The election results in Toronto tell a story the NDP does not want to hear

The NDP's Toronto federal election results really put the lie to a number of the narratives their partisans and organizers are trying to spin.

Already the line -- also adopted by a surprising number of "left" commentators outside the party -- that the NDP would now be more "powerful" even after losing over 600,000 votes and 20 seats because "it will hold the balance of power" has been shown to be an illusion.

Justin Trudeau very quickly ruled out any type of coalition and why wouldn't he. Only needing 13 votes to pass legislation he can turn to the Bloc Quebecois, the NDP or even the Conservatives in some cases. None of the parties will really want to fight another election too quickly for a variety of reasons so it is pretty safe to say the Liberals are likely to get at least a couple of years out of this minority without the need of explicitly pandering to the NDP at all even if you assume the NDP would have pushed a radical agenda in exchange for its support which I do not.

The case of the NDP backing austerity budgets during the minority Liberal government in Ontario shows that their price can usually be had pretty cheap.

There has also been a tendency in some quarters to try to say the party's lackluster results are due largely to "racist Quebec". Dave McKee deals with this bogus line very effectively in the People's Voice piece "ELECTION RESULTS NO EXCUSE FOR NATIONAL CHAUVINISM". As McKee notes:

Upon seeing that the NDP had been reduced to a single seat, CBC anchor opined, “It is fair to also ask whether Quebec was ready for a person of colour to be leading a party.” When Chantal Hebert pointed out that the Bloc Quebecois “ate [all of] the Liberals, the Conservatives and the NDP,” Barton quickly moved to another question. Whereas elsewhere in the country, the NDP’s poor results were packaged into somewhat understandable or even supportable excuses, its near wipeout in Quebec was immediately attributed to racism.
Never mind that Maxime Bernier, leader of the ultra-right racist People’s Party was trounced in the Quebec riding he’d held since 2006. Never mind that a key issue for Quebecers is supply management in agriculture, a system the Bloc squarely committed to defending. Never mind that the same CBC election broadcast included a clip of an anglophone Canadian saying of Jagmeet Singh that “people aren’t ready for his [points to her hair] religion.” And never mind the numerous incidents of racism that Singh directly encountered in English-speaking Canada, virtually all of which were celebrated as examples of the NDP leader’s “principled response” rather than condemned as examples of xenophobia.
The narrative that “Quebec is the racist core of Canada” is not confined to CBC or other media pundits. It has, unfortunately, been echoed by some on the political left, with comments ranging from a smug tsk-tsk to outright bigotry against Quebecers. Much of this discourse seeks cultural evidence by pointing to Quebec’s “Law on the Secularism of the State”, Bill 21, which bans most public workers from wearing or displaying religious symbols and is widely understood to be focused on Muslims. But the legislation has received a lot of opposition within Quebec.

Obviously NDP partisans are upset that the big upsurge in support they were insisting was occurring, despite the rather scant evidence for it, did not happen. If not scapegoating Quebec they have also turned to the notion that "at the last second" voters in places like Toronto changed their minds and voted Liberal out of fear swinging ridings to Trudeau that Singh and crew had been about to win.

To some extent this probably did occur, though as we will see this is a deeper trend than New Democrats might want to admit and cannot be used to explain everything away. Despite their protestations that the NDP was running on a truly "left" platform that was resonating with voters there was actually no indication that this was the case going into the election at all.

In fact, despite knowing when the election would occur the NDP was totally disorganized, its headquarters obsessively blocking or ghosting potential nominees for months meaning they had many ridings with no candidates just a few weeks or even days before the writ dropped, and far from having done the work to build momentum on the ground or in the streets that you need to do to promote a transformative platform the party was only saved from oblivion by the combination of a terrible outing by the Greens and a good couple of weeks from Singh.

The NDP's fate is always tied to electoral shifts like this as it eschews any meaningful movement orientation between elections of any kind and has been entirely electorally focused for decades. I still remember NDP partisans confident that Tom Mulcair's strength as a parliamentarian and during things like Question Period would bring victory and impress the people prior to the 2015 election.  Of course it didn't.

With a party's outcomes being based on the whims and short-term currents of bourgeois electoralism you can be up one week and down the next given the reality that most voters do not really think there is all that much that fundamentally separates parties like the Liberals and the NDP.

They are not wrong. Decades of the NDP in "power" in many provinces as well as in opposition have shown this to be a basically sound assessment regardless of whether the NDP brass have decided to cycle rhetorically more left or more centrist in this or that election and in response to this or that trend. So if the one looks the more likely to win than the other many progressives often don't really care either way.

That the NDP's various incarnations over the years have failed to build a serious base of support and left movement in places where they absolutely need it to "win" or to have any true influence on the country's political agenda is made nowhere more clear than in its results in Toronto.

Doug Nesbitt compiled a very telling chart of the NDP's fortunes in the city of Toronto since 1962 federally which I am using here with permission.

These are not relative numbers they are the NDP's vote and seat wins in absolute terms meaning that in 2019 the party only took just over 1,000 more votes in Toronto than it did in 1972 and won 5 fewer seats. As we all know, Toronto's population is much higher now and there were 5 fewer seats to win in 1972 so this looks even worse once that is factored in.

Not only did the Liberals win far more votes in Toronto in 2019 (681,551) so did the Conservatives (291,776). Only in the riding of Davenport did the NDP come close enough to winning for a last second shift to be a believable explanation for the loss.

Toronto is quite possibly the most diverse city in the world. It is politically progressive overall and given the pressures many Torontonians face in terms of housing, transit, the high cost of living and the consequences of social inequality and stratification, the failure of the NDP to build support that is not ephemeral in it tells a story the party does not seem to want to hear or learn from.

If you spend decades running on platforms that are just ever so slightly to the "left" of the Liberals, that are indistinguishable now from the Greens and that are packaged and framed with all the usual cynicism and "what is in the news this week" electoral thinking of bourgeois party politics then this is the likely result.

The NDP can try to spin the 2019 election as if it is detached from a broader reality all they want. But it is not and the fact that they are getting the same number of votes in Toronto that they did 47 years ago makes that pretty clear.

See also our other related pieces on the 2019 election results The NDP's election disaster shows again the need for something new on the left and No, the NDP losing over 600,000 votes and 20 seats is not a "victory"

Coalitions, Rewriting Constitutional History, NDP Spike or Surge and more -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week Six

This is the sixth and last of our weekly election round-ups of developments -- as well as the inane, bizarre, humorous and unusually facile -- in the great show that is mainstream bourgeois politics during the election of 2019.


The fifth was: NDP Spikes, Bloc Surges, May and Scheer Stall -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week Five

See also our The Left Chapter election editorial from this week with endorsements: Voting Communist, Tactical Voting and Conscientious Abstention -- Leftist Strategy in the 2019 Election

To coalition or not to coalition? 

The NDP, its leadership and its partisans, love to tell us over and again that there really is no difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives. Except, that is, when it comes to minority parliaments and coalition time, because then they seem to know full well that there is a difference.

With the polls indicating that a minority parliament is very likely, and with Jagmeet Singh and the NDP in a position to possibly hold the balance of power, both Singh and Justin Trudeau have been musing in various ways about hitching their parliamentary futures together to provide sunshine, lollipops and "progressive" government.

Needless to say, Andrew Scheer is unimpressed.

Looking to rally the troops Scheer has been warning that an NDP-Liberal coalition would be far more interesting and radical than I can assure you it actually would be. He has also been trying to rewrite parliamentary history and tradition to claim that the party with the most seats gets to try to form a government when this is not the case as anyone who ever took a public school civics course knows. The former Prime Minister of the previous House gets the first attempt to govern.

But even this absurdity does not go far enough for Scheer in trying to de-legitimize how the Canadian parliament works. The Conservatives are also suggesting in fundraising emails that if the NDP and Liberals governed together despite Scheer winning more seats it would amount to a de facto coup.

Seriously.

Of course, this is total idiocy. A minority parliament is the "democratic will of Canadians" in the parliamentary/electoral sense. Presumably Scheer is looking for something to get the base all angry about when the Governor General turns to Trudeau first in the event no one gets a majority.

Could it be that Scheer wants a distraction? 

It seems Andrew Scheer is doing his best to make the argument for strategic voting Trudeau wants. Another part of the reason the Conservatives want to cast doubt on the legitimacy of any NDP - Liberal collaboration is that they really have no natural partners to work with in a minority situation. They will either have to hope to govern bill by bill or come to rest on the backing of the Bloc Quebecois in many cases should the Bloc do as well Monday as it seems it might.

Is there an NDP "surge"?

There is no doubt that a combination of the Trudeau brownface scandal, a mediocre Liberal campaign and poor Green campaign, and a better outing by Singh than many anticipated led to a spike in support for the NDP in the wake of the debates. The party went from as low as 12 - 13% going in to around 18 - 19% now. This has likely staved off what looked like a possible annihilation election for them.

Keen to boost the "surging Singh" narrative various reactionaries like the Toronto Sun's reprehensible Tarek Fatah, the vile Brian Lilley and Lorrie Goldstein, and the conservative "pollster" Nick Kouvalis  penned articles suddenly pushing the NDP for rather obvious strategic reasons. Rather shamefully a number of NDP partisans online shared these.

But is the surge real? Insofar as it lifted the party back to being a player in the election again, yes. But it does seem to have stalled now and neither the Liberals nor the Bloc are collapsing as in 2011 so it would not appear any kind of Orange Crush is coming.

Election night will show to what extent their campaign turned the tide.

Jordan Boswell should be dumped by the NDP

Love me I'm a Liberal 

Other notable articles:

Disgraceful dog-whistling: Conservative Candidate Warns Voters Trudeau Might Name Jagmeet Singh His ‘Foreign’ Affairs Minister

Four Green nominees in Quebec made Islamophobic comments, party says

The biggest winner in Canada's election is the military

Dude, where’s my bus? How the election failed public transit

Group looks to help anti-abortion advocates get jobs working for new MPs

NDP targets Greens with misleading claims

10 Questions for Andrew Taylor – Communist

Federal Election 2019: Toronto-Danforth candidate Ivan Byard, Communist Party, answers our questions

NDP Spikes, Bloc Surges, May and Scheer Stall -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week Five

This is the fifth of our weekly Friday election round-ups of developments -- as well as the inane, bizarre, humorous and unusually facile -- in the great show that is mainstream bourgeois politics during the election of 2019.


The fourth was: Scheer's Very Bad Week, PPC At It Again and more -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week Four

Debates, campaigns stop NDP's fall see Bloc surge

As always after such events there was almost as much debate as to who won the last English and French leader debates as there was in the debates themselves! There seems to be a consensus that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh had a good night at the English debate while the French one was stronger for Trudeau and Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-François Blanchet.

In truth, while Singh likely had the best lines at the English debate the format was terrible with far too many moderators and a set-up that ensured much of the time was wasted with leaders talking all over each other. The French debate went better in terms of format but was not a good night for either Singh or Elizabeth May, the leader of the Greens. Most of its most interesting moments were in exchanges between Justin Trudeau, Andrew Scheer and Blanchet.

The importance of debates are often overstated by partisans of the parties who are far more interested in them than most of the public is. They do often serve to reinforce existing trends though and this seems to have happened here as well.

This is bad news for both May and Scheer.

The Greens came into the election really surging but have run a very poor campaign as these things go, with much of the wind coming out of their sails. May was not great in either debate and the threat the Greens posed to displace the NDP as Canada's third party and as the "progressive" left flank of the Liberal party seems to have faded.

Blanchet and the Bloc, meanwhile, are offering Quebec voters a nationalist and Quebec focused alternative to the federalist options. A solid campaign and debate performances have revived their fortunes largely at the expense of the Conservatives and, to a lesser degree, the NDP. Scheer helped this along by making it very clear he had something to hide on the abortion issue in the first debate, making it much easier for small 'c' conservative voters in Quebec who are not socially conservative to begin to view Blanchet as a natural fit.

Unfortunately for New Democrat partisans who heralded Singh's performance and the party's small bump in the polls as the beginning of a Layton style surge, the conditions are very different from those in 2011. Layton benefited from the collapse of the Liberal vote due to the horrible campaign of Michael Ignatieff and from voter fatigue with the Bloc in Quebec.

The Liberal vote is not collapsing this time -- at least so far and there is not much time to go -- and the Bloc is surging. What Singh's good campaign and debates has done, it seems, is to bring the NDP back from the brink of annihilation largely at the expense of some of the Liberal left vote and what was Green momentum going in. The NDP still stands to lose almost all or all of its seats in Quebec though it may now hold or even gain a bit elsewhere.

Singh's finest moment?

"Why is it that we ask the question about whether or not Indigenous people should have clean drinking water?"


After pointing out the billions the government squandered on tax cuts and pipelines NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has what is likely his finest moment when he turns the tables on a stupid media question.


Of course, Singh has his own hypocritical problems when it comes to Indigenous rights. His unwillingness to take a clear stance on the LNG project being pushed by the NDP government in BC is just one example of this. 

Related: Jagmeet Singh commits to funding clean drinking water in Indigenous communities

 Judy Sgro said what?!?

Liberal candidate for Humber River-Black Creek Judy Sgro set a new standard for liberal white cluelessness with her comments about the Trudeau brownface scandal to a Toronto radio station interviewer.

Sgro actually tried to claim that her Black constituents were sending him more "love" for what he had done! Seriously:

But let me tell you that in knocking on doors and being in the plazas and talking to people to make sure that I’m as sensitive as I need to be, if I missed something … and those in the Black community have told me how much more love they have for the prime minister, that he wanted to have a black face — he took great pride in that too and that it’s the media that have blown this into something that it shouldn’t be, and that they are very supportive and they’re actually looking for finding more ways that they can show how much they support and love the prime minister.

She has apologized for this astonishing and grotesque comment and remains a Liberal candidate despite it.

Liberals show, yet again, that their commitment to "reconciliation" is rhetorical

Shamefully, though predictably, the Trudeau government took a timeout from electioneering to challenge "a landmark human rights ruling to compensate apprehended First Nations children harmed by the on-reserve child welfare system and under-funded child and family services."

This move "could block billions in compensation to Indigenous children" that is long overdue.

As outgoing NDP MP Romeo Saganash says, "I never want to hear one single Liberal pronounce the word Reconciliation, ever again!”

Unfortunately he is unlikely to get his wish.

Other readings on this issue:

By fighting a compensation ruling, the government denies First Nations children justice — again

A Brief History of Canada’s Failure to Fund Indigenous Kids Equitably

Taking on Canada's "Minister of War"

As Ontario Communist Party leader Drew Garvie noted in an excellent recent article about Canada's odious imperialist Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland:

The hypocrisy of Canadian foreign policy under Freeland and the Trudeau Liberals cannot be explained by a love of human rights or humanitarianism. Their policies can only be explained by Canadian business interests, especially mining and arms deals, and their ever-closer alliance with an increasingly belligerent US government.
The world cannot afford another four years of Chrystia Freeland and neither can Canada. The Trudeau government’s pledge to raise military spending by 73% over the next eight years, prompted by Trump’s request to NATO countries to pay up, will result in deeper austerity and suffering at home and more war abroad. Freeland represents the worst the Liberal Party has in the way of war mongers and she must be defeated as a step towards winning an independent foreign policy of peace and disarmament.

You can watch Garvie, who is running against her federally, take her on at a local debate in the video below:



Other notable articles:

What a shock...a disgusting party of racists and bigots turns out to be a disgusting party of racists and bigots: People's Party won't take action against N.S. candidate who called Islam 'pure evil'

LOL! The knives are already out: Conservatives Reportedly Might Already Be Shopping For A Scheer Replacement

Rumours Of A Suppressed Globe Story About Justin Trudeau Are Bullshit

Green Party drops anti-abortion candidate in Ontario riding

Andrew Scheer's claim about foreign aid deemed false

Tossed Tory candidate ‘changes everything,’ with two-way fight shaping up in Burnaby North-Seymour

Singh lays out the NDP’s priorities for next Parliament

WHERE HAS LABOUR BEEN DURING THIS FEDERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN?

Ottawa-Vanier Communist Party candidate looks to fight poverty, tax the rich

Scheer's Very Bad Week, PPC At It Again and more -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week Four

This is the fourth of our weekly Friday election round-ups of developments -- as well as the inane, bizarre, humorous and unusually facile -- in the great show that is mainstream bourgeois politics during the election of 2019.



The third was:  PPC Goes Ever Lower, Climate Fails, Brownface Aftermath and more -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week Three

Scheer's very bad week

Andrew Scheer spent the last week doing his best to make sure that any residual fallout from the Trudeau brownface scandal would fade away with one self-inflicted wound after another.

First there is the bizarre and somewhat humorous revelation that he trumped up his credentials as an insurance broker. Of all the many things one could fudge about on a "resume" for public office this has to be one of the most flatline and boring bourgeois options to pick.

Then came the French language TV debate where it was hard to pick a winner amidst the deadening boredom, but very easy to pick a loser that being Scheer. He performed poorly and was unusually wooden even by his standards and seemed terribly evasive on the issue of abortion rights. While during the debate itself he refused to state his personal views on abortion -- even though they are widely known -- he did tell everyone what they already know the next day. Really makes his "personally pro-life but will not reopen the debate if elected PM" line sound even less trustworthy.

This was only compounded by his apparent inability to name for a reporter "a single policy in your platform that you believe shows that you do support women’s rights?”.

Finally comes the revelation that Scheer holds American citizenship. This in-and-of-itself would really be no big deal -- not sure why anyone would have a problem with someone having dual citizenship -- were it not for the fact that he appeared to take issue with the former Governor General  Michaelle Jean holding it in 2005. 

Meanwhile Scheer tried to guard his right flank against the People's Party of Canada (PPC) with an appallingly reactionary pledge to cut foreign aid spending by 25 per cent. 

 For a laugh also see: The Conservatives Say Scheer Won The French Debate & Quebecers Are Ripping Apart The Post.

PPC on an ignorant roll

Last week we saw a number of examples of PPC bigotry and racism at work. Apparently the good folks in the party felt they did not want to let this momentum slip away!

Thus we learned that two PPC candidates tweeted a far right cartoon "of Jagmeet Singh wearing [a] turban with [a] bomb on it". Despite this being clearly racist -- and despite Singh having been the target of racism on a public street related to his turban in Montreal this week -- neither one has been dropped by Bernier.

Just to make sure everyone knows which side he is on, Bernier also retweeted this fake poster approvingly:

 Thanks Max. There might have been a few folks left who were under the illusion you were against fascism.

See also: Violent clashes break out at Maxime Bernier event in Hamilton

Not to be outdone...

Of course, the BQ would not want the PPC to hog the nativist spotlight in Quebec now would they?

Yes, the tweet actually calls for people to choose women and men who "are like them" and then ends by saying "Tomorrow belongs to you"!!!

Now, presumably they were hearkening back to the old PQ slogan of "Demain nous appartient", but given the rest of the statement it reminded a lot of people more of this:





When a party says it is not on the left...I take them at their word:

Not satire...honest.

One headline captures why when it comes to climate change, despite all the progressive rhetoric, the Liberals are a joke. 

Other notable stories:

NDP commits $10B for 500,000 new child-care spaces across Canada

NDP would allow new parents to receive full EI benefit over shortened leave, Singh says

Green party proposes a 'robot tax' when companies replace workers with machines

LOL!: He thought he was a candidate for the Marijuana Party. He was wrong

Communist candidate on the ballot in Nanaimo-Ladysmith

Communist Party leader says Canada is ‘ripe for socialism’

'Willing to be honest': Central Nova Communist candidate Chris Frazer says party will seek to address real needs

We Asked Candidates in Climate-Exposed Ridings for Their Emergency Plans

NEO-NAZI PARTY ACTIVE IN SCARBOROUGH

Manning Centre a main financial backer for network of ‘Proud’ Facebook pages

See also: PPC Goes Ever Lower, Climate Fails, Brownface Aftermath and more -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week Three

Brownface, Scheer Hypocrisy, the PPC and more -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week Two

This is the second of our weekly Friday election round-ups of developments -- as well as the inane, bizarre, humorous and unusually facile -- in the great show that is mainstream bourgeois politics during the election of 2019.



The first was: Planes, Rhinos, Lackluster Debates and more -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week One

Trudeau brownface and blackface photos surface

Week two of the federal election campaign was puttering along much as one would have expected until the bombshell news that photographs and video of Justin Trudeau in blackface and brownface had surfaced. To say that this upended the campaigns as they had been unfolding to that point would be a huge understatement.

Many on the "left" and self-styled "progressives" -- most of them white -- suddenly became very forgiving of past transgressions that they would almost certainly have denounced had it been a Conservative candidate or Scheer for example. With a clueless privilege born of having grown up never having experienced systemic racism a lot of people who really should know better tried to paint Trudeau's actions as somehow no big deal. Or maybe as simply "youthful" ignorance that happened long ago in a Canada apparently far, far away when white people didn't get that blackface was bad.

Of course, this is total nonsense. Trudeau was 29 and a drama teacher at an elite private school at the time of the first incident that came to light. He was not some kid, he was teaching kids. It was also 2001, not 1951 or 1971.

If he didn't understand that black and brownface were wrong in 2001, why didn't he and how didn't he, because virtually all other liberally minded people certainly did and the opposition to the use of blackface due to its inherent racism was decades old.

In fact, the fight against racism was a major issue in Vancouver at the time and -- in what is a must read piece on the context of the photos -- Stuart Parker has written that "Putting Trudeau’s brownface in its historical context only makes it worse":

First, race and racism were front and centre in Vancouver’s public square. Nobody in Vancouver was living in a post-racial society. Anyone remotely aware in Vancouver in the 1990s, when Trudeau arrived on the west coast, would have known himself to be in a city in profound conflict over a rising tide of racism.
Second, as an actor and drama teacher, he would have known about the conflicts over Jim Crow–style productions that were tearing Vancouver’s theatrical community apart and forcing everyone onto sides. It is clear to me, from the images of him back in the day, that Trudeau chose a side. And it was not the side my family was on.

Trudeau's actions do matter and they are indicative of a person who when he was a full grown adult and a teacher simply did not care about doing something that he surely must of known many people and people from racialized communities felt was deeply offensive and racist.

That says something about the man and what it says is not good.

In the wake of the photos NDP leader Jagmeet Singh gave a very powerful response that can and should be heard in full at this link.

Other pieces worth reading on this issue are "Even before #brownface, the 2019 federal election was always about race", "'Yes, that is racist': How Toronto is reacting to photos showing Trudeau in brownface", and "There Is A Second Photo Of Justin Trudeau In Brownface".

Racism is a daily lived experience for millions of people in Canada. It is a serious issue, it does matter and it has devastating, violent and tragic outcomes. On the same day the news of the brownface photo broke the CBC posted this piece "'It's not OK': Frustrated over use of N-word, Sask. mother speaks out" that stands as a stark reminder that we have a long way to go.

Sheer hypocrisy

 As long as someone takes responsibility for what they've said, and addresses the fact that in 2019 some things that may have been said in the past are inappropriate today, that if anything that they've ever said in the past caused any type of hurt or disrespect to one community or another and have apologized for that, I accept that.

One has to wonder just how profoundly Conservative leader Andrew Scheer must regret saying these words mere days before the Trudeau brownface scandal while defending his own bumper crop of Tory ignoramuses.

Of course, given his appearances at Yellow Vest rallies, his defence of Faith Goldy pal and Conservative candidate Justina McCaffrey, and his positions on any number of issues, any outrage from Scheer about Trudeau's past actions is a farce. And many Canadians are pointing that out: "Scheer Dragged Trudeau Over His Brownface Photo But Canadians Are Calling It Hypocrisy"

 Journalist Jonathan Goldsbie brought up this inconvenient fact for Scheer on Twitter:

It seems very likely that this will not be the last skeleton in the Conservative closet when it comes to blackface.

Bernier's PPC ousts a candidate...for demanding the party oppose racism!

Meanwhile in the People's Party it is apparently a faux pas to ask that racism and white supremacy be opposed at all. 

Coquitlam–Port Coquitlam candidate Brian Misera said he was tired of being called a Nazi. He posted a series of videos on Twitter Sept. 10, calling on the party — and Leader Maxime Bernier — to distance itself from racism. He said he was trying to find out why “there is human garbage in our ranks,” saying it’s not enough to just “expunge racist idiots.”
In a video, he had said the party needed to be clear about how they are different from hate groups, or he would leave...The party removed him from its ranks the next day...

Despite this and despite the historical precedent that marginal parties polling low with no MPs who had ever been elected under their banner have not been invited to participate in televised leader's debates, Maxime Bernier will be allowed to. Liberalism is always the handmaiden of the fascism that digs its grave.

More musical monstrosities

Last week we all had the joy of hearing the Conservative campaign song penned by a songwriter best known for crappy tunes that were hits when I was a teenager.

Not to be outdone the Bloc Québécois this week released the dreadful Le Québec c’est nous. You can listen to it here. A warning though, once heard it cannot be unheard.

Meanwhile the band the Strumbellas have lent the Liberals their song One Hand Up as a campaign tune. Unfortunately when they did their own translation of it into French instead of calling for people to raise their hands it called for them to remove them. 

Petition to prevent the ouster of yet another Palestinian activist from the NDP candidate ranks

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East are trying to counter a campaign by B’nai Brith:

B’nai Brith is calling the NDP to drop their candidate for Ville Saint-Laurent, Ms. Miranda Gallo, because of her activism for Palestinian human rights. Gallo has been an employee with CJPME since 2017 and has been a powerful voice for Palestinian human rights for years. B’nai Brith has attacked Gallo primarily for her support for BDS: the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement pressuring Israel to respect Palestinian human rights.

You can sign their petition calling on the NDP to keep her as a candidate here.

 Burnaby North-Seymour Conservatives go completely off the cliff...

The Burnaby North-Seymour Conservatives are on roll of posting the distasteful and misleading.

This week it came to light that they completely misquoted Rick Mercer in a meme:

They also appeared to call for Trudeau's death in this one:

Charming bunch. Their obviously stellar candidate is Heather Leung.

Other notable stories:

"The problem is capitalism. The solution is socialism." -- Communist Party campaign launches in Toronto

"People & Nature Before Profit!" -- Communist Party releases its federal election platform leaflet

 It seems that Green leader Elizabeth May's attempt to use history as metaphor might need a little more research. 

Trudeau, Singh target auto sector votes with different takes on new NAFTA

Conservatives’ on-campus flyers maligning ‘left-wing’ professors anger academics, faculty representatives

The revolving door between the bourgeois "progressive" parties of little difference: NDP recruits former Quebec Green Party leader to take on NDPer who defected to Greens

NDP promises free dental care for households making under $70K starting in 2020