Skip to main content

Party Status for the NDP? by Wayne Johnson

Permit me to pontificate on the issue of a minority government. It can be good, when MPs act in the best interests of the nation. The Cons have come right out of the gate claiming that they will derail any of PM Carneys plans. Folks I’m sorry, political preferences aside, our nation is facing some very serious challenges ahead. We are in point of fact at War, with the USA, an economic war. This economic war could very well escalate based on the threats of military annexation. And the Cons seem to want to derail government during a national and international crisis, not just economically but geopolitically, with the War in Ukraine and Trump’s lust for Panama and Greenland, for example. We also know who puts party above country… The Conservative party of Canada hands down…

If I were advising Mr. Carney I would suggest that it is very much in the nation’s best interests to grant the NDP official party status. This is very much doable and has been granted in the past. The NDP has a long and rich history starting with the CCF. I grew up in a union family, both my parents were union leaders. I met them all in 68 when politics was done in a very different way. There were cocktail parties and BBQ’s at the homes of influencers, which they very much were. Full disclosure, by nature I’m a Liberal, but oddly, provincially in Ontario, I voted NDP. Like it or not the NDP bring a lot to the table, a progressive orientation and, if nothing else, at times they act as the sobering second thought to a Liberal minority government, albeit a strong minority. To not grant the NDP official party status would seem incredibly mean spirited on the part of the Liberals, and might very well cost them at the polls in the future. Let’s be frank, an awful lot of traditional NDP voters chose nation over party as did many progressives on the right.

To my mind on balance it would be in the nation’s best interest to grant them official party status. Canada needs stability going forward, we need a functioning government not a government going from one drama to the next. Politically it makes sense as the NDP and Liberals, on core issues, are reasonably aligned. This would be far more pragmatic than working with the BQ who would extract a heavy price for their support. As will the NDP, but at least their costs benefit all Canadians, not just one province. Liberal Party of Canada | Parti Libéral du Canada, Mark Carney consider this my gift to Canada. Think about what I’ve said, now is the moment to put nation above party politics. You have one party who simply will not cooperate in putting nation above party. You have another party, the NDP, who you have more in common with than you think. I frankly feel it is your moral obligation to those traditional NDP voters who chose nation over party. It would be in the best interests of Canada to grant official party status to the NDP, do the right thing.

Other than the Cons and perhaps the BQ, I can’t see a great deal of push back… any Liberal who objects to this needs to give their head a shake. Now is not the time for mean spirited politics, now is the time to put nation first. I would caution the BQ on voting against this. The reality is that they too could have lost seats to the point of being under the 12 seat threshold. Karma could easily bite them in the ass next election. Question… when the Cons were reduced to MGB status aka 2 seats, did they retain official party status? I sincerely believe this would be in Canada’s best interest

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HOW THE COVID PANDEMIC HAS CHANGED PANHANDLING by Jim Ward

Panhandling, i.e., begging for small change on the street, has been under considerable threat since the coming of Covid. Of course, the practice has been under threat before whenever the good burgers of some city find that the poor have resorted to “inconveniencing” the public and they feel the “moral” need to criminalize it. But Covid is causing different constraints. In these times very few people carry cash with them. In fact, many retailers will not accept cash, since it may well be ‘dirty money’. The term panhandling had its origins, so I’m told, during an economic depression in the United States in the late 19th century. That depression hit the panhandle area of northern Texas particularly hard and it caused many workers to head to New York City, where the ‘Buddy can you spare a dime?’ request was given birth. The practitioners of this art became known as the panhandlers. Back in the early 1970s I conducted studies of panhandling approaches in six North American cities, one of th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bleak Times for Trump’s USA? by Bill Lee

“If we don’t put a stake into the heart of this administration, there  may not be an election in 2028.” Gavin Newsom, Governor of California The news from the US of A about the wild and weird pronouncements and actions of the abhorrent individual sitting in the most powerful seat in the land, DJ Trump, is bleak. There is his destructive mania for imposing tariffs on every nation in the world: his corrupt attempt to block public knowledge of the truth of the sordid matter of the Epstein files; his racist hatred of Brown and Black people and his inhumane policy of arresting them willy nilly and illegally deporting many; his war on the hard won rights of women and other minorities; his ignoring of court orders (he owns a more or less corrupt Supreme Court); his impossible and unhinged comments on wanting Canada to become the 51st state of the USA; and his increasingly wacky and garbled speech, are only the most recent concerns. But probably the most dangerous of his right-wing campaig...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gun Violence and Bigotry, Due South & in Canada

Bill Lee August 24, 2019 Trump in his Florida speech asked how “these people” could be “stopped”. Someone among the crowd shouted, “Shoot them!” At first laughing, Trump responded, "That's only in the [Florida] panhandle, can you get away with that statement. [1] Given the obscene number of deaths from mass shootings in the USA recently it is probably not surprising that some of the old "rationales" have been taken off the shelf and dusted off. One GOP “legislator” has opined that there is a link to the spread and consumption of violent video games. Leaving aside that this is an exceedingly tired trope that has never been proven, there are a couple of others that clearly have much greater power as explanations. It is not, for example a fanciful notion that high capacity automatic weapons are a more likely link. [2] But there is another issue that really deserves much more full attention. When, oh when will the denizens political class, the media, a...
Post a Comment
Read more