NDP's Housing Joke

I Give Up

Jagmeet Singh has launched another attack on the Federal Liberals’ record, attacking them for supporting the building of airquotes “luxury” condos in Edmonton. It’s a nonsense tautology that ignores that some of the housing in the specific project he’s attacking is actually sub-market priced housing done in consultation with local First Nations communities but more importantly, it’s moronic idiocy. Building more fucking housing will help alleviate the housing crisis, because even if we accept that these are luxury condos, moving rich people from existing housing to new “luxury” housing frees up their old units for everyone else.

I am not a housing expert, but Singh’s policy is literally so stupid that it flies in the face of all basic economics. If you want to lower housing prices, there’s three things you can do; massively lower demand for housing (read: slash immigration levels and then freeze them there for at least half a decade), incentivize private builders to increase the number of units available in the market (by building up, aka apartment buildings and condos), or build a metric shitton of non-market public housing.

The latter idea is a good one, but there’s a lack of follow through from Jagmeet on how he’d pay for it whenever he sort of hints at supporting it. He’s yet to come out for reductions in immigration, which are needed. And he consistently attacks private builders increasing density for reasons passing understanding. Plainly, he’s either an idiot, or playing one for the cameras.

If the NDP is actually okay with this level of either intellectual vacancy or this level of deception, then they should just disband. If their leader genuinely thinks that building more units of housing is a bad thing, then he needs to be replaced immediately – but he won’t, because the party are cowards. And if their leader is lying to the public in an effort to use a housing crisis for political ends while actually working to undermine efforts to fix it? Then hell is an insufficient fate for his monstrosity.

…

“There is only one question about U2 that actually matters, and I’m still trying to figure it out while this four-door Maserati backs out of the garage: Is Bono for real, or is Bono full of shit?”

I was in New Jersey, by accident, the first time I ever read those words. In Philly the summer before Justin Trudeau won the election, I bought Klosterman IV, a compilation of the works of the aforementioned Chuck Klosterman. He has been an inspiration for my work ever since the cold, rainy day saw me and my mother accidentally go onto the exit for Jersey and not for Maryland. And that line is ringing in my head because I don’t know what’s worse.

Jagmeet is incredibly sanctimonious, incredibly holier than thou, and incredibly willing to say things that just aren’t true. The thing about him is whether this is in some ways an act doesn’t actually matter, because either way it’s really fucking bad. Jagmeet’s housing policy would make the crisis worse, full stop. Even if he committed to mass public building, it would still make things worse because an unfunded liability of the scale that would make a dent into the capacity crisis on an ongoing basis would cause the Canadian debt to trade at somewhere between 3 and 10 times their current levels, bankrupting the entire economy.

Jagmeet is either a dangerously stupid man, substantially stupider than even the dumbest Tory MP in the history of this country, or he’s a liar. He’s either genuinely an idiot or he’s lying to the country in an effort to make housing worse to boost the electoral prospects of his party. If you have a strong opinion about which of those would be worse, great – I don’t, because in either scenario he needs to be gotten rid of. He is a joke, a mockery. Remember when Ed Broadbent died last week and everyone talked about what an honourable and decent fighter for Canadians he was? Ain’t no fucking way Jagmeet’s epitaphs will be that kind if this is the damage he is doing.

I’ve said it before but this is actually truly poisonous to political trust in this country. The NDP is supposed to be better than the Liberals, it is supposed to be what the Liberals fail to be. Where the Liberals are arrogant liars, the NDP are supposed to be honest truth tellers. The Liberals support the corporate interest while the NDP stands up for workers. The Liberals care about getting elected, while the NDP care about doing things for people. Well, right now the NDP are standing with rich homeowners over workers unable to live where they work, they’re lying about the housing crisis instead of telling the truth, and they’re playing politics with a policy crisis. They’re frauds, because they elected a man who cares more about his vanity than his country.

Most politicians, and I’m sure Jagmeet believes this, think their party is best for their country’s interests. I believe every Conservative MP believes a Poilievre government would be better for Canada than a Liberal one. I disagree, but they sincerely believe it. Jagmeet claims to believe this, having said that an NDP government would be better than the current Liberal government supported by the NDP. But if he actually believes this, he’d resign as leader today. Or tomorrow. Or any time he actually decided to have fucking principles.

I voted NDP in 2021 and it is the most shameful thing I have done with my 8 cracks at exercising my franchise. It is shameful because I helped keep this moronic liar in a job, despite him being manifestly unfit to hold the job of dogcatcher, let alone leader of the NDP. Does it not embarrass everyone else to be led by a leader who makes an ass out of himself so fucking often for no discernible advantage?

The NDP is led by a joke. Jagmeet’s either an idiot or a liar. There is no polite way to say this about a man who is attacking density in a housing crisis. There can be no pretending he’s somehow not the joke that he is.

Get a serious leader, or get fucked.