Finally, I post my thoughts about the NDP filibuster of Stevie Spiteful’s draconian Back to work legislation of locked out Canada Post workers and the press coverage it has received, along with many Canadians’ attitude toward it. I’m not only concerned at Canadians’ attitudes toward Bill c-6, but also all the misinformation that had been going around. How the ‘socialist’ NDP are to be blamed, if it’s not them, it’s CUPW and the workers themselves. However, I’m not hearing how the Harpercons or management is to blame for the mess, at least, not from the media or much of the blogosphere or punditry, and they are, exactly, who’s to blame. I’m concerned that certain memes playing over and over again about how basically, since most Canadians support the Harpercons in this back to work legislation, the NDP had no business filibustering, or basically, even opposing the bill. Really? Most Canadians appear to be misinformed. Should we be continuing to pander to the misinformed? Or should we try to inform Canadians so they can make an informed decision? For example, does anyone know what the basics are in Bill c6? Yeah, I know, most don’t really care about politics. But, it goes to that saying, before endorsing something, shouldn’t you know what it is you’re endorsing? Lizzy May gave the basics of C-6, and what is wrong with it, in her blog (her post is actually a good read, she is also concerned about the precedent that c-6 sets, as I am ). I already illustrated how Bill C-6 can set a dangerous precedent for even non-unionized working Canadians a few days ago.
Today, my commentary will be more about the potential political fall out (if any), some speculation. I will be asking questions that no one on the pro-Harper side seems to be asking, as well. I will also attempt to debunk a few myths that were hammered by the Conservatives during the filibuster, as well as by the media and the punditry.
First off, as most of my readers know, I am hardly a partisan for the NDP. I will be looking at them critically, and asking questions about their motives, as well as defending their filibuster.
I have to start off by asking those of the anti-filibuster persuasion, what would you have had the NDP do? Roll over and play dead and simply rubber stamp for Lisa Raitt and Stevie? Yes, I know, Lizzy May and the Liberals both wanted the NDP to present their amendments to C-6 early and had asked them to present them countless times throughout that time. However, what purpose would presenting their amendments right away have served? I mean, as everyone knows, Stevie Spiteful has a majority and his attitude is clearly, my way or the highway. Why make it easy for him? As progressives of any stripe, do we want our opposition parties to make it easy for him? Even this Liberal blogger agreed with the filibuster of the NDP.
Following the filibuster on CPAC most of the time, it was clear to me that the NDP’s immediate goals in this filibuster were to a) bring awareness to anyone paying attention that it was management who locked out the workers, thus it was management who paralyzed the mail from getting out, not the workers; not CUPW. B) To make clear to the Harpercons that if they really wanted the mail to resume, all they had to to was to get management to stop the lockout, so everyone can get back to work and go back to the negotiating table. C) to stall the passage of Bill C-6 in the hopes that management and CupW can work out a deal without the necessity of any intervention and/or legislation from the government.
Another thing, the filibuster only delayed mail servicel by, perhaps, one day (none in Quebec, due to Fete St-Jean Baptiste, a Statutory holiday where there would’ve been no mail under normal circumstances anyway), Friday. The second reading of Bill C-6 was only introduced by Lisa Raitt at 8:40 PM, Thursday evening June 23. From there,the parliamentary calendar remained on that date until Saturday evening. Timeline of event from the day the rotating strikes to filibuster can be found here, that page also has links you can consult as well. As many seem to be hell bent on blaming the NDP for delaying the mail all that time, I just thought I should inject some reality here.
Harpercons’ Display of McCarthyism at Its’ Worst
What I did observe was just how McCarthyist those Harpercons were. In fact, if those of us on Twitter were tweeting the filibuster decided to take a drink every time those Harpercons uttered the words “socialism”, “communism”, “union boss(es)”, “marxist(sm)”, and yes, I believe I heard the term “communist pogrom” was uttered from the lips of Con MP of Mississauga-East-Cooksville, Wladyslaw Lizon, we’d all be dead from alcohol poisoning. It would’ve been hilarious if it wasn’t so disingenuous.
Oh yes, some award winners, besides Wladyslaw Lizon’s brainfart, were Con MP Levar Payne’s calling the NDP, the “Marxist Socialist Party of Canada”. More ridiculous, came out of Chris Alexander, he who thinks there’s no poverty in Canada and believes we should stay in Afghanistan indefinitely, “The Communist Party of Canada”. What’s scary is that while those who migrated here from the former Eastern block should be insulted by the notion, are probably eating it up with a spoon.
Since When Are the Working Class the Enemy?
Well, boys ‘n’ girls, it now looks like we can add “Big labour” to the list of words and catch phrases that are grossly misused and overused by McCarthyist neo-cons of the worst kind.
Big labour, to me, always meant every working person; the working class. Anybody who is not management, be they unionized or not unionized. How did it the term become such a dirty term? So the working class will not only be made to hate each other through neo-con propoganda, but made to hate themselves? Make workers feel guilty for having whatever salary and benefits they have in order to better accept less without much resistance? But I digress.
Dean Delmastro, It Takes One to Know One
We watched Dean of Gastroenteritis turn purple, continuing to use terms like “union thugs”. He yelled about how unions were corrupt. Well, Dean, it takes one to know one, doesn’t it? Your government has basically cornered the market on corruption these days; more corruption than any union can possibly dream up. I hardly think you or you’re colleagues are in any position to talk, now are you? Once again, with feeling, Dean, how do you really feel about unions? I honestly thought he’d cry like he did at fetus fetish rallies.
Welfare Recipients And Charities Are Suddenly Convenient for Harpercons-Feel The Hypocrisy and Find the Twist of Irony
Wouldn’t it be a kick in the ass if welfare recipients and those running anti-poverty groups started supporting and voting for Harpercons in droves? Don’t laugh, it may happen, if they remember those Harpercons continuously hammering the same meme for nearly 60 hours of filibustering; ” The poor! They’re not getting their welfare checques! The welfare checques!” Yes, they also inserted child and spousal support checques, as well as pension checques in the mix. For good measure, they threw in the charities and churches for good measure. Let’s not forget the churches, very important for those western Reform Fundamental Christians, now.
Funny, though, if one goes back to Stevie Spiteful’s old days, and read what he’s said in the past about the unemployed, that would most definitely include welfare recipients, not to mention any given Harpercon’s views on welfare, it’s funny how they all of a sudden became champions for the plight of welfare recipients. What hypocrisy!
Not sure if anyone caught the irony here, but Stevie spiteful was actually showing more respect for the welfare recipients over the working man that very long day and evening of June 23, 2011. Mark your calendars. This really must go down in the history books over everything else that happened. It likely won’t happen again.
Lies, Myths and Questions
Yes, the NDP doesn’t care about small business! Small businesses had to fold! Suppliers not getting their payments! You get the idea. To hear the Harpercons, and to read it in the corporate media which was blatantly biased, it sounded like the Great Depression was happening without the mail.
As many of my readers know, I work at the front desk of a head office of a social service agency which takes care of kids under the age of 18. Our mandate is both Young Offenders and Youth Protection. As such, among our many services, we take care of children in placement. Therefore, we receive money for their care. After the lockout, last week, a Canada Post truck stopped by with somebody in a CP vest hand delivered to me some envelopes. I also heard that essential mail like the pensions and the welfare checques were still going to get out. I guess lies of panic stricken people without their checques sounds a lot more compelling than essential mail actually getting out, despite a bitter labour dispute. Since all were legislated back to work this week, when the pension and welfare checques are scheduled to get out, I guess we’ll never know if all those checques would’ve been delivered on time. However, given that I received mail that last week, I was inclined to believe they would’ve gone out. Besides, I think most receive via direct deposit into their bank accounts anyway.
Another thing, we had our suppliers pick up their payments at the front desk. As soon as we heard about the labour dispute between CUPW and Canada Post, we started planning ahead. Other people and businesses that I know of did too. Those Harpercons implied that no person or business planned ahead?
70% of Canadians didn’t care how postal workers were being stomped on. They only wanted their mail. However, people I’ve spoken to said that when mail resumed, they didn’t receive anything important, if anything at all. Those same people who also say they rarely avail themselves of the services of Canada Post under normal circumstances. Was it simply jumping on that anti-union bandwagon of the right? A thought that I find, quite honestly, unsettling.
Did The Harpercons Set a Trap For the NDP as Many Seem to Suggest?
The Liberals, Lizzy May and much of the media and punditry sure seem to think so. After observing the events on CPAC over that long June 23, I have to admit, my first thought was Gerry Nicholls’ column in the Grope & Fail, from last January, this particular passage:
He (Harper) believed that, in such a polarized political environment, a conservative-oriented party would have a huge advantage over its left-wing rival. When given a clear choice, voters will usually pick conservatism over socialism.
This polarization, however, could not take place as long as the Liberal Party – with its chameleon-like ability to change ideological colours – was around to muddy up Canada’s political waters.
With the Harpercons’ McCarthyist rhetoric and the usual media suspects and pundits driving it home to Canadians who don’t follow CPAC (which is most), most of the Liberals being MIA and those present; their calls for compromise, along with those of Lizzy May, being being drowned out, neither the NDP or the Harpercons willing to compromise (not that there was one possible, realistically), being so polarized. Indeed, it looked like Gerry Nicholls’ prophecy coming to light and Stevie Spiteful’s next phase toward his goals of a neo-con utopia being realized. Too bad Stevie Spiteful and his puppets come by it so dishonestly, though.
If one took away all that McCarthyist language; took away words like “communist” “socialist” “marxist”, and if the Harpercons actually sounded semi-intelligable in their arguments, the NDP didn’t sound like they were going off the deep end. Good speeches. Passionate. Pat Martin with his usual panache, always entertaining. We heard speeches aboutIf anyone actually took the time to listen to them, they didn’t come off as Marxist or communist at all. Unless, of course, you consider speeches about the history of the labour movement, or the plight of workers or what postal workers go through or how unions should maintain the right to collectively bargain is ‘evul soshalism’. Their basic meme was to get the government to get Canada Post to open the doors again so they can all go back to work. They showed the Harpercons up for the pro-management, anti-working class elites that they are.
As for the NDP having walked into a Harpercon trap, perhaps they did. If so, I would have to argue, so did the Liberals. Let’s remember that not only did Stevie Spiteful want a far left winged party to look like a bunch of radical Marxists to make his neo-conservatism look good, but to complete that, the more moderate party has to go, meaning the Liberals. They should’ve taken a stand. Many Liberal bloggers are contending that the Liberals wouldn’t have done themselves a favour by joining the NDP filibuster, well guess what? They certainly didn’t curry any favours for their absenteism and their drowned (not to mention, defeated) amendments to C-6.
Trap or not for the NDP, what were they supposed to have done? Simply proposed their amendments, only to have them voted down by the Harpercons who outnumber the entire opposition, even if all were present? As I am not familiar with parliamentary warfare, I have a question: were there any other tools at the NDP’s disposal beside a filibuster? Anything to make Stevie ‘s life more difficult?
Could Stevie Spiteful Have Had An Additional Motive to Push Bill C-6, Like Revenge?
Here’s something else no one has spoken about. I’m not sure if this got much air time, if at all. Some time ago,Denis Lemelin, the national president of CUPW wrote this letter to Stevie Spiteful, urging him to block Israel’s membership to the Organization for Economic Co‑Operation and Development (OECD). We may be on to something, here. I don’t think I need to go into how obsessive Stevie Spiteful is toward Israel, do I? How Bibi and Israel can never do any wrong in his eyes and anyone who dares to criticize them is, well, Satan.
If CUPW’s critical stance toward Israel played a role in Stevie’s thought process regarding Bill C-6, that too, is frightening. The Harpercon cheerleaders love to yammer about thought police. Wait and see what could happen to anyone daring to criticize Israel. I have a feeling it’ll get much worse under Stevie’s majority.
Lizzy May the Naive Schoolmarm
I guess few may have paid more attention to Lizzy May, who’s stand was not far from that of the Liberals, but she’s more of a novelty. She did come off more as a school marm asking the kids in the schoolyard to stop bickering. She is indeed a newbie. She admits to being naive about people on her blog. I expect harder lessons are coming to her in the next four years.
Oh, and Lizzy, your buddy Lisa Raitt did deserve the scorn she received and a helluvalot more. In fact, if what you say about her brother and father dying of work related cancer is true, and she is still doing Stevie’s dirty work instead of working to help the working man, then I’m going to be crass and say that Lisa deserves to be spit on, just for spitting on the memory of her own flesh and blood. I guess the loss of her father and brother mean less to her than her sexy job as Stevie’s minister of management.
Let’s remember, Lizzie, Lisa was also the one who thought isotope shortages at Chalk River were ‘sexy’. Contemptable and I’m being charitable.
And Lizzy, if you expect to have a long political career and just perhaps, even have a few more Green MPs elected the next election, you’re going to have to produce better arguements than “Not all unions are good and not all corporations are bad”.
Oh yes, Lizzy, you’re also going to have to lose the school marm schtick–it don’t work in parliament. It certainly won’t work if you expect to remain relevent. Right now, the only thing you have going for you is that you’re a novelty. Funny thing about novelities-they tend to wear off if you don’t prove your usefulness. You won’t be able to count on Proportional repersentation happening anytime soon. That means hard work, but also a personality that isn’t congenial a lot of the time.
Privatizing Canada Post–The Argument That Makes No Sense After Back To Work Legislation–In the Be Careful What You Wish For Files
The Harpercons and their supporters want to privatize it, saying it’s not such an essential service after all. Well, which is it? They will end up attempting to have it both ways, and sadly, it will be an easy sell to Canadians who are all too easily compliant, unless of course they wake up.
And about privatizing Canada Post, be careful what you wish for. This article (h/t Dale from Hill Queeries) about the privatized postal service in the Netherlands is, to say the least, eerie. Do give it a read. The story about the postwoman earning less than legal minimum wage would surely warm the hearts of neo-cons, but, the competition over there isn’t nearly as rosie as any free-market advocate would like us to think it is. In fact, there isn’t really any competition at all.
If Canadians were really worried about getting their mail in a timely manner during the lockout or even during the rotating strikes, getting the mail late in the Netherlands, under their privatized system, appears to be the norm. The norm, with privatized service served by underpaid workers.
A More Oppositional Opposition?
I suspect that the NDP is now starting to learn much of the same lessons the Liberals did while they were in official opposition. They’re not going to please everybody. They’re going to have to pick which battles are worth fighting for and which aren’t, like with anything else in life. Like the Liberals before them, they will be fighting the media which is, for the most part, a cheering section for the Harpercons, which put them at a serious disadvantage. The recent filibuster proved as much. The next question becomes, will they be spooked? More specifically, the next target of Stevie’s will likely be the Public service workers. Will the NDP fight for them with as much zeal as they did for the postal workers? Will they fight for not only unionized workers but with they fight for non-unionized workers if and when Stevie Spiteful and Lisa remove Labour standards?
I also hope that they fight just as hard and passionately against that tough on crime, morality themed omnibus bill that is to come out in the fall. I believe it is also going to be one of the first things on Stevie’s agenda when they open the fall session. Yes, this will be another thing most Canadians will support the Harpercons on. I will be looking for those same bloggers to sing that old, “but Canadians support tough on crime!”, even though everybody knows, including the Liberal party that war on drugs, higher prison sentences and other tidbits of the American penal code have proven to fail and will prove much more disastrous and costly in the end.
There will be more insidious neo-con bills and motions the Harpercons will put forth that will prove disastrous for Canadians in the long run, will they be prepared to oppose with all the tools at their disposal?
The same holds true with the Liberals, the few remaining Bloc members and Lizzy May, of course. Yes, Stevie Spiteful has a majority and he’ll end up getting his way one way or another, but don’t make it easy for him. Another thing, those who did vote you in, are expecting you to well, oppose. Otherwise, they’d have voted in Harpercons in your ridings.
Quite frankly, before the filibuster, I was starting to worry. Parliament was starting to look more like the Ozzy and Harriet Show, all that drivel about ‘civility’. I say, to hell with civility! Honestly, I like my parliament to have conflict, drama and to be adversarial.
It started to look like they were either in a hurry for summer vacation or they really wanted to go along to get along, something the NDP often chided the Liberals for when the Harpercons were in minority. On the first day back at school (parliament), all of them pretty much voted to push through $250.8-billion in government spending estimates for the next year without the usual scrutiny as Parliamentary rules normally require by the 24 House committees. That was alarming. Now this is something I think even Conservative minded Canadians would’ve liked to have seen more scrutiny. After all, that is our tax money we’re talking about here. Tugboat Tony and his gang have proven they can’t be trusted, yet they all vote in unison to push all that spending through?
Joe Comartin, in a state of panic over a Quebec judge letting 31 accused Hell’s angels go because it would supposedly take too much time to try them, insisted that Rob Nicholls reintroduce that mega-trials bill, C-53, and that passed quickly without much debate. Again, disconcerting. Instead of actually wondering why that judge decided to drop the case, he panicked! I wonder if Mr. Comartin knows that Quebec built a courthouse right near the jail on Gouin Boulevard a few years back, expressly for a Biker mega-trial? I don’t think it’s been used since.
They all also voted quickly to extend the mission in Libya without much debate. Only Lizzy May had questions regarding Libya and the mega-trial bill, but I believe she did end up supporting that mega trial bill in the end without too much trouble.
Why in the name of hell didn’t the NDP or the other opposition parties get, well, oppositional over those issues? Why didn’t they, at the very least, study them more, debate them more? Yes, I was disappointed in all of ‘em. Even if it was simply a question of ‘em all being in a hurry for summer vacation, it was no excuse.
Liberals, I get that you’re rebuilding. I really do, but rebuilding is also about convincing not only your members but attracting new ones by showing them you can do politics. Being incognito at the filibuster, at least for the votes and the committee of the whole was really a bad start. As mentioned, there will be more serious issues and you’re going to have to be more present and take a stand. You may not gain many favours, if for it, but you’ll earn more respect than for not showing up and not standing for something.
Here’s to hoping we see more life come September. As mentioned, I am hoping that come September, the NDP will have as much zeal over the hideous bills the Harpercons will bring in, and there will be. Yes, many of these bills will be supported blindly by Canadians just as the egregious Bill C-6 was, but not necessarily good for the country in the long run and somebody will need to take a stand against them. Otherwise, we might as well send every opposition MP packing and just fill those seats with Conservatives and skip the by-elections (Canadians don’t like going to the polls neither, after all, gotta do what most Canadians want, if we go by that thinking).