The 2015 Federal Election on The Left Chapter in review -- A round-up

During the course of this unusually long federal election campaign The Left Chapter saw 34 posts that were directly related to it.

These ranged from a look at the Liberal's "unicorn and fairy dust" fiscal plan, to the dangerous emergence of dog-whistle, racist politics, to views on why not voting is not the unconscionable option so many present it as.

But, when it came to what Left Chapter readers read the most, all of the top posts were related to the NDP and the, to us, mystifying campaign they ran.

As we head into the last weekend before the vote, here are the top five directly election related posts, in terms of hits, on The Left Chapter since the writ dropped:

1) NDP campaign enters panic mode

By Fraser Needham

If in politics a week can be a lifetime, a month can be an eternity – especially in an election campaign.

Just put yourself in the shoes of NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair’s top strategists to see how much things can change over the course of four weeks. On a late August afternoon when members of the Mulcair team looked out on a bright and sunny day from the confines of the NDP war room, they must have been feeling pretty confident about themselves.

Read More! 

2) The NDP's phony “credit card” analogy: a neoliberal conception of the public household

By Matt Fodor

In an attempt to shore up the NDP’s fiscal credibility, Tom Mulcair recruited Andrew Thomson, the fiscally conservative finance minister that served in the NDP provincial government of Lorne Calvert in Saskatchewan.

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3) Morgan Wheeldon, Israel and the triumph of neo-conservative dogma

It would seem that, as with climate change, any serious discussion or criticism of Israel is now essentially forbidden in mainstream politics in Canada -- including within the NDP.

On the heels of backtracking on a perfectly reasonable and, in fact, scientifically factual comment made by star candidate Linda McQuaig about the oilsands, the NDP has now, quite literally, erased the candidacy of Morgan Wheeldon in  Nova Scotia over comments he made critical of Israel's attacks on the Palestinians.

Read More! 

4) Mulcair doubles-down on the NDP's right shift by defending Thatcherism

This week is the week where I think it can officially be said that the NDP leadership "jumped the shark" from any pretense at ties with its roots as a social democratic labour party to a straight-up and very open embrace of Blairite centrism and neo-liberal "progressiveism.

Read More!

5) The NDP and budget deficits: Not the Tommy Douglas vision

By Fraser Needham

The 2015 Canadian federal election took another strange turn this week.


NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair committed that his first budget as prime minister would be a balanced one. This seems somewhat strange as Canada appears to be headed into a recession and if the current Conservative government has struggled to maintain services in recent years without running deficits, in what have been stronger economic times, the only way a new government could balance the budget in a weaker economy would be through substantial cuts. The minor revenues gained by an NDP government canceling income splitting for high-income earners and a modest corporate tax increase would not be enough to maintain current spending levels in an economic downturn, let alone meet other campaign commitments such as a national childcare plan.

Read More!

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!

August: Margaret Thatcher, Morgan Wheeldon, Tom Mulcair, Tommy Douglas & more -- The month on The Left Chapter in review

August on The Left Chapter saw 25 posts of various types.

Without any further ado, the top five posts in terms of hits for the month were:

1) Mulcair doubles-down on the NDP's right shift by defending Thatcherism

This week is the week where I think it can officially be said that the NDP leadership "jumped the shark" from any pretense at ties with its roots as a social democratic labour party to a straight-up and very open embrace of Blairite centrism and neo-liberal "progressiveism".

Read more! 

2) Morgan Wheeldon, Israel and the triumph of neo-conservative dogma

It would seem that, as with climate change, any serious discussion or criticism of Israel is now essentially forbidden in mainstream politics in Canada -- including within the NDP.

Read more! 

3) The NDP and budget deficits: Not the Tommy Douglas vision

By Fraser Needham

The 2015 Canadian federal election took another strange turn this week.

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair committed that his first budget as prime minister would be a balanced one. This seems somewhat strange as Canada appears to be headed into a recession and if the current Conservative government has struggled to maintain services in recent years without running deficits, in what have been stronger economic times, the only way a new government could balance the budget in a weaker economy would be through substantial cuts. The minor revenues gained by an NDP government canceling income splitting for high-income earners and a modest corporate tax increase would not be enough to maintain current spending levels in an economic downturn, let alone meet other campaign commitments such as a national childcare plan.

Read more!

4) Deficit spending and the very odd week in Canadian social democracy

This has been an interesting week in the history of Canadian social democracy.

After Mulcair decided to double-down on comments he made praising Margaret Thatcher last week, we began this week with NDP advisers musing to Lawrence Martin in Canada's business tribune, the Globe and Mail, about trying to outflank the Harper Tories from the militarist side on defense spending by stating that they may yet be going to propose a whole lot more of it! As Martin relates it:

Read more!

5) Defeating the Harper Conservatives -- The peace movement and the federal election

by Dave McKee, Canadian Peace Congress President

The 2015 federal election is a critical opportunity for the people of Canada to defeat the Harper Conservative government and its reactionary, pro-war agenda. It is important that the peace movements in Canada begin work now to play a strong role in shaping the public policy debate.

Read more!

The number one food post for the month was Slow Cooker Beef & Mushroom Chili.

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!


Check out our review for the month of July!: July: Xenophobes, Olivia Chow, Eve Adams, Naheed Nenshi & more -- The month on The Left Chapter in review

Morgan Wheeldon, Israel and the triumph of neo-conservative dogma

It would seem that, as with climate change, any serious discussion or criticism of Israel is now essentially forbidden in mainstream politics in Canada -- including within the NDP.

On the heels of backtracking on a perfectly reasonable and, in fact, scientifically factual comment made by star candidate Linda McQuaig about the oilsands, the NDP has now, quite literally, erased the candidacy of Morgan Wheeldon in  Nova Scotia over comments he made critical of Israel's attacks on the Palestinians.

His name was taken off the party website, his own website wiped clean, and he was thrown under the bus entirely by senior party enforcer Brad Lavigne:

Our position on the conflict in the Middle East is clear, as Tom Mulcair expressed clearly in the debate. Mr. Wheeldon's comments are not in line with that policy and he is no longer our candidate. We were made aware of some information that had not previously been disclosed. When we approached Mr. Wheeldon with this information he submitted his resignation.

The information that "had not previously been disclosed", is a quote that the Conservatives dug up and put on an attack site dedicated to cherry-picking NDP candidate comments and presenting them out of context. Wheeldon had, in 2014, said on Facebook:

One could argue that Israel’s intention was always to ethnically cleanse the region — there are direct quotations proving this to be the case. Guess we just sweep that under the rug. A minority of Palestinians are bombing buses in response to what appears to be a calculated effort to commit a war crime

Setting aside for the moment that, even out-of-context, there is nothing he said here that is particularly inflammatory and that one can make a very strong case that Israel has committed war crimes, this sets yet another terrible precedent and reflects how on some issues the neo-conservative right has succeeded in shutting down all meaningful discussion and debate in our political discourse.

Is it really now the case that you cannot run for the NDP if you have ever been publicly critical of Israel? Given Wheeldon and Paul Manly before him, it certainly would appear so -- and that is ludicrously anti-democratic and wrong-headed.

Where does this end? His are by no means the only controversial comments on the Conservative site. Are the other candidates -- aside from those too well-known for the NDP to do this with like McQuaig -- to be erased as well?

This ugly and seemingly inexorable push by the NDP to insist on absolutely mindless unity and unanimity by all candidates and MPs on all issues that have been pronounced upon by the Great Leader and his inner-circle strategists is a symptom of the dumbing-down of mainstream bourgeois politics more broadly. In 2015 the diversity and contrast  of positions and policies between any of the major parties is more narrow than at any other time in our country's modern political history.

More dangerously, though, it allows the Conservatives and the neo-conservative movement more broadly to set the limits on what is and what is not allowed to be said, criticized or debated.

The consequence is that, no matter who gets elected, on certain issues like Israel or fundamentally tackling climate change, one variation or another of the Harper government and neo-conservative position and vision is what Canada is going to get.