Tag: thomas mulcair

Alberta Politics: The election of Jeremy Corbyn to lead Labour is proof that, sometimes, hope triumphs over fear mongering

PHOTOS: Jeremy Corbyn on Sept. 5, campaigning in Margate. (Photo by Chris Beckett.) Below: A young Mr. Corbyn, always true to his principles; the catastrophic Margaret Thatcher; 1970s Labour prime minister Harold Wilson; NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair. If you’re one of those who imagines Alberta has embarked on a “dangerous

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Pushed to the Left and Loving It: Why Thomas Mulcair Should Distance Himself From the CFIB and Why he Won’t

Recently, Justin Trudeau has come under fire for remarks he made suggesting that some small business owners used their concerns to avoid paying taxes.  He did not suggest all, but that didn’t stop the media and his opposition from jumping on the bandwagon.

However, leading the charge is a group called the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.  (Former president shown above with NDP members, including Brian Topp).

However, in 2011, David Climenhaga exposed this group for what they really are:

Why does the so-called Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses push a far-right agenda that benefits the country’s richest corporations and individuals at the expense of independent businesses? 

Well, it’s not that complicated, really. Like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which doesn’t represent the interests of Canadian taxpayers, it’s fair to say based on its actual behaviour that the CFIB is a typical example of pure, unadulterated AstroTurf pretending to serve the interests of one group while actually working against them.

In 2012,  CFIB’s president, Christine Swift (above with Topp),  was forced to step down because of her involvement in a group called Working Canadians.  Don’t let the name fool you.  This is actually another AstroTurf group, whose primary stated goal is to diminish the role of unions.

Since when were the NDP anti-union?  I know in Quebec that Mulcair was, and it is he who suggested that the party move away from them, but still.  It’s rather odd that they would be backed by an anti-union group, although everything about this party is odd these days.

That would certainly explain why most of their attacks have been against Justin Trudeau, despite the fact that it’s the NDP who actually benefit from union support.  The only anti-NDP  ad is against the B.C. Party, but they have left Mulcair alone.

Maybe it has something to do with this.

Their former president tried to explain here.

The Tories’ latest TV attack ad takes direct aim at Trudeau, ignoring Mulcair. Similarly, a group called Working Canadians, headed by former Canadian Federation of Independent Business president Catherine Swift, and funded mainly by donations from business owners, is airing radio ads attacking Trudeau’s “high-tax, big-government agenda,” but not taking aim at Mulcair—

She suggested that she didn’t think he would have electoral success, but given past polls, why are they still leaving Mulcair alone?

One of their television ads is eerily similar to those run by the Conservatives.  They use the cherry picked “budgets will balance themselves” and a short clip from Trudeau’s teaching days.

Swift’s replacement, Dan Kelly, is also right-wing and has even called on businesses to boycott the United Way and supports the use of temporary foreign workers.

The Proof is in … Well the Proof

Ok.  So you look at the above and might say that the links between the NDP and CFIB are weak, except that the NDP themselves have admitted to courting their influence.

Last week’s exchange in the House is just one small example of how the CFIB’s influence – with all parties – has grown substantially, particularly the NDP, one expert says.  From question period. 

“The political parties are looking at the CFIB as the only credible organization that deals with small and medium sized businesses. That’s an approach the NDP has been taking in the past few years,’’ says Gilles LeVasseur, a business and law professor with the Telfer School of Business in Ottawa. 

“They’ve been dealing with unions. So now they (the NDP) are shifting toward business people because they see that they’ve missed out on that opportunity. You have to understand that the NDP is doing that because they have to show they can govern the country, and by governing the country you also need to have business on your side,’’ said LeVasseur, who was a member of the CFIB for a year about a decade ago.

They’ve been dealing with unions alright.

So the CFIB and the offshoot Working Canadians are overtly attacking Justin Trudeau with money from “small businesses”, and CFIB has an NDP MP as a former member.  Did they draft Mulcair’s business tax strategy that benefits the rich?

They have set up Justin Trudeau and once again the media has become complicit.  Don’t you just love the state of our democracy?

Trudeau is right to challenge them.  He has heard the ads and he knows the players. He could pull an #NDPTruthTeam on them and ask why the NDP was being backed by a group that wants to stop money going to the United Way.  Or is a strong supporter of the Temporary Foreign Workers program.  Or wants to diminish the role of unions.

Wait a minute.  I think I just did that.  Yeah, me.  I’m for #RealChange.

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Pushed to the Left and Loving It: Bandwagons and the NDP. Could They Lose Quebec?

According to Wikipedia, the “bandwagon effect is a phenomenon whereby the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads and trends increases the more that they have already been adopted by others. In other words, the bandwagon effect is characterized by the probability of individual adoption increasing with respect to the proportion who have already done so.  As more people come to believe in something, others also “hop on the bandwagon” regardless of the underlying evidence.”

The term originated with a circus clown, Dan Rice, who was a household name in the mid nineteenth century. He is credited with creating the modern day circus, though is now considered to be “the most famous man you’ve never heard of”.

 The notion of hopping on the bandwagon has become commonplace in politics and political polling; though not always as an affect, but often, a root cause.

 While pollsters reveal the results of their polling, the media gets to interpret those results, to create attention grabbing headlines.  “Surges” and “horse races”, sell papers or on-line memberships, but they can also have an affect on voting intentions,

 In 1994 Claude Emery, prepared a report for the Political and Social Affairs Division on Public Opinion Polling in Canada.

Because polls are generally perceived to be accurate and scientific, the debate on polling centres largely on whether it undermines the democratic process by influencing electoral behaviour and election results. Some political strategists and observers argue that the publication of polls gives an unfair advantage to parties or candidates whose fortunes are seen to be improving. The so-called “bandwagon” effect assumes that knowledge of a popular “tide” will likely change voting intentions in favour of the frontrunner, that many electors feel more comfortable supporting a popular choice.

This is especially true when headlines of “surges” are published near the end of a campaign, before people have had a chance to analyse what has caused the “surge”, or if it is even valid.


All summer we have heard of an NDP surge in Canada, especially in Quebec.  But what they don’t tell you is that at the beginning of the campaign, 70% of those called were undecided.  Even now it is about 50%.  So how accurate are those polls?  Not very.  And yet the headlines suggest otherwise.
Our local TV station reported last night, that the Conservatives had dropped to third place and the NDP had taken the lead.  But even that is misleading.  The NDP is polling higher in Quebec, skewing national results.  However, in Ontario, they are a distant third.  
Can They Hold Quebec?
There was a discussion on Twitter between the head of Leger Marketing, which has always come out strong for the NDP, and several Bloc supporters.  

Jean-Marc Leger was being criticized for what was deemed to be invalid results, and accused of thwarting democracy.  Leger accused his critics of not liking the results because their guy was not in the lead, but finally contended that the support for the NDP was based on emotion, and that anything could happen come October 19.
The feeling of those debating Leger, was that there was a stronger vibe in Quebec for the Bloc.  I have actually seen similar remarks on social media with many questioning what was creating the headlines.
If it is true that the corporate media is funding Thomas Mulcair, as a push back by the 1%, than the headlines makes sense.  But if not, what is the intent and either way, how fragile is the support?

In January of this year Chantel Hebert stated in a piece Mulcair needs Layton-style miracle to win election, she reminds us that while “no one is completely dismissing the party’s chances to stage a second consecutive spectacular surge in as many elections” that “lightning — even of the political kind — rarely strikes twice.” and “Nowhere are NDP roots more shallow than in Mulcair’s home province.”

I’m currently reading Social Democracy after the Cold War, Edited by Bryan Evans and Ingo Schmidt (2012 ISBN – 978-1-926836-88-1)  The authors also discuss the fragility of the NDP support in Quebec.

The massive success of the ndp in the 2011 federal election should not obscure the fact that it rests on an extremely weak organizational basis in Québec. While the fifty-nine federal seats gathered in the province represent close to 60 percent of the ndp caucus in Ottawa, its membership in the province was still a mere 2 percent of the total party membership four months after the election . Furthermore, prior to the May 2011 election, only a handful of ridings had local party chapters.  In many areas of the province, the ndp was simply absent or, at best, operated through regional committees. In contrast to other areas in Canada, the ndp had no support from organized labour, and none of Québec’s influential social movements endorsed the party. Most of the victorious candidates, with the notable exception of Mulcair and four or five others, were stand-ins, who had little if any roots in the community. In many cases, they did not even campaign locally. In short, in Québec the ndp is a topheavy party with no solid organizational roots.

Admittedly, things have changed somewhat since 2011, and several unions are now backing Mulcair, but only because they want Harper gone.  However, if the Quebec support wanes, or the NDP no longer look like the winning party, that will change.  No doubt, that is why the media moguls who funded Mulcair’s leadership bid, need to keep the headlines going,   Mulcair is not necessarily Quebec’s favourite son, but he is theirs.

They need to feed the emotions, so that the heads ignore the facts.

I believe that the Bloc will do much better this time, than in 2011, and that the Liberals will have a better showing.  We just need to find a way to take the wheels off the bandwagon, although the NDP might topple it beforehand.

The statements by a member of their communication team, against the Pope and RC priests, will not sit well in a province that is almost 85% Catholic.  The party is also experiencing conflicts from within.

And as Evans and Schmidt point out:

Not surprisingly, consolidating its breakthrough is presently the ndp’s main objective in Québec. Two strategies are possible.  The one championed by Mulcair and supported by a number of Québec caucus members is to keep to the political mainstream and avoid too close a relationship with organized labour or the social movements… The other possible strategy — put forward by trade unionist Alexandre Boulerice, a cupe staff rep newly elected in the Montreal riding of Rosemont — is to build the party from below by strengthening the party’s links with labour and the social movements while keeping a strong focus on defending Québec’s national rights, including the right to self-determination.

Mulcair is trying to do both, but is not doing either very well.  Saying one thing in French and the opposite in English; or one thing in Quebec and the opposite in the rest of Canada; while classic Mulcair; is being caught by social media, and even some members of the MSM.

As for Boulerice, an increasingly influential voice in the caucus, his identification with labour and militant resistance to the Harper Conservatives is definitely an asset. His refusal to cave in to public pressure from English-Canadian media and renounce his membership in Québec Solidaire (as interim ndp caucus leader Nycole Turmel was forced to do in August 2011) has won him considerable respect among activists. However, he was forced by the party leadership to backtrack on the Palestinian issue and withdraw his very public support for the “Canadian boat to Gaza” initiative. He has also remained silent on some errors committed by party leaders with regard to matters sensitive to Québecers, one example being the unexplained acceptance of a unilingual Supreme Court judge named to the bench by the Tory government. 

At this stage, the balance of forces within the party is far from favourable to a “grassroots left” strategy. At best, this strategy might coexist with a more dominant “social democracy from above” approach. … The late Jack Layton was very adept at navigating the treacherous waters of Québec. His background as a social activist and his public support for the right to self-determination gave him considerable leeway in the province. But that might not be the case with his successor Mulcair. (Evans/Schmidt 2012)

Anything top heavy, risks a collapse.  I think there is a very strong possibility that the NDP will lose Quebec. Pollsters can only hold them up for so long before the public cries foul.  They are already doing that.  Just ask Jean-Marc Leger.

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Pushed to the Left and Loving It: Thomas Mulcair in Contempt of Greenpeace, Maude Barlow and Canines


On March 24, 2005, the following items were tabled in the Quebec National Assembly. 

Copy of a letter, dated 24 March 2005, he sent to Mr. Jacques Saint-Laurent,Chairman of the Commission d’accès à l’information, asking him to investigate the conduct of Mr. Thomas Mulcair, Minister of Sustainable Development, the-environment and Parks, during Routine Proceedings, at the sitting of 22 March 2005.(Sessional Paper No. 1702-20050324) 

Copy of a letter, dated 24 March 2005, addressed to Mr. André Dicaire, Secretary General of the Government, by Mrs. Line-Sylvie Perron, Executive Assistant to the Leader of the Official Opposition, concerning the observance of sections 30 and 33 of the the Act respecting Access to documents held by public bodies and the Protection of personal information.(Sessional Paper No. 1703-20050324)

On March 22, 2005; Thomas Mulcair, then Minister of Environment, failed yet again to present the necessary documents, requested by the opposition, to explain his actions in several matters.  This put him in contempt, and the matter would eventually make its way to the Supreme Court. (1)

It might have been simpler just to buy a big black magic marker, like the one that Harper used when he was found in contempt, and produced heavily redacted documents.  But Mulcair dug in his heels, citing cabinet confidentiality.  His reputation for obstinance was well known.

Michel David in Le Devoir spoke of that reputation when in opposition, stating that “he literally horrified his opponents” with his “brutality or vulgarity”, earning him the moniker, “pit bull”.  (2)  David had hoped that Mulcair would be a “green pit bull”  fighting for the environment, but it was not to be.  Instead Mulcair fought for the economic interests of the multinationals.

In fact, one of the debates held on the day in question, centred around the appointment of William J. Cosgrove, to chair the public hearings on the environment.  In that position, Cosgrove could select his own people to conduct the assessments, a red flag given who Cosgrove was.

 He was President of The World Water Council, a group calling for the privatization of water services worldwide, and promoters of public-private partnerships, to control not only the environmental concerns, but the selling of water in bulk, to multinational corporations.

 Maude Barlow, a foremost authority on the issue of water, has attended protests against the World Water Forums , held every three years, run by the WWC.  In 2009, she was interviewed by Democracy Now during the event held in Instanbul.

They [the WWC]  basically say that they are the collection of people around the world who care about water, and they come together every three years to have this great big summit. And every single year, the police presence gets more and more like the World Trade Organization, every single year, from the very beginning, when there was none, to this. But basically, the World Water Council, which puts this on, is really the big water corporations and the World Bank and some UN agencies and some northern development agencies, some academics, the odd small NGO — small as in, you know, NGOs, but really, it is the corporations, and it’s a big trade show. That’s what this is about. They’ll put on sessions on gender and water, but they don’t mean any of it. This is really about one development model for water, and that’s the privatization model. And that’s what they’re promoting, and that’s what their consensus is, and they refuse to include the notion of the right to water and, of course, the public trust into their documents. 

Mulcair not only said that “he does not share the fears of people like Maude Barlow”,  but that he found no problem with using PPPs to monitor water safety.  Steven Guilbeault of Greenpeace told Le Devoir:

“one wonders what ideological alignment the new president of the BAPE gives commissions of inquiry when they have to decide on the adequacy of public facilities where PPPs are concerned, works that touch water in one way or another or, for example, on projects small private stations. Ultimately, one wonders if it is not a government strategy to reduce the moral authority of the BAPE, which annoys many developers.

Despite being called a conflict of interest, since Cosgrove worked for corporations trying to privatize the world’s water supply, he was allowed to stay in that position until 2007, and Mulcair would continue to allow PPPs to flourish, even in the building of a highway.

I am a huge fan of Maude Barlow.  A respected voice on progressive issues and supporter of the NDP, when they were too.  But did she ever think, during her many protests of the WWC, that it’s president was once lauded as hero (March 22, 2005) by the current leader of the NDP?  It defies logic.

She has spent decades fighting for something, not realizing that she was held in such low esteem by Thomas Mulcair, who got his talking points from a man inside the walls, protected by soldiers, that kept her on the other side of them.  I wonder how many times her name was brought up?

“Minister Mulcair, concludes Jacques Boivin [vice president of the of the Quebec Association for a World Water Contract] has just shown his true colors …it will not be economic development that respects ecosystems but ecosystems that must comply with the requirements of economic development.

So he is different from Stephen Harper, how?

Sources:

1. CANADA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC, DISTRICT MONTREAL, Citizens Committee of the peninsula-Lanaudière c. Quebec (Attorney General), 2006 QCCS 4861, SUPERIOR COURT; No: 500-17-023251-047, August 24, 2006 

 2. Green Pitbull, by Michael David, Le Devoir, December 7, 2004

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