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That's why when the federal Liberals made themselves out to be the most antiGST, anti-Mulroney FTA party in the 1993 election, they expanded Mulroney's neoliberal trade deal with NAFTA immediately after winning a phony majority. Therefore, in your opinion, because the Liberals lied, then so, too, would the NDP have flip-flopped. Even though you have no evidence for it. You are all about conjecture and heresay and wild speculation in general when it comes to the NDP. There, I saved you the effort.
Brains and knowlege, always trumps the nonsense OO.
Good 1.
LMAO
I must have missed all those thread after thread you started praising the NDP.
That's stunningly illogical.
Just because there are people from the CAW running for the NDP doesn't mean the CAW as an organization supports the NDP.
That's like listing all the NDP candidates who are Catholic and then using that to claim that the Catholic Church supports the NDP.
Life, Unionist was very vocal in his support for Mulcair in the Outremont byelection.
And ottawaobserver is correct to point out that the NDP has quite strong ties to unions. While the majority of the Canadian working class has always voted Liberal and Tory, the bulk of union staffers and activists support the NDP. That fact however doesn't mean that the NDP is entitled to our support, and we should be well aware that there has been a loosening of ties in recent years.
Thanks LP, but this character never posts without attacking me. Kindly give him/her/it the satisfaction that real life denies.
Or how about all the CAW members who are Catholic to prove that the CAW supports the Pope.
I see the logic there, Michelle - why can't you?
That said, I still support and vote for the NDP. And I don't think the NDP is completely divorced from its labour roots. But there's some nose-holding involved when they pull shit like this on one of their best MPs.
Same here, but there are times when I'm tempted by the BQ, although our local BQ guy is useless.
Really, you are the centre of my world? Who knew. I guess all those posts in threads I have made must be imaginary. What is it like to be the ego of babble?
And don't forget that the largest student union in the country supports the NDP's plan for funding post-secondary education since the Liberals laid waste to it in 1995, too. I know lots of union workers and their families who are totally off of that party which feigns being to the left in election campaigns and then governs on the right once elected.
I consistently voted NDP for thirty years and for some years donated money to the party but as I said I stopped doing that after I volunteered and had an up close look at the NDP in Manitoba, now I vote to ensure the Conservativves don't get a seat. I don't like where I see the NDP headed, as I said before I think they have fallen to strategy and I think the NDP you are describing is the one of yesteryear and that party will not return until politicians of true integrity are willing to step forward.
Well at least in Quebec there is (sometimes depending on the local candidate) another option for progressives like the BQ...also...much more interesting...an alternative at the provincial level like QS.
I like progressive parties like the BQ, and especially when they went against the NDP in Parliament and vocally supported the CIA's abduction of Haiti's first and last democratically elected president in 2004. But I guess that's another progressive-regressive thread topic of anti-NDP discussion.
The BQ are far from perfect, just another choice away from the Cons and Libs. But it's frustrating to me that they allow a neanderthal like our MP to stand for office in their name. I'd love to see QS win out here, but that's not likely to happen in my lifetime, just like the NDP getting elected here won't happen in my lifetime.
But OO didn't make that claim.
The list of candidates does support what I said: that between the NDP and CAW, the more things change, the more they stay the same. [Which I placed in the larger context of things not changing: the old days of more professed support of the NDP were really no different than the present where the CAW is nominally less inclined to partisan support.]
Do you think this support of the military has produced any positive results with the public? Has there been an increase of support because of this pro-military stance?
What is actually "stunningly" illogical is comparing a labour union to a church, especially the Catholic one.
Do you think that people in the labour movement would be candidates of the NDP, if they were not supportive of the NDP?
If the NDP was distancing itself from the labour orgs, do you think they would be accepting so many labour org candidates?
I run around with pamphlets for the NDP every election, and all of us agree that it's a waste of time to go to those houses with yellow ribbons displayed on homes and cars. Nope, they don't like the NDP none too much. One guy told me to get the hell off his property and slammed the door. I just don't understand it. How can the NDP project itself as any more pro-war and pro-US led military occupation of the Stan? I mean come on! Four more wars? I don't think they're buyin' it.
Actually, I believe Libby Davies self-identifies as bisexual and not lesbian.
AS if he cares.
I didn't compare labour unions to churches, remind. As someone who would never be a member of a church again, and who is a proud and active union member, that is a ridiculous reading of my post.
I was simply saying that just because there are a number of people affiliated with an organization who run for the NDP, it doesn't mean that the organization they are affiliated with also supports the NDP as an organization.
But you knew that, didn't you? Nice smear attempt.
That is true. I only found out that she was queer at all over the last few days. I don't actually do a lot of research on people's personal lives.
Thanks for the head up Stockholm.
I've met many a Catholic priest who equate the NDP with the devil's socialism. Not all, mind, but far too many. So if anyone doesn't like the NDP, they are in good company. I'm beginning to think as logically as the best of them here. Just sayin'
BTW, I didn't say I agreed with Cueball that the NDP is distancing itself from labour. In fact, I said in another post that I DON'T think that the NDP is divorced from its labour roots.
I just said that it is illogical to assume that because a number of NDP candidates are from the CAW that this means the CAW supports the NDP. I don't know if things have changed since the big dust-up over Buzz Hargrove and jacket-gate, but I was under the impression that the CAW is no longer affiliated with the NDP organizationally. If I'm wrong, please do correct me -- I'm no expert on the issue.
That certainly doesn't mean that there aren't lots of other unions who do support the NDP, which is why I don't agree with Cueball and said so.
No up there somewhere you were saying that the NDP has never taken principled stands on gay, lesbian or women's rights.
First of all, a party has to walk the walk and try to elect as many women as possible in order to be taken seriously wrt women's issues. Which party has the highest percentage of women MP's today and voting on women's issues and laws effecting women and their families?
Which party voted near unanimously for same sex marriage rights?
Which party has proposed time and time again to end poverty for the children of women everywhere in Canada?
If these are not principled stands when it actually counts for something, then what is?
What is a list of candidates associated with unions suppose to prove? Is it the same thing that listing the candidates on the Faith and Social Justice committee proves?
Well, I guess you *can* take the Mod out of the grrl.
Nope. Not what I said. What I said was that their was nothing particularly unusual about it.
Fact: this legislation would not have been passed were it not for the fact that the 67% of all Liberals in Parliament voted for it.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, various political trends played out within the Canadian labour movement as political parties and their supporters rallied for leadership control of the emerging labour movement.
The Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (TLC) held a policy of non-partisan activity right up until the formation of the CLC. However, within the TLC, efforts were made by Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) labour activists to attain a policy of CCF support. A significant measure of this support was the 133-133 tie vote at the TLC's 1954 Ontario convention on the matter of CCF support.
With the Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL), the situation was more complex. As a child of the Great Depression and the international romance with revolution in the decades immediately after 1917, Communist Party of Canada labour activists had taken leadership positions in several key unions and locals of CCL-affiliated unions. Indeed, the Workers Unity League (WUL) was a group of Communist-led unions in the 1930s with considerable organizational success. With adoption of the position of a United Front against fascism after 1939, the WUL merged with the CCL.
And even with the CCL there were many local unions with Communist leadership. In particular the United Auto Workers locals in Windsor, Ontario were Communist-led. The orientation of the Windsor UAW locals deeply affected the legislative and parliamentary elections in the Windsor area. In the 1943 elections, the CCF had won all three Windsor-area seats. But in 1945 the UAW locals endorsed three UAW activists who ran as "UAW-Liberal-Labour" candidates with the support of the Labour Progressive Party (LLP). As a result the CCF lost all three Windsor seats. Taking advantage of a mis-step by the leadership of UAW Local 200 in trying to rally a national one-day strike in sympathy of Ford workers, in 1946 CCF activists within the local 195 and 200 overturned their leadership. In addition, the UAW International Board elections of 1947 gave stronger support to Walter Reuther, the CCF-supporting International President. Between these two trends, the Canadian UAW leadership changed directions. In the 1948 provincial elections, the United Auto Workers supported CCF candidates.
Similarly, the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) in British Columbia was also Communist-lead. When, in 1948, CCF supporters gained control of the IWA's New Westminster local, other BC-based (and Communist-led) locals of the IWA withdrew in an attempt to form an independent union. However, this effort failed when the union members did not endorse the change.
Efforts to dislodge Communists from the United Electrical (UE) and the Mine Mill union did not succeed and these unions were expelled from the Canadian Congress of Labour. Hence by 1950, the Canadian Congress of Labour had become a federation of unions which, to a greater of lesser extent, all supported the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation.
With the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada-Canadian Congress of Labour merger complete in 1956, a further step was taken. Although political discussion was downplayed during the merger talks, in 1958 the Canadian Labour Congress and Co-operative Commonwealth Federation set up a 20 person joint committee to discuss the foundation of a new political party. These talks resulted in the founding of the New Democratic Party in 1962. the NDP has, in its constitution, an organic relationship with the labour movement. Many local union organizations directly affiliated with the NDP, giving these local union bodies the right to participate in the Party's conventions and councils. NDP constitution also recognizes the CLC's District Labour Councils—organizations of local unions in a single city or town—as delegating bodies to the conventions of the provincial and federal New Democratic Party sections. Hence, by embedding labour organizations in its structure, the NDP went beyond being simply the party for labour and became of the party of labour.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Labour_Congress