The “Government In Waiting” is off to a slow start. The parliamentary session has not even begun for the fall, and already the major issue isn’t any oversight of the government, it is a dispute over their own new chosen interim leader. NDP …
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Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Tom Mills challenges the Cons to show any job creation whatsoever as a result of their non-stop corporate tax slashing:The thing is, if corporate tax cuts really do create jobs, Flaherty should be able to dem…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- L. Aaron Wright nicely contrasts the fabricated hysteria over Nycole Turmel against the choices of the Libs and Cons:Where was the outrage when Stephen Harper tried to recruit Mario Dumont of the ADQ in Quebe…
Continue readingCalgaryGrit: Welcome to the official opposition…
…and all the anonymous news reports that come with it:NDP ‘unease’ surrounds Turmel’s Bloc secrecyThere’s a serious unease in the NDP over interim leader Nycole Turmel’s memberships in two Quebec sovereigntist parties, a party staffer said Thursday.T…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Gerald Caplan calls out the non-stop and substance-free gotcha politics facing the NDP since the public started recognizing that it had a legitimate chance to form government: It never stops and never will. The momen…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On equalization
One more note on today’s fund-raising news which is best seen in Alice’s historical quarterly data.For 2011 Q2, total fund-raising for the NDP, Libs, Bloc and Greens was $7,918,876.12 – while for the Cons, it was $8,205,078.88. Which looks to mark a lo…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Not quite comparable
Alice notes that all three official parties in Parliament amassed record fund-raising totals during the course of this spring’s election campaign. But it’s worth adding one asterisk to the raw numbers.While both the Cons and the NDP mostly raised money…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on the silliness of this week’s hullabaloo over Nycole Turmel’s past Bloc membership – and the lessons we can stand to learn about Quebec politics in response.For further reading…- Marianne White also treats this week’s news as a teachable mome…
Continue readingMontreal Simon: The Liberal Lynching of Nycole Turmel
As the Liberals continue their fevered assault on Nycole Turmel. No doubt hoping that out of her ashes, their shrunken party will rise again, like some fleshless phoenix. Or some charred scarecrow.Even as they help fuel comments like the…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Janus Jack Layton and The Quebec Policy
Recently, having crushed the Bloc in the 2011 elections, there was a flurry of discussion in the media and blogs around the ambivalent NDP policy regarding the right of Quebec to separate under the Canadian constitution, the relationship between the ND…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Martin Patriquin offers up the definitive response to the pearl-clutching over Nycole Turmel’s Bloc membership (italics in original, bold added):(H)ere’s the wee nuance that seems lost on the rest of…
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: A non-NDP contrarian POV on how much Turmel’s political affiliations will hurt the NDP
I’ve been on vacation this week and viewing the controversy over Nycole Turmel, the NDP interim leader who has a recent BQ past and still supports Action Solidaire today – with some interest, as you might guess. I’ve not been on to comment on it because of being on said vacation. I have some time now though, and here’s my thoughts.
Briefly, I’m not sure this is going to hurt the NDP nationally as much as the media think (particularly the Globe and Mail; they seem to be the ones publicizing the most editorials/op-eds about it):
A) It’s summer – people aren’t paying attention to politics. The impact of […]
Continue readingA BCer in Toronto: Is she still Nycole from the Bloc?
Who says political summers need to be boring? A well-timed leak to the Globe and Mail about new NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel certainly livened things up, with the revelation that Turmel was very recently a member of two Quebec sovereigntist parties…
Continue readingFar and Wide: The Federalist Vacuum
The Nycole Turmel story isn’t something to be viewed in isolation, and for the Liberals it provides further direction in terms of emphasis. I’m more convinced than ever that the future of the Liberal Party resides within an reassertion of a strong fede…
Continue readingPample the Moose: Federalism – It’s not just for Centralizers any more!
As an addendum to yesterday’s post, I see that Nycole Turmel has re-stated her commitment to federalism, and plans to end her membership in the sovereignist Quebec Solidaire. But here’s the central issue for me, as someone who teaches courses on Canad…
Continue readingRedBedHead: 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 readingMontreal Simon: The Strange Trial of Nycole Turmel
Golly. Who knew you could combine the McCarthy hearings with Alice in Wonderland and make a non-story sound so alarming?“We all support our friends — that doesn’t mean we buy a membership for five years with a party that wants to break up Canada,…
Continue readingImpolitical: Turmel’s day
Just a few points to add to the maelstrom. Have been out much of the day so forgive me if any of this is repetitive of anything seen elsewhere.Last week I did want to blog about the NDP interim leader selection process. But I held off out of a sense th…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Telling
No, Tim Harper’s take on the latest news about Nycole Turmel isn’t any better than most of the media’s coverage. But it does at least include one rather telling contrast:Inside Quebec, the Turmel revelation will likely cause little damage.It is underst…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On building opportunities
There’s no doubt that the trumped-up story about Nycole Turmel’s one-time Bloc membership reflects the inevitable first real pile-on against the NDP in its new role as Official Opposition. But it’s worth noting that the NDP also has an opportunity to t…
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