Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘ndp’

The longtime leader of the NDP and official opposition leader of Canada, Jack Layton, lost his battle with cancer this morning at age 61:

“We deeply regret to inform you that the Honourable Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, passed away at 4:45 am today, Monday August 22. He passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by family and loved ones,” the statement read.

Layton led a party that I often didn’t agree with. I wasn’t a big fan of him as a politician, either. I mocked his used-car-salesman demeanour, his debate tactics, his party’s habit of apologizing for extremism or drawing false moral equivalencies, and even his moustache.

All of that aside, though, his death is a tragedy, just as any death from cancer is a tragedy. It also comes at a time when the country is, more than ever, in the iron grip of a Conservative party that is doing frightening things to our political landscape. The NDP’s historic gains in the May election, which vaulted them into official opposition status, meant that Layton was expected to play a major role in doing whatever he could to keep the Tories in check. Now, of course, this duty will pass onto someone else.

Canadians of all political stripes – left, right or the kitchen sink – will mourn Layton’s passing, and rightly so. I didn’t always agree him, but  even where we disagreed, I recognize that he was acting for what he believed was his vision for Canada. My condolences to Olivia Chow and to the rest of Layton’s family and friends.

You can read the text of Layton’s last letter to Canadians here.

Well, the votes are in, and Stephen Harper has his majority government.

1. The right moves further to the right. The Tories, after spending five years walking all over Canadians as a minority, now get to walk all over Canadians even more as a majority. Harper believes – as he should, with these numbers – that he has a mandate from Canada to impose his agenda and move the government rightward. Forget the Shit Harper Did; what about the Shit Harper will do?
   
2. The left moves further to the left. The official opposition is now the NDP, not the Liberals. The same NDP who has campaigned on anti-Israel platforms; who cozies up to the labour unions; who believes that quota systems will provide equality.  The NDP is positioning itself as the de facto Tory alternative, and with nearly three times as many seats as the Liberals, it clearly believes that it is the voice of the left – or the potential leader of any merger or move to unite the progressive parties. Ironically, the jubilant Layton doesn’t seem to grasp that he had more power in fourth place in a Tory minority than he does in second place in a Tory majority.
   
3. The middle disintegrates. The Liberal party is in shambles. They lost over half their seats and most of their star MPs. They lost official opposition status. They will have to regroup and rebuild. And the common sense centre, the great balancing force against polarization, is severely crippled. Moderation is what suffers in this outcome.
   
4. A weaker official opposition. A Harper majority is a scary enough prospect. But now 102 NDP MPs – many of whom are complete political rookies – will be heading to Ottawa to serve as the official opposition. Even seasoned Liberal MPs would have had a hard time keeping the Harpers in check. There’s no way that inexperienced political neophytes from the NDP will be able to pull it off. Harper’s now got a majority with no strong opposition; he can basically do whatever he wants and get away with it.
   
5. Bloc collapses, but sovereignty gets a boost. The big news of the night was the Bloc Quebecois’s collapse from 47 seats to 4 amidst the Quebec “orange crush”, and Duceppe’s defeat and resignation. It should be good news for federalism? Right? Wrong. I’ve never seen so many Quebecers feel disenfranchised and alienated from the rest of Canada. This is going to provide a huge boost to sovereignty. I’m about as staunch a federalist as it gets, but even I have to admit that I see their point. Quebec voted overwhelmingly left-wing progressive NDP; the rest of Canada (except for Newfoundland) voted overwhelmingly Conservative. Is there any point in arguing that we’re not different here in La Belle Province?
   
6. Human rights? What human rights? With as many as four Supreme Court seats opening up to be stacked by Harper-crony Conservatives during this term. Abortion rights, gay marriage, rights of women, rights of minorities, immigrants’ rights… you name it, it’s on their agenda for attack.
7. No more funding for arts and culture. That is, unless the Calgary Stampede is your idea of a cultural event.
8. Technology and innovation? Not on Harper’s watch. With important issues facing our country around telecom consolidation, internet billing and metering, privacy, digital rights management… the only party who didn’t respond to Canadians’ concerns about internet and digital policy is the one now holding a majority in Parliament. Four or five more years for the rest of the world to advance while Canada lags behind? Will we even have an economy when Harper is done with us?
9. Canadians get slapped around; claim we fell down the stairs. We have a government who ignores us at every turn, walks all over us, and breaks the law with impunity. We get a chance to toss it out on its ear. Instead, we go crawling back to it. Domestic abuse on a grand scale, anyone? Basically, we’ve just sent Harper a message that he can get away with anything. And he will.
10. Harper plans to reward his “base”. The Alberta-native social conservative movement has been waiting a long time in minority to get rewarded for its efforts to put Harper in power. All this time, he didn’t revisit socially conservative issues because he didn’t have a mandate and knew that the opposition wouldn’t let him get away with it. Now, all these interest groups want their pound of flesh. Our flesh.

The silver lining is, it’s only 4 or 5 years. The question is, will we recognize Canada after all that time?

What does your party believe? I’d venture a guess that only a small number of Canadians who vote actually bother to read their party’s platforms… or the platforms of the other parties.  Even if we concede that politicians break campaign promises all the time, shouldn’t you know what your party is promising before casting your ballot?

Read the platforms here:

• Liberal Party of Canada
• Conservative Party of Canada
• New Democrat Party of Canada
• Bloc Quebecois (in French)
• Green Party of Canada

Then, when you’re done, check out the candidates in your writing. Read up on their voting records, if they are already MPs. Read their blogs, find their  Facebook pages, check out anything they’ve written or published. Make sure you know who you’re voting to send to Parliament on May 2nd.

An uninformed electorate gets the government that it deserves. So get informed.

The Election Prediction Project is forecasting 125 seats for the Conservatives, 94 for the Liberals, 51 for the Bloc, 36 for the NDP, and 2 for Independent candidates. They’ve been pretty dead-on in past elections, so we’ll see if that trend continues this time.

Voting is our most fundamental right and privilege. Regardless of your politics, make sure to exercise that right today and vote. Remember, if you don’t vote, you can’t complain about the results.

Jack Layton things that the rise of the ADQ in Quebec means that more Quebeckers will vote NDP in the next federal election:

Layton told about 100 NDP supporters on Saturday that the rise of the ADQ was spurred by a rejection of the province’s two “old” parties.

“They wanted to see something new,” he said of Quebec voters.

Well, yes, that’s true. But the similarities between the right-of-centre ADQ and the decidedly left-wing NDP end right there. People wanted change, sure, but they flocked to the ADQ, not to Quebec Solidaire. Layton might do well to remember that.

The Liberals’ post-convention surge in support is coming largely from the left, according to a new EKOS poll:

The EKOS poll, which surveyed 1,022 voters on Tuesday and Wednesday and is considered accurate to 3.1 percentage points 19 times out of 20, showed the Liberals picking up support mainly at the expense of the left-leaning New Democratic Party.

The New Democrats were at 10.2 percent in the poll, well below the 17.5 percent they picked up in the January election.

The Conservatives have dropped 3 percentage points since January’s election, but the NDP has dropped over 7, demonstrating that the Liberals are primarily making inroads on the left, not in the middle.

Needless to say, this is not a happy development. With the Liberals moving leftward, there’s nobody left fighting for a centrist vision for the country. How long can it be, I wonder, before we start hearing calls to “unite the left” and move to a two-party system like in the United States?

Interestingly enough, support for the Green Party is actually up, indicating that the attention being called to environmental issues is actually outweighing any support that the Liberals under Dion’s leadership (and that of his dog, Kyoto) might be shaving from that camp.

Jack Layton and the NDP have withdrawn their support of the Liberal government, opening the door for an opposition movement that would bring it down and force elections. Layton claims it’s because he’s aghast at the corruption within the party:

“We cannot express confidence in a government that is under the leadership of a party that cannot be trusted to clean up the politics that it tainted,” Layton said in Toronto.

Of course, if that were true, the NDP wouldn’t have spent the last year propping up the Liberals. No, the real reason is that the NDP is no longer able to extract its pound of flesh:

The New Democrats have been the only party willing to keep the government in power and they wrung spending concessions from the Liberals in April in exchange for backing the budget.

But the partnership foundered when the Liberals rejected NDP proposals to limit private medicine. Layton said he was still open to an offer from Prime Minister Paul Martin, but thought this nearly impossible.

“If Mr Martin were to do a 180-degree turn and completely change the position that he gave to us, you always have to be willing to hear somebody out. I don’t think there’s really any possibility of that happening,” he said.

In other words, it’s okay that the Liberals stole billions of dollars of taxpayer money… just as long as they don’t allow privatized healthcare. What shall we call this? The blackmail protocol?

All this to say that I doubt any party will put forth a motion to bring down the government just yet. Nobody wants a Christmastime election. And by the time an election comes around, the Liberals will probably win back enough votes to once again form a minority government, thus making the election an exercise in futility.

Plus ça change…

That’s the greater implication of this proposed blackmail by the Conservatives:

The Opposition Conservatives are willing to support the NDP’s $4.6-billion budget amendment, but only if the Liberals agree to delay same-sex marriage legislation.

The Liberals have the numbers to pass the budget even without Conservative support. So did the Liberals grow a backbone and tell the Tories to stuff it? Hah! Not exactly:

Reacting to word of the opposition offer, Prime Minister Paul Martin’s spokesperson Scott Reid said no deal had been struck.

“The government committed to make every effort without summarily cutting off debate and others’ views to get C-38 passed this session,” Reid said.

But, Reid added, actually getting the same-sex marriage legislation passed before Parliament rises may be out of the government’s hands.

“That remains our hope, but the fact of the matter is that if the Conservatives are determined to obstruct and filibuster, it may be difficult.”

In other words, they’re committed to the bill as long as it doesn’t make life too difficult for them. Oh yeah, that’s a strong stand.

Damian Penny thinks that the Tories have failed because they haven’t told Canadians in any clear terms what they stand for. I have to disagree. The Conservatives are making it blazingly obvious what they stand for: they have a single-minded obsession with gay rights that is trumping everything else on the agenda. Kate McMillan thinks the Tories need a three-syllable platform to win support. Well, how’s this for a three-syllable platform: “homophobes”.

Sadly, the Conservatives seem unable to get past being a single-issue party, and the Liberals seem unable to stand up to their blackmail. And of course, when auctioning off civil rights, minorities like Canada’s gay population are the first losers. Who will it be next?

Coming soon to a Canada near you: a de facto NDP government:

The NDP could seek a long-term agreement to prop up the Liberal government in exchange for a handful of concessions, party officials said Wednesday.

Fresh from winning $4.6 billion more for its priorities in return for helping the Liberals survive a confidence vote, the NDP is upping the ante and contemplating a more wide-ranging deal. The party inched closer to holding the balance of power in the House of Commons after this week’s Labrador byelection gave the Liberals another seat.

Some Conservative bloggers such as Damian Penny are lamenting the fact that the Liberals’ one usual saving grace – a balanced budget – will now be a thing of the past.

To all those who voted Tory and cheered the fact that the Liberals were reduced to a minority in the last election: starting to miss that Liberal majority government yet?

Once again demonstrating his perpetual spinelessness and willingness to do anything to hang onto power, Paul Martin struck a deal with Jack Layton, making “concessions” in exchange for an NDP promise to vote for the budget.

What sort of “concessions”? The usual NDP mixed bag. Deferring corporate tax cuts in favour of $4.6 billion in additional social spending for things like Aboriginal housing, the environment, foreign aid and the like.

That’s all besides the point, though. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the changes, the main thing here is that we have the party who came in dead last among the four major parties in the last election essentially dictating the federal budget. What’s wrong with this picture?