For over a week now, politicians, the media and pundits have relentlessly sniped interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel for her past association with the Bloc Quebecois. To them, it’s not enough Turmel canceled her membership with the Quebec separatist…
Continue readingTag: bloc quebecois
RedBedHead: Why Is The NDP Buckling On The Bloc?
It’s sad to listen to Nycole Turmel’s mea culpa’s in the news as she pleads over and over that she is now and has always been a federalist. Almost half the province of Quebec are sovereignist for God’s sake. It’s a legitimate political stance and suppo…
Continue readingBlunt Objects: Nycole Turmel: Marrying Separatists
Well, not literally, though she was apparently a member of both the now-tiny Bloc Quebecois, and the little communist separatist party, Quebec Solidaire.Is this a high revelation? Well, there’s the fact that she never mentioned it before; that’s somewh…
Continue readingRedBedHead: Nycole Turmel & The Media’s B.S. Loyalty Test
This is a story that isn’t a story.
NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel has a long history as a union activist and progressive. She was president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada for a number of years and can point to a significant victory for …
Continue readingPample the Moose: Nycole Turmel, meet Jean Lapierre
Gosh, the Twitterverse is atweet today with spin and counter-spin on Daniel Leblanc’s article in the Globe and Mail about interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel’s very recent membership in the Bloc Quebecois. Some partisans are crying foul and alleging that…
Continue readingCanadian Progressive World: Wishing Jack Layton A Speedy Recovery
NDP Leader Jack Layton announced Monday he’s is taking a temporary leave of absence to receive treatment for a new cancer. The Canadian Progressive World wishes Layton a speedy recovery. Layton has not only been the public face of the federal …
Continue readingBlunt Objects: Nycole Turmel – Dancing With Separatists
While I have the greatest respect for the current situation the NDP is in, what with their permanent leader Jack Layton taking a break to fight another occurrence of cancer (I wish all the best for his fight), one has to wonder what he and the NDP cauc…
Continue readingBlunt Objects: Bloc Quebecois to Hold Leadership Race This Fall
From Alice of Pundit’s Guide:Unlike the Liberals, who are trying to quit their leadership quick-fix habit with a delayed timetable for permanently replacing Michael Ignatieff, the Bloc Québécois will move to select a replacement for Gilles Duceppe…
Continue readingBlunt Objects: Maybe We Should Have Gone in 2009
I’ve been thinking aloud recently about whether or not the Liberal Party would have been put into a better position post-election if said election was held during the fall of 2009, rather than the spring of 2011.You of course remember what that was, ri…
Continue readingDeath By Trolley: The Best and Worst Thing About Each Canadian Political Party
What is your favourite and least favourite thing about Canada’s federal parties? As a Canadian who has intently followed US politics and is now endeavoring to take an active interest in the politics of my homeland, I would like to ask readers to share what they believe to be the best and worst things about […]
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Electoral Math I: Vote Splitting and the NDP+Liberal merger hypothesis
This historic election has seen the complete collapse of the Bloc Québécois and the decline in the Liberal party to historic lows while propelling the Conservatives to a majority government and the NDP to the official opposition. With the governing…
Continue readingPolygonic: Québec’s NDP revolution: the new normal, or a BQ holiday?
Québec doesn’t do things by halves, does it? Some of us have begged and implored the NDP to focus its energies on Québec: to play to its social democratic credentials, and to take the Bloc to task as arrogant, single-minded, comfortable and lazy, and prone to taking its voters for granted. The idea being that […]
Continue readingliberal catnip: Election – Post-Game Thoughts
So, there we have it: the Cons have a majority government. The NDP is the official opposition. Iggy led the Liberal party to a historic low in the house. The BQ is all but decimated and, at this point, Elizabeth May of the Greens might have won a seat …
Continue readingliberal catnip: Election – Post-Game Thoughts
So, there we have it: the Cons have a majority government. The NDP is the official opposition. Iggy led the Liberal party to a historic low in the house. The BQ is all but decimated and, at this point, Elizabeth May of the Greens might have won a seat for
Continue readingElection – Post-Game Thoughts
So, there we have it: the Cons have a majority government. The NDP is the official opposition. Iggy led the Liberal party to a historic low in the house. The BQ is all but decimated and, at this point, Elizabeth May of the Greens might have won a seat for
Continue readingMy Seat Projections
Okay, just for fun I’m going to do this. I don’t have some crazy scientific method of figuring it out, I just go with my gut feeling – which has varying results. Interestingly you can see from my post here which was made on Election Day in 2008 that the
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: A Compendium of My Prime Minister Layton Posts
I’ve enjoyed writing four pieces about the Prime Minster Layton concept in the last 2.5 years. Originally, it was a wishful thinking hyper long-shot in a prorogation crisis at a time when the Liberals had no firm leader. Then in June 2010 it was a curiosity when polling indicated a Jack Layton-led coalition with the […]
Continue readingPample the Moose: NDP in Quebec: Who are these prospective MPs?
With all the excitement/panic/drama surrounding the apparent NDP wave in Quebec, it’s fair to wonder who might suddenly become the new crop of MPs from Quebec if polling data translates into seats in the House of Commons. I, for one, am very curious. Here in Guelph, the NDP ran fourth in the 2008 election, and even today, a week before the election, there is still no candidate bio on the website for the local candidate, Bobbi Stewart. I have no idea from the website who she is, other than the election preparedness chair for the local riding association.If that’s the case in Ontario, it’s no surprise that speculation is rampant about the Quebec crop of candidates for the party. The Globe and Mail has started digging, and has turned up at least a handful of university students. I’m not surprised at all. When I volunteered for the local NDP candidate in Outremont in the 2004 election, I was rather surprised to discover that the entire provincial campaign was being run out of a single office on St. Laurent Blvd, and that most of the candidates for the province were in fact the campaign management team, based almost entirely out of Montreal, many of them university students, and most of them under thirty years of age. A quick glance through the list of candidates seems to indicate that this is again the case in at least a sizeable number of ridings.As a person who genuinely would love to see the NDP replace the Bloc as the choice of Quebec voters, I’m hoping that some of the blue seats in that province will turn orange, and that the newly elected MPs will do a good job. It’s just that nagging memory of the ADQ surge to become the official opposition in Quebec in 2007 that has me a little concerned of what could happen when a series of placeholder candidates suddenly become MPs. Let’s just say that I’m hopeful, yet concerned…
Continue readingNDP Surge
The NDP vote is surging, especially in Quebec where all the other parties are losing support to the NDP, particularly the Bloc. The NDP is clearly ahead of both of the other federalist parties in Quebec and depending on what poll you look at they are either just behind or
Continue readingMadLibMadLib: In Defence of Democracy! (or, To Block The Bloc)
At least I think I am defending democracy. Perhaps I’m just out of touch, too. I read and comment on dozens of online news sources daily but few of them do I ever circle back around to see if anyone has replied to my comments. The Kingston Whig Standard‘s comment
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