Lunch with NDP MP Pat Martin – back on the front bench, but not as angry (he hopes)

OTTAWA – Pat Martin is back from his summer sabbatical, feeling refreshed. He may be the only opposition MP to admit he didn’t mind the extra month of prorogation.

“I needed a break and took it quite selfishly,” he says.

“It wasn’t my favourite year of my career.”

Instead of defending democracy, as he is wont to do, the NDP MP for Winnipeg Centre spent more time defending himself – from a $5 million defamation lawsuit by automated calls firm RackNine Inc.

Martin, 57, settled the suit in February for an undisclosed sum and set up an online legal defence fund to help pay back the money.

He faced further scrutiny about union donations, but says they were cleared by the ethics commissioner from the start.

“This whole lawsuit has taken a really heavy personal and professional toll on me, I don’t think that’s any secret,” says Martin, wearing a slate suit to match steely blue eyes.

“I flew too close to the sun but I paid a big price for it too.”

The 16-year political veteran – class of 1997, one of four longest-serving NDP MPs – is perhaps best known for his outspoken manner and colourful turns of phrase.

They include calling the Conservatives “rat-faced whores” and performing a puppet show featuring a Muppet named Toxic Timmy to advocate against a form of asbestos in toys. (He has since given the puppet to his nephew: “We just told little Benjamin he was a pirate.”)

But lately, Martin has been much quieter.

“I’ve been told I have kind of a political Tourette’s, where I just don’t have the same filters that some people have,” he says.

He cuts a contradictory figure: low-key and soft-spoken in person, but prone to outrage and impulsiveness on the public stage.

Known for his quick wit, Martin also struggles with a disability – a stutter he has learned to cope with, but will always be with him.

He is a man, it seems, at war with himself.

“People blame me for swearing on Twitter,” he says, referring to his lashing out at Vic Toews when the former public safety minister didn’t invite him to an event in his riding.

“I don’t apologize for that at all. That’s an appropriate response to an outrageous situation.”

In the next breath, he adds: “It was a mistake. I’m not proud of it.”

But if Martin has been wounded, he is not down.

As he dines daintily on halibut and fingerling potatoes in the Parliamentary dining room, snippets of the old Martin shine through.

His targets include Green Party leader Elizabeth May, whom he calls a “walking guilt trip” and employees at the Prime Minister’s Office who attend question period. (“There’s that little row of ghouls.”)

Martin’s career is bouncing back, too – a new high-profile portfolio as his party’s Public Works critic, and the newly-minted chair of the ethics committee.

“I think I’m being allowed to go off leash a little,” he chuckles.

But last year’s toll is evident.

The day after lunch, Martin calls to make sure a comment about Toews – who pleaded guilty to election overspending in 1999 – is fact-checked before it’s printed.

The remark included the words “rigged,” “election,” and “busted.”

Martin woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it. “I was worried about another lawsuit,” he says. (Toews has said the overspending was the result of a misunderstanding with the provincial Conservative campaign office and pleaded guilty in 2005 to put the matter behind him.)

Martin attributes an extended summer on Saltspring Island, B.C., the most time he’s spent with partner Jenni Prince, to his newfound rejuvenation.

“I needed some time to reassess and re-evaluate what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go,” he says.

“To be silenced is the worst thing you can do to a politician.”

A tumultuous two years

Martin swears it won’t happen again. No more cursing on Twitter, no more heckling, no more “loudmouth” behaviour.

He’s said it before. All he can say is, this time it’s different.

“I’m just not going to let myself get pulled in quite as deep into things,” says Martin, crunching on a buttered breadstick and sipping curried carrot soup.

“It’s anger. You’re living anger. That kind of stress will kill you.”

It came to a head in December 2012 when he went on Twitter and lambasted both Toews and the Conservatives.

He was already battling the robocalls lawsuit from Edmonton-based RackNine, whose equipment was used to send misleading calls directing voters in Guelph, Ont. to the wrong polling stations in the 2011 election.  The company denied wrongdoing and Martin retracted and apologized.

“I had a really tumultuous two years leading up to that,” says Martin.

“Too busy on too many files all at once, getting super emotionally involved and furious about this notion that some very bad people had sabotaged the last federal election.”

The NDP was also sued, and Martin was swiftly removed from the file. He also faded from view.

He doesn’t call it a punishment, but rather, a “cooling-off period.”

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair only got involved once, he says.

“The only time Tom has ever interfered with me is that he wishes I would stop swearing at people,” says Martin.

He calls the explicit language “industrial” – a term from his carpentry days – and admits there is an appetite for politicians who actually say what’s on their mind.

“Sometimes the appropriate response is to be outraged,” he says.

“I think we should be the most effective Official Opposition we can be. That’s the job that’s been given to us. So I mean, that doesn’t call for being timid.”

Martin is still convinced that the 2011 election was decided by “widespread electoral fraud.” He just hasn’t been able to prove it.

“Some very bad people hijacked and sabotaged the last federal election, and won it by cheating,” he says.

“I can’t say who because I don’t want to wind up in court again. But if you were an amateur detective you start with motive and opportunity if you’re looking for the guilty party.”

He says he worries deeply about democracy under the Conservatives, who have allowed few or no amendments to bills, shut down debate in committees and invoked closure on legislation.

“They’re systematically cutting a swath through everything that’s good and decent about our democracy, and just showing an incredible disrespect.”

Most important, he has learned he can be tough on issues – without being tough on people.

“I keep a lot more of my opinions to myself now. It seems a disproportionate number of my opinions are in fact slanderous,” he laughs.

You didn’t realize that before?

“Didn’t realize how expensive it can be. Holy s***. I’ll be paying for that one forever.”

‘It ain’t no beach party when you can’t talk.’

Stuttering changes the way you think, the way you form sentences. You have to develop a thesaurus in your head in case you run into trouble.

“You’re never cured as a stutterer,” says Martin, who still gets caught on hard Cs and Ps. “You just find ways to cope with it, which I have thankfully. But certainly didn’t until even into my mid-20s.”

It’s one of the reasons he left Winnipeg at 17 to work in an asbestos mine and mill in the Yukon.

“It was like a poultice for me after all the stress of trying to get through high school as a stutterer, man. It ain’t no beach party when you can’t talk.”

But he quickly learned the dangers about asbestos – an issue he remains passionate about today. “You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face,” he says.

He worked in the mines for two years, then onto zinc and silver mines and oil rigs before moving back to Manitoba to head the carpenters’ union before getting into politics.

He plans to run again in 2015, and says he doesn’t worry about if his party has slipped to mid-20 per cent support in the polls.

“I was a member of an NDP caucus, we were eight per cent in the polls and 13 MPs,” he says, recalling the 2000 election.

“I like where we are.”

He believes an NDP government is in the realm of possibility – picking on the Conservatives’ ethical issues and calling the Liberals “gifted chameleons.”

“They will say anything to anybody to achieve power,” he says of the third party.

He claims the NDP majority Manitoba government is a shining example of his party’s competency to govern.

But he doesn’t really have an answer about the party’s recent pummelling in Nova Scotia.

“Provincial and federal politics are just so separate in Canada,” he says.

What may be Martin’s saving grace in his latest attempt at civility is his personal life.

As he digs into sticky pudding that he insists on sharing – “you’ve got to try some of that sauce” – he reveals how he reconnected with his partner, Prince, a Kiwi whom he first met in the Yukon.

“We both went our separate ways and had families and stuff, and then kind of completely lost touch for 30-some odd years,” he says.

“And then her son robbed a bank in the United States and went to prison for a long time.”

Prince moved to Canada to be close to her 19-year-old son, who pulled a toy gun on a bank teller, stuffed his backpack with $5 bills and tried to get away by skiing down a mountain. He was sentenced to nearly five years in prison.

Martin says he and Prince are “very, very happy.”

And as he prepares for his re-entry into the limelight, Martin seems determined to keep himself out of trouble.

“I don’t want my lasting image to be irresponsible, reckless, swearing at cabinet ministers,” he says.

“I could probably do something a little more constructive with the last couple of years that I have. I’m hoping anyway.”