Demarchy

Why I’m Endorsing Brian Topp as the Next Leader of the NDP

I’ve been a New Democrat since I was 15.

It had started years earlier. Watching images of American warplanes reign hellfire on Iraq in the early days of the 2003 invasion, something inside of me started to shift. I wasn’t even 13, yet I still sat in front of the painful images on CNN, outraged. 

Now, I don’t want to get into my life story here. Suffice it to say, that I was reading the Communist Manifesto at 14, Noam Chomsky at 15 and, by 16, I was a pacifist. When I turned 17, it was 2008, and I joined the NDP. I walked into the campaign office of a local teacher, actor and activist who was running for the NDP in Sydney-Victoria - a Liberal stronghold in one of the most economically depressed regions of Canada; Cape Breton.

So I cut my teeth. By 2009, I was in the campaign office daily - working to get our candidate elected as an MLA. While we didn’t win, the NDP formed government in Nova Scotia. A few months later, I was in Halifax. I found myself travelling across the province working on by-elections whenever they sprang up. I served on the executive council of the provincial party as co-chair of the youth wing.

I was on the firm left of the party. I became frustrated with half-measures and “tough, but necessary solutions.” I spent more time on the activist and journalism side of things.

I became re-engaged when 2011 rolled around. With Jack bounding back on the stage as a real, progressive candidate to fix the country, I joined the staff at a small campaign in the Halifax suburbs. I worked 12 hours a day, sometimes more, every day for every week of the campaign. In the end, we lost, but had an amazing showing (and were declared the winners for about a half hour.)

Quebec was the next step for me. I got a dingy apartment in Montreal and I ended up disengaging with federal politics to focus on journalism, knowing that the party could get along without me.

Then Jack died.

I knew that any leadership race offers some dangerous choices. You can chose your Svend Robinson, or you could go with Lorne Nystrom. My model was never after Jack Layton, because I know his mentor in turn was Tommy Douglas. 

Without, I hope, inducing gagging - we needed a leader that is willing to tell the mice to stop electing cats.

I had my favourites to enter the race. Megan Leslie, Libby Davies, Peter Julian - none of them offered to run.

And I found it curious when Davies endorsed Brian Topp. 

I knew Topp’s name. I read his Globe column closely. I had heard his name branded about in the campaign office. I knew of the work he was doing in Ottawa that trickled down to the ridings.

But he was a backroom guy, I thought. He was too right-wing. 

I liked Ashton. I liked Peggy more. I was curiously interested by Saganash and Mulcair.

And it only took about 20 minutes and two beers to convince me to support Topp.

All I had to hear was Topp’s experience in Ottawa and Saskatchewan, an assurance that he’s one of few who is fluently bilingual, and - much more importantly - he was the most progressive candidate in the race.

One of his first moves was to come out in support of a free, independent Palestinian state. He’s since taken bold stances on tax reform, fighting inequality and reforming parliament. A policy wonk after my own heart.

And what have the other candidates proposed? Rehashed policy from 2010 - that Brian was central in writing.

Don’t get me wrong - the other candidates are great, and I still like them (my personal feelings about Mulcair aside) but Topp has cemented himself as my first choice.

The Question of Bias

Yes, I’m a journalist. 

But, I’ve been a New Democrat longer, and I find it hard to stay entirely out of the race.

As much love and respect as I have for those people in the Parliamentary Press Bureau, I’m not sure it was ever something I thought I could do. I’m not concerned about burning that bridge.

And no, Tom supporters, I was not a campaign attack-dog sent out to hit Mulcair. I made up my mind on my own over the past few months to join Topp’s campaign because of the work I was doing. At no time did the campaign alter the content or direction of my stories. Scream bloody murder all you’d like, but I was merely expressing my personal opinion about Tom that exists outside of my feelings about Brian.

Political Hactivism

No, I will not become an annoying partisan hack. You will not find me donning a Twibbon or exposing talking points here, or anywhere else.

Like I’ve always done, I will be offering my thoughts on the good, the bad and the ugly - regardless of who its directed at. I will still be able to criticize Brian Topp or laud Peggy Nash without my shock collar going off. 

But yes, I do believe Brian can bring about a Canada I believe in - out rooted in peace. One that tackles inequality with unparalleled ferocity. One that becomes a good steward of the environment. One that modernizes Canada and creates a clean, efficient economy. One that makes life affordable for everyone.

Leftist solutions to fix Canada.

Do I believe other candidates can do that too? Sure. But I trust Brian to do it in 2015, and to do it without sacrificing our convictions or moving to the center.

This isn’t about necessary evils, compromises or the lesser of many evils.

No, Brian is the guy.

EDIT: I got this comment just a minute ago:

Brian Topp was a Third Way advocate in the Romanow government. Ask yourself why he has such little support from Saskatchewan where he worked for several years. He’s doing a classic “run to the left for leadership… track to the centre afterward”. Good luck with that :)

I don’t buy this. Before the leadership race, Brian was also slotted to go out to BC and work for Adrian Dix, arguably one of the more left-leaning provincial politicians. He also worked for Jack while the party was pushed to the left.

At the end of the day, these people serve at the pleasure of the party. I’m sure there were left-leaning people working for Alexa McDonough and there were right-wing people on Tommy Douglas’ team. 

Brian is now running on his own merits, and those are fundamentally left-wing ones.

Goddamit, America, You’re Scaring Us.

(Original photo: Phelan Ebenehack / Reuters)

Hey, America, cut it out.

When this GOP primary race started out, we all just figured ‘They’ll do their crazy dance, then end up going with the boring guy’ like you did with John McCain a few years ago. We had some laughs, you got a boring moderate white dude - everyone’s happy.

No, this time, you spurned your great white hope and decided to go through every other flavour at Ben & Crazy’s. Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum - seriously? Rick Santorum?

No matter how bad it got over there, I could comfort myself by chanting “At least it’s not Rick Santorum!”

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Mining For Good Policy in the NDP Leadership Race

Paul Dewar tells reporters about the fish he just caught. Just don’t ask him about policy.

 Via the Canadian Press

This week, I was offered a curious thought.

The thought goes that this NDP leadership race ought not introduce any new policy, and rather it should focus itself on who is best able to lead the party to victory. 

It’s a valid thought, no doubt, and it makes a lot of sense coming out of Mulcair’s camp. 

That said, I think it’s enormously stupid.

Now, let me frame that by saying - I think, perhaps, the idea is correct insofar as the leader must be a leader, not a policy maker (at least to some extent.) But, on the other hand, this is perhaps the best chance for innovative, bold policy solutions to come forward on the national stage. And it doesn’t matter if the candidate proposing those policies wins - it matters that the policy gets out there.

Being a leader is important, but offering a robust plan to actually address some of the issues that this country faces is much, much important. I realize that Tom is running on his experience crafting the party over the past few years. That’s a fine record to run on, and I won’t deride that. I just think he’s missing a great opportunity to put forward a more bold solution. Hey, maybe he will, but it doesn’t look like it at present.

And that’s why it’s such a shame that some of these candidates are keeping their cards close to their chest. No doubt every campaign has a great braintrust of very smart folks, and releasing that deluge of knowledge would benefit the candidate, the party, Canada, AND THE WORLD. 

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Dear Quebec: Make Up Your Damn Mind.

Quebec, we need to talk.

Last spring you brought in the ‘Orange Wave’ that pulled the Bloc out to sea and violently drowned them.
 
Then, you welcomed Francois Legault with open arms and together you CAQ-blocked the Péquistes.

Now, a floundering Gérald Tremblay is doing a morose victory lap on his tenth year as mayor of Montreal, just waiting to get pounded by Richard Bergeron or Louise Harel.

On the other hand, the NDP is polling low in Quebec, Legault wouldn’t stand a chance against Gilles Duceppe or maybe he won’t even not fare so well against Charest, but might still get a majority, while Tremblay…Well, Tremblay is screwed every which way.

Why are you so damn fickle, Quebec?

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On: Getting Blatch’d, Inspiring Ire and the Thomas Mulcair Rage Machine.

Well, dear readers, if you’ve read more than one post here, you know that I have a penchant for snark. 

I’ve come across a few, such as some in the Rabble crowd, are no big fans of my acid tongue. 

My mother has also expressed concern at my salty language.

But that comes with the territory. I wouldn’t be happy unless I were pissing people off. 

And, much to my surprise, the fieriest of the social media fury I’ve seen thus far is in the NDP leadership debate. 

It started when I proclaimed Mulcair’s campaign as DOA. That ruffled some feathers.

But in recent weeks, the social media campaigns have materialized and legions of loyalists have taken to Twitter to bite and bitch at anyone who dare cross their candidate. 

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The End of the Second Period: The NDP Leadership Race

So while Canadians sit around the table and contemplate good cheer and the year that passed us by, I’ve got my eyes firmly fixed to the NDP leadership race.

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And Then There Were Eight.

Fred Chartrand/The Canadian Press

Well, the over-sized pack of painfully polite wolves has shrunk by a factor of one.

Robert evidently saw the francophone writing on the wall and knew his campaign would never survive past the next french debate. That was a smart move.

But one has to wonder exactly what Robert left behind. No doubt, some of the long-shot candidates entered the race as a sounding board for some of their ideas they’d like to see fused into federal party platform. 

For Robert, it seems, your ideas are his ideas.

It’s sort of a shame that Robert never had a chance to bring out his populist banjo and rattle off some of the ideas that have been submitted on his site. Some are actually quite good.

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Harper Punishes UNESCO By Appointing Jean-Pierre Blackburn To It

Photo: Radio-Canada

Good news, everyone! Harper has finalized the appointment for Jean-Pierre ‘I Hate Veterans’ Blackburn to the Palestinian-loving UN arts and culture body, UNESCO.

It doesn’t take a genius to put this one together.

Blackburn, a defeated MP who has no experience with education, arts or culture, is headed to sit on a body simply because the Harper government dislikes one of their decisions. God, he’s like the international Mike Duffy.

EthicalOil Boycotts Bananas, Canada Collectively Facepalms.

Yes, really.

I’ve written before about Ethical Oil and their magical campaign against logic.

Now, with Alykhan Velshi departed for a cushy job in the Prime Minister’s office and new-kid-on-the-block Kathryn Marshall has taken the reigns.

Marshall, according to her LinkedIn, has also worked for the Conservative government from time-to-time. She’s also worked for the right-wing Fraser institute, which receives funding from large oil and gas companies.

And now, she’s taking on bananas.

Yes, because Chiquita has chosen to not use tarsands oil in the shipment of their fruit, leading EthicalOil to proclaim “Unethical Chiquita supports blood oil!”

This makes me miss the days when they’d just dress up in niqabs outside the American embassy.

This is all, of course, ludicrous. Like I’ve written, this is a false choice. If Chiquita chooses not to use Albertan oil, they could use oil from Newfoundland, England, Norway, America - or virtually anywhere else.

The problem is that this boycott is bad for big oil.

It’s not bad for Alberta. It’s not bad for Canada. It’s bad for those oil companies operating in Alberta.

Okay, here’s an idea

Listen, I’m a tarsands pragmatist. We could shut it down, but it would be painfully costly. We could open it up for even more investment, and destroy the environment.

Or, we could be smart. 

There’s been no lack of discussion about raising royalties, decreasing foreign ownership of the tarsands and so on. 

What EthicalOil is trying to do is inspire patriotic pride in American enterprise that’s extracting resources and revenue from our land. That’s insane. So are their campaigns.

But what if the corporations working in the tarsands really were Canadian? What if we were able to enact all the environmental change we want?

Yes, the Canadian government should be running the tarsands.

Whether that means creating a crown corporation, taking a stake in one or two the existing corporations or taking federal control over Albertan lands, we have got to change the way things are happening in Alberta, and we need to make sure it’s benefiting the entire country.

Merely yammering on about the Newfoundlanders who found jobs in Fort Mac doesn’t cut it. That’s not economic development, that’s forced migration.

If Canadian oil was really ethical, and not just branded as such, we could actually occupy on the moral high-ground.

The First NDP Leadership Poll

So the National Post buried the lede a bit and embedded the results of our first NDP leadership poll in a story about Paul Dewar.

I mean, it’s sort of a non-poll, given that it’s a paltry sample size of 300 people who voted NDP in the last election. So, statistically, seven of those respondents are actually members. Not exactly representative.

But, like any good pundit, I will proceed to explain what the broad and important ramifications of the poll are.

Here’s the breakdown for the 163 decided respondents.

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