Onyalo but it will eventually take care of itself. We will eventually elect people that represent—are more representative of the labour movement membership just by virtue of the fact that they’re—the population density will change, and so there will be more opportunities that way. More importantly, I think that the labour movement has done a lot in terms of addressing inclusion and, you know, addressing a lot of the—understanding awareness and attitudes and perceptions around, you know, what is the typical trade unionist. It doesn’t look like me anymore. Certainly, doesn’t look like you. Right. That’s been—you see that change happening. It has been happening in the last ten years, but it’s certainly more so now, when you go to conventions. It just depends. Like, you’re going to go to—

 

RM [01:05:09] Well, that’s very true.

 

AH [01:05:10] Yeah. I mean, it’s always going to be—you know, you go to a building trade, right. I mean women in the electrical field there’s about five, seven percent, maybe, type of thing. Right? So, you know you’re still going to find—

 

RM [01:05:30] It’s still hard for them.

 

AH [01:05:32] It is. In a lot of trades, it is. I mean, my trade, all of the kitchens are still designed for six foot men, right? All of the chefs, it was rare to find a woman chef.

 

RM [01:05:49] So, you’re right at home then? (laughter)

 

AH [01:05:50] I am right at home. (laughter)

 

RM [01:05:53] You’ve had such a diverse career; it’s very interesting. You look back, I mean, there’s certain things that you’re most proud of or a legacy that you might have left behind when you moved on kind of a thing? I mean, what—do you reflect much on that?.

 

AH [01:06:10] No, I don’t really reflect—

 

RM [01:06:12] You’re not retired?

 

AH [01:06:13] I’m not. No. I have had such a tremendous life. I, you know, I have had tons of opportunities. Five children. Six—the sixth grandchild is on the way. I’ve had so many amazing career opportunities. The people—

 

RM [01:06:37] You raised five kids and did all that, too?

 

RM [01:06:40] Oh, yeah. Well, we’re a blended family, so three and two, but we raised them all together.

 

RM [01:06:44] Fair enough.

 

AH [01:06:44] Yeah. I feel very blessed. Very lucky to have had all of the opportunities that I’ve had. I could probably—I can’t think of a legacy. I’ve never—I could never say I’ve had a mission or anything like that. I’m going to do—

 

RM [01:07:11]  You did effective work.

 

AH [01:07:12] Yeah, I’m going to do the best damn job I can do at whatever I do. I’m always going to look for ways to raise people up. Right.

 

RM [01:07:23] There’s something that drives you? I mean, I just thinking, where does this come from?

 

AH [01:07:27] Well, I don’t know. (laughter) Just me.

 

RM [01:07:29] You could have been a corporate executive or something.

 

AH [01:07:34] Yeah. Maybe. Not really interested.

 

RM [01:07:35] You’re smart. You’re talented. You’re organized. You’re a Geoff Meggs acolyte. (laughter) But, I mean, you know what I’m saying? You ended up in the labour movement.

 

AH [01:07:42] Yeah, that was—

 

RM [01:07:44] Was that just an accident, do you think? Something got you angered about health and safety.

 

AH [01:07:50] Yeah.

 

RM [01:07:51] This is not right.

 

AH [01:07:52] Yeah, someone said I can’t do something. Yeah. (laughter) No, I’ve always wanted people to be treated fairly. All of the values that the labour movement has are values that I have. I’ve always had. It’s just, you know, and so they just came naturally. It’s like, you know, you don’t leave people behind.

 

RM [01:08:16] One last question. I should have asked this when you were talking about being deputy chief of staff. Politics is different, right? I’m sure you noticed that. Did you find that you had to hold your tongue, bite your tongue at times and stuff like that?

 

AH [01:08:29] Of course.

 

RM [01:08:30] Yeah. Well, what was that like? In the labour movement, you speak out. No one really holds back.

 

AH [01:08:38] So, I have worked—I had to learn how the public service at that level works. How they think, you know, because it’s different. That was a big learning curve for me. But one that’s—because it can be a really weird atmosphere or a weird kind of way of doing this where it’s all like, ‘Yes, Minister. Yes, Prime Minister. Yes, Premier. Yes.’ It’s really hard to sort of keep your feet on the ground, and Horgan was really good at that. You know, for the most part, he was really just a rock. He had such an amazing respect for the public service and their role. It was one that I—it can be subtle until it smacks you upside the head. I had to learn that really fast. I was stronger for it—for learning that, and the way that the public service works and the important role that they have in how decisions are made and the role that the public service plays in, and the way that the legislature works, and the everything, all of the decisions and all of the work that’s done in the legislature. That was a big learning curve for me, but one that I hold a lot of value for.

RM [01:10:47] Wow, this is great. Anything you’d like to touch on that you haven’t?

AH [01:10:52] (laughter) Probably talked your ear off, you know.