Sometimes, when the excitement of watching the Leafs miss the playoffs for the seventh year in a row becomes too intense, I like to downshift to something a little more sedentary. Canadian politics.
So after the Leafs lost to the Rangers in OT last night I caught a bit of the NDP leadership convention.
They've got themselves a new leader to replace the late Jack Layton.
Thomas Mulcair. Used to be a Liberal in the Quebec parliament. Now he's the official Leader of the Opposition in the Federal Parliament, and the leader of the NDP.
He's going to be going head to head not only with the Harper gang, but with the interim leader of the Liberal Party, former Ontario NDP Preem Bob Rae.
Confusing? You bet!
But the fact that an NDPer can seamlessly morph into a Liberal and vice versa is the least of it.
I'm of the generation that remembers too well Bob Rae's tenure as leader of Canada's richest province. Socialist ideals met capitalist realities and it wasn't pretty. By the time Mike Harris and his ultra-right conservatives consigned Bob to the dustbin of history in the next election Bob had achieved two things.
He brought casino gambling to Ontario, and he made bicycle helmets mandatory.
So much for the socialist agenda.
Now that Bob's climbed out of the dustbin to become acting leader of the Liberal Party, and a former Liberal is at the helm of the NDP, what remains of that agenda?
Not much. In fact, as the NDP becomes more and more a centrist party, I think it's just a matter of time before it absorbs what's left of the Liberals, in much the same way that the once upstart Reform Party ate the old Progressive Conservatives.
That would open up the left of the political spectrum to a new party that could return to the socialist roots that the NDP have steadily distanced themselves from.
Watch for the Marxist-Lenninist Party from Falling Downs!
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