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Alot of Quebeckers and Atlantic Canadians would like to see the goverment deal with inequality, and I do remember looking a poll where a majority of Canadians want more taxes on the rich. So, this won't be a problem I believe.
Speaking about the whole one side issue on foreign policy, it seems that Topp is being supported by the Canadian Arab Federation
Considering the number of people I've met who feel we have sold out, or compromised our principles when in government provincially and territorially, the number may not be that small. Also consider the discussions on babble about the Saskatchewan and Manitoba NDP governments in particular.
Whatever heading or question you want to put in front of it, Mulcair's use of the anecdote stands on its own.
Viz. what Policywonk said: its still an apocryphal quote that is not representative.
Few people that do not like what the Prarie NDP govts have done would say that winning govt is itself evidence of selling out.
The NDP is a big tent. So of course such people exist. But they are NOT representative of people who dont feel like just taking whatever happens to come our way from NDP leaders and governments.
There arent any of these straw people that say they are voting according to policy alone, and do not include electability.
The debate will be on CPAC live from 2:00PM EST to 3:30PM, and replayed from 9:00PM to 10:30PM. I believe this will be the same on both the English and French channels. (I like to toggle between them to listen to the French or English and avoid the translators. Niki Ashton speaking with Sean Connery's voice freaks me out.)
Sometimes the NDP has sold out in government, like when the BC NDP cut welfare rates and the Ontario NDP took a pass on public auto insurance and equal rights for GLBTT people.
I am so sorry for exagerrating and saying there are not any of them. I shall endeavour to be more precise.
If you commented according to what you read so carefully, you know that it is unrepresentative to use apochryphal examples as if they typify a position you are characterizing. Like I said, sending out straw people.... corrected for the hair splitting that they do not exist at all.
Pragmatism, maybe, we can look at who is pragmatic.
But 'guts'? Please explain how using the classic cop out of why nothing can be done is 'guts'. You can argue that it could possibly be necessary to take the dodge... but guts?
And as to Mulcair's pragmatism, how about this:
"Using the words 'cap and trade' is not going to hide Mulcair's EXPLICIT proposal of using cap and trade as an altrenative form of general revenue raising. The Liberals got skewered for it, and they at least were not stupid enough to make the dotted lines explicit, as Mulcair has now done."
and further from here:
He hasnt proposed that any economic policies be changed? Really?
See the post above. The NDP's climate change package is not only an environmental policy. It is an economic policy because it has to be.
And what good is it that his ideas are unthreatening in the abstract, if they heedlessly offer up extra opportunities for the Harper Cons to skewer us?
Ken, you're trying way way too hard. I can't counter you when I don't get your point.
I'm just going to have to fundamentally disagree with you on that one.
I understand Topp's estimates are static - that is, they don't take into account changes in behaviour due to taxation. For example, let's say corporate tax brought in $10 billion a year and we increase that tax by 10%. We shouldn't expect to increase revenue by $1 billion because corporations will do things that result in them reporting less income than they would otherwise, such as using intellectual property licensing and transfer pricing to move profits to lower-tax jurisdictions or deciding that marginal investments that made sense with the earlier tax rate don't now. So if Brian Topp becomes Prime Minister and asks the economists over at Finance to create a more sophisticated estimate of the effect of his tax plans on the budget, he'll be receiving smaller numbers than those. It's still a good idea to raise taxes on those who can best afford it, but the idea that changes just for the wealthy and corporations are going to permit a massive expansion of federal spending doesn't really fit with the evidence. In high-spending countries, it looks as though consumption taxes do the revenue heavy lifting.
Ken S,
Cap and trade has been in the NDP platform since 2006, I believe. There have not been any new direct taxes on individuals since 2004, when the inheritance tax was proposed. If it was such a good idea, why did Layton never bring it up again?
Even though Mulcair says he will use cap and trade to raise general revenue, I think he will be able to defend his position. Mulcair is no Stephane Dion. Hopefully, the +/- of his strategy will be discussed in tomorrow's debate.
Wilf Day - CPAC has three options - English, French and FLOOR! Floor means no translator!
No thumbs up button, but that is, of course what it boils down to - a difference in emphasis. Much of policy is decided at convention and everyone, even the leader, is beholden to said decisions.
Sometimes NDP governments sell out and sometimes they just don't improve things as much as we want them to.
Even with a Federal government, we have to manage expectations and realise that three more years of Harper will have left this country in quite a mess.
Nothing I have seen from Mulcair has changed my opinion. I just don't like him as a politician or potential leader. He has and continues to strike me as an opportunist first and foremost. This is mostly a gut reaction, intuitive if you like, but his published policy positions leave me cold, especially on the foreign policy front.
Perhaps he will attract more "professional" voters to the party but he also risks alienating many <gasp> working class people as well as activists.
^^^^^ spot on.
It doesn't seem too very opportunist at all to leave a good job as a Quebec cabinet minister and then run federally for a party that had only ever elected one MP in the province and then only temporarily. Either he's beat Jojo Savard for must successful psychic in Canadian history or that's not opportunism.
He is succesful winning elections as an MP. The demands on what we need from the Leader are in another league, and with many more dimensions and demands.
And how will Mulcair make us winners when he puts our heads on the chopping block?
Nobody could have sold the Liberal program with the political foolishness built into it. I said so when it came out- before Dion's ways had any effect. "The Liberals will be the ones to get the punishment. Opportunity for us."
They started sinking as soon as the predictable attack ads came out. Predictable, because the Liberals practically wrote the script for the Harper Cons. All before Dion opened his mouth.
And guess what attracted the Liberals to the "revenue neutrality" concept cribbed from the Greens. They had been with us on cap and trade and critical of the carbon tax. Dion affirmed that in and right after the leadership race [and no "communication problems" then].
But the attraction of the carbon tax with revenue neutrality- give the money back through the income taxes and credits system- was that the Libs could say it was not going to cost anyone.
There were two huge problems with that.
1.] Political expediency, not that this fazed the Liberals: carbon pricing revenues are needed for green initiatives to proactively foster energy use reduction, as has been the case with successes in Europe. Carbon pricing alone has negligible effect- whether carbon tax or cap and trade. But for political expediency the Libs wrote off all the carbon tax revenues to the revenue neutrality for individuals.
2.] It did no good. Expedient intent or not, they painted a target on themselves. Because it ended up looking like- and to a large degree was- taking new taxes for new social programs. TAX GRAB!
And Mulcair has set up a repeat.
He said in Halifax, and has now affirmed with a lot more words and illustrating examples, that cap and trade revenues is the way to go in getting new revenues instead of what Brian Topp has proposed.
In the first place, if you are going to use cap and trade monies to fund the new revenues to maintain existing social programs that we need, what is paying for the green spending initiatives that Mulcair has affirmed we will do and the NDP has always EXPLICITLY promised will be what ALL the cap and trade revenues will be spent on.
But focusing on the political foolishness: this is a repeat of what the Liberals did in 2007. The Libs wanted to bypass the political risks of promoting carbon pricing, Mulcair wants to avoid the political risks in straight up saying you are going to tax anyone more, even the rich.
We know how well that worked for the Liberals. Now Mulcair suggests trading the risks of saying you will tax even the rich more, and his alternative sounds good on the surface. Topp says that he is confident Canadians are with us in taxing the wealthy. If you think that is risky, you think it is better that Mulcair promises things that don't add up and which are not just risky but guaranteed to get us skewered for surrendering the political benefits crafted into the NDP policy we have had for 5 years???
Laine Lowe says of Mulcair, "Perhaps he will attract more "professional" voters to the party but he also risks alienating many <gasp> working class people as well as activists."
On the contrary, Mulcair has atracted many activists to his camp in Quebec. He has the strongest environmentalist credentials of any candidate. That served to completely collapse the Quebec Green vote into the NDP. There is every reason to think he can duplicate this in the ROC.
We make a bad mistake by retrenching into the "working class." The mere term is dismissive and alienating. Mulcair has made the same point about the tired mantra of "ordinary Canadians."
Besides, the organized working class is shrinking. Just look at the census figures. The NDP is doomed unless it grows into other sectors. The new redistribution will add numerous seats to the GTA and similar areas, where we have never won anyting. Mulcair offers us a chance to expand into those seats, just as he helped capture similar suburban seats in Quebec.
On Friday, he made the telling point that at the big Toronto debate a couple weeks back the thousand people who attended were overwhelmingly white and middle-aged. This in the most culturally diverse city in North America. He contrasted this with the outreach he undertook to ethnic communities in Quebec with the result of a very representative and diverse NDP Quebec caucus.
He understands, as I think we all should try to understand, that we must guard against retreating into our old complacent tribalism.
Fine. But the number of 'tribalists' in the NDP has been diminishing for a long time.
And it is offensive to repeatedly lump together the substantive arguments of everyone, using examples of what some 'tribalist' said.
For example, because a small group of people either say or make it clear that 'he's not one of us', they represent all of us who have a variety of strong reservations about Mulcair.... including whether he is the practical choice he is held out to be, as if unassailbale and without serious competition on that front.
Not to mention that he is by no means the only candidate who understands the damage that knee jerk sticking to old shibboleths can do. He's just the one who finds the 'reminders' convenient.
For what it's worth, I certainly dont find Topp's use of that 'tribalism' commendable or better [the 'we dont need to be Liberals' "reminders"]. But by the same token, the elevation attributed to Mulcair's 'reminders' is no more innocent. They are both politics at its crassist.
It is literally dangerous for people to think that good communications skills of the prospective Leader is the salve that can cure all.
Ignatieff has very good communications skills. Not as good or experience when it comes to the political hot seat.... but far better than Dion. And what good did that do him. And not just in the comparing election results- he got tagged even worse than Dion.
Like Dion, Iggy got hopelessly tagged because the rudderless Liberals had hopelessly lost politics.
Iggy was lost because the Liberals let the Cons frame him. Good communications skills cannot overcome them.
And Mulcair is repeatedly offering up even better material for framing him than the Liberals managed, hard as that is to imagine.
I still think that the biggest problem with Dion's "green shift" was that it was all about a carbon tax which was going to be a direct tax on individuals. Cap and trade is all about polluters paying for the damage they do to the environment as was done with the acid rain treaty.
I just hope something is enforceable before we reach the point of no return. Or are we there already?
Sorry Ken S, I disagree:
Ignatieff had horrible communication skills. He was inauthentic. The CONS were so effective at attacking him b/c there was always a sense that he was trying to hide something, that he wasn't being himself.
I think I once heard Liberal "strategist/lobbyist" John Duffy speculate that Ignatieff should have taken the attack ads head-on. He ought to have said something along the lines of "Look, I've taught Harvard, I'm an intellectual, I will engage Harper on his policies, and if you (the voters) don't like me, too bad, I'll take my ideas elsewhere". That would have been extremely arrogant, but it would have been true to his nature. Instead, he tried to pretend he was the "common man", which everyone knew he obviously wasn't. The Tory narrative of "Ignatieff as nothing more than an opportunisitc carpet bagger" began to have some resonance.
Apparently, authenticity is the key to making a successful political leader. Even Mulcair's cirtics admit that he has it. Even you, a Topp supporter, admitted that Topp lacks it. (see our discussion about Topp's "feel-good" videos) You say Topp will develop it w/ time. They said the same about Ignatieff.
^^^^ another smart person.
Thomas Mulcair--positives and negatives:
Positive: He will change the style of language used in campaigning. He won't refer to "ordinary" Canadians.
Both positive and negative: He won't have a place for "Che" socialist NDPers. He will likely lead as a middle of the road leader with a few progressive points proposed in a platform. How's that for alliteration?
Positive: He will be ready to take on Harper right away. He won't need to find a seat in the House of Commons or improve his French.
Negative to Positive: He needs to establish himself as a pan-Canadian leader rather than as a parochial pro-Quebec leader. The Conservatives will likely wage a cultural battle against "foreign" influenced radicals. Foreigners could include Quebeckers such as Mr. Mulcair.
Positive: Mr. Mulcair does know that the NDP needs to reach out to Canadians who have not traditionally supported the NDP.
Negative: Mr. Mulcair's campaign needs to reply to at least one of my emails that I sent under my real name. If Mr. Mulcair's camapgin cannot communicate with me, then how can I support Thomas Mulcair as a first or second choice in the NDP leadership race?
As much as I disagree that cap-and-trade will somehow reduce carbon emissions, but also make money off of the same carbon emissions we're supposedly reducing...
Cap-and-trade is WAY different from the Liberal green shift, which was a carbon tax that affected everyone, including the poor. I'm not a giant corporation, so I never hit the "cap" part of the cap-and-trade. There's no direct tax on me. If conservatives want to have the argument that the oil companies will then turn around and make stuff more expensive for me, we just have to be prepared to say they've already made things more expensive by destroying the manufacturing sector (see: Dutch Disease) and imposing huge environmental costs that won't be properly measured (internalized) until the next generation. We have to win the debate on economics, not dodge it.
And comparing any New Democrat to Ignatieff is just insulting. Even if you assume good faith when he was running the international circuit, insulting Canada and praising "empire lite" to score points with the in crowd, that would make him one of the worst communicators in Canadian politics of all time. Personally, I don't think that was a communication problem. He was just completely out of step with our values.