The NDP helped build Canada’s welfare state. Now, under pressure from Donald Trump’s tariffs and a shifting political terrain, the party risks electoral annihilation as voters split between technocratic centrism and right-wing populism.
The NDP helped build Canada’s welfare state. Now, under pressure from Donald Trump’s tariffs and a shifting political terrain, the party risks electoral annihilation as voters split between technocratic centrism and right-wing populism.
Even as I saw the government forcibly end the workers’ strike and the NDP break the confidence agreement over it, I saw it at the time more as political maneuvering, than an actual revival of the party. I wanted Singh and MPs to stand with striking workers literally rather than just figuratively. They say a lot of nice words like “we will fight for you”, but are always light on details about what they would do if they were in power, and we have not seen concrete action taken yet either (I get that legislature wise that’s not entirely their fault).
The Gaza/Free Palestine problem is also an Achilles’ heel wedge issue destroying the party as well. Canada and by extension the NDP can do little about that besides posturing, while it is both in International courts and being massively funded by the US. Most of our energy should be on problems we can solve rather than those we can’t, and we shouldn’t shun people completely because they don’t come with picture-perfect views on one issue or another, since that is what gets exploited by bad-faith actors and trolls.
I have real hope in the BCNDP, ABNDP, SKNDP and MBNDP for having actual ideas to solve actual issues of inequality, homeless and the housing crisis, healthcare. The ONDP is on the right track but still quite irrelevant…, and Singh seems to be following in their path rather than Western NDP style which I think we need some aspects of again. Tommy Douglas, a prominent Saskatchewan CCF leader and Premier after all.
In an election where the two leading parties are refusing to even acknowledge that genocide is being committed by a “friend” and ally, a country to which we continue to sell arms, I’d argue that the NDP’s stance on Gaza is probably the only thing they’ve done right in this election. Your suggestion that Canada can’t do anything is just plain wrong. We should, for example:
I’m all for trying to build a “big tent” party with a diversity of views, but that should stop at genocide enablers and apologists.
That’s a sound plan IMO and I’m in support of doing all of that. We can act in this way, but during the campaign the parties have been pressed to make a unilateral declaration on how the state will be organized, which is not within their capability.
Also note that Canada has already paid a toll with our aid workers being killed by Israeli forces, so we still have to keep that in mind as we proceed.
Party leaders can indicate their ideal goals, but there’s nothing any of the leaders can promise about the fate of Palestine itself, or whether it is free and democratic, or if a despot gets installed, since it relies on so many factors outside our control.
I never said that they should make promises about Palestine’s future. I only ask that anyone claiming to want to lead our country have the integrity to at least recognise that a genocide is being conducted, and that we are facilitating it.
No major disagreement from me.