Current position of the NDP with Greens voting for BDS and Trudeau courting unions
For my part I found the CBC analysis about Trudeau courting unions interesting in that it is being presented as newsworthy. But there should be no surprise here. This is the one thing -- the only thing -- both parties agreed on a couple years ago. Remember when the parties each had voices calling for a merger and each party's leader said there would be none. Each party promised to "unite the left" leaving the other outside.
And so we had a campaign that in Chantal Hébert's analysis went head to head leaving a generation of at least one party’s leading lights in defeat. Those were the rules of the duel. Some might say, a most ridiculous duel.
This is where the analysis of the last campaign must start. The two parties had an option to merge, and chose not to. They knew they were facing a major long-term battle for viability with each other more important than the immediate battle with the Conservatives. They opted for a winner-take-all battle. Voters were frustrated with both parties but accepted that there was going to have to be a choice between the two in order to unseat Harper. The membership of both parties solidly back a winner-take-all campaign.
In that campaign the Liberals made sure they ran to the left (in rhetoric if not entirely in policy) of the NDP and with them doing that, the NDP quite easily ran to the right of the Liberals. Mulcair clearly overplayed his hand appearing further to the right of the Liberals than anyone needed or wanted. The Thatcher quote symbolized this and it clearly meant Liberals had prepared for this and the research had been done. Each party intended to leave the other no ground to stand on. The result was going to leave one party with a crisis of identity.
The idea that Mulcair could stay on was theatre. He bet his entire career on a move that if it had succeeded would have ended the Liberal party and left the NDP as the strongest party in Canada. But in failure he had no credible strategy as leader. Trudeau did the same -- if he had lost to Mulcair his ability to survive as leader would have been heavily compromised if not to the degree of Mulcair.
There were differences in what they were gambling. For Mulcair, a loss meant he absolutely could not continue as leader of the NDP but his party, while smaller, could survive. The only thing that kills a party on a wing is a merger.
For Trudeau, he might have been able to hang on a little longer as his party was tired of divisive leadership races, he had brought in enough people to support him and he had lower expectations given how low the Liberals were. But the Liberal party itself was at risk. A party in the centre will vanish if there is no centre ground available (unlike a wing party). So for the Liberals the gamble was existence. For the NDP it was Mulcair’s leadership and their contender status.
If Mulcair's gamble to the centre had won electoral approval, there is little doubt that the rump of Liberals would have split as the NDP would have campaigned looking like a party they would recognize.
A loss to the Conservatives, with that government left in power, would have caused a revolt in both parties demanding merger. A merger probably would then have been inevitable as this loss would have required a stalemate between the NDP and Liberals. The voters were clear they would have none of that. This is why they moved so quickly from the NDP as the favorite to the Liberals with no wasted time in the middle.
So knowing this, the leaders and the parties presented campaigns and platforms designed to beat each other first but needing to reduce Harper at least to minority. With Harper at a minority, they both knew they would have to work together to create a new government, something they hated, but this was preferable than a merger. They both felt confident that a campaign primarily against each other would at least still reduce Harper to a minority such that they could go to a plan B coalition rather than merger and preserve their parties as independent entities. A loss to the Liberals would end Mulcair's career at least and a loss to the NDP would probably have ended the Liberal party.
This brings us to today. The NDP, having lost that mega winner-take-all battle is severely weakened but not dead (due to the fact that it is on a wing). So no surprise that the Liberals want to consolidate the NDP loss by going after their union support which they have been able to take chunks of before.
This also explains the position of Elizabeth May. Her party in approving BDS was striking to a progressive left -- passing the weakened NDP on the issue. This is a bigger story than people realize. If they succeed several things could happen. First the NDP would in fact be in a fight for survival no longer being a wing party as they would be squeezed between the two.
The Greens historically in Canada have been a somewhat Libertarian right of centre environment party with the NDP the left environment party. If, in a moment of NDP weakness, the Greens moved to being a left environment party, and took up room to the left of the NDP the NDP would be in crisis. Of course this Green Party would not be able to fit with May. It would no longer just be a Green Party, it would be the ultimate in parties: a sustainability party understanding the relationship between environmental sustainability and social sustainability. A party for the times, you might say, founded on the understanding that one sustainability cannot exist without the other. May is the NDP’s ally here. With her career at stake, she probably can extinguish the Green Party’s flicker of being progressive and keep them in their place. If she can’t, the Green Party could quite possibly take from the NDP most of what the Liberals have not already taken. They could go on with a new leader to challenge the Liberals.
The NDP are deeply wounded and the Liberals can keep them down for a while by tacking left (although there are indications that they are more likely to move back to the centre-right in a number of polices while rhetorically pretending different). But it is the Greens, a party that is small and nimble enough that it could be remade with a new leader that provides the more immediate than realized long-term threat to the NDP.
There is no room for May in this scenario so she is fighting it. But at the end of the day, this is the best hope for her party and her movement. Now, May is literally in the way. If May were to leave in the next year or so and a new, dynamic interesting, and most importantly, left leader, were to emerge, the NDP could end up in the worst shape it has ever been.
The NDP may think it is in an existential struggle with the Liberals but it has largely lost that battle for this generation. The recent BDS vote in the Green Party suggests it may enter one with the Greens. If May were to retire and the Greens opted to choose a leader who walked to them from the left of the NDP – things could move much quicker than anyone realizes. Imagine if someone of the stature of Libby Davies or Avi Lewis jumped at a Green Party Leadership. They would have unified the NDP-Green divide leaving the NDP establishment outside.
And those are the rules of the new duel.
To be fair, a good many would not see that bus coming until it hit them. This initial BDS vote in the Green party rank and file is the only warning they might get.
I'm not saying this to heckle, but realistically, how important do you think that Israel/Palestine is to the average Canadian voter?
Which of these do you think is LESS important to the average voter than Israel/Palestine?
1. Jobs
2. The environment
3. "Terrorism"
4. Which candidate they'd like to have a beer with
5. the Oilsands
6. Trade agreements
7. The party they've always voted for
8. Equal marriage
9. A balanced budget
10. Home mail delivery
The Liberals and NDP are only left in relation to the Conservatives. Both the Liberals and the NDP accept the basic neoliberal framework. It's practically propaganda to call them parties of the left. At best they are both centrist parties.
That is the media narrative. At no point has either the Liberals or NDP been non-viable as a party. Both have consistently remained larger than the Greens. The media narrative was that neither could beat the Conservatives alone but that narrative was false. Both parties were individually able to defeat Harper.
The NDP hoped it could finish off the Liberals by moving to the centre they just moved so far to the right that they went right past the Liberals.
The Liberals are not a leftist party. They take policies from both the left and the right.
I didn't take a poll but from the people I spoke to all three parties are viewed as centrist moderate parties maybe with the Conservatives and NDP leaning slightly right and left but still basically all the same.
I didn't see any frustration from voters on the parties not merging. For voters, this was just another typical election in which they chose the party they thought could best lead Canada economically and administratively. The ABC campaigns never really took off. The majority was not desperate to get rid of Harper. The NDP thought they could succeed with the same smear tactics as Harper and bought their own propaganda that Trudeau was some callow youth that could be ignored. Mulcair's arrogance came to a head when he refused to debate unless Harper was present putting an end to the debate on women's issues and the possibility of a network debate. The NDP is totally an establishment party now regardless of its members.
The NDP tried to move so far to the centre that there would be no room for the Liberals. Instead the Liberals held the centre and the NDP left themselves superfluous because they deserted the left.
The strongest centrist party. There would no longer be a party on the left. The NDP would be the Liberal Party with a different name and the left would have been destroyed for at least a generation.
Well with the left vacated the Liberals could easily have attacked the NDP from the left. The NDP promised to balance the budget all four years and deliver national daycare and pharmacare all of which they would have failed at. The NDP would have been dead after one term.
Yes, and that would have completed the NDP's transformation into a centrist establishment party. The left would no longer have a home.
Yes, leading to a single centrist party, and no home for the left.
The swing voters I talked to saw little difference between the NDP and the Liberals so they were willing to swing either way. The NDP never had them on policy. For awhile the public bought the NDP/Conservative line that Trudeau couldn't do the job of PM. By default that left Mulcair or Harper. Had the NDP been leading as a leftist party Trudeau's rise would not have shaken their support but that wasn't the case. The NDP was running as a replacement for the Liberal party. The NDP campaign hung on personality politics not ideology or dramatic policy differenciation. That made it a contest between leaders. Having bought their own propaganda they decided the Liberals weakest link was Trudeau. I recall Nicky proclaiming that Mulcair's support was solid built on his superior qualities in comparison to Trudeau.
The NDP chose to run a shallow campaign rooted in personality politics and cynical choices. It depended on the public perceiving Trudeau as lightweight incapable of being PM.
Trudeau's campaign was designed to beat the Conservatives and the NDP. From day 1 Trudeau's intent was to form government not just reduce Harper to a minority. He took high risk high reward positions becoming the agent of change. He ignored the political pundits and sold himself and his policies to the Canadian people. He is still doing it.
The whole merger thing was never more than a media narrative. I don't think either party ever even toyed with a merger. Both parties were willing to absorb the other when they were in the lead and the other party was weakened. That isn't the same thing as a merger.
While some moderate NDPers might have stayed with a merged Liberal/NDP party core members would not have. A merger never made any sense. Moderate members could go Liberal without a merger, and it seems many have. Moving so far to the centre to win made it easy for supporters to switch.
I recall NDP supporters saying here that it was okay for me to be critical of the NDP not being far enough left but not if I was supporting the Liberals. The NDP convinced me they are a centrist party so that is what I judged them as. I was not choosing between a right or centre party and a left wing party. I was choosing between two centrist parties. If there had been a leftist party available to vote for I would have voted for them.
NDP supporters try to have it both ways. Be a centrist party but get credit for being the party farthest left that all progressives must support or they aren't progressives. The NDP tried it in BC, and in Ontario, and federally.
The NDP isn't on a wing anymore. They are centrist. Unless they move left they don't have a reason to exist. CUPE and the Council of Canadians are fighting CETA while provincial NDP governments collude with the federal government making secret deals that undermine our democracy. That is not leftist.
You missed the story. Regardless of what the Greens do the NDP's unquestioning support of Israel is evidence that it is already no longer a left wing party. They have become an establishment party that accepts the basic neoliberal economic system. Like the Liberals they support social programs to ease the pain while supporting the trade deals that cause it. The NDP's weak criticism of the corporate rights aspect ignores the many other ways that these trade deals undermine workers.
Even you describe the NDP as a party that will only move left to defeat other parties.
Yes, because the NDP has moved so far to the centre that it is easy for parties to be on the left of it.
That's right. The NDP can no longer claim to be the left wing party of Canada demanding the alligence of all progressives.
I saw two centrist parties and chose the one that would deliver the most benefit to me and other Canadians under neoliberalism.
Pondering --I spent time unpacking one long illogical post of yours tonight. I can't spend the time on this one. This is written so badly and with so many not relevant or simply wrong things in it that I can only conclude that you do this to tire people out.
Example, I have no clue where this comes from or what you consider to be a source for this:
I am too tired to pull out the knots in this post.
Your paragraph begining with "You missed the story" is a bizarre misreading of what I said. It has no relation to any of the conclusions I drew.
There is no doubt this was an extremely stupid move. The NDP had a free chance to take a pretty serious swipe at Harper and the Conservatives, and they turned it down. I don't know whether it was Mulcair or his 'team', but whoever made this decision should be sent back to political kindergarten. Man! A free chance to highlight NDP women's issues policies, at the same time stressing how the Conservatives thought so little of women they didn't bother to show up...
I remember shaking my head over this one. I think it was at this point I started to realize the election was lost to the NDP.
I can kind of understand where Mulcair & his advisers were coming from. They thought they were running a frontrunner's campaign. They thought it would be 'safe' to avoid some of the debates. And they also thought they were hurting Trudeau & the Liberals by marginalizing them.
However, what Mulcair & his team forgot was that the NDP only had a small lead, and it was mainly as a result of the Notley Wave in Alberta. It wasn't because everyone suddenly loved Mulcair. Prior to Notley, Mulcair & the NDP had trailed Trudeau (& Harper) for 2 years. The NDP had performed badly in the 2013 & 2014 by-elections. The NDP became the frontrunner because of Notley, but Mulcair thought it was because of him.
The NDP overlooked 2 other factors:
1) Trudeau & the Liberals had the potential to come back with a good campaign
2) Harper was prepared to play dirty (eg. the niqab)
But Mulcair & his team didn't seem to know how to respond to Trudeau's recovery or Harper's dirty niqab gambit. As a result, the NDP dropped from 1st to 3rd.
Especially since the NDP tends to win over public support when its message is presented unfiltered, such as in the debates. Unfrotunately, by effectively cancelling the consortium debates, they blew their chance to debate in front of a large audience. The debates they did attend didn't have nearly as many people watching, and so people formed their opinions based on the filtered perceptions of the pundits.
Justin Trudau has, in my opinion, succeeded in turning federal politics in Canada into a popularity contest. Average voter engagement on issues has plummeted in the 10 months since the October 2015 election.
If Trudeau's popularity holds through 2019, then I would expect voter engagement in the 2019 election to plummet, as Trudeau supporters would feel confident in re-electing the Liberals without paying any attention to what the parties are offering on policy.
The NDP and the Conservatives are both in a very difficult position. Both parties have lost their leaders from the 2015 election, and both are going to struggle to engage voters beyond their core supporters in their upcoming leadership contests. Once these parties pick their leaders, they'll struggle to gain name recognition in the current climate.
If Trudau has an achilles heel, it's probably pipelines. If the Liberals approve either the Kinder-Morgan or Energy East pipelines, it could hurt the Liberals popularity in BC and Quebec respectively. Though keep in mind that the Liberals have enjoyed a surge in popularity since the last election, so their popularity could take a hit in BC and/or Quebec and still wind up being what it was in 2015.
The greens are still largely viewed as a fringe party. The BDS resolution that passed at their recent convention, while welcome to this babbler, doesn't change this fact.
If the NDP picks another centrist Liberal-lite leader, they could bleed some support to the greens. My guess though is tha this bleed would be at a level where it would hurt the NDP more than it would help the Greens.
The other factor is what changes are made to the electoral system for the 2019 election. These changes could either help to cement the Liberals dominant position, or help the NDP and Conservatives (and possibly the Greens) maintain a larger presence.
We had some major debates here about this. I was very upset with the NDP over it but was told by a couple very strong NDP partisans that this was what being a front-runner looks like -- that all would be well. It wasn't. The seeds for the loss -- if they did not start there -- were firmly planted. Peple capable of impartiality could see soemthign seriously wrong with the NDP leadership there and some sounded an alarm only to be told they were being disloyal.
This is the crap that made me back away from the NDP on the double.
I disagree on two points:
First I do not think that this approach works to help a front runner campaign. Sometimes we see this attitdue but I think it is always a liability but some campaigns are so strong that others think it is somethign that actually helped. Also some parties can do things others can't becuase their potential voters have different standards. Someone looking for an NDP type vote is not going to ignore a women's debate unless they are extremely foolish no matter where they are in the polling order.
Second I did not buy the Niqab as the thing that ruined Mulcair's campaign. I think it just so happened that things were turning when that came up and it was seen as cause and effect. I realize this is the popular notion but I never accepted it. The NDP was in trouble well before then. I don't think it was the difference. The issues with the NDP campaign had more to do with being seen to be right of the Liberals, the approach to the deficit, the lack of promotion of NDP priorities, the dismal first debate performance, the lack of response to the middle class tax cut ads. -- If the NDP had come out hard on the middle class tax cut calling it a fraud (which it was and still is) and if they had not promised to freeze corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthy, the NDP may have had a chance. The campaign was poorly thought out.
I wrote here that the NDP chances to win were just about over even before the Niqab gambit came up.
I disagree with this as well -- the reason is that I don't think it was Trudeau alone that made it a popularity contest.
The NDP went with the leadership politics to a level they had never done before -- even with Layton.
And the other factor in it becoming a popularity contest is you had three very negative campaigns against one positive one. The NDP, Conservatives and BQ all ran gloomy nasty campaigns and pretend now that this was not part of the reason people did not flock to them -- shocking really since Layton had left the NDP with the hope is stronger and better than fear message.
I was wrong about Brain Topp here. He would have been infinitely better because he at least grasped that. In retrospect I think Topp could have presented a more positive campaign. But hindsight is 20-20.
When you promote the leader over all else (something all the parties did) you can't have in a leader a pessimistic often petty negative person and expect to do well. That was Mulcair's persona and at the start of the campaign he really did not know how to communicate without it and so he went back to that.
Trudeau I have heard does have a petty mean streak at times but he does not let that become part of what people see and he understands the need to market positive. I would agree with him there and so would Layton.
By the end of the previous campaign Layton was the most popular and if he had won some would ahve said he turned it into a popularity contest- but that would have been sour grapes just becuase he became a person we wanted to know. And for millions of Canadians -- so did Trudeau.
..bc is where more conservative votes were lost than all the rest of canada put together. and most of these were in ridings that touched water. this due mostly to harper policies on pipelines and tankers..even in solid conservative ridings. this is the people factor and it is not considered in the analysis other than in passing references playing bit parts like voting. for quite some time the ndp benefited the most from this anything but harper movement in that long long election. the libs didn't steal it in my view..the ndp lost it.
..now i see a resurgence of electoral chatter on babble..in the electoral realm that omits the people factor. i see this omission as a weakness in the analysis presented. especially now when the movements are stronger than they were when the election took place. this will play a large roll in the next election i predict and there is no counting the ndp out. but the must get invloved much closer with those movements.
..today i see steward kennedy raising funds in burnaby to defeat kinder morgan. romeo saganash has got a petition going round calling for the full implementation of the declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. thiis would impact heavily on site c dam, pipelines and the tar sands themselves. while alexandre boulerice is calling for disbanding the neb energy east hearings. so the ndp are well aware of the importance of these struggles. i feel though rather than just try and protect individual ridings, the ndp as a party need to commit to altering the present path towards climate and extraction.
edit
That is clearly not true.
In 2011 they had 166 seats including 21 in BC.
In 2015 they were reduced to 99 seats in a larger parliament with 10 in BC.
They lost 67 seats in total -- only 11 in BC.
They lost 40 seats in Ontario alone.
my mistake sean. i meant more conservative votes not mp's.
I was curious as it did not make sense to me becuase the proportion of voters in BC is so much lower than Ontario for example. So I looked
In 2015 they had 708,010 votes in BC and 2,293,393 votes in Ontario.
In 2011 they had 853,272 votes in BC and 2,457,463 votes in Ontario.
The loss from one election to the other was 145,262 votes in BC and 164,070 in Ontario
But then look at the national figures:
5,613,633 in 2015; 5,835,270 in 2011 for a difference of 221,637
You can see that the net loss from BC and Ontario together was more than the national net loss (this means the Conservative vote in some provinces went up which is not a huge shock when you consider that the overall vote went up substantively). The vote share of the Cosnervatives was uniformly down but in some provinces increased turnout and larger population means that even with a lower share they got more votes.
Still, if you add the national net loss together it is still more than BC -- and the loss was greater in Ontario in votes as well. So on this you are still not correct.
But I assumed there was something to what you were saying. So the third option was to look at vote share. Now proportions cannot be added so there is no putting it together (you cannot simply add fractions with different denominators). Even so we can see that the vote share went down in other places more than BC even though it did see a loss of 15.5% in vote share. But MB as well as every one of the Atlantic Provinces had an even greater loss in vote share.
Still I thought the figures were interesting so decided to share them back.
.....2015.....-....2011
BC 30.0 45.5 diff 15.5
AB 59.5 66.8 diff 7.3
SK 48.5 56.3 diff 7.8
MB 37.3 53.5 diff 16.2
ON 35.0 44.4 diff 9.4
QC 16.7 16.5 diff 0.2
NB 25.3 43.9 diff 18.6
NS 17.9 36.7 diff 18.8
PE 19.3 41.2 diff 21.9
NL 10.3 28.4 diff 18.1
YT 24.0 33.8 diff 9.8
NT 18.0 32.1 diff 14.1
NU 24.8 49.9 diff 25.1
All that said, I remember something that sounded like what you mentionned -- this is why I looked so much becuase I had heard soemthing like this and was curious becuase it did not make sense to me.
I think it may have been related to vote share in the ridings that touched the Pacific. It is possible that the Conservatives had the greatest loss in vote share in those ridings (not province wide in BC). I don't have the time to pull those figures but if you look at the pipeline root ridings to the Pacific this may be where you could be correct -- except it is not seats or votes but relative vote share.
Of course the issue of the vote loss and what and where it is does not dimish your point about the significance and the concentration of loss in the pipeline areas and touching water areas.
I challenged the minor point becuase it was interesting to me but this in no way compromises the larger points you were making in your post. I should be clear about that since I think it was an important observation.
..my statement was based on my memory of a report i posted post election. i posted it in 3 different threads. i will try and find that report and post it but i can't do it from where i am and i'll be here for another 5 or 6 days.
No problem -- I look forward to reading it. I seem to remember a similar thing. This is why I went looking for the data. I am pretty sure this was an analysis of the ridings along the pipeline route in BC and the loss being disproportional there.
I just tried to find it but was not able. I hope you can.
I think you posted this:
Strategic voting didn’t defeat Harper. Voter turnout did.
So then Epaulo rememberd it fairly well. The problem was that this source was wrong.
I say this becuase the figures I posted in this thread are from Elections Canada and they are the official ones.
I think there is another article about the pipeline ridings -- I am not sure now if it would be accurate either if it relies on the same source as this.
I do know that there could have been preliminary results that could have differed from the EC final tallies but these are rather big differences so I have no idea why. But in the end the Conservatives got nearly a quarter million fewer votes in 2015 than they did in 2011. They did this with almost 3 million more votes being cast.
Sean, my comment was mainly about how Trudeau has SINCE the election managed to turn his own popularity into the main media narrative surrounding federal politics. The MSM routinely writes puff pieces about Trudeau that are on the level of celebrity gossip sections; and the public is eating it up in droves. The other parties are going to have a very tough time convincing pro-Trudeau voters that issues stil matter.
I think certainly this is true and it is easier to produce a puff piece than one related to policy. These articles are filler -- advertising delivery -- like reality TV minus the reality.
I think there is more to this than Trudeau though. He is a popular subject but I think a lot of what passes for journalism would have taken the easy way regardless. They would have found other subjects. It is useful for the Liberals to go along with this than have the attention on more difficult matters but I think this is a journalism dynamic deeper than Trudeau himself. And the media went for this becuase it sells -- sadly people want entertainment more than information but that is not that new it has been a trend growing for the last generation.
I saw two centrist parties and chose the one that would deliver the most benefit to me and other Canadians under neoliberalism....
...while I do appreciate your spirited excellent arguments...this is your conclusion? as a leftist?
Is this not supposed to be a site for progressive alternative politics? Why are we not talking about useful strategies?
There are no longer term benefitsd to neoliberalism, except possibly some short term buyouts, only fiurther corrupting any possibilities for transformations from the neoliberal globalist venture....
as the system´s authorities make their last ditch efforts to save their bankrupt finances (via the central banks), where will we find the discussions for the alternatives?
..thank you unionist. although that wasn't the piece i had posted mine was also from dogwood. the numbers look the same though with the addition of the loss of 90,000 in ridings that touched water.
..the bc numbers are close to what you posted sean. less than 4,000 separating but for the rest of the country big difference. insights west though has run polls since 2011 or maybe even before re pipelines and the numbers i have found to be consistent. rejection has always been high and i believe that around 50% rejection has been bottom.
..i want to once again though come back to the people factor point. the most recent example that unionist posted in the west east thread re shutting down the neb hearing. opinions runs deep and passionate. and there is no way this will be swayed by smooth talking politicians or promises of safety and jobs. there needs to be real alternatives put forward that can be applied right now..today. transit is a example where tomorrow more buses could be put on the road. i know the extra buses are there in vancouver and just needs more drivers. political will is what is preventing this and mass pressure is the solution.
..where is the party that will catch and carry these issues? will it be the ndp? if not the movements will find alternatives..greens for instance. not because greens are the most progressive or democratic of parties but because this is a way to move the issues forward on a political stage. also a way to force other parties to take more forceful positions. imho.
Sorry I do not know who you are addressing and I don't know what you refer to when you say is this your conclusion. I am not sure if the person you want to answer is less lost than me. Can you help explain more.
It does look like an interesting question...
Yes Epaulo I do realize that your major point on how people are empowered and their views come down to policy is more important than the side issue of the Conservative loss in support. I wonder if a single political party will ever truly carry the issues -- they will always being trying to defend a position, attack a position or look out for an interest. What is needed is a non-partisan conduit that is issues based, I think.
I actually think that a reformed Senate could be helpful without parties -- apologies to any who would be upset that my position here is closer to Trudeau. But I do believe we can do well with an institution that is not overtly partisan. I say this becuase of course the individuals will have preferences but by not being overt it may be easier for issue based views to cross partisan lines and get greater consideration than otherwise they would.
A lot of this is cost / value. We don't have this discussion when you ahve parties scrambling to shut things down in order to promote their vision or to leave money on the table for their priority.
As well my other bias regarding the Senate is that it is an existing institution that I think could provide for recognition of Aboriginal peoples where their nations do not get lost in part politics. Provinces are geographic and so the constitutional divisions of the Senate woudl not need to be abandoned by imposing a other variables on top of it when it comes to allocating the seats. Without it being elected you can have a level of inclusion that an electoral process would never accomodate.
I am keen on hearing other people's ideas in answer to Epaulo becuase he is raising an absolutely critical issue here if I am understanding it correctly. The Senate option is just one. Perhaps there are other better ones.
That was addressed to Pondering - I think iyraste1313 (instead of using the quote function) usually quotes someone verbatim without quote marks, then adds their own response after three dots.
There is no alternative in terms of political parties. They all support neoliberalism. If either CUPE or the Council of Canadians were political parties I would vote for them because they are the only two organizations opposing CETA. In my opinion trade deals are the key to unraveling neoliberalism.
The Liberals are open to social programs that mitigate the harms of neoliberalism because it buys social peace and because they believe it's good for business to support education. One of Trudeau's arguments for improving indigenous education is that they are the fastest growing population in Canada so they can be either a burden or a resource. Yes he also believes it's the right thing to do but the economic argument underpins it. The Conservatives have a very short-sighted view always looking for immediate economic benefit. The Liberals take a longer view.
I think there are plenty of alternatives right now. There are great affordable solutions in every field. If existing best practices in Canada and around the world were put in place our lives would improve immeasurably. What is lacking is the political will which can only be driven by the people. When the public is angry enough leaders like Sanders and Corbyn can rise but even they will not lead the revolution. Only people in the millions in the streets can force government to act or be replaced. When they are ready to do that there are plenty of alternatives available.
That's the way I see it. Either some party catches and carries these issues (as you say), or the movements will find alternatives. I'm actually impressed these days that the Greens don't seem as subject to bureaucratic dictatorship and utter alienation from real movements as some others. But we shall see.
Okay -- thanks
Sean, what I'm getting at is that Trudeau's personal popularity is sucking all the oxygen out of the room which will make it very difficult for the NDP to get enough attention to get their support level out of the basement. It also means that matters such as Trudeau courting unions are flying almost completely under the radar, making it's effect on the position of the NDP basically irrelevant.
In all likelihood anyone whose political backbone is weak enough that they would shift their support from NDP to Liberal based on Trudeau courting unions is a)probably unaware that Trudeau is courting unions, and b)has already shifted their support from NDP to Liberal based on Trudeau's personal popularity.