Daily Archives: April 7, 2016

Avi Lewis, democracy, Naomi Klein, Politics

WHEN IT COMES TO THE LEAP MANIFESTO, MULCAIR IN FOR A CLOSE SHAVE

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His rhetoric has shifted left, but will the NDP leader articulate a vision ambitious enough for a grassroots eager to make Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis’s manifesto official party policy at its weekend convention?

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Leap Manifesto co-author Avi Lewis has been stickhandling questions about his own leadership aspirations in lead-up to Edmonton confab.

By Andria Vasil, reposted from NowToronto, Apr 6, 2016

It’s not until near the end of the Thinking Big In A Time Of Climate Crisis town hall Tuesday, March 29, that moderator Avi Lewis jumps up to remind the 500 or so assembled in the auditorium at Bishop Marrocco/Thomas Merton Secondary School that the event is strictly non-partisan. That’s after Barry Weisleder, chair of the NDP’s Socialist Caucus, rises at the front of the room to encourage everyone present to email their MPs to adopt the Leap Manifesto as policy at the NDP convention, running April 8 to 10 in Edmonton. Lewis wasn’t the first among the organizers to stress the non-partisan nature of the event. Other speakers among the panelists did as well.

For the many NDPers in the room, there’s no denying that the manifesto appears to be just the ticket to allow the tattered federal party to renew itself as it grapples with questions about Thomas Mulcair’s leadership.

Lewis and his partner, author and activist Naomi Klein, along with enviro, labour, First Nations and social justice groups, launched the blueprint for a green economy in September, just before the federal election.

It was viewed back then by the mainstream press as a lefty bogeymen in Mulcair’s closet. Lewis has himself been stickhandling sensitive questions about his own political aspirations, which have only gotten louder with news that he will speak at the NDP convention, albeit on a panel on insider/outsider dynamics with former MP Libby Davies. He told the CBC on April 1 that Mulcair’s job “is the furthest thing from my mind at this point.” Lewis and Davies, along with former NDP MP Craig Scott, are also proposing a resolution calling for a discussion by riding associations, followed by adoption of the manifesto, at the party’s next convention in 2018.

Lewis may not be planning to spring a surprise from the convention floor this weekend, but it’s hard to ignore the many NDPers in the room, including the town hall’s co-host, NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo, who’ve been very vocal about the need for change at the top of the federal party and think its resurrection lies in the ideas contained in the manifesto. To date, 19 NDP riding associations have passed resolutions calling on the party to adopt the document as party policy.

DiNovo suspects Mulcair will survive as leader, but she tells NOW, “That’s no excuse to sit on our hands. We need to be focusing on regaining all of those activists we lost. They’re where the real energy of the party lies in the future. The Leap Manifesto is a vehicle to make that happen.”

***

In the lead-up to the convention, the New Dems have been grappling with some big-picture questions: Who are we? How did we bungle the election so badly? And what exactly is the playbook for change?

One thing’s clear from outgoing NDP president Rebecca Blaikie’s election debrief, released last week. The party has fallen “out of sync with Canadians’ desire for a dramatic break from the Harper decade.”

Blaikie and a chorus of NDP insiders agree that it’s time to walk away from the mushy middle; that positioning let the Libs outflank Mulcair’s centre-hugging NDP during the election. Even Mulcair admits that “our commitment to balancing the budget overshadowed our social democratic economic vision.”

Yes, his rhetoric has started shifting left, but will the former Quebec Liberal cabinet minister who played footsies with the HarperCons before he decided to join the NDP deliver a vision ambitious enough to stir the party’s grassroots? A growing chorus say no, including Canadian Labour Congress president Hassan Yussuff, an original signatory to the Leap, who told the Globe this week that he doesn’t see Mulcair winning more than 60 per cent in Sunday’s leadership vote. Blaikie suggests Mulcair needs 70 per cent support to stay with any legitimacy.

But Canada’s largest private sector union boss and Leap signatory, Jerry Dias, says Mulcair deserves a two-year grace period before the party tries something “dramatically different” before 2020’s federal election.

***

Toronto-Danforth is one riding association that’s backing the Leap. Its MPP, Peter Tabuns, a co-host with DiNovo of the town hall, says, “The door is open in North America to a much bigger debate on income inequality,” not to mention the “profound and rapid change that will be needed to stabilize the climate.” Still, he’s unsure how much the manifesto might shift and shape Mulcair’s leadership.

Lewis says, “It’s clear that the Leap has really captured the imagination of a lot of grassroots NDPers.” And that “behind the leadership question, which is the really big drama of the convention, is whether the NDP should associate itself with the Leap Manifesto.”

During the election much of the mainstream press narrative characterizing the manifesto as a challenge from the left wing of the party, the proverbial knife in Mulcair’s back. But Lewis notes this weekend’s convention will be giving top billing to riding association resolutions championing the manifesto. “It’s clearly not seen by the party brass as some kind of weapon against the leader,” Lewis says.

The New Dems may not endorse whole hog a political platform “written by outsiders,” says Lewis. But “they should find a way to do their own version to take some ownership of it and to reconcile some thorny policy conundrums that it raises,” like taking a pass on all pipelines and ending support for fossil fuel infrastructure.

“There’s clearly a lot of radicalism in the electoral space right now,” says Lewis. Indeed, the rise of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in Britain and young voters “feeling the Bern,” so to speak, with Bernie Sanders south of the border are reference points for NDPers who say a bolder progressive agenda could catch on here.

University of Toronto political science prof Christopher Cochrane, author of Left And Right: The Small World Of Political Ideas, has been mapping the NDP’s sweet spot between its lefty roots as a social democratic party - back before the party voted to drop “socialism” from its constitution in 2013 - and its centrist 2015 campaign.

“The two conflicting pieces of evidence are that on the one hand the NDP’s success in Canadian politics corresponded with a gradual move toward the centre from the left,” says Cochrane, and on the other the fact that “centrist parties don’t win.”

Fly too close to the centre and they “leave themselves open to a real enthusiasm gap.

“The Ontario NDP has tried this, the federal NDP has tried this. Strategically, I don’t think it’s in the party’s interest,” Cochrane says

Whether Mulcair is leader or not, adds Cochrane, the NDP “has to do something to reclaim its identity as a progressive party. Otherwise, it’ll suffer the fate most people thought the Liberals were going to suffer: it will disappear into oblivion.”

COUNTDOWN TO THE NDP CONVENTION

70%

Percentage, give or take, of delegates supporting him that NDP leader Thomas Mulcair needs to have a shot at remaining party leader.

LESS THAN 60%

Support Canadian Labour Congress president Hassan Yussuff says Mulcair will receive.

59%

NDP voters who support the Liberals’ first budget in recent Abacus Data poll

16%

Canadians in same poll who say they’d still vote for the NDP

34,738 & COUNTING

Individuals and groups who’ve signed the Leap Manifesto, A Call For A Canada Based On Caring For The Earth And One Another.

19

Federal NDP riding associations who’ve endorsed the Leap Manifesto and say it should be party policy.

7

Major labour organizations backing the Leap:, Unifor, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, CUPE Ontario, Public Service Alliance of Canada, Toronto York Region Labour Council, Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation and Registered Nurses Association of Ontario.

[email protected] | @ecoholicnation

democracy, Politics

G20 class-action lawsuits to proceed, G7 coming to Canada in 2018

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People inside the kettle at Queen and Spadina on June 27, 2010. Photo by Pat Tapia from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

By Brent Patterson, reposted from Canadians, Apr 7, 2016

The Council of Canadians welcomes the class-action lawsuits representing the more than 1,000 people whose civil rights were violated at the G20 summit on June 26-27, 2010 in Toronto.

The Toronto Star reports, “Ontario’s top court [the Ontario Court of Appeal] gave the green light [on April 6] to two class-action lawsuits covering more than 1,000 people who say their rights were violated when they were detained by police during the G20 summit six years ago. …The lawsuits against the Toronto police board call for a combined $45 million in basic damages and $30 million in punitive damages, lawyers for the detainees said.”

CBC adds, “The lawsuits allege people were mass-arrested indiscriminately and held in ‘inhumane conditions’ at a detention centre located inside an unused film studio on Eastern Avenue. ‘What happened to them was terrible. They were arrested without cause’, [Kent] Elson [a lawyer for the plaintiffs] said. ‘That shouldn’t happen in a democratic country like ours.'”

The principle is that the police cannot arrest a large group of people indiscriminately in the hope that one of those persons is a person they believe may be engaged in criminal activity.

Most of the people arrested were later released without charge.

The Council of Canadians has been calling for a public inquiry into the G20 summit since June 2010.

In June 2011, we also joined with the Ontario Federation of Labour, Amnesty International and No One Is Illegal to call for a judicial inquiry that would look not only at police abuses - by the RCMP, OPP and multiple police forces - during the G20 summit, but at the politicians who directed the police and the summit itself.

To date there have been reports by Ontario ombudsman Andre Morin, former chief justice Roy McMurtry, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, a Toronto police internal review, the RCMP Commission for Public Complaints, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, and a Toronto Police Services Board civilian review.

In August 2015, the senior Toronto police offer who ordered the kettling was found guilty of exercising unlawful or unnecessary authority and of discreditable conduct under the province’s Police Service Act. Global News has reported, “Retired Judge John Hamilton said in his 150 page ruling that [Supt. Mark] Fenton’s decision for the mass arrest showed a lack of understanding of the right to public protest.”

Now, the Toronto Star highlights, “Speaking for a unanimous three-judge panel, Associate Chief Justice Alexandra Hoy said the multimillion-dollar lawsuits would send a stronger message than non-binding recommendations issued after the tumultuous world leaders’ summit.” She writes, “In my view, the remedies sought by the plaintiffs, which include a declaration that class members’ Charter rights have been violated and an award of damages, would be stronger instruments of behaviour modification.” Elson says, “There have been non-binding recommendations before but now we have binding legal process, which can actually make changes happen.”

The Guardian notes, “A similar lawsuit was launched in Washington DC after the arrest of some 700 protesters and bystanders near the World Bank and International Monetary Fund buildings in 2000. One decade later, a federal judge approved a US$13.7m settlement for those held in the mass arrest.”

Pending further appeals from the Toronto police, the class-action lawsuits are expected to be heard by the court this fall.

A G7 summit will take place in Canada in May-June 2018.

The Council of Canadians has called for the exclusive and costly G7 and G20 summits to be scrapped and for national leaders to meet instead in the more democratic forum of the G193, otherwise known as the United Nations General Assembly. We have noted that the $1 billion spent on the two-day G20 summit in Toronto could have been used instead to provide clean drinking water to about 50 million people.

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Politics, Preventing Ecocide

Canadian social democrats should (and do) oppose CETA

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Reuters photo of Gebert and Mulcair.

By Brent Patterson, reposted from Canadians.org, Apr 6, 2016

Raoul Gebert was the Chief of Staff for NDP leader Thomas Mulcair between May 2012 and January 2015. During this period (and presently) the federal NDP have lacked a clear position on the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). While they have stated they are generally opposed to ‘investment protection’ provisions in ‘free trade’ deals, they are (still) reserving judgement on CETA as a whole.

Last month, Gebert wrote an article titled ‘CETA - a social democratic perspective from Canada’ for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a German political foundation associated with the Social Democratic Party of Germany. That party is pivotal with respect to CETA because it is both a member of the governing coalition in Germany (which will vote on the ratification of CETA on a state level) and is associated with the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (a political grouping in the European Parliament, which is critical to defeating CETA at that level).

Gebert writes (in German) that, “All three major parties at the federal level in Canada have rated CETA largely positive. …The provincial governments of all three political currents (Conservatives, Liberals and the social-democratic NDP) have commented consistently positive on CETA.”

He then argues, “The remaining critical stakeholders in Canada are now the dairy sector, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and traditional critical civil liberties groups on the left edge such as the Council of Canadians, the Canadian Health Coalition and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives think-tank.” But he says that our concerns about additional state and individual costs on drug costs “find little reverberation” and that issues around drinking water and chlorinated chicken “hardly echo”.

He highlights, “The public debate about CETA since the completion of negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership has largely subsided.” And he adds, “CETA is therefore largely evaluated positively in Canada and is now expected in spite (or because of) the increasing criticism of the Trans-Pacific Partnership to come relatively quickly into force.”

Gebert acknowledges that “conventional arbitration” is a “red line for the party”, but suggests that the “improvements” recently announced to those provisions in CETA “are an important step to assuring broader social support” at the federal level. He concludes by suggesting this could be a “blueprint” for “progressive forces on both sides of the Atlantic” for a “more responsible free trade act”.

The Council of Canadians takes exception to Gebert’s analysis:
- A September 2015 poll by Environics found that 68 per cent of NDP voters oppose the investor-state dispute settlement provisions found in ‘free trade’ agreements.
- The recently announced amendments to the investment protection provisions in CETA are fundamentally flawed and still fail to require foreign investors - like everyone else, including domestic investors - to go to a country’s domestic courts before seeking an international remedy.
- A December 2013 poll by Environics found that 65 per cent of Canadians oppose longer patents for prescription drugs in CETA and that, even among those who “strongly support” free trade with Europe, 54 per cent oppose a deal that extends patents on brand name drugs.
- A June 2011 poll by Environics found that 52 percent of Canadians oppose opening up of public water and wastewater treatment utilities to European corporations.
- Chlorinated chicken has been a major food safety issue for Europeans during the ongoing United States-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations, but is not part of the CETA deal (it should be noted though that Health Canada regulations already allow chicken to be washed and processed in chlorinated water).
- While an October 2015 poll by EKOS found that only 41 per cent of Canadians support the TPP, it would be wrong to imply that opposition to CETA has subsided and is now focused on TPP (in part because both deals contain similar investment protection provisions).

The Council of Canadians rejects CETA and is working to stop its ratification in both Canada and Europe. We stand with the more than 3.4 million Europeans who have signed a petition against the ratification of CETA, noting in particular its investment protection provisions. We have also endorsed the Leap Manifesto which says, “We call for an end to all trade deals that interfere with our attempts to rebuild local economies, regulate corporations and stop damaging extractive projects.”

The NDP convention in Edmonton this coming weekend will reportedly hear numerous resolutions relating to the Leap Manifesto. We hope that party delegates will endorse the manifesto and that the party adopts (and strengthens) its own resolution 4.5h which states, “New Democrats believe in … not negotiating investor-state dispute resolutions mechanisms into trade agreements, consistent with the policy of the Labor government and party of Australia.” In April 2011, the Labour government in Australia adopted the principles of ‘no greater rights’ for foreign investors and the government’s ‘right to regulate’ to protect the public interest.

And given the federal NDP has had the full text of CETA since September 2014, it is our hope that the NDP might soon adopt a position and be as strident in their opposition to CETA as they have been against the TPP.

In December 2014, Mulcair told a European audience, “Europe shouldn’t let itself be locked into an agreement that contains such a provision, especially since it’ll serve as the basis for an eventual agreement with the United States. Because ultimately, all these tools, whether it be trade, public spending, natural resource exploitation, or finances, should be at the service of citizens.”

The time is now. If European social democrats are going to defeat CETA in the European Parliament later this year, they need to know that Canadian social democrats are onside with them.

SOURCE

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Trudeau government, C.D.Howe Institute step up their defence of ‘investment protection’ provisions

Cultural Ecocide, Ecocide ALert, Fascism/Corporatism, Politics, Preventing Ecocide

Treaty 8 chiefs condemn Site C dam project

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Chief Roland Willson from the West Moberly First Nations. Photo by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud.

By Valentina Ruiz Leotaud, reposted from the NationalObserver, Apr 5, 2016

Under pouring rain, Chiefs from the West Moberly First Nations and the Prophet River First Nation — joined by Grand Chief Stewart Phillips from the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs — met a dozen campers protesting the Site C dam project. They had traveled all the way from the Peace Valley to join protesters camped front of the BC Hydro office in downtown Vancouver.

“Site C is a stupid idea,” said Chief Roland Willson, from West Moberly. “We have geothermal capacity, here in B.C., that they don’t want to look at. We have wind energy here. We are not opposed to the development of the energy—we are opposed to the destruction of the Valley.”

Construction of the $8.8-billion “clean energy” dam began last summer on the Peace River of northeastern B.C., a river that flows right through the heart of Treaty 8 Territory belonging to the Doig River, Halfway River, Prophet River and West Moberly First Nations. Upon completion, BC Hydro claims it will produce enough power to light up roughly 450,000 B.C. homes per year. But critics contest whether that power is necessary for B.C., and say the dam’s reservoir is expected to flood more than 100 kilometres of river valley bottoms along the Peace River and its tributaries.

Chiefs and farmers like Sage Birley —who has become a spokesperson for the Site C protesters—argued that the project was going to disrupt their livelihood and threaten B.C.’s food security by flooding highly productive agricultural land.

Willson also expressed concern that the dam would destroy “one of the longest freshwater fish migrations in all of the province.”

Protesters also slammed B.C. Premier Christy Clark, who said she wanted to push the Site C project “past the point of no return.” Indigenous leaders argued their treaty rights have been violated by decades of development on their territory.

When he finished addressing some 30 attendees and reporters, Willson approached Kristin Henry, the 24-year-old who held a hunger strike for 19 days to protest Site C. In a teary-eyed moment, he offered some traditional gifts that his community sent her.

Kristin Henry and Chief Roland Wilson. Photo by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud.

Welcomed back into the camp with drumming and a round of applause, Henry said that she felt inspired by seeing the community coming together to oppose the “unnecessary and destructive project.” But she also said that more needs to be done, noting that she realized that most Canadians are unaware of the Site C project itself.

Henry lamented that, despite her own expectations, neither the B.C. Liberals nor the federal government acknowledged her protest and hunger strike.

“Neither of those parties has come forward and acknowledge that I put my health at risk to stop this. I’d like to say shame on them for that,” she said. “I hope this will help expose the fact that this government is not working for the people of B.C., but for their own self interest.”

Still, she said that if it’d come to that, she would do it all over again. “Look at all the people that are here today. I absolutely believe that we have to stop this project.”

Kristin Henry and Hereditary Chief Gordon August. Photo by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud

 

Grand Chief Stewart Phillips had similar words towards the Christy Clark administration.

Hereditary Chief Gordon August and Grand Chief Stewart Phillips.Photo by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud

“I think it’s very fitting that we’re in front of this building that represents the sponsor, together with the Clark government, of a project that represents world class stupidity,” he said.

Phillips repeated that he would continue fighting against a project that “has been proven time and again, there’s not market [for], there’s no buyer for the power.”

Environmentalist David Suzuki was also expected to be in attendance, but a last-minute commitment didn’t allowed him to be at the press conference. Campers said he stopped there to show his support earlier in the morning.

Protest against Site C dam in downtown Vancouver. Video by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud.

In spite of this opposition, the Community Relations Manager for Site C, David Conway, stated in an email that out of the “13 Aboriginal groups that BC Hydro is engaged with, only two First Nations remain opposed the project in court (West Moberly and Prophet River).”

Conway also wanted to make clear that the camp outside the Dunsmuir office was not organized by First Nations and that it has become a health and safety concern. “We are working closely with health and safety officials like the local fire department and the health authority. We are presently reviewing our options for the next steps that we may or may not take,” he wrote.

SOURCE

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‘Bizarre’ clause in new B.C. water legislation raises concerns

Ecocide ALert, Fascism/Corporatism, Politics, Preventing Ecocide

Energy East could put drinking water at risk for five million people, report warns

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Teika Newton. Photo from Teika Newton

ByCharler Mandel, reposted from the NationalObserver, Apr 6, 2016

Just outside the northern Ontario community of Kenora in the Lake of the Woods district, Teika Newton can look out her front door and see two of the pristine bodies of water the region gains its name from.

But like many residents in the area, Newton is worried that an oil spill from the proposed Energy East pipeline could spoil that natural beauty forever.

It’s not an idle worry.

Hard on the heels of TransCanada’s most recent spill in South Dakota just this week, a coalition of groups has released a report asserting that the company’s Energy East project threatens the drinking water of five million Canadians.

Newton - the executive director of Transition Initiative Kenora and one of the report’s authors - would be one of those.

The right-of-way for the proposed pipeline runs right through Newton’s family property.

“This is an area that has an enormous amount of fresh water and Energy East puts that all at risk,” Newton said Wednesday.

“If there is a leak - and we know there have been pipeline disasters in our area in the recent past - the potential to get contaminants into our watershed is really tremendous and we’re quite concerned about the impact that would have on our tourism-based economy, on our livelihoods, our culture, and, of course, our health.”

The report is the work of a coalition of groups, including Environmental Defence, The Council of Canadians, and Transition Initiative Kenora, among others.

One pipeline rupture could contaminate drinking water for years to come

The report cites TransCanada’s record on pipeline ruptures and spills. The natural gas pipeline proposed for conversion - the very same one running through Newton’s property - has had 10 ruptures over the past 25 years.

The company’s Keystone pipeline leaked 71 times in its Canadian section in the first two years of operation.

From Manitoba to New Brunswick, nearly 3,000 lakes, rivers, streams and acquifers - which are relied upon by millions of Canadians as sources of drinking water - would be at risk from oil spills, the report contends.

“Just one pipeline rupture in any one of these vulnerable locations could contaminate drinking water sources for years to come.”

The pipeline would cross some 2,900 waterways.

Tim Duboyce, Energy East spokesperson, said that when it comes to concerns over the environment and pipeline safety, TransCanada is working hard to address those in the best way that it can.

“I think this paper reflects those concerns and those concerns are legitimate,” Duboyce said. “As a company and a project, we do put safety first, and ensuring that we design, build and operate a pipeline safely is our priority.”

TransCanada spent $1-billion on preventative measures last year, according to Duboyce.

“Our goal is to have zero incidents on our pipelines.”

He also cited a report consisting of statistics from the Transportation Safety Board and Transport Canada from 2003 to 2013 that concluded moving oil via pipeline is 4.5 times safer than moving it by rail.

But Adam Scott, climate and energy program manager for Environmental Defence, said: “Canadians should not sacrifice our clean drinking water for oil companies’ profits, Protecting our most valuable resource - clean water - must take precedence over exporting dirty oil.”

The report estimates that between Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick’s populations in proximity to water, Energy East could potentially impact the water supplies of some five million people.

In the Lake of the Woods, for example, the pipeline would traverse the Upper Winnipeg River watershed at the foot of Lake of the Woods. There, the pipeline would jeopardize several thousand rural wells and private lake-sourced water intakes.

The City of Kenora’s municipal water would be at risk from surface and groundwater seepage potentially reaching its intake pipe at the north end of Lake of the Woods.

Elsewhere, the pipeline threatens the water supplies of dozens of large municipalities, including Ottawa, Montreal, Laval, Levis, Fredericton and Saint John.

Eighty-two municipalities in the Communaute Metropolitan de Montreal rejected the pipeline in January, citing the threat to municipal drinking water as the biggest concern. The pipeline’s proposed route would cross three major rivers in the region.

No “design adequately address the risks”

If built, Energy East will ship crude oil from Alberta to New Brunswick, carrying up to 1.1 million barrels per day. It would be the largest constructed tar sands pipeline in North America.

The report assessed risk to municipal drinking water as distance from a pipeline crossing or corridor. Any waterway within 60 kilometres downstream from the pipeline was labeled as “at risk.”

In many cases, the waterways listed are less than 10 to 20 kilometres from the pipeline.

The 60 kilometre distance is based on the July 2010 rupture of Enbridge’s Line 6B in Michigan, in which some 800,000 gallons of diluted bitumen spilled into Talmadge Creek and subsequently into the Kalamazoo River, contaminating at least 60 kilometres of the latter.

“This is a serious threat that millions of Canadians are being asked to accept from a pipeline project that would have marginal benefit for most Canadians,” the report concludes.

“Given the sheer scale and complexity of the threat, there are no reasonable rerouting decisions or design tweaks that could adequately address the risks to drinking water sources across the route.”

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New Report: Energy East Pipeline threatens drinking water of up to 130,679 New Brunswickers, over 5 million Canadians along entire route

Politics, Preventing Ecocide

Trudeau’s Liberals embrace radical ideas in LEAP manifesto Mulcair rejected

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By BRIAN LILLEY, reposted from TheRebel, Apr 5, 2016

It’s been said that New Democrats were Liberals in a hurry. Then, Trudeau’s Liberals campaigned to the left of the NDP and now the LEAP manifesto has echoes of Trudeau advisor Gerald Butts in it which has me wondering, is it the other way around now?

During the election, Trudeau promised deficit spending, higher taxes and a very left wing agenda. I didn’t realize how left until I thought about the LEAP manifesto a bit more.

Here’s what the radicals behind the LEAP manifesto write about energy policy:

“There is no longer an excuse for building new infrastructure projects that lock us into increased extraction decades into the future.”

Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like Gerry Butts, top advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who called for a zero carbon economy?

Butts made that statement when he was head of the World Wildlife Fund. He also signed onto a document calling for an end to infrastructure that would support the “Tar Sands.” Joining him as a signatory on that document was Marlo Raynolds, then head of the Pembina Institute, now Chief of Staff to Environment Minister Catherine McKenna.

So is the LEAP manifesto just not that radical now? Or is it that the Liberals are now that radical?

The answer is easy: The Liberals have become radicals.

Watch as I make connections to some of Trudeau’s radical ministers that demonstrate their radical views and tie it all to the LEAP manifesto.

Trudeau and company have departed from decades of Liberals who are centrists and become Liberals pushing harder for socialism than the NDP.

And the scary part for Canada is that the Liberals are in charge for four more years.

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democracy, Politics

As its convention approaches, the NDP faces its biggest test yet

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“…if [the NDP] recognize that their party is facing an existential crisis, they will soundly reject Mr. Mulcair and come to grips with the hard reality that Justin Trudeau is making their party almost completely irrelevant. Photo: anne campagne/flickr
By Murray Dobbin, reposted from Rabble.ca, Apr 1, 2016

I wonder if the 1,500-plus NDP delegates headed to their Edmonton convention in a couple of weeks realize just how critical their vote on the leader will be. While there have been a few voices pro and con Thomas Mulcair, no one seems willing to bet on what the grassroots will do. But if they recognize that their party is facing an existential crisis, they will soundly reject Mr. Mulcair and come to grips with the hard reality that Justin Trudeau is making their party almost completely irrelevant. It is an interesting paradigm shift: for 10 years, Stephen Harper fantasized about disappearing the Liberal Party. Now the Liberals are in a position to destroy the NDP — tossing them into the dustbin of history along with the Social Credit Party.

The chances that the party can find its way out of this crisis are very slim because getting rid of Mulcair is just one requirement. Finding a new leader who actually embodies the social democratic values of the founders of the CCF/NDP will be extremely difficult because such a process depends on a politically engaged membership who actually own their party. And that’s the problem, one that goes back a very long way to when the CCF joined with the labour movement to form the NDP. That was the starting point of the party’s embrace of professionals to run their till-then genuine movement. Following that merger, members have become increasingly marginalized — called upon only for donating and election door-knocking. Professionalization reached a high point under Jack Layton and Tom Mulcair.

Denial of responsibility

The end point is today, where the NDP has to grapple with a disastrous situation brought on by having made a deal with the devil when they chose a conservative, over-weaning autocrat as leader — one who now believes he can lead the party to victory into the next election. One of the most amazing aspects of Mulcair’s post-election musings is that very few people have seriously called him on a series of humiliating declarations and months of denials that he or anyone in the NDP hierarchy is responsible for the drubbing the party endured on election night. First, the claim went, the only reason they lost was because they were principled on the niqab issue (though so was Trudeau). Then the focus shifted to “reminding” members that despite the loss of over half its seats and opposition status in a total rout, it was the “second-best result” ever for the party.

After three full months of avoiding the media and any substantive comment on the leadership question, Mulcair formally addressed the media on January 18, 2016. He wanted to talk policy, but the media wanted to know about his future. Mused Mulcair: “It wasn’t there for us this time. As a team, we haven’t been to the finals very often, and I can tell you that we learned a lot. Next time, we’ll be there to get the cup.” Seriously? A hockey analogy? “Next time” isn’t the game next week, it’s four years away — an eternity in politics. It’s notable that the response was in the passive voice: “It wasn’t there for us.” What we didn’t hear, and should have, was: “We completely bungled the election and betrayed our supporters and the thousands of people who worked their butts off for months and gave us millions of dollars to campaign for their values. I am resigning.”

And when asked what percentage of the delegate vote he would consider a vote of confidence, Mulcair, according to the Huffington Post: “told reporters that he needs 50 per cent plus one vote to avoid a leadership race and that he hopes to get more than that…but he refused to set a floor and say how much support he wants in order to remain the party leader.” More than almost any other statement by Mulcair it is this one that demonstrates his political narcissism: what sort of leader truly dedicated to his party would continue to stay in the job if almost half of the convention delegates rejected his leadership?

Mulcair’s musings about staying on as leader reveal a disturbing inability to think about what is best for the party. It’s all about him. Asked in the same interview if he had ever thought about stepping down, Mulcair replied, never, not once: “It’s not in my nature.” He did a self-serving interview with the Canadian Press where he revealed the moment he “decided” to stay on: “I finished that evening; Chantale was with me, we drove back to Montreal and I said, ‘We are going to continue the fight.'” There was no hint of awareness that this might not be his decision to make — that in these circumstances his feelings were secondary to what the party needed.

For almost four months, Mulcair refused to formally accept any responsibility for one of the most catastrophic election debacles in Canadian history. It was not until February 10 that he sent a letter to members, saying “[O]ur campaign came up short. As leader, I take full responsibility for these shortcomings.” This conventional mea culpa is meaningless, of course, because taking responsibility means recognizing that there are real personal consequences, a price to pay. If I borrow my friend’s car and smash it up, I “take full responsibility” by paying for it. In the NDP, no one really takes responsibility.

To their credit, yesterday the party released a frank report on the election that did identify the weaknesses of the campaign — basically confirming what most commentators had already observed. But the other shoe is unlikely to drop: no one will be held responsible in any meaningful way.

Budget deals further blow

All of Mulcair’s responses to the election loss suggest a sort of political post-traumatic stress disorder — an almost pathological inability to grasp reality. But whatever remained of the notion that the party could survive by keeping him on took a further, probably fatal, hit on budget day. That’s when Trudeau brought down what Armine Yalnizian of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives called “the most progressive budget in 40 years.”

Tossing out the “run from the left and govern from the right” formula the Liberals have relied on for decades, Trudeau has single-handedly moved the Canadian political centre a huge step to the left, leaving the NDP completely stranded. It simply cannot craft a credible response to this budget given its own policy platform and Mulcair’s deeply conservative politics. It can’t come back from where it is.

The party’s recent missive to its members — “Top 10 ways Budget 2016 shortchanges Canadians” — reveals in spades how trapped Mulcair is. The response is cynical and misleading: “The Liberals’ budget was long on rhetoric but short on dollars when it came to keeping their promises to Canadians.” How a leader who ran on a balanced budget platform (which, by the way, was not party policy) could pen this line with a straight face is beyond me. Should the Liberals have racked up a $40-billion deficit so they could keep all their promises? The NDP — which should support virtually every Liberal expenditure — would have had zero dollars.

The document then proceeds to list a number of unkept (so far) promises without ever acknowledging or explaining the long list they did keep. Some budget items they don’t mention at all and for obvious reasons. For example, the NDP had promised to cancel the $115-million cuts to the CBC announced by the Conservatives in 2012. The Liberals’ budget commitment: provide additional funding of $675 million over five years.

At this point in the political calendar, pundits and party members alike should have been confident that the party would reject Mulcair and commit to returning to its social democratic roots and its traditional role as a party of big ideas. But this is the NDP and many commentators have made the point that the party historically hasn’t dumped its leaders for losing. The implication in this observation is that this is an admirable thing. I am not so sure. I remember heated arguments I used to have with an NDP friend in Saskatchewan who expressed his contempt for my involvement in “useless” social movement organizations. My response, in kind, was to suggest to him that the NDP was not so much a political party as it was a cult. I was only half kidding. There was a siege mentality in the NDP rooted in feelings of ideological marginalization reinforced by a hostile media. They hated extra-parliamentary groups because they couldn’t control them. Any criticism of the NDP was tantamount to heresy — and disloyalty.

In fact, decades of observing this party from the outside has convinced me that loyalty is far and away the most important principle in the party’s culture. It is more important than political philosophy, more important than party democracy, more important than member engagement and even more important than winning. In the NDP, it seems, so long as you have been a loyal member since you were 14, chances are you will never be held accountable, no matter what mistakes you make. Loyalty is obviously an important principle in any party and if it had a leader who knew when to get off the stage, it need not be a problem, even for the NDP. But when a leader like Thomas Mulcair is prepared to shamelessly exploit it for what appear to be purely egotistical reasons, it is tantamount to a political suicide pact. SOURCE

Murray Dobbin has been a journalist, broadcaster, author and social activist for 40 years. He writes rabble’s State of the Nation column, which is also found at The Tyee.

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