Green Party of Canada: Lower Your Entrance Fee for the Leadership Race! - Petition

Brandy Baker started this petition to Green Party Members

The Green Party of Canada just announced this morning that it is charging candidates for the leadership race a $50,000 entrance fee. This is an extremely small party of 20,000 members all across Canada and it is charging a higher entrance fee than the NDP did in 2017 (NDP charged $30,000 in 2017; $15,000 in 2012). In their previous leadership race (2006), the GPCA only charged $1,000.

The $50,000 fee is designed to limit the number of candidates as well as the range of ideas and it also shows that the Party leadership are afraid of a turn to eco-socialism, a turn that could open the Party up to communities that have been historically underrepresented in the Green Party such as working class people, immigrants/New Canadians, youth, and others whose voices are not heard in Canadian politics. If this astronomical fee is allowed to stand, many in these communities will not be able to participate. Going forward with this fee shows an astounding level of political tone deafness towards most people who cannot afford to buy political access. If the leadership fee is $50,000, what else in the Party will be inaccessible to most working people?

Many have called the traditional leadership of the GPCA "Tories on bikes" and this insistence on a pay to play $50,000 membership fee shows a glaring elitism that proves this statement correct. One of the tenets of the Green Party is grassroots democracy: the Party is supposed to be bottom-up, not top-down, and this  fee shows that the current GPCA leadership does not want to operate any differently from the other top-down political parties in Canada. It will remain a largely white, upper-middle class party if barriers such as this fee remain.

We call on the Green Party of Canada to lower this fee to make this race more accessible to those who do not have the wealth and connections of the 1%. We understand the importance of candidates having the ability to fundraise, but this requirement is much too high. In the words of leadership candidate Alex Tyrrell:

"Canadian politics is already dominated by special interests, big money and the 1%. The Green Party is supposed to do politics differently. We are supposed to be against big money in politics. We are supposed to be democratic. We are supposed to be able to debate a wide variety of opinions and points of view before deciding who should lead the party forward into the future."

Please add your name to the petition at this link.

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!

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

Fare Evasion Frauds, NDP Debacles, Racism in Canada & more -- 2019 on The Left Chapter in review

2019 saw over 470 posts of various kinds on The Left Chapter. These ranged from analysis to opinion pieces to left history to art and recipe posts.

Consistently popular were our vintage postcard and photography posts such as On Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands - A Photographic Trip to the Soviet Far East, 1973 and Sofia, Bulgaria 1973 -- 19 Vintage Postcards and Images. We continued with our Republics of the Soviet Union series in posts like The Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic 1987: Photos, Culture, Economy, History & more.


Meanwhile the Vintage Leftist Leaflet project is ongoing with posts like The World Communist Movement: Yesterday and Today, 1983 and "An Act of Solidarity in Angola" - Speech by Fidel Castro, 1975. Readers can look forward to many more of these in 2020.

We debuted our new feature the Daily LIFT (Leftist Image for Today) with posts like Eugene V. Debs Portrait, 1919 -- Daily LIFT #7 while having extensive coverage of the attempted coup in Venezuela, the coup in Bolivia, international news and events with our weekly round-ups and issues such as the Parkdale NDP nomination debacle as well the Kafkaesque fiasco that unfolded with other NDP nominations in the lead up to the election.

The disgraceful capitulation of the Liberal government to imperialist narratives were looked at in the posts Which of these countries is not like the other? -- A Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland Imperialism Quiz! and Canadian hypocrisy and double standards in South and Central America on full display and others, some of which made this list.

I want to thank all of our readers and contributors very much for their feedback, support, criticisms and engagement.

The year had many posts that came very, very close to making this list. We also had contributions from writers that were widely read and shared, including three that made this top of the year list.

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed this year and I look forward to seeing what interesting viewpoints and arguments we see next year.

(Remember that if you have a left point-of-view or opinion, a recipe or a story you want to share or if you want to share a petition/appeal or upcoming event you can send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!)

Readers can look forward to new features in 2020. Remember also to watch for our list of the top food and recipe posts of 2019 early in the new year.

While normally we have the top ten posts, this year after we had already started our countdown a new post Canada has a racism problem and the fact so many Canadians think we don't is a part of it, did so well that it made this list at #4 so we have expanded the list to eleven so that nothing gets bumped off.

Here, without further ado, are the top eleven posts (in terms of hits) on The Left Chapter in 2019:

#1) The "fare evasion" narrative on the TTC is a total fraud. Here's why.

Every year the same line is trotted out by the TTC and various civic politicians in Toronto with the damage done monetarily always increasing from 20 to 40 to now allegedly over $60 million a year. Fare evasion, they say, is a serious problem and then they tsk-tsk about the "cheaters" and the need for more enforcement and get to shift the narrative of blame about the TTC's woes from themselves and decades of mismanagement, incompetence and underfunding to those mean and nasty freeloaders, i.e. TTC riders themselves.

(See also: The policing of fare evasion reveals the twisted agenda of our politicians)

#2) Of course Ford has not revealed plans for the TTC "Ontario Line". It will never be built.

Of course -- with many detours, delays and fake routes still to come -- in the end likely nothing gets built which will be blamed by Doug Ford and his stooges on the federal government, Toronto City Council, aliens or whatever.

It doesn't really matter who they say was at fault, nothing getting built was almost certainly the plan all along.

(See also: Higher TTC fares, more fake cops and a cancelled LRT -- Ontario's politicians ring in the holiday with a boot to the face for transit users)

#3) 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”

#4) Canada has a racism problem and the fact so many Canadians think we don't is a part of it

Perhaps after an election where Justin Trudeau was exposed for having worn blackface on several occasions and yet not only was not forced to resign as Liberal leader but was ultimately reelected as Prime Minster (albeit with a minority) it should not come as a surprise that "49 per cent of Canadians don't think racism is a serious problem in the country".

(See also: For Horgan "peaceful resolution" apparently flows from the barrel of a gun)

#5) Where Does the NDP Stand on Venezuela?

Entirely predictably it would appear the NDP is going over to the imperialist camp.

(See also: In Venezuela as in Chile, what is past is prologue)

#6) 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.

(See also: No, the NDP losing over 600,000 votes and 20 seats is not a "victory")

#7) Canada extends Ukraine military mission against alarming backdrop of rising fascism and neo-Nazism

Greatly overshadowed by other news out of Ottawa the Trudeau government today announced its decision to extend the Canadian military mission to Ukraine until at least 2022. Chrystia Freeland -- who notoriously celebrated her Ukrainian grandfather's nationalist past despite the fact that he was a Nazi collaborator -- stated that the mission "allows us to meet Ukraine's needs and to offer new forms of support as Ukraine needs them."

(See also: Canada and Freeland's rhetoric about a "rules-based international order" is bullshit and the US just proved it again)

#8) The NDP's election disaster shows again the need for something new on the left

Apparently the masses didn't get the memo.


Despite all the assurances and social media posts of NDP partisans, and despite the surprising number of left activists who decided to jump onto a bandwagon to nowhere, Jagmeet Singh and the NDP not only did not surge they ended up with their worst result in 15 years wiping away all the gains of the Layton years that were supposed to deliver them to the Promised Land of power.

(See also: Fifty years later it is time to acknowledge the Waffle was wrong)

#9) “The End of History” and the Post-Soviet Tragedy

By Nathaniel Laxer 


When almost any discussion of the USSR occurs today it is clouded by the western framing of the Cold War. Generally it is only the flaws of the Soviet Union or the Stalin Era that are looked at. Due to this it is often taken for granted that the collapse should be seen as a great and positive defining moment of the modern world and a victory over tyranny.

(See also by Nathaniel Laxer: A Holiday Nightmare)

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

It would appear that Sid Ryan is the latest casualty of a long standing, right wing NDP trend. 

(See also: The cat is out of the bag with the Sid Ryan and NDP vetting fiasco and Janet-Lynne Durnford's NDP nomination story a Kafkaesque travesty)

#11) What happened at the Parkdale NDP's nomination meeting?

by Myles Hoenig


Alabama of the 50s and 60s has migrated to Toronto.  The ghost of South Africa has a consulate here. Israel’s apartheid government must be jealous over how well Toronto’s NDP runs its elections. So what the hell happened?

(See also: Canada’s NDP Looks Like the US’s GOP: Voter Disenfranchisement in the Parkdale-High Park Riding and The optics of the Parkdale NDP's federal nomination meeting are not good)

Have a happy and safe New Year! See you all in 2020.

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.

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”

Read more!

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.

Read more!

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.

Read more!

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.

Read more!

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.

Read more! 

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

Green Party...Not on the Left!

What garbage.

In an era when rapacious capitalism is destroying the planet and when just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions, if you are not on the left, you ARE on the right.

(Meme is an official Green Party of Canada tweet from April 25, 2019)

NDP Surges, Doug Ford Opposes Rent Control, Hydro One & more -- The Left Chapter Ontario Provincial Election Roundup Week One

The provincial election campaign in Ontario is now a week old and with only three weeks to go until election day the desire to "change" who is arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic appears to be strong enough that the tired Liberal regime's fate may well be sealed.

Momentum has swung, at least for now, to Andrea Horwath's New Democrats as the primary alternative to the looming Doug Ford catastrophe, though not so much due to any great enthusiasm on the part of Ontario voters but rather due to the paucity of choices.

In this, the first of what will be weekly The Left Chapter round-ups we look at this past week's themes, news and developments.

Fully 74 per cent of voters wish they had a different choice

A poll taken as the writ dropped found profoundly deep voter dissatisfaction with the various mainstream "choices" on offer. Almost three-quarters of those questioned said they wished "there was another option other than Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne, PC Leader Doug Ford and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath."

This same poll also found that while it was true that Horwath was the most "popular" leader (or perhaps least unpopular) this was not based on any great embrace of her leadership by the public:

Pollster Darrell Bricker said while Horwath has an advantage on the favourability front, it’s more “neutral” since the other two have fairly high negative favourability.
“Andrea Horwath comes up better because she’s less disagreeable, not because she’s so much more likeable,” Bricker explained.

I looked at what this poll meant and its broader implications in the piece: Deep ennui greets launch of an Ontario election that is Ford's to lose

The NDP surges 

The polls all seem to agree that the NDP is surging right out of the gate. With Kathleen Wynne remaining deeply unpopular -- out of all proportion to the actual popularity of the government's recent polices and budget going into the election -- Andrea Horwath and crew seem to be shaping up as the progressive alternative to Ford in the minds of voters.

The CBC poll tracker shows the NDP up by around 3.5 points to 30.6% while the Liberals are down by 1.2% to 23.7%.

Upward trends very early in a campaign can be a double-edged sword as they leave plenty of time for opponents and the natural evolution of events to bring these numbers back down. There are countless examples of opposition parties going into elections much stronger than they finished them, the Tom Mulcair led federal NDP in 2014 being a case in point.

But there at least two reasons that NDP partisans can hope that the trend in this case may have staying power.

The first is the aforementioned general dislike for Wynne and the sense that her government should be sent packing. There comes a point -- as happened with the Rae government in 1995 -- where, as Globe and Mail analyst Adam Radwanski put it "If voters aren’t willing to buy what Wynne’s Liberals are selling, none of their advantages matter."  He further noted, when referring to Wynne's slick new ads "All the production values in the world can only go so far if voters just don’t want to hear from you any more."

How low could Wynne and the Liberals drop in the polls? Very low indeed. And a great deal more of their vote is likely to go to the NDP than the Conservatives.

Which brings us to the second reason for optimism among New Democrats, which is that it is rather easy to make the transition between them for centrists and mild progressives in this context as there so little that separates the two parties ideologically.

It is akin to dropping Coke in favour of Coke Zero.

While in most cases this would hurt the NDP -- and has time and again including in Ontario in the 2014 election -- here it allows them to transition to being a new and nonthreatening liberal party for voters scared of Ford but tired of Wynne's baggage.

As Thomas Walkom put it in the Star "Experts can parse the differences between the Liberal and NDP child care or pharmacare promises. But I suspect most voters see the two party platforms as near-identical."

Various NDP partisans may have deluded themselves otherwise, but I suspect Walkom is right.

Of course, the other side to that is that should Wynne somehow regain her footing or numbers start to trend back her way, the transition back to the Liberals from the NDP would be just as effortless.

Either way, with the Conservatives remaining steady at above 40% support the two parties are right now vying for who would be the official opposition to a massive Ford majority unless they can bring that support level down.

Doug Ford says he prefers the "market" to rent control

If you thought the housing market with soaring rents and low availability could not possibly get worse for tenants in Toronto, you would be wrong.

If Doug Ford gets elected they will get much worse.


Hydro board raises

Despite the fact that they only have their positions thanks to Wynne's short-sighted and deeply unpopular decision to privatize the bulk of Hydro One, the dim bulbs running the show there seem determined to tank her government.

How else to interpret the news that in the lead-up to an election where hydro rates are a central issue the part-time members of the utility's board of directors gave themselves a big raise?

Article: Hydro One's part-time board members gave themselves $25K raises

Of course, while Doug Ford pontificates about replacing these clueless rich people with his own group of clueless rich people, Andrea Horwath is correct in saying that the only long-term solution to hydro issues in the province is to bring Hydro One back into public hands.

That it will then be run in a fundamentally more democratic or egalitarian way under an NDP government, however, seems unlikely to say the least.

Green Party

The Green Party launched its campaign in Toronto running on a fairly progressive platform that you can read on their website. The prospects that there is room for a third mildly progressive party to gain traction in an election like this one would appear bleak.

What is clear though is that the media and the other parties are doing their best to make sure they remain that way with the Greens being shut out from the debates.

Party leader Mike Schreiner confidently predicted "We are going to make history and we are going to elect Ontario's first Green MPPs". Regardless of whether or not that would be a good thing, at this point it would not seem to be in the cards.

Two major parties run candidate slates that are over 50% women 

In an historic development two of the major parties running candidates province wide have slates that are comprised of over 50% women.  

The NDP lead the pack at 56% while the Greens followed closely at 52%.

Communist Party launch

While we are in an election where "change", as Ontario Communist Party leader Dave McKee put it,  really amounts to putting a new "jockey on the same old horse", the Communists launched their campaign on a platform that offers a genuine, unequivocally anti-capitalist vision.

I attended their campaign launch in Toronto and you can read about it at: Communist Party launches Ontario provincial election campaign in Toronto -- "Ignite the movement for Socialism"

Further news/articles of interest about the campaign:

Another debate, another Doug Ford comment about Kathleen Wynne's smile

Avalanche of detail overwhelms Kathleen Wynne's message

No longer polling third, Horwath and the NDP are fending off attacks from both sides

NDP's Horwath has 'no interest' in coalition with Liberals

See also: Doug Ford wants you to subsidize the poverty wages of corporations

Labour, Québec Solidaire, the CPC and more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List May 28 - June 4

This week's list of articles, news items and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.




This list covers the week of May 28 - June 4. It is generally in order of the date of the article's release.

1) Abortion clinic ‘safe zones’ to be introduced

Kristin Rushowy, The Toronto Star

Safe zones will be created around abortion clinics so that women can access the procedure without harassment, the Ontario government announced Monday.

Read the full article.

2) Québec Solidaire Congress: United Front Against Austerity and For Independence

Richard Fidler, The Bullet

As expected, the 500 delegates to the congress of Québec solidaire (QS), held in Montréal on May 19-22, voted to work toward a fusion with Option nationale, debated and adopted the remaining part of the party's draft program with few major amendments, and elected a new leadership headed by “co-spokespeople” Manon Massé and Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.

Read the full article.

3) Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois wins Gouin byelection in landslide

Montreal Gazette

Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois was easily elected as the MNA for Montreal’s Gouin riding on Monday, taking 69 per cent of the vote, with none of the 12 other candidates winning more than 10 per cent.

Read the full article.

4) B.C. Green Party agrees to support NDP in the legislature

 Justin McElroy, CBC News

The B.C. Green Party has agreed to support the NDP in the legislature, setting up the possibility of 16 years of Liberal rule coming to a dramatic end.

Read the full article.

5) Ontario becomes 2nd province to go ahead with $15 an hour minimum wage

CBC News 

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has announced a plan to increase the provincial minimum wage to $15 an hour by Jan. 1, 2019.

Read the full article.

6) The CPC's bringing back the abortion debate — bet on it

Michael Harris, iPolitics

Justin Trudeau must have slept like a baby last night. 2019 is no longer the year of living dangerously as far as the Conservative threat to his regency is concerned.
Not only did the social conservatives retain control of the Harper Party, but in Andrew Scheer, the former PM (still thought to be a behind-the-scenes puppet-master by some) likely got the candidate he wanted. At the very least, he did not get an uppity progressive like Michael Chong — who defied him in the days of Harper’s flat-out authoritarianism — or the weak tea of an Erin O’Toole.

Read the full article.

7) The US Bernie Sanders campaigners lending Jeremy Corbyn a hand

Nadia Khomami, The Guardian

Staff from US presidential candidate’s team have been helping Momentum make the most of Labour’s supporter numbers.

Read the full article.

8) Military inquiry finds failure of 'basic leadership' in handling of sex assault allegation

Murray Brewster, CBC News

A military inquiry has determined there was a failure of "basic leadership" in how the army handled a high-profile case of alleged sexual assault and harassment.

Read the full article.

9) Parkdale property CEO nearly hits tenant advocate with truck

Emily Mathieu, The Toronto Star

Tensions between tenant advocates and property management staff in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood escalated Tuesday when a truck driven by MetCap’s president nearly ran over a man trying to deliver a letter on behalf of elderly tenants.

Read the full article.

10) How I Left B.C's Toxic Partisanship Behind

Ryan Painter, The Huffington Post

Partisanship is something that came very easily to me. As someone who felt like a loner all throughout high school and university, I was looking for a group that I could cast my lot with. I was interested in politics at an early age, and social democracy was my banner, so the New Democratic Party was a natural fit. I found the party and the people within it accepting and encouraging, and I quickly grew in confidence and embraced the partisan nature of party politics with gusto.

Read the full article.

11) A study about how endometriosis affects men's sex lives? That's enraging

Imogen Dunlevie, The Guardian

Endometriosis affects 176 million women but there is no cure, no known cause and treatment is limited. There is no case for a study about its impact on men.

Read the full article.

12) Killed by Chivalry: Everything wrong with the Men’s Rights Movement in one Tweet

David Futrelle, We Hunted the Mammoth

In the wake of the Portland train stabbings that left two men dead and one seriously wounded after they tried to stop a white supremacist from harassing several women, Paul Elam — still probably the best-known Men’s Rights Activist online — posted a tweet that spoke volumes — not about the incident itself, but about the utter moral bankruptcy of the Men’s Rights movement.

Read the full article.

13) How One Story Pissed Off Just About Every Non-Rich Person in Toronto

Alison Tierney, Vice

If you can go a day in Toronto without listening to someone droll on about gentrification or the housing crisis, then you probably have a 905 area code. One place that keeps coming up in that conversation is Parkdale. The west Toronto neighbourhood has been a symbol of gentrification in the city for about a decade now—it's often compared to Williamsburg in that respect, as the creative types who moved there after being priced out of nearby Queen West then started being priced out of Parkdale—and it continues to get more and more expensive to live there.

Read the full article.

14) Corbyn goes from no-hoper to crowd-puller in U.K. election

Thomson Reuters, CBC News

For a radical socialist written off by many as a no-hoper leading Britain's Labour Party to its worst ever election defeat on June 8, Jeremy Corbyn is pulling in big crowds.

Read the full article.

15) Landmark deal in RCMP sexual-harassment class action wins court approval

Colin Perkel, The Canadian Press

An unprecedented settlement that will pay up to $220,000 to women who were sexually harassed while working for the RCMP over the past 40 years has been approved by a Federal Court judge, who called the agreement fair and reasonable.

Read the full article.

16) Tory candidate's blogposts on rape 'absolutely shocking'

Rowena Mason, The Guardian

A Conservative candidate in a key marginal seat has said a woman’s “promiscuity” is relevant in determining how likely it is that she consented to sex in alleged rape cases.

Read the full article.

17) US anti-Trump protesters facing decades behind bars


Patrick Strickland, AlJazeera

More than 200 anti-Trump protesters are facing felony charges that could land some in prison for 70 to 80 years.

Read the full article.

18) Portland attack survivor says people are worrying about the wrong victims, calls out ‘white savior complex’

CNN Wire

Micah Fletcher, the man who survived the Portland commuter train knife attack, went on social media Wednesday to say people are worrying about the wrong victim.

Read the full article.

19) The Guardian view on the election: it’s Labour

Guardian Editorial Board

Jeremy Corbyn has shown that the party might be the start of something big rather than the last gasp of something small.

Read the full article.

20) How Theresa May went from supreme confidence to doubt and panic

Toby Helm, The Guardian

It was supposed to be a coronation for Queen Theresa … but that was back in April. Now, as the Tory leader found on the campaign trail in Yorkshire, nothing can be taken for granted.

Read the full article.

See also: UK Election, Manchester, Kerala and more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List May 21 - 28

See also: Cultural Appropriation, the UK, Brazil, Venezuela and more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List May 14 - 21

Adam Capay, the ONDP, the US Greens & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List: October 23-30

This week's list of articles and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers. 

This list covers the week of October 23-October 30. It is in order of date of the article's  release. 

1) Ontario’s sickening mistreatment of Adam Capay

Globe & Mail Editorial Board

Learn the name of Adam Capay. He is the living symbol of everything that is wrong with Canada’s prisons, its justice system and its treatment of indigenous people.

Read the full article

2) Ex-cop ONDP candidate defends culture of silence

Evan Johnston, Socialist.ca

The Ontario New Democratic Party (ONDP) has nominated former Hamilton Police Association president, Mike Thomas, to be their candidate for the Nov 17 by-election in Niagara West-Glanbrook.

 

Thomas, a retired police officer of 30 years and former President and CEO of the Hamilton Police Association (2010-2014), will be representing the ONDP in the the riding recently vacated by former Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak.

Read the full article

3) A Materialist Analysis of Why I am Voting Green, and Why the Left Should Do the Same

Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report

I consider myself a Marxist. However, the term "Marxist" is merely a label. Those who ascribe to the tenets of Marxist thought must place their political affiliations within the context of the current historical moment. Anti-communism and imperialist hegemony have set back the struggle for a classless society to the point where much of the US left is mired in confusion as to what political direction should be taken to confront the challenges before us. One of these challenges is the 2016 elections. The radical left should plan on voting Green this November and building a mass movement around the demands put forward by the Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka campaign.

Read the full article

4) The Helsinki Formula

Jonathan Kay, The Walrus

In 2014, Tasha Kheiriddin, a self-professed “life-long small-c conservative,” announced in a National Post column that she wouldn’t be voting for Tim Hudak’s Tories in the then-upcoming Ontario election. Her reason? The Tory platform would limit state-funded educational options for Zara, her four-year-old daughter, who’d been diagnosed with Asperger’s. The next day, Post editorial-board member Jesse Kline accused Kheiriddin of hypocrisy. “Too many people purport to espouse fiscal conservative values, but make an exception for the issues that affect them personally,” he wrote.

Read the full article

5) Fifty-two months of torture and the four men responsible

Scott Gilmore, Maclean's 

There is a young First Nations man in Thunder Bay who the province of Ontario has kept in a hole for 52 months. His name is Adam Capay. When he was 19 he was arrested on minor charges and sent to jail. There he got into a fight and another man died. We don’t know if Capay is guilty—he has been waiting an incredible four years for his trial.

Read the full article

6) Budget cuts at Toronto libraries ‘rip the heart out’: Keenan

Edward Keenan, Toronto Star

On Monday evening, Cedarbrae library near Markham and Lawrence in Scarborough was humming — or whatever the muted librarian-approved equivalent of humming is. It was packed, in any event: the Youth Hub was full of teenagers at the Homework Help table and crowded around the televisions playing video games. The Learning Centre’s rows of desks were filled with people working away on laptops. The study rooms were fully occupied, the work stations lined with people, the computer terminals virtually all in use, the kids book nook area being well put to use. Between the shelves towards the back of the upper floor, where the library houses book collections in 12 languages including Hindi, Tamil and Pashto, a group of high school-aged kids were lounging on the floor, reading, doing homework, chatting.

Read the full article

7) Poverty activists say delays to transit initiative due to 'lack of political will'

Ben Spurr, Toronto Star

Advocates for Toronto’s poor are criticizing the city for its lack of action on creating a discounted transit pass for low-income riders, saying that repeated delays to the project are undermining the anti-poverty plan championed by Mayor John Tory.

Read the full article

8) Unearthing the Hypocrisy of the 'Pro-Prostitution Left'

Rae Story, Morning Star

HOW DO we explain the phenomenon of prostitution? If we believe it to be a form of exploitation, is it better described as gendered or classed?

The feminist position on the sex industry, if not always well understood, is certainly well known to be critical, especially in its most traditional manifestations. But what about a socialist feminist perspective?

After all, the make-up of the sex industry can be most effectively described as the renting of working-class, migrant and poor women, by middle-class or otherwise materially comfortable men.

Read the full article

9) Gaétan Dugas: 'patient zero' not source of HIV/Aids outbreak, study confirms

Nicola Davis, The Guardian

Scientists have managed to reconstruct the route by which HIV/Aids arrived in the US – exonerating once and for all the man long blamed for the ensuing pandemic in the west.

Read the full article

10) The 76ers not only dropped the ball by booting national anthem singer Sevyn Streeter, but they also displayed their severe ignorance 

Shaun King, New York Daily News

I’m a huge NBA fan. Wednesday, if you didn’t know it, was the first game of the year for many teams and we are now in that short sports sweet spot with NFL and college football, playoff baseball, and the opening week of NBA action all happening at the same time.

On Wednesday, the Philadelphia 76ers asked a special guest, R&B singer Sevyn Streeter, to sing the “Star-Spangled Banner,” before the game. Not only was she ready, glammed up and well-rehearsed, she even spent time promoting the opening game against the Oklahoma City Thunder on social media. Then, just minutes before she was scheduled to go out onto the court to sing the national anthem, they yanked her because she had a stylish shirt on that simply said “We Matter.”

Read the full article

11) Acquittal of Bundys is proof of racial double standards — and a greenlight for right-wing terrorism

Arun Gupta, Raw Story

When the Raw Story visited the Bundy bunch inside the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge they were calling for a revolution against the federal government. Rifle-toting supporters said, “ I’m here to fight for freedom and get our Constitution back,” and “I would support this to the death, literally.”

Now eight months after their occupation came to an end the government case has ended in a jury acquitting the two Bundy brothers and five other supporters on all charges but one, including the main one of conspiracy. The government failed to prove the Bundy Bunch “had engaged in an illegal conspiracy that kept federal workers — employees of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management — from doing their jobs.”

Read the full article

Right Sector, Liberalism, Colin Kaepernick, Pamela Anderson & more -- August & September on The Left Chapter in review

August and September saw 33 posts published on The Left Chapter. Though that is the lowest number for any two month period, again the same period saw the highest number of hits for any two month period in our history!



Our top post for the month was one of the most widely read and shared in our history.

Thanks again to all our readers and contributors.

Without any further ado the top six posts from the two months, in terms of hits, are:

1)  What is far-right organization Right Sector doing marching in Toronto's Ukrainian Festival Parade?

Toronto's Ukrainian Festival is an annual celebration of Ukrainian culture and food that takes place on Bloor St. W. and that draws large crowds looking to enjoy some traditional song and dance, perogies and all the other things that get people out to festivals. The organizers say it is the world's largest such festival.

Read More! 

2) Viral photo of North Dakota Pipeline Protest is 100% FAKE. Stop sharing it.

A photo is going viral on Facebook that purports to show the Standing Rock Pipeline protest in North Dakota.

It was posted by someone named Tyler Eldridge and is getting thousands of shares every few minutes, standing at near 200,000 shares at the time of this post.

Read More! 

3) Obama, Trudeau & Clinton -- Feeling good about the lies of liberalism

Do you remember this moment?

That time when newly minted President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for absolutely nothing other than having won an election in the wake of the George Bush apparent catastrophe and for having given nice speeches about "hope", closing down Guantanamo and supposedly taking the US in a new direction that would be a departure from the death dealing of the past.

Read More!

4) It was not the American military that fought for democracy and justice. The people -- and people like Kaepernick -- did that.

No American soldier in decades has died for anyone's rights or for "democracy".

Period.

This is a total crock and an American fantasy.

Read More!

5) Is May about to repudiate member democracy and tank her own Green Party?

Something very troubling, it seems, is afoot in the Canadian Green Party.

Read More!

6) Pamela Anderson is not the porn 'hypocrite', so-called leftist and progressive porn supporters are

By now you have likely heard that Pamela Anderson -- so often derided as some kind of joke -- has taken a, supposedly, surprising and strong stand against pornography.

For this she has been attacked with the usual ridicule of the "freedom" wing of liberalism's useful idiots as some kind of "hypocrite".

Read More!

Although published originally in June, Canada Post's 'problems' are driven by the neo-liberal assault on public services was widely shared again when a lockout appeared to be imminent and would have been third on this list had it been from the period.

The top food post was Sugar For My Honey - An Exceptional Austrian/German Bistro-Cafe in South Etobicoke (in fact it was one of the most widely read food posts we have ever published).

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

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

See also: Black Lives Matter, Canada Post, Tory Austerity & more -- June and July on The Left Chapter in review

See also: NDP "Democracy", Ontario Liberal Injustices, Etobicoke Thrift Shops & more -- April and May on The Left Chapter in review