Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Michael Harris lists ten things the Harper Cons want Canadians to forget before the 2015 election. But it’s worth keeping in mind that their expectations for mind-wiping are surely shaped by their own willingness to completely forget what they were repeating incessantly before
Continue readingTag: nathan cullen
Driving The Porcelain Bus: Opposition Reacts To Speaker’s Ruling On Budget Bill
Opposition Reacts To Speaker’s Ruling On Budget Bill Earlier today from Nathan Cullen, NDP House Leader: (from MaCleans.ca: C-38: ‘Mr. Speaker, let us do the right thing’) Earlier today, NDP House leader Nathan Cullen stood in the House to respond to Elizabeth May’s point of order. Marc Garneau, for the
Continue readingImpolitical: C-38 Speaker’s ruling reaction
Key point on Scheer’s ruling and the ongoing discussion over C-38, the government’s monstrous omnibus bill that jams unrelated and consequential bills into the budget process: “It’s something that clearly means we’re going to have to change the way Parliament does business,” Rae said. “If we can’t succeed in doing
Continue readingcenterandleft: Free Riders and Dire Needers
Breaking news: bad jobs exist. In a classic case of Conservatives boiling down an issue to a wide-sweeping preposterous claim, Jim Flaherty claimed that “there is no bad job”. Yikes Flaherty is proposing reforms to the Employment Insurance program, making it harder for Canadians to remain on the program for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Joan Bryden reports on the Cons’ latest abuses of majority government power, this time in allocating and shuffling around the few opposition days already available in Parliament for their own purposes. But it’s worth noting the difference between the responses of the affected
Continue readingcenterandleft: I Am Not Afraid of an Abortion Debate
If we, as Canadians, believe a woman ought to have the right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy, why are we so afraid of having our views challenged? Why is it so frightening to open up debate on this socially contentious issue? If we are an open, democratic society,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Paul Wells had previously theorized that the size of environmental demonstrations in Montreal might hint at the NDP’s ability to establish a long-term base. So what ended up happening? What happened in Montreal was a great big rally for Earth Day whose
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On shadow boxing
Aaron has already listed and commented on Thomas Mulcair’s shadow cabinet assignments. But there are a few additional points worth adding into the mix. First, while others have pointed out Nathan Cullen’s promotion to House Leader, the exact choice of positions is very much worth emphasizing. As the leadership candidate
Continue readingThe Equivocator: A conversation between Micah Goldberg & Joseph Uranowski on: Progressive Cooperation
Micah Goldberg is one of my favourite people (he has guest blogged for me on a number of occasions.) One of our first conversations together was an argument about some electoral reform proposals I had put forward when I was Education & Government Commissioner on the University of St. Michael’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Leadership 2012 – Candidate What-Ifs
Following up on this post, let’s look at a few what-ifs from the NDP’s leadership campaign in retrospect – this time wondering how the outcome might have changed from the perspective of the candidates based on choices made during the course of the race. And it’s fairly easy to narrow
Continue readingA BCer in Toronto: #ndpldr pics, video and a few thoughts
It was a very long Saturday at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre — about 12 hours for me, longer for others — for the NDP to arrive at what, for many, was an inevitable result: the election of Thomas Mulcair as their new leader. With Mulcair set to take his
Continue readingLeDaro: Thomas Mulcair Wins the NDP Leadership Race
It was a long and at times exceptionally boring convention. Because of the computer glitches and delay in vote count, it looked like an eternity especially as – on top of the glitches – it took four ballots to declare Mulcair winner. When I watched the very first debate between
Continue readingPop The Stack: Beards Again
Last night the NDP chose a new leader Thomas Mulcair. Mulcair was the most reformist candidate that was on offer but he was also not the biggest party insider among the candidates. So in a sense he represents a tradeoff between striking out in bold new directions versus staying the course
Continue readingPop The Stack: Beards Again
Last night the NDP chose a new leader Thomas Mulcair. Mulcair was the most reformist candidate that was on offer but he was also not the biggest party insider among the candidates. So in a sense he represents a tradeoff between striking out in bold new directions versus staying the course
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Leadership 2012 – Second Ballot Endorsement
First-ballot results are here. My quick read is that three candidates have a remaining path to victory (no, I can’t see any chance for Peggy Nash when even her vote combined with Dewar’s wouldn’t vault her ahead of Brian Topp), and one of those fits with the themes I most
Continue readingLeDaro: Nathan Cullen: NDP Leadership Race March 2012
I believe Nathan Cullen gave one of the best speeches at the NDP Leadership convention in Toronto. Watch and enjoy. Thomas Mulcair and Peggy Nash stumbled a bit.Read more here.Despite the missteps my predictions is that Thomas Mulcair will win the leadership.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Leadership 2012 – First Ballot Endorsement
The NDP’s leadership campaign has presented such a wide variety of opportunities and questions for party members that it’s been difficult to decide who to endorse – and I’ve reached my own first-ballot decision only after taking time to see how those have been balanced out in this afternoon’s leadership
Continue readingTrashy's World: Friday miscellany…
… complete with Dippers, Lisa Raitt, Ashley (boo-yaa) Madison! And fish trafficking too! —————————————————————————————————————————————————— The NDP leadership convention is this weekend and NDPers from across the nation are flocking to the land of the Toronto Blue Jays (used to be the Leafs) to choose and bless the leader to replace
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Liberal blogger CalgaryGrit makes persuasive argument for Cullen as NDP leader
WesternGrit ranks the top NDP leadership candidates through the prism of what is best for the Liberal Party, and, while expressly not endorsing any candidate, outlines a very strong case for Nathan Cullen as the best NDP choice for Canada (my underlining): How would Cullen affect the LPC? Well, if
Continue readingCalgaryGrit: Final NDP Power Rankings
The NDP crowns its next leader tomorrow, and the best we can do at this point is narrow the field down to 5 possible winners. That’s a far cry from September when the Brian Topp juggernaut was described as Martinesque. I made my “secret Liberal memo” endorsements earlier this month,
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