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Are they going to stay not running all the way around, or just give a symbolic protest to the autocratic top down actions?
John, it sounds like you're saying the fix was in for Schreiner. That doesn't seem very democratic.
How do you respond to some of the claims about the Green Party made by some here? Such as the Greens are merely neoconservatives with composters. Do you hide your BMW in the back?
I don't drive a BMW, but I sure do drive more than I should..
Despite being considered a conservative Green because I have a business background, I have always leaned NDP, personally. My father came back one night in Montreal in the seventies with blood on his face after a scuffle with scabs during a Millwrights strike.
"Eat the rich" always sounded right to me :-) And I am probably representative of most Greens.
IMHO, the NDP is too closely aligned with the formal labour movement. Greens are progressive people who don't belong to unions. Which puts us in step with the majority of Canadian voters these days.
But what about the Millwright's strike?
And what about the 170 repressive pieces of labour legislation enacted across Canada since 1982? You either believe in free labour markets or you don't. Imho, one must either shit or get of the pot.
Imho, the Greens are a split the left vote kind of party. And that was made evident when the leader of the GPC recommended their supporters vote Liberal everywhere but Central Nova in the last election. And now E. May has come out with a venomous attack on Michael Byers for suggesting a strategic voter alliance betwen the Liberals and NDP to bring down the Tories.
Imho, the political opinions of some percentage of leftwing GPC voters and those of the party's leaders may not be one and the same.
But in 2010 it's time for a new progressive force, free of short-sighted and self-serving union interests.
When the federal NDP defends the Oshawa auto plants against restructuring and emission reductions, you've lost me.
Is the Green Party that new progressive force? Maybe. I'm discouraged lately, but life is long.
... didn't know neoconservatives all drove BMWs....
Geez Fidel. Did you listen to the interview? May launched into her standard line about Jack Layton and the NDP to open things up. But she didn't attack Byers, or his suggestion. Actually she rather daintily avoided commenting directly on anything except for specifically endorsing Byer's call for PR.
And if we're going to reheat all the old chestnuts, maybe we could at least stick to commenting on the Ontario Green Party?
And to heck with those unemployed millwrights!
Well youve lost me altogether with this unsubstantiated claim. And with E.May telling people to vote Liberal - the same Liberal party that sold Canada's environment to Exxon-Imperial and marauding transnational enegy companies when in government last- I have to wonder just how green their valley really is?
Some random selections, federal and provincial, on why voters do not trust NDP on Green issues.
http://www.hilltimes.com/page/view/political_reporting-8-17-2009
http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/BC-Politics/2009/04/16/PlatformsCompared/
"NDP: scrap the carbon tax", "Stabilize (i.e. subsidize hydro rates)
Hefty Carbon Tax Raised Norway's Emissions
Greenhouse gases up 15% despite system aimed to curb themAn NDP evangelist quoting the Wall Street Journal? I have lived too long..
From the same article:
Industries deemed vital to the nation’s economy or image were spared the tax or given sweet deals.
John respectfully, neither of those citations meet your comments about Oshawa auto plants, nor indeed unions influencing the NDP....
Norway to join EU ETS I guess they had to do something with CO2 emissions soaring under a carbon tax regime since the early 1990's, Do we need really need to repeat the same mistake in Canada with delivering the carbon tax equivalent of slaps on wrists to corporate polluters and Canadians who insist on driving gas guzzlers no matter what the price at the fuel pump? Maybe they just have to get to work whether affordable and efficient public transit exists or not.
And while the two old line parties at both levels of government are doling out billions of taxpayer dollars worth of no-strings attached corporate welfare to US-based car companies, what incentive do they have to make fuel efficient cars that people want to buy?
Our topic was the GPO leadership race, originally.
We will debate these other points in various ridings in 2011 :-)
Okay my mistake. But I still think the Greens should consider supporting free labour markets in Canada. Without that policy they are just another conservative party, and we already have two of those - in government and phony opposition federally. Carry on.
It's quite comical how NDP partisans here insist that they oppose the carbon tax on the grounds that it represents market ecology and suggest the neoliberal cap and trade system as the alternative.
Auto bailout:
We had several auto firms collapsing (e.g. GM) but others were doing fine (Toyota Canada).
The GC and ON govt spent $10G to bail out the collapsing firms on the basis that "they were too big to fail".
Same argument used for %*$^ banks. Solvent, successful firms received nothing.
NDP opposed bank bailouts, but supported auto bailouts. Because auto firms are unionized but banks are not :-)
Auto unions have constitutionally-guaranteed votes at NDP (20%?) Which makes NDP spokes-puppet for unions. Which makes an independent progressive movement like Greens necesary.
The Canadian banks did not need bailing out, and the automakers got loans, which they just paid a huge chunk back on yesterday and it is believed they will pay the remaining back ahead of time...
And if only 20% of union workers vote NDP then I guess the other parties that the 80% majority vote for , are even more beholding to the unions than the NDP...and are even more their mouth piece....
We've been bailing out Canada's increasingly deregulated banks since Mulroney. The NDP opposed big bank mergers once prescribed as a fix for Canada's big six banks who just wanted to be bigger in order to gamble bigger and better alongside their US and British counterparts on Wall Street and High Street.
One of the reasons the NDP supported car company bailouts is that car manufacturing and parts assembly is about the only sector of our economy that has seen an increase in productitivity since the neoliberal trade deals were signed. The NDP doesn't like the fact that no other rich country allows a third as much foreign ownership and control of its manufacturing base as Canada does since FTA/NAFTA. What we don't do is subsidize Northern industries in Ontario to nearly the same degree, which the NDP says is wrong. We don't offer any help to Canadian high technology flagship companies like Nortel. Like Avro Arrow was, we can hand it off to US and other foreign interests for a song.
Weakened trade unions since neoliberal voodoo began are not the problem in Canada. Next to the US, Canada has the next largest non-unionized, low skill and lowly paid workforce in the developed world.
If unions were detrimental to economic prosperity, then thirdworld capitalist countries like Guatemala and Honduras and Colombia and Haiti and El Salvador should all be rich by now. Kids in those countries should be in school all day not out working under the tropical sun for peanuts.
As noted already- no bank bailouts in Canada. In other words, you've slid into making stuff up.
Testimony to the purposes one isolated and distorted fact can serve.
Unions that are affiliated to the NDP- which by no means all are even of those whose members are much involved- for the purposes of the leadership vote have a voting formula. It doesn't work out to any given share.
If you think that makes the NDP a union sock puppet, you know nothing about how the NDP operates. Unions are one constituency among oters that have clout within the NDP. Let alone within your own house, do you know anywhere that democracy is a neat and tidy affair? And I beleive you are sufficiently acquainted with the clout of constituencies within the Green party.
Tell that to UofO economics prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Canada's 75 Billion Dollar Bank Bailout The $64 Billion Federal Budget Deficit is intended to Finance Canada's Chartered Banks
Budget 2009 and the Bay St. bailout Duncan Cameron
Jeezus! $200 BILLION CDN works out to $5617 USD per Canadian! That's more than twice as much per capita as crazy George's $700 billion dollar taxpayer-funded TARP bailiout for US banksters!
Help! SOMEbuddy CALL THE COPS! We've been robbed! Again!
I stand corrected on the 'no bank bailout here.'
I had forgot about this quiet number.
One reason it was so quiet is that despite the big numbers it wasn't remotely on the scale of what happened in the US. The $700billion TARP was just the start in a multi trillion shoveling of money that is not loan guarantees- it's 'invested' like gone, the same as is the auto bailout funds: only to return to government coffers when/if there is some equity in the resurrecetd and reinvented entities.
Its still a bailout for sure- but the scale of comparison is off. [Note Duncan didn't make one like that.]
More to the point with the discussion here: now that I remember this happened, I vaguely remember that the NDP may have taken a few pokes at it. But despite the big numbers involved, it was not in the league of the Chrysler and GM bailouts- by risk, scale or public policy implications.
We are subsidizing the banks in a big way. Not only do we allow them to create debt money (money out of nothing) and charge interest on it, we also make the risks public while keeping profits private: Why Canada's Housing Bubble Will Burst
True about subsidizing the banks. But thats really a comment on the capitalist system, not one on the bailout in particular.
Does capitalism require the government to insure mortgages? This just shows that our banks are already bailed-out. The Canadian government holds the sub-prime risk, in contrast to what the situation was in the US.
Lets not get into pointless hair splitting.
But these days, when the word "bailout" is used- the model people have is definitely the shuffling of money at the US banks without much of a structure, let alone plan; no idea how much will come back or in what form, etc. Or the much more modest version of the auto bailout.
Yes, the Canadian government did do that bailout. But substantively speaking, its more like a slight rachet up from business as usual... and not the kind of anything goes, whats next bailout.
There's a huge difference in degree here. At the very least in public perception, but I don't think only in that.
Where from what I have said do you stretch to make the rhetorical 'question' [statement] do I think that is how the system should work. The discussion has been about how it works, and secondly about labels being used... not about how it should work.
Still on the theme of how things work- its not a given the housing bubble will burst here. [And slow price declines don't have remotely similar consequences.] The lefts habit for overblown statements don't help the cause of public education.
There is plenty of case to be made that the financial system is subsideized by all of us, always has been. And that there is a clear line between that and the collapse of the financial sector where citizens get to pay for repairing the damage, and its all being reloaded for the fat cats to reap the wealth on the next ride up while we backstop them.
I'm of the opinion you don't overstate things as impending disasters. We do that on a regular basis.
Oh, well carry on then. Sorry for the inappropriate question.