Canada's NDP chooses Green Party strategy of self-immolation

You remember the Greens, don’t you? Well, maybe not… I for one had high hopes for the Green movement generally. I was especially enamored with the leader of the German Greens, Petra Kelly, but there were ominous signs even then that they’d end up in bed with NATO. In Canada we never had a Petra Kelly. We had Elizabeth May instead. Realizing her political career had run its course, Ms. May tried to retire seven or eight years ago. That brought one Annamie Paul to the fore. By now the Green Party was fully signed on to the woke agenda, to the point where they were way more woke than they were ‘green.’ Ms. Paul seemed to tick a few more boxes than Ms. May. For one thing, she was Black. There are voters who think that’s important. Unfortunately for Ms. Paul, she made some comments deemed antisemitic by prominent Jewish donors, and that was the end of that. Annamie didn’t last long, and was replaced by the most impressive box-ticker in Canadian political history, Amita Kuttner. They were, in no particular order, the first transgender leader of a Canadian political party, first south-Asian person, and first person with a Ph.D. in astro-physics to lead a national party. With Woke bonafides like that you won’t be surprised the party got wiped out in the next election. What does surprise me is the NDP’s just-released 23 page guidance for their upcoming leadership contest. Right away I’m out of the running. I might be able to manage the non-refundable “vetting fee” of $1,500, but that $100k “application fee” is far beyond the means of this retired former member of United Steelworkers, the UAW, the CAW after Bob White delivered our independence, the International Woodworkers of America, and the Ontario Secondary School Teacher’s Federation, and I think I missed some… clearly, democracy is out of reach for the working man. Nevermind working men; the party rulers (ie big donors) are even discriminating against the cissy men. Check out paragraph 6 (clause 2) on page 8, wherein the ruling elite of the workers party decree; “at least fifty percent of the signatures must come from men who are not cissy men.” Holy shit! Even if I could snag some big donors, how could I ever find so many non-cissy men in the NDP? The only name I recognize among those who have declared their intention to contest this election is Yves Engler. He’s probably right that he’s got the most progressive take on NATO and the current wars to preserve the American Empire. He’s also the candidate who makes potential big donors most uncomfortable, if you know what I mean. Gaza genocide? BLOOD LIBEL!

Canada election 2021

Singh is uninspired and hopeless.

Paul somehow managed to equate her brief stewardship of the Green Party with both antisemitism and anti-Black racism simultaneously, a rare feat indeed. The Greens will never recover.

O'Toole is just a useless tool.

Which leaves PM Fluffy a clear path to a majority.

What a clown. What an a-hole. Does this man-child have any redeeming features whatsoever? If so, I've never been able to ferret them out. Nevertheless, he's the best our vaunted democracy can throw up.

What an embarrassment to democracy!

New Brunswick grabs the Democratic Process by the ass

Well, this is rude.

Fourteen NDPers jump ship en masse for the Greenies!

It's a bad day for Jagmeet and a good one for whatsername over there at the Green Party.

And what is her name?... Elizabeth Green? Greene? It's Elizabeth something or other, I'm pretty sure...

Whatever it is, it's got about as much traction in the media universe as Jagmeet's brand.


Don't look this gift horse in the mouth, Liz.

Canada's pretend socialists try for free ride on "$15 is FAIR" coattails

The Canadian political party formerly known as socialist has decreed that $15 is indeed fair; a fair minimum wage for Canadian workers... IN 2019!

How this bit of shabby headline-mongering succeeded is beyond me. NDP leader Mulcair got headlines all across the Great White North on his call for a $15/hr minimum wage. In every case you don't get the 2019 part until you read the actual story.

Nor is Mulcair making a principled statement about the need for a decent minimum wage for ALL Canadians, right now; he's limiting his "demands" to that small minority of Canadian workers who are covered by federal instead of provincial minimum wage legislation.

In other words, these headlines are the result of a calculated attempt to steal a bit of the spotlight from the "$15 is Fair" campaign.

The NDP under Mulcair's leadership has been steadily losing the credibility it had under the late Jack Layton. Mulcair's gutless refusal to say anything other than parrot Harper talking points during the recent Israeli war on Gaza, for the ludicrous reason that his wife's family is Jewish, alienated a lot of traditional NDP types who expect the Party offer something different from the one-sided support for Israeli militarism that we typically get from the Harper gang.

As for that $15/hr minimum wage, listen up, Tom; that's something that the working poor in Canada need today, not in 2019, and they need it across the land, not just in federally regulated industries.

The wimpy radicalism of the NDP

Andrea Horwath wants to shift more of the financial burden of our fight to slay the deficit onto the "super-rich".

But she doesn't want to give offence.

So she's suggesting a 2% surcharge on folks earning over a half million a year.

Far from not giving offence, that confiscatory two percent earned her a scathing rebutal in the Globe.

Contrast that to the proposal put forward by Left Front Presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon in France.

How about a 100% surcharge on everything over half a million bucks?

Obviously he's not concerned with giving offence!

Canada's former socialist party elects new leader

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!