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After the Nanaimo-Ladysmith disaster...what now for the NDP?

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Tue, 2019-05-07 01:33

#1

Ken Burch

After the Nanaimo-Ladysmith disaster...what now for the NDP?

This should have been a seat the party could COUNT on holding in a walk.

Instead, it's almost certainly going to finish third-a showing which makes it impossible for the party to regain the seat in a general election only six months from now.

After this result, what possible chance is there for the party to avoid total disaster in October?

If they couldn't count on holding THIS seat, what ridings do they have any hope of holding anywhere?

Will there be any way of rebuilding if the party goes down to less than 10 seats nationally, what will there even be to rebuild?

And is there anything Singh can possibly do to avoid being the most disastrous leader in the party's history?

Tue, 2019-05-07 02:04

#2

Debater

I think one of the things that hurt the NDP tonight was Sheila Malcolmson's opportunistic decision to resign her seat before she had even served one full term. It's understandable if an MP has to leave early for family or health emergencies, but to quit a seat you've only been in for 3 years just to run for a seat at another level of government is bad form. Malcolmson isn't the only MP who has done this, but I think it hurt the NDP.

As for the Liberals, they deserve to lose the next election after Trudeau's behaviour the past several years. It won't be great to have Trump-lite in office and someone who won't do anything progressive on climate change or equality issues, but Trudeau gave Scheer the rope to hang himself.

Tue, 2019-05-07 02:05

#3

Ken Burch

One thing is clear: If Singh wants the party to win any significant number of seats, and to hold any at all in Quebec-it's likely the party will never recover if it goes back to being seatless in Quebec, since that would mean it would go back to not being a national party-it needs to totally let go of Mulcair's insistence on blocking left candidates from seeking NDP nominations. The only races where anyone standing for the NDP this fall will generate any enthusiasm will be those where the candidate is a passionate voice for transformative change-nobody's going to win as a Dipper this year standing as a bland, "safe" incrementalist.

Tue, 2019-05-07 02:35

#4

jerrym

As I mentioned in the byelection thread, this was an important victory for the Greens, but I see the Cons as the biggest winners.

With 11% of the vote, a loss of more than half their 2015 vote, and a fourth place finish, the Liberals confirmed the big gap in the polls between them and the Cons. Coming along with the provincial losses over the last two years, this also weakens the Liberal argument that they are the automatic alternative if you want to beat the Cons in a particular riding.

The Greens, NDP and Liberals are all likely to proclaim new bold green policies as climate-change related flooding and the upcoming wildfire seasons are likely to further reinforce the fact that we are living in a new environmental paradigm. Failure to do so is going to leave the field open to the other two parties. The Cons of course will only have to say they have a plan (just like Nixon and his 1968 Vietnam plan) without any meaningful details and for most of their supporters that won't even be necessary.

The NDP needs to take the initiative on the Canadian Green New Deal that came out today instead of a piece of this and piece of that approach that it ran in the last election or end up looking like a party whose time has passed. They need to integrate a national pharmacare program, a widescale social housing program, upgrading indigenous health, education and housing to the national average, and going after offshore tax haven abusers, into a Canadian Green New Deal to produce a message tying economic justice for everyone and the environment together. If it fails to have a bold program it is likely to get lost in the campaign background.

Over 60 organizations, including United Steel Workers, youth leaders, David Suzuki, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, Greenpeace, Indigenous Climate Action, 350.org Canada, singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright, Neil Young, K.D. Lang, William Shatner, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, Naomi Klein, and Stephen Lewis, among others, supported the development of such a plan.

The NDP has to quickly build on this plan.

A made-in-Canada Green New Deal could include:

• Shifting to 100 percent zero-emission and renewable energy sources.

• Retrofitting all existing buildings to the highest energy efficiency standards.

• Building clean, affordable, and accessible public transit, including high-speed rail.

• Building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food.

• Ensuring truly universal access to clean water and affordable housing.

• Skills retraining and a federal jobs guarantee for workers across the country.

A Canadian Green New Deal would create thousands of high-wage jobs from coast to coast to coast. It would be our opportunity to further reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and address the systemic inequalities faced by so many people living in Canada.

In Canada, we could kick-start this shift with public money we’re currently using to subsidize the economy of the past. If we began by simply eliminating corporate tax loopholes and ending all federal fossil fuel subsidies, we would free up $265 billion over the next ten years.

https://futureofgood.co/a-made-in-canada-green-new-deal/

Tue, 2019-05-07 03:27

(Reply to #4) #5

bekayne

Debater wrote:

I think one of the things that hurt the NDP tonight was Sheila Malcolmson's opportunistic decision to resign her seat before she had even served one full term. It's understandable if an MP has to leave early for family or health emergencies, but to quit a seat you've only been in for 3 years just to run for a seat at another level of government is bad form. Malcolmson isn't the only MP who has done this, but I think it hurt the NDP.

Actually it was Leonard Krog who started that chain of events.

Tue, 2019-05-07 05:20

#6

nicky

The Nanaimo results are bad news for progressive politics in Canada.

we should be under no delusion that the Greens are the enemy of the NDP and that they see their route to growth largely through supplanting the NDP.

yet the Greens are scarcely progressive in many ways. In BC for example they have frustrated Horgan’s labour reforms and child care expansion.

after Nanaimo, and PEI, the press narrative will no doubt be that the Greens are about to surpass the NDP. They are at the moment relatively close in the pols and it is conceivable the Greens may start to edge into 3rd place.

this at a time when the NDP is eroding in Quebec and seeing about half its caucus not re-offering.

Over the past 20 years the Greens have repeatedly been responsible for helping elect numerous Conservatives on a split vote. And this was where they received only 3 to 5 %. If the Greens get up to 12% or so they stand to enable the election of dozens of Conservatives who would otherwise lose.

jerrym is right that Nanaimo is good news for the Cons where they held their vote. That is all they need to do to win if their opponents splinter the vote.

the following result is now entirely possible:

cons 35%

libs 30 %

ndp 15%

greens 15%

con 175 seats

lib 100

ndp. 12

green 5

bloq 15

Trudeau’s betrayal on electoral reform may saddle Canada with a very right wing majority government elected with barely a third of the vote.

Tue, 2019-05-07 07:51

(Reply to #6) #7

cco

Ken Burch wrote:

-it's likely the party will never recover if it goes back to being seatless in Quebec

This is a particularly pernicious narrative I hear pushed in the media a lot: the idea that one bad election means a party (specifically the NDP, or the Bloc, or the PQ) needs to pack it in forever. The Liberals were frozen out of francophone Quebec for 35 years and at one point were in distant third place, but were never described as "not a national party" or forever doomed. The NDP under Layton went from 13 seats to 103 over several elections, and yet the pundit meme is, essentially, that those elections (especially 2011) didn't really count. They were accidents. Like Rachel Notley was an accident in Alberta. People got blackout drunk, stumbled into the voting booth, and cast a vote for the NDP just to confound the pundits. It's only good, solid right-wing votes, like Reform, Alliance, Tory, PPC, and Liberal, that really reflect deep convictions on the part of the voters. Everything else is unrepeatable flights of whimsy.

Elections are still decided one at a time. The NDP could win in October, or it could be wiped completely off the electoral map. But that wouldn't mean the NDP needs to pack it in and go join the Greens or the Liberals. That decision is not commentators' to make, as much as they'd like it to be.

Tue, 2019-05-07 08:23

#8

Debater

cco, you make some valid points about media narratives, but you must have missed the fact that the Canadian media DID write off the Liberals as doomed after the 2011 Election.

The majority of commentators said the Liberals would probably never recover, and well-known authors like Peter C. Newman even wrote books saying the Liberals were basically dead.

Tue, 2019-05-07 09:48

#9

swallow

swallow's picture

Which is pretty much his point - the media narratives about the end of a party are generally wrong.

I have the impression that under Jagmeet Singh the bar on left candidates is lifted. Svend Robinson is publicly on twitter urging NDP to go further on Palestinian rights. Leah Gazan won an NDP nomination in Winnipeg. Nima Machouf in Montreal is a Quebec Solidaire activist. A relatively strong seat, Hamilton Centre, has seen the nomination of Matthew Green, no soft centrist. Barrington Walker in Kingston is an awesome anti-racist voice. So is Mae Nam, a co-founder of the Philippine Women’s Centre of Quebec, and Minsook Lee, an antiracist artist, both in Toronto. There is a real push to recruit Indigenous and racialized candidates, from Diana Yoon and Yafet Tewlede in Toronto to Anna Betty Achneepineskum in Thunder Bay and Annita McPhee in Skeena - Indigenous women running in winnable ridings.

It's not all rosy at the NDP by any means, but a good campaign on a green new deal could certainly mobilize people and do well - could even win back Nanaimo if Bob Chamberlain is willing to run again. Personally I'd like to see Green-NDP cooperation in this last-chance for climate-policy change election. But I also think that quietly, behind the scenes, Jagmeet Singh is doing some interesting things to make the party look more like Canada - and given time, this could make for some interesting developments. Jack Layton rebuilt slowly and steadily, and Singh may be able to do the same.

Tue, 2019-05-07 10:12

robbie_dee

Given (1) the failure of proportional representation advocates to actually obtain a change to the electoral system in any Canadian jurisdiction, in many cases in the face of clear rejection by the potentially affected voters in referenda on the subject, (2) the threat to our very survival as a species from climate change and (3) the fact that the Conservative Party appears to have been captured by willfully ignorant, climate change denialists who will do nothing about #2 until it is too late, I think what SHOULD happen is that the Greens, Liberals and NDP sit down and talk to each other about running a coordinated campaign and holding back candidates in ridings where the presence of multiple "science-based" candidates on the ballot could split the vote and lead to the election of a Conservative death cultist. This will never happen though.

Tue, 2019-05-07 10:24

swallow

swallow's picture

The Liberal policy on the climate emergency is better than the Conservatives'. But is it enough to achieve anything? If not, then what to do?

Tue, 2019-05-07 10:37

jerrym

A bold plan that integrates a real widespread climate change policy with funding many social issues gives the NDP its best chance of appearing meaningful in the fall election because the Liberals would have a number of problems with that. The Liberals are trapped by their purchase of the Trans Mountain and the billions in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry pipeline in saying, on the one hand, that they support pipelines, while at the same time proclaiming they are the transforming the economy into a renewable energy one through carbon pricing. They will have to run on this because it is too late to take another tack. This opens them up to being attacked from the left for being hypocrites for spending more money on fossil fuel purchases and subsidies while proclaiming they are climate change environmentalists.

The money needed for a broad, bold NDP Green New Deal would come from the "eliminating corporate tax loopholes and ending all federal fossil fuel subsidies, we would free up $265 billion over the next ten years." (https://futureofgood.co/a-made-in-canada-green-new-deal/), something the Liberals or the right wing of the Greens would not support. This could have broad appeal if a compaign was well designed to deal with issues of affordability because "Forty-six per cent of respondents to an Ipsos survey conducted on behalf MNP Ltd. said they're within $200 of insolvency every month" (https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/46-of-canadians-on-the-brink-of-insolvency-a...) in a country where income inequality continues to grow based on an unjust tax system and "one in four Canadians cite financial issues, taxes, or housing as keeping them up at night". (https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/broadbent/pages/7356/attachments/o...)

Tue, 2019-05-07 11:15

Martin N.

The NDP refused to change from their dated ideology and the Greens will simply eclipse them, replace them and render them irrelevant. No one wants to listen to NDP grievancemongers preaching to the choir. Younger generations want action on their priorities.

A classic mistake of attempting to force your product on the buyer rather than changing to products to suit demand. The NDP is stale-dated and about to be flushed by the Greens.

Tue, 2019-05-07 11:33

(Reply to #13) #14

R.E.Wood

swallow wrote:

Jack Layton rebuilt slowly and steadily, and Singh may be able to do the same.

Sorry, but I think Singh is one of the biggest problems the NDP has - not the solution. All the polls show that Canadians are not choosing Singh to be PM. And it's for a number of good reasons (which have been repeatedly listed by several posters here, including myself). He is a huge drag on the party. He's a hapless leader - not despicable like Mulcair, but gaffe-prone, totally inexperienced, and a deer-in-the-headlights. The other biggest problems are the federal executive (whose control of the party has led it where it is today), and the lack of compelling narrative to inspire & make people want to vote NDP.

I see nothing improving as long as Singh is leader, and the federal executive stays in control. The Nanaimo-Ladysmith result (and every single other by-election result since the last election, other than Singh's own win - where he campaigned for months in advance and required massive support from the federal party to pull off) forecasts what is coming. The NDP has no positive momentum. This loss - particularly that the NDP dropped from 1st to 3rd in what should have been a safe seat, and couldn't even hold second place - reinforces that the NDP is on the decline. People know it. The MP's know it, and that's why so many are choosing not to run again. Perception is very important in politics, and being perceived as a loser on the way down is the worst.

The Greens have momentum and excitement now, and with an MP in Manly who should have been playing for the NDP (edited to add: F-You Tom Mulcair). The Cons will be happy too, coming in second. The Liberals had a disasterous showing as 4th-place also-rans, which - like the NDP's disaster - will almost certainly hurt their support in the coming election. Most people across the country won't remember this result in six months, but lots of people on Vancouver Island, and probably the lower mainland will, and it will influence how they vote.

Tue, 2019-05-07 12:08

R.E.Wood

Trudeau, Singh both have reason to worry about Green byelection breakthrough

Paul Manly made history in Monday's federal byelection in Nanaimo–Ladysmith, winning the Vancouver Island riding and securing the Green Party its second seat in the House of Commons.

The breakthrough is a shot across the bow of both the New Democrats and Liberals, two parties that took significant hits in support as the Greens leapfrogged from fourth to first.

With 37.3 per cent of the vote, Manly increased his score from the 2015 election by 17.5 percentage points. The Conservatives' John Hirst finished second with 24.8 per cent, up 1.4 points from his party's performance four years ago.

The incumbent New Democrats slid by 10.1 points, with Bob Chamberlin capturing just 23.1 per cent of ballots cast. That was the party's lowest score in the region since 2000.

The Liberals' Michelle Corfield took 11 per cent, less than half of what the party had done in 2015 ...

Turnout in the byelection was 41 per cent, well above the 31 per cent average turnout in previous byelections that have been held during the life of this Parliament.

With the next general election less than six months away, the results could not come at a better time for the Green Party, fresh off a provincial breakthrough in last month's election in Prince Edward Island.

While Vancouver Island has been a strong region for both the federal and provincial Greens in B.C., Nanaimo–Ladysmith does not overlap with any of the three seats held by the provincial party on Vancouver Island — suggesting the federal party is breaking new ground.

And the gain is impressive by the standards put up by its rivals in other byelections. The increase of nearly 18 points is the third biggest jump scored by any party in a byelection over the past four years, ranking just behind upsets pulled off by the Liberals in 2017 in Lac-Saint-Jean and the Conservatives in 2018 in Chicoutimi–Le Fjord. Both of those victories were seen as meaningful breakthroughs by the two parties in the decisive electoral battleground of Quebec.

Worrying sign for Singh, NDP

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has reason to be concerned by the results in Nanaimo–Ladysmith. The area has a long history of voting for the New Democrats, who have won at least a portion of the present riding — the boundaries were significantly redrawn before 2015 — in 18 of the 22 previous elections since 1953.

The New Democrats have now lost vote share in 11 of the 12 byelections held during Singh's leadership. The sole exception was Singh's personal victory in February's contest in Burnaby South.

The implications for the NDP are potentially disastrous. The kind of swing that took place in Nanaimo–Ladysmith, were it to be replicated throughout Vancouver Island, would cost the New Democrats four of the five seats they still hold on the island. The results put up by Chamberlin are the worst since the days of Audrey McLaughlin and Alexa McDonough, when the NDP was at an all-time low.

Those are not the kind of precedents that Singh wants to be matching. And it is becoming a worrying pattern for the NDP — the provincial Greens benefited from the collapse of the NDP vote in New Brunswick and P.E.I. as well.

... (edited out analysis from Con and Lib perspectives -- see link below) ...

It is just one byelection. But the results are consistent with some of the wider trends that have been witnessed over the past few months. Those are worrying trends for Singh and Trudeau — and signs that the October federal election could be one of the most unpredictable in years.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/green-win-should-worry-trudeau-singh-1....

Tue, 2019-05-07 12:29

(Reply to #15) #16

BertramPotts BertramPotts's picture

BertramPotts's picture

robbie_dee wrote:

Given (1) the failure of proportional representation advocates to actually obtain a change to the electoral system in any Canadian jurisdiction.

This was not the fault of activists but of party leaders. Quebec will soon demostrate that all we needed to pass electoral reform was a vote in the legislature, the Liberals, AB NDP and BC NDP each had it totally in their power to get this done if it was actually their priorty. Even now I don't think there is any NDP provincial wing (or the Fed) who've said they'd just go ahead and pass PR if given a majority mandate.

Tue, 2019-05-07 12:33

WWWTT

After some consideration, it could very well be that this was not a green win but a Manly win. Or a candidate win. As pointed out by Swallow up thread, the NDP are still attracting strong candidates! (And good job swallow for the extensive update!)

probably a good message sent to the NDP brass by this loss and they deserve it, not the grass roots!

Im not writing off the NDP! They are still relevant, and socialist selflessness best hope in Canada, hands down!

Tue, 2019-05-07 12:46

quizzical

this should give them a heads up on Weir.

Tue, 2019-05-07 13:56

(Reply to #18) #19

Policywonk

WWWTT wrote:

After some consideration, it could very well be that this was not a green win but a Manly win. Or a candidate win. As pointed out by Swallow up thread, the NDP are still attracting strong candidates! (And good job swallow for the extensive update!)

probably a good message sent to the NDP brass by this loss and they deserve it, not the grass roots!

Im not writing off the NDP! They are still relevant, and socialist selflessness best hope in Canada, hands down!

It was both.

Tue, 2019-05-07 15:19

(Reply to #19) #20

Ken Burch

quizzical wrote:

this should give them a heads up on Weir.

If they still feel they can't let Weir back in, they at least need to not nominate an NDP candidate against him. All trying to beat Weir would do would throw the riding to the Cons.

Tue, 2019-05-07 15:38

(Reply to #20) #21

ctrl190

quizzical wrote:

this should give them a heads up on Weir.

Save for Ashton, the NDP wil likely get swept across the Prairies, regardless of whether Weir runs or not.

Tue, 2019-05-07 16:06

(Reply to #21) #22

Debater

Ken Burch wrote:

quizzical wrote:

this should give them a heads up on Weir.

If they still feel they can't let Weir back in, they at least need to not nominate an NDP candidate against him. All trying to beat Weir would do would throw the riding to the Cons.

Yes. And some election forecast sites like Election Prediction have already put the Weir seat in the Conservative column.

Tue, 2019-05-07 16:14

Debater

Chantal Hébert

Green victory suggests progressive vote is up for grabs

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2019/05/07/green-victory-suggests-progressive-vote-is-up-for-grabs.html

Tue, 2019-05-07 17:12

josh

Other than the environment, what’s progressive about the Greens?

Tue, 2019-05-07 17:14

kropotkin1951

First of all lets not forget that seats in the major cities are where the NDP needs to win. Nanaimo has always been a working class city but it is not very cosmopolitan. The population of this riding is 80% European ancestry and only about 5% Asian ancestry. The NDP probably did very well with the 10% of the population that is indigenous but frankly Reconciliation, although it is one of the issues nearest to my heart, is not a lead issue for Nanaimo and in fact running an indigenous candidate might have caused some of the NDP's more red neck voters to desert the party.

If Paul respects his Mother and Father, whose shoulders he is standing on, and raises the genocide occurring in Gaza and the West Bank then I will be happy with his win. Being a cynic I suspect he will not have much to say on the issue now that he's an MP.

Tue, 2019-05-07 18:28

Mighty Middle

Elizabeth May is on CTV and said the Green party nabbed NDP votes after BC Premier Hogan committed Billions of dollars in subsidies to fracking and LNG

WWWTT wrote:

After some consideration, it could very well be that this was not a green win but a Manly win.

Also on CTV Elizabeth May said this was a Paul Manly win, backed by a strong Green Party support.

Plus Jagmeet Singh told reporters this Green win was a "protest vote"

Tue, 2019-05-07 18:41

(Reply to #26) #27

Debater

Mighty Middle wrote:

Plus Jagmeet Singh told reporters this Green win was a "protest vote"

Sounds like Jagmeet Singh isn't taking the results seriously enough.

Was the Outremont loss also a "protest vote"?

Tue, 2019-05-07 18:42

Debater

Elizabeth May's new husband to run for the Green Party in BC

Tue, 2019-05-07 18:47

(Reply to #28) #29

R.E.Wood

josh wrote:

Other than the environment, what’s progressive about the Greens?

Proportional representation, social housing, pharmacare, and more...

https://www.greenparty.ca/en/our-vision-new

Tue, 2019-05-07 20:22

(Reply to #29) #30

WWWTT

josh wrote:

Other than the environment, what’s progressive about the Greens?

Im not sure? But I know this, if the greens are a socialist party, the ICM should be attacking them. And is the imperialist corporate media attacking the greens?

For me this is the obvious indicator. Perhaps the greens are still a lesser popular party so may still fly under the icm radar. But that should be changing soon, no?

Tue, 2019-05-07 20:26

(Reply to #30) #31

josh

Mighty Middle wrote:

Elizabeth May is on CTV and said the Green party nabbed NDP votes after BC Premier Hogan committed Billions of dollars in subsidies to fracking and LNG

WWWTT wrote:

After some consideration, it could very well be that this was not a green win but a Manly win.

Also on CTV Elizabeth May said this was a Paul Manly win, backed by a strong Green Party support.

Plus Jagmeet Singh told reporters this Green win was a "protest vote"

Must have been a protest vote against the way the NDP treated Manly. Maybe they’ll be another one on behal of Erin Weir.

Tue, 2019-05-07 20:29

(Reply to #31) #32

brookmere

bekayne wrote:
Actually it was Leonard Krog who started that chain of events.

Didn't stop the NDP from retaining the seat provincially though. In fact, the Green vote went down significantly in the byelection. Apropros, I read that the NDP was running campaign ads where Bob Chamberlin was pictured together with John Horgan but without Jagmeet Singh.

Tue, 2019-05-07 20:44

(Reply to #32) #33

kropotkin1951

WWWTT wrote:

josh wrote:

Other than the environment, what’s progressive about the Greens?

Im not sure? But I know this, if the greens are a socialist party, the ICM should be attacking them. And is the imperialist corporate media attacking the greens?

For me this is the obvious indicator. Perhaps the greens are still a lesser popular party so may still fly under the icm radar. But that should be changing soon, no?

Currently the Greens are not a real threat to the establishment and are a good way to diffuse the oppostion. If Paul Manly actually takes up his parents fight and raises the genocidal treatment of Israel towards the people of Gaza then we will see the medias response.

Tue, 2019-05-07 21:30

Martin N.

Maybe, due to the short tenure of this term, voters used the opportunity to send a message. The October election may provide a different result. Buyer's remorse may be present.

Tue, 2019-05-07 22:18

(Reply to #34) #35

Aristotleded24

Martin N. wrote:
The NDP refused to change from their dated ideology and the Greens will simply eclipse them, replace them and render them irrelevant. No one wants to listen to NDP grievancemongers preaching to the choir. Younger generations want action on their priorities.

A classic mistake of attempting to force your product on the buyer rather than changing to products to suit demand. The NDP is stale-dated and about to be flushed by the Greens.

I'm curious about your logic in that post. The Greens agree with the climate change panic that you have repeatedly derided, and are also steadfast in their disapproval of any pipelines to the west coast and fracking and LNG in British Columbia. They are also supportive of the carbon tax. All of these are positions you have used to attack your version of the left.

Wed, 2019-05-08 00:09

(Reply to #35) #36

Policywonk

Martin N. wrote:

Maybe, due to the short tenure of this term, voters used the opportunity to send a message. The October election may provide a different result. Buyer's remorse may be present.

Doubt it. This was a Green win and a Manly win. I suspect the Greens will take a few more seats in October.

Wed, 2019-05-08 00:35

Debater

The Greens will obviously target Victoria again -- they finished 2nd in 2015, and with Murray Rankin retiring, they will try to be 1st in 2019.

Wed, 2019-05-08 02:03

(Reply to #37) #38

Ken Burch

cco wrote:
Ken Burch wrote:

-it's likely the party will never recover if it goes back to being seatless in Quebec

This is a particularly pernicious narrative I hear pushed in the media a lot: the idea that one bad election means a party (specifically the NDP, or the Bloc, or the PQ) needs to pack it in forever. The Liberals were frozen out of francophone Quebec for 35 years and at one point were in distant third place, but were never described as "not a national party" or forever doomed. The NDP under Layton went from 13 seats to 103 over several elections, and yet the pundit meme is, essentially, that those elections (especially 2011) didn't really count. They were accidents. Like Rachel Notley was an accident in Alberta. People got blackout drunk, stumbled into the voting booth, and cast a vote for the NDP just to confound the pundits. It's only good, solid right-wing votes, like Reform, Alliance, Tory, PPC, and Liberal, that really reflect deep convictions on the part of the voters. Everything else is unrepeatable flights of whimsy.

Elections are still decided one at a time. The NDP could win in October, or it could be wiped completely off the electoral map. But that wouldn't mean the NDP needs to pack it in and go join the Greens or the Liberals. That decision is not commentators' to make, as much as they'd like it to be.

Obviously, parties have recovered from bad results and the NDP could, in a few decades, recover from another 1993-style outcome.

But a small correction: The Liberals were not "shut out" in francophone Quebec-though they had been shut out in the Prairies and B.C. in 1958 and again in 1980-they finished second in the seat count there throughout the Mulroney, Chretien, and Martin years, though they won the popular vote in Quebec under Chretien at least once.

What I am talking about is the NDP going back to having no seats at all in Quebec, which is a real possibility. If we get back into a thing where left votes in QC always go to the Bloc again, as they did from 1993 to 2011, that will have a devastating effect on the ability of the party to persuade anybody outside of Quebec to consider going back to it. This is why is it desperately necessary to hold at least three or four Quebec seats. It's difficult for to imagine the party making a comeback in Quebec in any future federal elections if it ends up seatless there this fall.

I'd be glad to be wrong on that.

Wed, 2019-05-08 11:25

pietro_bcc

The Green party and its membership are progressive, Elizabeth May is not. In fact when the Green Party voted to support BDS, May pulled a tantrum and said that she would leave if the party didn't vote to reverse their position in a special vote.

As long as May remains the leader the party will in practice remain centrist, hopefully some success in the next election will result in a leadership challenge that can net a new leader. I am not opposed to supporting or even joining the Green party, I am not a dogmatic NDP supporter, but not with May as leader.

Not to mention that a Green party which argues for the tar sands to be refined within Canada rather than keeping it in the ground is laughable.

Wed, 2019-05-08 13:24

Ken Burch

If there are more than three GPC MPs elected in the fall-we can assume Manly will hold the seat he just took, since the NDP won't do anything different campaigning there in the fall than they just did-there first course of business should be ditching May as leader and putting Manly in in her place.

Wed, 2019-05-08 13:35

Pondering

This could be good news rather than bad news. The NDP doesn't have to merge with the Greens they can just steal their votes. The NDP is not kn0wn for it's environmentalism. It isn't just that they rejected the Leap, it's that they have always put immediate jobs in front of all else. Even as they moved towards the centre my perception is that they remained old-fashioned on the environment with no significant difference from the Liberals. Maybe that was their bid to appear more centrist, or at least not like tree-huggers, not too lefty.

A new leader gives the NDP the opportunity to do an about face on the environment. I sound like a broken record to myself but wait for the platforms.

Wed, 2019-05-08 14:09

quizzical

absolute bs pondering. my whole family have always been environmentalists and NDP. even my GPA who worked for a huge pulp mill was out protesting clear cuts.

the environmental membership hasn't gone anywhere, yet. pretty sick of your no nothing from QC.

Wed, 2019-05-08 14:12

(Reply to #42) #43

Misfit

Misfit's picture

Ken Burch wrote:

cco wrote:
Ken Burch wrote:

-it's likely the party will never recover if it goes back to being seatless in Quebec

This is a particularly pernicious narrative I hear pushed in the media a lot: the idea that one bad election means a party (specifically the NDP, or the Bloc, or the PQ) needs to pack it in forever. The Liberals were frozen out of francophone Quebec for 35 years and at one point were in distant third place, but were never described as "not a national party" or forever doomed. The NDP under Layton went from 13 seats to 103 over several elections, and yet the pundit meme is, essentially, that those elections (especially 2011) didn't really count. They were accidents. Like Rachel Notley was an accident in Alberta. People got blackout drunk, stumbled into the voting booth, and cast a vote for the NDP just to confound the pundits. It's only good, solid right-wing votes, like Reform, Alliance, Tory, PPC, and Liberal, that really reflect deep convictions on the part of the voters. Everything else is unrepeatable flights of whimsy.

Elections are still decided one at a time. The NDP could win in October, or it could be wiped completely off the electoral map. But that wouldn't mean the NDP needs to pack it in and go join the Greens or the Liberals. That decision is not commentators' to make, as much as they'd like it to be.

Obviously, parties have recovered from bad results and the NDP could, in a few decades, recover from another 1993-style outcome.

But a small correction: The Liberals were not "shut out" in francophone Quebec-though they had been shut out in the Prairies and B.C. in 1958 and again in 1980-they finished second in the seat count there throughout the Mulroney, Chretien, and Martin years, though they won the popular vote in Quebec under Chretien at least once.

What I am talking about is the NDP going back to having no seats at all in Quebec, which is a real possibility. If we get back into a thing where left votes in QC always go to the Bloc again, as they did from 1993 to 2011, that will have a devastating effect on the ability of the party to persuade anybody outside of Quebec to consider going back to it. This is why is it desperately necessary to hold at least three or four Quebec seats. It's difficult for to imagine the party making a comeback in Quebec in any future federal elections if it ends up seatless there this fall.

I'd be glad to be wrong on that.

give up your damned love affair with Quebec.

wuebec does not like the NDP. They never have and they never will. 2011 was an anomaly. Forget it! It’s done and gone.

but guess what! The NDP IS a national party. They always have been and they always will be. With or without Quebec.

Yiur constant whining about Quebec is nauseating.

there are three national parties in Canada. The Liberals, the Conservstives, and the NDP. All three have lost party status or have been close to doing so. All have rebounded within an election or two.

Wed, 2019-05-08 14:41

(Reply to #43) #44

Ken Burch

Misfit wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

cco wrote:
Ken Burch wrote:

-it's likely the party will never recover if it goes back to being seatless in Quebec

This is a particularly pernicious narrative I hear pushed in the media a lot: the idea that one bad election means a party (specifically the NDP, or the Bloc, or the PQ) needs to pack it in forever. The Liberals were frozen out of francophone Quebec for 35 years and at one point were in distant third place, but were never described as "not a national party" or forever doomed. The NDP under Layton went from 13 seats to 103 over several elections, and yet the pundit meme is, essentially, that those elections (especially 2011) didn't really count. They were accidents. Like Rachel Notley was an accident in Alberta. People got blackout drunk, stumbled into the voting booth, and cast a vote for the NDP just to confound the pundits. It's only good, solid right-wing votes, like Reform, Alliance, Tory, PPC, and Liberal, that really reflect deep convictions on the part of the voters. Everything else is unrepeatable flights of whimsy.

Elections are still decided one at a time. The NDP could win in October, or it could be wiped completely off the electoral map. But that wouldn't mean the NDP needs to pack it in and go join the Greens or the Liberals. That decision is not commentators' to make, as much as they'd like it to be.

Obviously, parties have recovered from bad results and the NDP could, in a few decades, recover from another 1993-style outcome.

But a small correction: The Liberals were not "shut out" in francophone Quebec-though they had been shut out in the Prairies and B.C. in 1958 and again in 1980-they finished second in the seat count there throughout the Mulroney, Chretien, and Martin years, though they won the popular vote in Quebec under Chretien at least once.

What I am talking about is the NDP going back to having no seats at all in Quebec, which is a real possibility. If we get back into a thing where left votes in QC always go to the Bloc again, as they did from 1993 to 2011, that will have a devastating effect on the ability of the party to persuade anybody outside of Quebec to consider going back to it. This is why is it desperately necessary to hold at least three or four Quebec seats. It's difficult for to imagine the party making a comeback in Quebec in any future federal elections if it ends up seatless there this fall.

I'd be glad to be wrong on that.

give up your damned love affair with Quebec.

wuebec does not like the NDP. They never have and they never will. 2011 was an anomaly. Forget it! It’s done and gone.

but guess what! The NDP IS a national party. They always have been and they always will be. With or without Quebec.

Yiur constant whining about Quebec is nauseating.

there are three national parties in Canada. The Liberals, the Conservstives, and the NDP. All three have lost party status or have been close to doing so. All have rebounded within an election or two.

It's not a love affair-it's the question of whether the NDP matters. It only matters if it can contest for power-and no, the choice doesn't have to be seeking power OR having principles, a winning party can do both.

The NDP can never be anything but a third party if it goes back to never winning seats in Quebec.

And you're wrong-2011 was a sign that Quebec voters can be reached. The need is to make sure that the party IS radical-almost all of the Quebec caucus are people to the left of the leadership.

Had Mulcair allowed the Quebec MPs to support the student tuition strikers-and there was no point in his saying no ont hat, since nobody who opposed them would ever have even considered voting NDP; support for making college more expensive is a marker that a person is a total reactionary-had he allowed them to publicly commit truth on Israel/Palestine, had he let the connection to the social movements happen, the massive losses there in 2015 would not have occurred. And because Singh still hasn't addressed that, it looks as though the freaking Bloc will absorb all the Left votes in Quebec again.

Winning votes there doesn't involving betraying potential NDP supporters anywhere else-accepting Quebec's right to self-determination is something only right-wing Anglo supremacists would oppose.

Wed, 2019-05-08 15:53

Pondering

The Israeli/Palestine issue is not a deciding factor in Quebec at all. 82% of Quebecers are done with the sovereignty issue. Quebecers are focused on the same things the rest of the country is focused on: inequality(the economy), the environment, and immigration.

Wed, 2019-05-08 16:03

(Reply to #45) #46

contrarianna

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Martin N. wrote:
The NDP refused to change from their dated ideology and the Greens will simply eclipse them, replace them and render them irrelevant. No one wants to listen to NDP grievancemongers preaching to the choir. Younger generations want action on their priorities.

A classic mistake of attempting to force your product on the buyer rather than changing to products to suit demand. The NDP is stale-dated and about to be flushed by the Greens.

I'm curious about your logic in that post. The Greens agree with the climate change panic that you have repeatedly derided, and are also steadfast in their disapproval of any pipelines to the west coast and fracking and LNG in British Columbia. They are also supportive of the carbon tax. All of these are positions you have used to attack your version of the left.

There is not a shred of logical or ethical consistency in that the relentless tar sands and tanker shill Martin N. would advocate the Greens over the NDP.

But be not puzzled, these are the cynical machinations seen with our undemocratic first-past-the-post system (which of course he also supports, along with the fossil fuel industry).

The unvoiced consistency of his absurd contradictions is a desire to promote a win for the more avid climate destroyers by dividing support in the potentially less destructive parties.

Karl Nuerenberg shows this apprehension in his article:

Paul Manly's Green victory is personal vindication and sends a message on climate change

....Good for Andrew Scheer's Conservatives?

Those who are, mostly, terrified that our first-past-the-post electoral system could deliver a cheap victory to Andrew Scheer's climate-change-denying Conservatives next time will worry about what the Nanaimo-Ladysmith results portend. With three parties, that at least rhetorically [emphasis mine] recognize the reality of the climate crisis, splitting the progressive vote, the let's-make-gas-cheaper-and-build-more-pipelines Conservatives could slip into power....

http://rabble.ca/news/2019/05/paul-manlys-green-victory-personal-vindica...

Wed, 2019-05-08 16:50

(Reply to #46) #47

pietro_bcc

Pondering wrote:

The Israeli/Palestine issue is not a deciding factor in Quebec at all. 82% of Quebecers are done with the sovereignty issue. Quebecers are focused on the same things the rest of the country is focused on: inequality(the economy), the environment, and immigration.

Not true, support for sovereignty is way higher than 18%.

Wed, 2019-05-08 18:09

Debater

Ken makes a valid point about the loss of Quebec on the NDP. The NDP's biggest challenge right now, bigger than the leadership issue, is that it needs a regional base. It needs to be dominant in one area of the country. That is a requirement to succeed in our federal system. A party has to be 1st or be dominant in one of the big provinces in order to win, or even form Official Opposition.

The NDP is now in the same challenge that the Liberals were in a couple of elections ago. The Liberals fell to 3rd because they had lost their Quebec base, lost Ontario, had virtually nothing in Western Canada, and were even losing parts of Atlantic Canada. They came back under Trudeau in 2015 because they swept the Maritimes, won back Quebec, won Ontario, and finished first in BC for the first time since 1968.

The Conservatives remain strong & competitive because they are the dominant party in Western Canada and in rural Ontario, and have some other strongholds.

If the NDP is to have a comeback in the future the way the Liberals did in 2015, or the way the Conservatives may in 2019, the NDP will need a region of the country where they can be the dominant party.

Wed, 2019-05-08 18:24

(Reply to #48) #49

Pondering

pietro_bcc wrote:

Pondering wrote:

The Israeli/Palestine issue is not a deciding factor in Quebec at all. 82% of Quebecers are done with the sovereignty issue. Quebecers are focused on the same things the rest of the country is focused on: inequality(the economy), the environment, and immigration.

Not true, support for sovereignty is way higher than 18%.

They are still done with the topic.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/a-new-poll-suggests-alberta-is-the-province-that-most-wants-to-separate-from-canada-not-quebec

A February poll by the Angus Reid Institute found that 50 per cent of Albertans would support secession from Canada. In contrast, in an October 2016 poll, 82 per cent of Quebecers said they have no desire to revisit the idea of sovereignty any time soon.

Quebec politicians don't represent the will of the people any better than other politicians.

Wed, 2019-05-08 18:36

Pondering

More numbers:

A full 82 per cent of Quebec respondents to a survey conducted by the Angus Reid Institute in partnership with CBC agreed with the statement, "Ultimately, Quebec should stay in Canada."

When broken down by language group, 73 per cent of francophone respondents said Quebec should remain in Canada.

In addition, 64 per cent of francophone Quebecers surveyed agreed with the statement that "issue of Quebec sovereignty is settled, and Quebec will remain in Canada."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-angus-reid-canada-indepdence-1.3788110

Sovereignty association was promoted to insinuate that Quebec wouldn't really be separate. When asked at the time of the first referendum some thought it meant Quebec would still have representation in Ottawa.

That is the reason for the Clarity act.

Wed, 2019-05-08 19:11

(Reply to #50) #51

Ken Burch

Pondering wrote:

The Israeli/Palestine issue is not a deciding factor in Quebec at all. 82% of Quebecers are done with the sovereignty issue. Quebecers are focused on the same things the rest of the country is focused on: inequality(the economy), the environment, and immigration.

Would it be such a terrible thing for the NDP to have this position: "We recognize that Quebec has the right to self-determination; at the same time we hope Quebec will remain both a nation AND a vital component of Canada and will work with all out might to persuade the people of Quebec to always so remain"? Would that be impossible for you to live with? It's not as though sovereigntism is a thing that has to be defeated. It's enough that it be...well, just put aside.

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