The hypocrisy of our leaders around social distancing is reckless

Site C, BC

In the past couple of weeks reports have started to come in of freshly empowered cops and by-law officers seemingly going overboard enforcing often vague new rules around social distancing. In Police and bylaw harassment is not a coronavirus cure we noted that without proper oversight and control police will seize on even necessary restrictions to behave in draconian and arbitrary ways and that this is certain to have a greater impact on racialized and marginalized communities as well as on those living in poverty.

It already has as with the grotesque example of police in Hamilton, Ontario ticketing homeless people.

There are also mystifying examples like the Oakville, Ontario family hit with an $880 ticket after going rollerblading even though they all lived together and were nowhere near anyone in an area that was not marked as closed. This is obvious overreach and the enforcement officer was, frankly, acting like a bully.

To excuse such pettiness various politicians point to the fact that there are people recklessly flaunting the rules in anti-social ways. There was even a "demonstration" by a group of conspiracy theorists in Vancouver who were later labelled quite rightly as "covidiots" by twitter.

Clearly intentionally dangerous behaviour like that is unacceptable.

The trouble is that all around the crackdowns and pleas for social distancing by the political class hovers a dark cloud of hypocrisy.

Some of the hypocrisy is on a personal level. Thus we have Justin Trudeau, despite "repeatedly urging Canadians to stay home for Easter amid the coronavirus pandemic, even if it meant not seeing their families" crossing the border of Ontario and Quebec to do exactly that with his. At a cottage no less though authorities have begged people to not go to their cottages.

Then there was Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, Liberal B.C. cabinet minister Carla Qualtrough, and Conservative Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer, his wife and their five children all practicing the opposite of social distancing on a small jet to Ottawa on Friday. Not a good look.

Far worse is the fact that millions of Canadian workers cannot practice social distancing in any meaningful sense for large parts of the day as their jobs have been deemed as "essential". Many of these are among the lowest paid workers in the service sector at grocery stores, chain pharmacies and the like.

To some degree this is unavoidable. People have to be able to purchase food and medicine, though it does not necessarily follow that they need to be able to do so in the relatively laissez-faire way that is for the most part happening. This lack of structure is entirely meant to put the corporations and the economy ahead of the health and safety of workers and the public.

But even accepting that some of these stores need to be open, and that some services like the mail need to continue, huge construction projects are being allowed to proceed when there is nothing "essential" about them under these circumstances at all.

These include projects like Site C in British Columbia where literally hundreds of workers not only work in close proximity to each other but also live together in man camps. The BC NDP government even rescinded the state of emergency that the City of Fort St. John voted to implement to allow construction to proceed.

As the new BC Ecosocialist Party pointed out, this does put the foolishness of  the "Covidiots" into a bit of perspective.

The demands for people to stay at home already do not fall anywhere near evenly in their burden. It is one thing for wealthy or upper middle class folks drinking cocktails and wine on the patio or in the yard to not leave home and quite another for poor or working families living in overcrowded apartments to do so.

Due to overzealous enforcement and confusing "rules" some people have told media that they are scared to go outside at all lest they get in trouble. Alternately they have to to get to work.

The problem with such obviously egregious disparities and with government and political hypocrisy both small and large is that it undermines not only public health efforts to fight the spread of Covid-19 but also public confidence that our "leaders" actually mean what they say and are practicing what they preach.

Trudeau dodges, Horgan and Singh contort on Wet'suwet'en, the RCMP and UNDRIP

On the same day NDP leader Jagmeet Singh revealed that he was open to Canada footing the security bill for Royal castaways Harry and Meghan, he also came a little more out of the shadows in de facto support of fellow NDPer and BC Premier John Horgan's colonialist line on Wet'suwet'en and the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

Singh has tried to deflect any blame for the standoff from Horgan and his social democratic swamp of deepening hypocrisy by expressing "concern" over the actions of the RCMP which he paints as the fault of the federal Trudeau government.


Hence, as we have pointed out before, the farce of tweets like this one:

First, Singh himself, unlike the federal Green Party, is not actually yet calling for the RCMP to withdraw from Wet'suwet'en territory. He has only said they “should be careful,” and, as we all know, that is sure to make the RCMP think twice before acting.

Further, Singh is now echoing the misleading  propaganda of folks like Horgan and Trudeau that tries to divide and conquer with rhetoric of how "“the vast majority” of elected First Nations officials and communities along the proposed route support the project" as if that somehow overrides the concerns and opposition of the Hereditary Chiefs who do not. This is an old and ugly tactic.

It is difficult to reconcile this with Singh's role as federal NDP Indigenous affairs critic, especially given ongoing protests such as the temporary occupation of the office for the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources on Wednesday and the statement of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) that unequivocally noted that the "Wet’suwet’en Jurisdiction and Governance Must be Upheld". 

Horgan has made his commitment to pushing the project through very clear. He was profoundly dismissive of the Hereditary Chiefs in his comments on Monday saying "I'm not going to drop everything I'm doing to come running when someone is saying they need to speak with me...I'm not being disrespectful, I'm just saying be realistic here" as if the chiefs are somehow cranks or lobbyists demanding unreasonable attention from the imperial overlord.

Of course, were they actually industry lobbyists Horgan probably would meet with them, though the $10,000 dinner fee getting a one-on-one with him for resource industry corporate talking heads that was the price tag back in 2016 is not the option it once was.

Horgan also tried to say that his government's alleged commitment to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) does not apply in this case since it was "meant to be forward looking, not backward looking" as the CBC paraphrased it, meaning projects that violate it that have already been approved must barrel ahead.

"There is no negotiating to be done," he claimed. 

Perhaps sensing that this is not playing terribly well with significant sections of the NDP's voting base, Horgan did soften this stance somewhat when later on Monday he "sent a letter to Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief Nam’oks on Monday, saying he would like to send the province’s minister of Indigenous relations and reconciliation" for talks in his stead.

The NDP leadership both federally and in BC should be concerned with the federal Green Party being far stronger in its support for both the rights of the Hereditary Chiefs and the principles of UNDRIP.

In a press release Green Party MP Paul Manly said:

The fact that the RCMP have been sent in shows that this is a political failure on the part of the provincial and federal governments. The Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs provided alternative routes to Coastal GasLink that would have been acceptable to them as a pipeline corridor. Coastal GasLink decided that it did not want to take those acceptable options and instead insisted on a route that drives the pipeline through ecologically pristine and culturally important areas...
...Greens call on B.C. Premier Horgan to meet with the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs as quickly as possible. We also want the B.C. government to address this situation through the lens of UNDRIP. Since UNDRIP was brought in to address historic injustice, how can it be ignored in order to allow this injustice to persist? The Wet'sowet'en hereditary chiefs have jurisdiction over their traditional territories, and they clearly have not given their consent.

Green Party Parliamentary Leader Elizabeth May stated further that “British Columbia recently enacted new legislation in line with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). This situation undermines the constitutional role played by the hereditary chiefs."

Prime Minister Trudeau, of course, is very happy to leave the ball entirely in Horgan's court stating “It’s a provincial project and provincial processes. It is being well taken care of by the provincial government.” This is mildly clever, if typically disingenuous.

Still, despite all of Horgan's attempts to claim matters as somehow out of his hands due to the "rule of law", it is a provincial project that would never have gone ahead without the NDP offering up billions of dollars in tax and other incentives and issuing all the necessary permits. The NDP provided all of these incentives despite also turning around and telling BC teachers that their "demands for (a) pay increase don’t square with balanced budget".

Meanwhile the RCMP, having set up roadblocks, now also "admits it’s deploying “air assets” to monitor Indigenous land defenders". Matters are coming to a head and if history is any guide the RCMP, when it acts, will do so with great violence, threats, arrests and brutality. Future progressives will likely not judge Trudeau, Horgan or Singh too kindly unless they take steps now to force a change of course.

NDP partisans have long sought to portray the Green Party as little more than "conservatives with composters". Whatever the accuracy of that moniker, Singh and Horgan had best watch out as they are increasingly -- along with the best past efforts of former Alberta Premier Rachel Notley -- making the NDP look like the corporate apologists the Liberals are, only with dusty old copies of the Regina Manifesto hidden in a desk drawer somewhere.

Further Readings: 

Horgan, Trudeau and Singh show once more "progressive" rhetoric about reconciliation is a sham

Open Letter to Jagmeet Singh regarding Trans Mountain, Site C and Coastal GasLink

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

Voting Communist, Tactical Voting and Conscientious Abstention -- Leftist Strategy in the 2019 Election

With less than a week to go until election day in Canada, anti-capitalist leftists are in the challenging position yet again that no anti-capitalist candidate -- either an independent or affiliated to a political party -- is going to get elected next Monday.

While there are partisans, and perhaps even a candidate or two, of the NDP who claim it is anti-capitalist this cannot be taken at all seriously given the party's program and history both in office provincially and opposition federally.

Keeping these limitations in mind we need to take a look at what strategy and tactics left socialists and communists can and should adopt, in our opinion, depending on factors such as where they live and what they are trying to accomplish by their involvement in the electoral process.

Vote Communist in 31 ridings and other individual endorsements

In the 31 ridings in this election that do have a Communist Party of Canada candidate they deserve our vote and support. The Communists and their leader Elizabeth Rowley have run an excellent, principled campaign on a comprehensive, irrefutably anti-capitalist platform. We have looked at this before in the posts "People & Nature Before Profit!" -- Communist Party releases its federal election platform leaflet and "The problem is capitalism. The solution is socialism." -- Communist Party campaign launches in Toronto.

Voting Communist sends a clear, direct message to the mainstream "progressive" parties rejecting their bankrupt platforms that do not go nearly far enough in tackling fundamental issues facing us such as grotesque levels of inequality and the threat posed by the climate emergency.

If you are in a riding with an independent or non-Communist party candidate who is also running on an explicitly anti-capitalist platform we would advocate a vote for them as well.

There are also a handful of individual candidates for the mainstream parties with a compelling enough narrative to deserve consideration.

Mumilaaq Qaqqaq (NDP) running in Nunavut would add an exciting and necessary voice to parliament. Sending Rudy Turtle (NDP), Chief of the Ontario Grassy Narrows First Nation, to Ottawa from Kenora would be a call for politicians to move beyond the hollow rhetoric of reconciliation and towards actually doing something to deal with the ongoing, brutal consequences of government colonialism, racism and indifference towards Indigenous peoples. Early on in this campaign the bullies at B'nai Brith tried to get the NDP to dump Miranda Gallo, who is running in Saint-Laurent, due to her activism on behalf of Palestinians. Electing her would be a rejection of the new McCarthyism that some have sought to impose around Israeli Apartheid.

Strategic and tactical voting versus conscientious abstention

What to do in ridings where there is no Communist or anti-capitalist candidate?

While the Liberals certainly always try to scare you into it, there is no serious leftist case to be made for strategic voting for Trudeau to stop the Conservatives. The Liberal party is a profoundly cynical, ugly, imperialist Bay St party that, while better than the Conservatives in many important and significant ways, is totally undeserving of support. The Trudeau government has reflected this cynicism while in power. There can be no greater symbol of why Trudeau and his government must be rejected entirely than the odious twin pillars of it, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Minister of Finance Bill Morneau. In no riding in the country should the Liberal get a left vote.

Tactical voting for the Greens or New Democrats in ridings where they have a chance of defeating the Conservative candidate specifically (as opposed to each other or the Liberal) is something to consider.

However, outside of practical riding by riding concerns about stopping Scheer neither of these parties deserves actual support from a leftist perspective and voting for them is an implicit indication of some type of support.

 The Greens and the NDP are not that different from each other in any real sense, their platforms are deeply and profoundly flawed and hypocritical to such an extent that you can count on their partisans to distort them to make them appear better, and neither party is opposed to either capitalism or the global western imperialist order in any meaningful way at all. In an age of desperate inequality, unrestrained western interventionism and an existential environmental threat posed by global capitalism, this is not a minor point.

Those on the left who still insist that somehow we must support the NDP due to its "historic" ties to labour or the working-class are engaging in a fiction that may once have had some meaning but is more and more silly and out-of-touch with objective circumstances now with each passing year.

In fact it is both depressing and informative that so many on the left have found one excuse or another to feign enthusiasm for Jagmeet Singh and his lackluster campaign that has benefited only by comparison with the tired Trudeau and the even more lackluster campaign this time out by Elizabeth May.

Any objective look would show that advocating for the NDP or pretending its platform is somehow "leftist" is simply getting on board with another dead end like those in 2015, 2011, 2008, 2006, 2004 and on and on and on.

The party has tried, rather unconvincingly, to slightly mimic the tone of Bernie Sanders (himself a deeply flawed candidate) and the NDP has proven record of never doing what it says it is going to when or if it wins anything. It is worth remembering how the party shifted dramatically rightward under Jack Layton -- an allegedly "leftist" leader -- especially after "winning" opposition.

Ironically, despite the supposed NDP partisan contempt of the Liberals and insistence that they are no different from the Conservatives, the main goal of the NDP now seems to be to win enough seats to make a deal with Trudeau!

In a riding where the Greens or the NDP have no chance of winning or where the Conservatives pose no threat why reward their liberalism, inherent imperialism and fundamental embrace of capitalism? What will this achieve in advancing the cause of working people and socialism? Nothing.

In fact, leftists continuing to waste their energies on the NDP (or now the Greens) despite decades of evidence in and out of power that this is a totally bankrupt dead end can only be seen as tremendously futile and counter-productive. A kind of crutch and excuse to which many return that prevents the emergence of a serious mass anti-capitalist alternative.

And just because the Liberals are genuinely awful and the Greens are only aspiring to be as milquetoast as the NDP has been does not make Andrea Horwath disciple Singh anymore interesting or "leftist".

In a riding where there is no Communist or anti-capitalist candidate, where the Greens or NDP have no chance, where it is a Liberal - Conservative race or where the Conservatives pose no threat we would suggest considering a conscientious, principled abstention and rejection of the sham of mainstream politics by either staying home or by spoiling your ballot.

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

The Greens, NDP Nomination Debacles, Jagmeet Singh & more -- August and September on The Left Chapter in review

August and September saw 65 posts of various kinds on The Left Chapter.

These included new installments in our always popular vintage photography posts like Olympic Soviet Kiev -- 12 Panoramic Views of the City 1980 and 17 Panoramic Views of Soviet Kharkov 1984. There were, in addition to the ones on the top six list, a number of political posts that came close to making the list like "The problem is capitalism. The solution is socialism." -- Communist Party campaign launches in Toronto and Corporate names for public stations are as dangerous as they are idiotic and absurd.

We started our weekly Canadian federal election roundups the most recent of which was PPC Goes Ever Lower, Climate Fails, Brownface Aftermath and more -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week Three. We also launched a new feature called the Daily LIFT the first of which was "Hey, quit that! Ain't you fellows got the vote?" -- Daily LIFT #1.

There was also our annual music post 10 Best Songs of 2019...So Far.

Our number one post (in terms of hits) was from a contributor. Thanks very much to all our readers and contributors.

If you have an article, editorial, analysis, recipe or story you would like to contribute there are details on how to do so on our Submissions page as well as at the end of this post.

Without any further ado, here are the top six posts, in terms of hits, from August and September.

1) Green Party RA President steps down citing "racism", demands Green leadership apologize to Jagmeet Singh

By Ammario Reza

The president of the Saint John East provincial Green Party riding association has stepped down from his position late Sunday night. In a Facebook post Kevin (Kage) O’Donnell blasted the Greens for being what he described as “a party that allows people who promote...racism”

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2) Sid Ryan's nomination run in Oshawa yet another federal NDP debacle

Just over two months ago the Parkdale NDP engaged in an epic debacle of a nomination meeting whose optics were appalling by the standards of any observer outside of the party who is not a bigot. The photos from it, frankly, are shocking and we have looked at them before on The Left Chapter in several posts.

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3) Singh's statement on Trudeau's brownface controversy needs to be heard in full

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh's powerful comments on Wednesday night about the Trudeau brownface controversy need to be heard in full. Since the photo came to light many have sought to diminish the racism inherent in wearing blackface or brownface and seem oblivious to the pain and hurt it causes for people who have faced systemic racism their entire lives.

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4) The cat is out of the bag with the Sid Ryan and NDP vetting fiasco

Sometimes, in politics and messaging, less is more. That is certainly a lesson the folks leading the shitshow at the federal NDP HQ might want to learn. Fast.

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5) Janet-Lynne Durnford's NDP nomination story a Kafkaesque travesty


We have little more to add on the ugly reality of the NDP's dictatorial streak and drive as well as exposing the travesty regarding Sid Ryan, but it is worth sharing this post by Janet-Lynne Durnford who was trying to run for the NDP nomination in Simcoe North.

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6) Two months later, let's have a look at the shameful Parkdale NDP nomination fiasco again

Two months have passed since the utter, shameful debacle that was the Parkdale NDP's federal nomination meeting and there have still been no serious answers or explanations as to what happened from the federal NDP power brokers.

Read more!

Our top food related post was: Golden Cook Caribbean Restaurant Reinvents Itself in New Toronto

Do you have a left point-of-view or opinion, event or petition, a recipe or a story you want to share?

Send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!

See also: Ontario Line, "Kicking Ford", Parkdale NDP Fiasco & more -- June and July on The Left Chapter in review

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

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

This is the first of what will be 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.



May "wins" first lackluster debate

Justin Trudeau was a no-show for the first televised federal election debate leaving the other three major party leaders to duke it out Thursday night in Toronto. It was a lackluster affair that was notable for little other than its terrible moderating by Paul Wells and its truly awful commentary panel.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May likely won the debate insofar as anyone did. She seemed more polished and sharp in her sparring and kept on message while for the most part rebuffing or blunting the attacks of the others. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh did well, especially in his attacks on Scheer, though May did seem to get in more zingers.

There was (predictably) very little that separated May and Singh in both policy and performance. They occupy a virtually identical space which really reminds yet again what a joke the vicious and nonsensical virulent antagonism between many of their partisans is.

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer was actually quite bad and wooden. The only saving grace for him came from his rather fortuitous positioning so that he could look directly into the camera and deliver clearly well rehearsed lines as if it was a commercial.

May was at her strongest in the final part of the debate that was centered around foreign affairs. She blasted Scheer repeatedly and on point calling him Trump's "dummy" (as in a ventriloquist dummy with Scheer's mouth opening to do the President's bidding), stating that fighting climate change and other social issues are more important to the Greens than increasing military spending and denouncing the Conservative pledge to move the Canadian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. She spoke of the illegal occupation for what it was, called out the Netanyahu government for its actions and pointedly noted the hypocrisy of so many in the west when saying "So it is not ok when Russia occupies Crimea but it is ok for Israel to occupy Palestine".

Meanwhile, when it comes to the terrible LNG project backed by fellow NDP Premier John Horgan in B.C., Singh was quite evasive for a supposed "Green New Deal" backer. He simply refused to state whether or not he supported it. It was a serious low moment.

You can watch the full debate here.

More vetting  a la Orwell for the NDP

The Left Chapter has been following the disgraceful debacle of the NDP's candidate selection process for weeks now from the appalling nomination meeting in Parkdale, to the farce with Sid Ryan, to the Kafkaesque shambles with Janet-Lynne Durnford, to the shameful rejection of Robbie Mahood.

This has been a travesty that is a combination of heavy-handed authoritarianism and utter incompetence.

On Tuesday another truly grotesque example came to light in the case of Christeen Elizabeth who posted publicly about her case on Facebook:

The day after her post -- and on the first day of the election -- the party dumped Thompson-Nicola-Cariboo NDP Candidate Dock Currie for past social media comments.

(It should also be noted that the NDP quite rightly asked a candidate accused of domestic abuse to step aside and the Greens dispensed with one as well when a disgusting anti-Muslim social media post surfaced.)

“Wow, just like the jets my parents flew when my sister and I were growing up middle class like you did!”

While it is normal for major campaigns to book such things for their leader tour the optics of tweeting out a picture of your private jet on Day One when you have been droning on-and-on-and-on about how "middle class"  you are are not good. But that is exactly what Andrew Scheer did of course.

Reactions were less than positive. 

Activist John Clarke summed it up quite nicely:

Rhinos pin the tail on an ass 

The magnificent folks at the Rhinoceros Party have trolled People's Party leader Maxime Bernier in a glorious fashion. They will be running under the slogan "Don't take a chance, vote for both!".

I guess Nickelback was unavailable

Canadian singer Bryan Adams has made many millions off of terribly mediocre hit radio fare co-written back in the day with Jim Vallance.

Vallance, it seems, is now a staunch Conservative.

Putting his tremendous lyrical talents to work for their cause he has penned a rockin' ode with lyrics like:

A brand-new day,
a better way.
It’s time for you
to get ahead!
It’s your choice,
let’s hear your voice.
It’s time for you
to get ahead!

Apparently a video is coming. Great.

 Here is a video that the Conservatives probably wanted to keep under wraps:




Speaking of abortion...

For some unknown reason Elizabeth May started the week by saying that she would not whip the votes of Green MPs if they tried to reopen the abortion debate in Parliament. This despite the fact that the party insists that no one who was anti-abortion rights would be allowed to run in the first place.

While Green partisans tried to blow this off as a total non-issue one has to ask, if no one who is anti-abortion rights would be allowed to run why is May musing about how she would be unwilling to force these non-existent MPs to vote according to supposed party policy?

This is either a really stupid "own-goal" on the part of May or maybe they were not as careful in making sure all candidates were on board with the big issues as they would like us to believe.

Sign of things to come?

A media bus hitting the wing of your campaign plane on Day One cannot be a good omen.

Other notable stories:

 Elizabeth May has ludicrously been excluded from an upcoming French language debate.

"Liberal Party bars wife from vying to replace MP husband embroiled in dispute with ex-girlfriend"

Scheer seems to be talking bullshit when it comes to the "RCMP investigating people in the PMO over SNC-Lavalin"

Looks like the Liberals are having a hard time finding sacrificial lambs in southern Alberta. 

"Green Party RA President steps down citing "racism", demands Green leadership apologize to Jagmeet Singh"