Welcome back New Democrats - WOW!

The latest polling shows a minority government with the NDP holding the balance of power which is the best scenario possible at the present time 

And don’t forget Jack Layton’s NDP was not polling that well leading up to the 2011 election when the NDP won 102 seats

https://abacusdata.ca/liberals-and-conservatives-deadlocked-at-32/

We Are Living in a Growing Corporate Dictatorship’

A Q&A with Leah Gazan, the ‘fearlessly progressive’ Indigenous socialist running for the NDP this fall.

https://thetyee.ca/News/2019/07/16/Leah-Gazan-NDP-Candidate/

https://www.straight.com/news/1279426/jenny-kwan-immigration-exercise-nation-building-and-investment-future-generations

Grassy Narrows Chief to run for NDP 

https://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2019/07/29/grassy-narrows-chief-to-run-for-the-federal-new-democrats-in-fall-election-3/#.XT8qziUTGEe

Previous NDP candidate Linda McQuaig unloads on Jason Kenney’s nonsense Imagine how much more constructive our House of Commons would be with even a few MPs like McQuaig

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2019/08/alberta-targets-foreign-special-interests-omits-big-oil

https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/08/04/politics-take-a-prominent-role-at-vancouver-pride-parade.html

How many flakes and loose cannons will be running for the NDP this time?

At least she had the good sense to step down before it was too late to choose another candidate

https://www.100milefreepress.net/news/federal-ndp-candidate-for-kamloops-thompson-cariboo-riding-has-stepped-down/

https://www.burnabynow.com/opinion/blogs/opinion-this-video-attack-on-jagmeet-singh-is-a-hateful-clown-show-1.23918787

Come on Jagmeet, hit these scum bag Liberals where it hurts as SNC Lavalin is despicable 

If the RCMP come in “we’re cooked” say Liberal MPs in article today in Hill Times

Is this SNC joined at the hip with the Trudeau Liberals the kind of government Canadians want?

 Seriously.

https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/furey-heres-why-its-up-to-jagmeet-singh-to-expose-trudeaus-game

Jagmeet Singh slams Election Canada over their stupid climate change comments 

https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEP8kdHeFXQG3Ns-NQOJWgRwqGQgEKhAIACoHCAowqeP_CjDdg_oCMMTh6QU?hl=en-CA&gl=CA&ceid=CA%3Aen

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/singh-scheer-minority-1.5256647

Just wish the NDP had 100 candidates like Linda McQuaig, instead of the many of its usual flakes like Weir and Moore, Ryan, etc. Once the election is over, with hopefully a minority government, Singh's number one issue should be to get the team focused on the next election. 

Denounced in media, taxing the super-rich turns out to be popular with Canadians

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Linda McQuaig

August 29, 2019

The Onion magazine once sardonically described the gap between rich and poor as the Eighth Wonder of the World -- "a tremendous, millennia-old expanse that fills us with both wonder and humility… the most colossal and enduring of mankind's creations."

Another aspect of the rich-poor gap that fills me with wonder is the way the rich manage to keep it off the political agenda, although that may be changing.

Prominent U.S. Democratic presidential contenders Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are campaigning on taxing the super-rich, with Warren calling for a two per cent annual tax on wealth above $50 million, rising to three per cent on billionaires.

In Canada, where politicians have shied away from even putting their toe in the water when it comes to taxing the rich, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has taken a bold plunge, calling for a version of Warren's tax -- an annual one per cent tax on wealth over $20 million.

This is an excellent idea, and is apparently popular. A new Abacus poll shows that 67 per cent of Canadians support (or somewhat support) a wealth tax, along the lines proposed by Warren, and that even a majority of Conservative voters support it. That's probably about the same percentage of Canadians who support (or somewhat support) Mother's Day.

Yet the wealth tax has received little media coverage -- beyond denunciations in the National Post, which surely has nothing to do with the fact the media is largely owned by billionaires.

One Post columnist posed the bizarre question: what is the problem to which creating a wealth tax is a solution?

Fortunately, the brilliant French economist Thomas Piketty answered that question at length in his celebrated international best-seller, Capital in the 21st Century, where he made the case for wealth taxes.

Without them, he argued with extensive data, wealth will become ever more concentrated, allowing the mega-rich to swallow up an ever-larger share of the world's resources.

Given that 26 individuals now have as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity (3.8 billion people), one wonders at what point conservative commentators might consider this a problem. What if one individual had as much as the rest of humanity -- or if she had all the world's wealth? Would that cause alarm at the Post?

Let's not forget that the super-rich typically made their fortunes by selling products built by employees we all paid to educate, and shipping those products on roads we all paid to build.

 A wealth tax would redirect a tiny fraction of those fortunes back to the community to help ordinary Canadians. I'd call that a good solution to the problem of millions of Canadians working really hard but still struggling to get by.

A wealth tax would also help curb the enormous political power of the super-rich. Fossil fuel billionaires, for instance, have effectively managed to block global efforts against climate change.

Billionaires and their defenders maintain the super-rich would find ways to hide their money from tax authorities. But then why do billionaires resist such taxes? Because they know they would actually pay more -- just as they did in the early postwar years, when taxes on the rich were much higher.

Piketty notes that Warren's wealth tax is in line with historically high U.S. tax rates on the rich. He maintains those higher rates were key to the strong economic growth from 1940 to 1980 -- before Republicans gutted taxes on the rich, slowing down growth and swelling family fortunes.

The Canadian tax system also helps perpetuate dynastic fortunes. Canada is the only G7 country without an inheritance tax.

According to a study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, between 2012 and 2016, the net worth of Canada's wealthiest 87 families grew by more than $800 million -- per family.

 The study also found that inheritance is growing in importance. Among the wealthiest Canadian families, 45 per cent had passed down wealth at least one generation in 1999, compared to 53 per cent in 2016.

So much for the argument that the super-rich are increasingly self-made entrepreneurs.

Turns out that Canada's billionaires are mostly winners in what Warren Buffett calls the "ovarian lottery." They just think they hit a triple.

Linda McQuaig is a journalist and author. Her book Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths was among the books selected by the Literary Review of Canada as the "25 most influential Canadian books of the past 25 years." This column originally appeared in the Toronto Star.

Image: Sean Davis/Flickr

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2019/08/denounced-media-taxing-super-rich-turns-out-be-popular-canadians

NDP leader said he would never prop up a Conservative government 

It was the correct thing to say and a play which will strengthen his hand 

In the last minority Liberals supported the Conservatives so many times Canadians lost count, rather than work with the NDP

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.macleans.ca/opinion/jagmeet-singhs-minority-government-calculus/am

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/politics/article-singh-is-right-to-put-his-identity-at-the-forefront-of-his-campaign/

Ever try getting a campsite?

Canada could easily use double its number of national parks

Jagmeet Singh wants a new National Park Reserve in the South Okanagan-Similkameen to go ahead, and is concerned about the serious delay of the project.

Which rich people, supporting the Trudeau Liberals, as well as the other right-wing parties, are holding this up? 

Finally some progressive left-wing policies which most voters want, even if they don’t quite realize it yet But pound away steadily on these themes for five-six weeks and then we shall see.

https://www.bramptonguardian.com/news-story/9595051-ndp-promises-tax-hikes-for-companies-wealthy/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJZx6TMcjL0

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2019/09/13/singh-takes-anticorporate-pro-affordability-pitch-to-the-danforth.html

Brilliant - how refreshing!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mNnkEtvSqyc

The NDP have pulled away from the slumping Greens, so can the NDP now catch up to the Leaders?

Jagmeet Singh pledges to build 500,000 new affordable homes in 10 years

https://globalnews.ca/news/5912408/jagmeet-singh-affordable-homes-pledge/

Unifor backs the NDP in Windsor