Alberta NDPer here. I agree 100% with this assessment. I despised how Singh made outrageous personal attacks against PM Trudeau but then voted to prop up the government. I support the Alberta NDP but the Federal Liberals. I do not just mean I mark an X on election day. I am a generous donor and provincially work for the NDP at election time!
Exactly! The fact that the AB NDP provided 2 wanna-be federal Lib candidates (one who won & one who was screened out) for this latest election tells us all that we need to know.
Having said that, I absolutely agree that the NDP should not be treated to party status. Simply put, they are totally irrelevant - according to the voters! - to the Parliament that we have. There has for many years been a threshold of twelve seats for a party to be recognized in Parliament; there should be no waiving of that rule.
Put differently, if you waive for the NDP, why not waive for the Greens? [Shudder, shake in horror!] Why not waive for a party that did not win any seats? The threshold has existed for a number of decades. To waive that rule which is truly well known is an insult to the voters.
Yeah, I'd say I voted "blue" too if I were you since the party you voted for are the ones who actually SHOULD have lost party status like their relatively superior cohort, Mulroney's PROGRESSIVE Conservatives did in the before times. Remember that?
BEFORE algorithms and social media silos enabled the already "Reformed" conservatives to become full-on "cons," i.e. deceitful, dishonest, and unscrupulous people where the ends entirely justify the means, people who lie with impunity to deny this country's preference for progressivism. They have done this by being the ONLY POLITICAL PARTY to shamelessly employ all the disinformation opportunities offered by the big tech bros now standing openly with Trump.
Amazingly, and depressingly, they also did this openly and WITHOUT being vilified themselves WHILE Poilievre simultaneously conducted a vilification campaign against Justin Trudeau (perceived as effeminate and ineffectual) AND the Liberals that was so vicious, so unprecedented, and so successful that it qualifies as a phenomenon that seems to have escaped notice. It's also indisputable proof that subliminal advertising works.
The only comparable campaign was conducted against the NDP in Alberta by the same guy guys of course (they're having a real moment here, and it's not pretty) whipped into a frenzy of toxic masculinity by the small, blonde woman who had the nerve to presume that she could LEAD macho Alberduh, an outrage similar to that of the GOP when confronted with a half-black man actually winning the presidency. Like Yoko Ono so insightfully said, "women are the niggers of the world." Except we're fully half of humanity.
So the source of the cons' dangerous vitriol is the threat to their white male supremacy, and male hegemony period, being challenged. Conservatives can't abide change, so want to roll back the clock.
Fortunately that isn't how time works, and change is the constant of life.
It is a good thing WE don't make the decisions..... The NDP have stuck to their word(even against their best interest) and held this last Parliament together for 3 years...If this next Gov't is going to work for the best of Canada, the Cons are going to have to move a little to the left and the Lib's under Carney will move to the right (to appease Alberta and the Cons)and we will need a NDP party to be 'allowed' to go back to the Left, otherwise we may become an American style 2 party hate system. I contend it is in our(canadian) best interest to retain their party status.
This has to be one of the best Canadian political columns I've read in the last few years. For me, the line that hist most hard, and the reason I can't consider the NDP for a good long while: "They don’t deserve party status because they didn’t earn it, and they don’t deserve good will from Liberals after trashing us with blatant lies"
Official parties need to be given seats in committees but they don't have enough members to sit on all the committees so they can't be an official party.
Even if I didn’t vote Liberal because of policies and values, I would still vote for them because both the NDP and CPC blamed something/someone else rather than take responsibility for their poor performance. The NDP listens to people yet doesn’t hear them.
Agree entirely except for the bit about attacking the Liberal party with "blatant lies". I don't think you can, with a straight face, say that the Liberal party is pro-worker (see: their entire history, but especially lately their glad hand with back to work legislation) and not absolutely given to rolling over for corporate interests (again, see their entire history). C'mon, thats like, the exact kind of stuff you complain about! They're very fair criticisms, and the opposite of blatant lies.
The problem wasn't the accuracy of the accusations (they were spot on), it's who was saying them - a deeply unserious man with no better credentials on those files than Justin Trudeau leading a party with no plan for how to do better. It came across as laughable and hypocritical and so unbelievable that even people who know it's true doubted the veracity lol.
Alberta NDPer here. I agree 100% with this assessment. I despised how Singh made outrageous personal attacks against PM Trudeau but then voted to prop up the government. I support the Alberta NDP but the Federal Liberals. I do not just mean I mark an X on election day. I am a generous donor and provincially work for the NDP at election time!
I mean, it makes perfect sense to support the Alberta NDP and the federal Liberals, they're the same party in different-coloured shirts lol.
Exactly! The fact that the AB NDP provided 2 wanna-be federal Lib candidates (one who won & one who was screened out) for this latest election tells us all that we need to know.
Evan, you vote Red and I voted Blue.
Having said that, I absolutely agree that the NDP should not be treated to party status. Simply put, they are totally irrelevant - according to the voters! - to the Parliament that we have. There has for many years been a threshold of twelve seats for a party to be recognized in Parliament; there should be no waiving of that rule.
Put differently, if you waive for the NDP, why not waive for the Greens? [Shudder, shake in horror!] Why not waive for a party that did not win any seats? The threshold has existed for a number of decades. To waive that rule which is truly well known is an insult to the voters.
Yeah, I'd say I voted "blue" too if I were you since the party you voted for are the ones who actually SHOULD have lost party status like their relatively superior cohort, Mulroney's PROGRESSIVE Conservatives did in the before times. Remember that?
BEFORE algorithms and social media silos enabled the already "Reformed" conservatives to become full-on "cons," i.e. deceitful, dishonest, and unscrupulous people where the ends entirely justify the means, people who lie with impunity to deny this country's preference for progressivism. They have done this by being the ONLY POLITICAL PARTY to shamelessly employ all the disinformation opportunities offered by the big tech bros now standing openly with Trump.
Amazingly, and depressingly, they also did this openly and WITHOUT being vilified themselves WHILE Poilievre simultaneously conducted a vilification campaign against Justin Trudeau (perceived as effeminate and ineffectual) AND the Liberals that was so vicious, so unprecedented, and so successful that it qualifies as a phenomenon that seems to have escaped notice. It's also indisputable proof that subliminal advertising works.
The only comparable campaign was conducted against the NDP in Alberta by the same guy guys of course (they're having a real moment here, and it's not pretty) whipped into a frenzy of toxic masculinity by the small, blonde woman who had the nerve to presume that she could LEAD macho Alberduh, an outrage similar to that of the GOP when confronted with a half-black man actually winning the presidency. Like Yoko Ono so insightfully said, "women are the niggers of the world." Except we're fully half of humanity.
So the source of the cons' dangerous vitriol is the threat to their white male supremacy, and male hegemony period, being challenged. Conservatives can't abide change, so want to roll back the clock.
Fortunately that isn't how time works, and change is the constant of life.
It is a good thing WE don't make the decisions..... The NDP have stuck to their word(even against their best interest) and held this last Parliament together for 3 years...If this next Gov't is going to work for the best of Canada, the Cons are going to have to move a little to the left and the Lib's under Carney will move to the right (to appease Alberta and the Cons)and we will need a NDP party to be 'allowed' to go back to the Left, otherwise we may become an American style 2 party hate system. I contend it is in our(canadian) best interest to retain their party status.
This has to be one of the best Canadian political columns I've read in the last few years. For me, the line that hist most hard, and the reason I can't consider the NDP for a good long while: "They don’t deserve party status because they didn’t earn it, and they don’t deserve good will from Liberals after trashing us with blatant lies"
Official parties need to be given seats in committees but they don't have enough members to sit on all the committees so they can't be an official party.
Even if I didn’t vote Liberal because of policies and values, I would still vote for them because both the NDP and CPC blamed something/someone else rather than take responsibility for their poor performance. The NDP listens to people yet doesn’t hear them.
Agree entirely except for the bit about attacking the Liberal party with "blatant lies". I don't think you can, with a straight face, say that the Liberal party is pro-worker (see: their entire history, but especially lately their glad hand with back to work legislation) and not absolutely given to rolling over for corporate interests (again, see their entire history). C'mon, thats like, the exact kind of stuff you complain about! They're very fair criticisms, and the opposite of blatant lies.
The problem wasn't the accuracy of the accusations (they were spot on), it's who was saying them - a deeply unserious man with no better credentials on those files than Justin Trudeau leading a party with no plan for how to do better. It came across as laughable and hypocritical and so unbelievable that even people who know it's true doubted the veracity lol.