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That said, I did read the whole press release and it's true that near the end, it said,
But I think the press release was laid out terribly. They should make it clear from the start that this $1,200 is not a child care program. THEN they should go on to say that if they're going to give a family allowance, that it should be tax free. The way it's laid out now makes it look like they're just capitulating to the Tory policy and quibbling over the details.
[ 08 June 2007: Message edited by: pink ]
Criticizing the NDP = Supporting the liberals
It makes more sense than the old mantra:
Criticizing the Liberals = Supporting the Conservatives
The NDP platform called for an increase in the Child Tax Benefit of $1000 per child. The Conservatives policy, as implemented, will give those who need it most less than what the NDP wanted to give them. Why on earth is it wrong to get the Conservatives to change their policy to make it closer to something the NDP included in their platform?
Interestingly, under the federal Liberal deal, Ontario would have created no more than 25,000 - 25 thousand - daycare places over 5 years! 5,000 places per year according to Le Devoir's report of Ontario's official figures. This was the big plan - and Ontario would get the lion's share.
I think Layton may be playing things here more intelligently than some give him credit for.
Le Devoir reports that the cancellation of the Liberal plan will mean, at most, that 10,000 places that do not exist now will not get built. That's it - the Liberal plan being cancelled means 10,000 spaces not built. Quebec will add that every year or every 6 months.
So Olivia Chow demanding that the 1,200 at least go totally to parents no strings attached, no clawbacks, no tax cutbacks, is a vast improvement over the status quo and does not prevent people from continuing to want some form of universal daycare program, fedrally- or provincially-funded.
In the past few weeks, there has been this growing chorus of voices that the NDP is in bed with the Tories, which seems unfounded. Maybe the NDP is not trying to baillonnette the Tories every day, but it is an opposition party doing what it was elected to do in the circumstances of a minority parliament - oppose bad government policy, keep the government clean and make sure it delivers on things that can make sense, and propose better solutions.
As for the inheritance tax, the NDP in June 2004 kind of sprung it on people without preparing them. It sounds like it can be a good fiscal policy idea but it should be discussed 3 years before elections, debated, examined by tax specialists, etc.
In 2004, I was helping with phoning for a local candidate in an area with a heavy immigrant worker population and we were given no arguments to defend the inheritance tax idea. Boy were the Italians and Portuguese angry - I learned logts of Portuguese and Italian swear words that summer. They were convinced we wanted to steal their homes. In Toronto, it is easy to have a family home worth 750,000 - many immigrant families have bought duplexes or triplexes. If the mom and dad have a company pension, you easily make it over 1 million bucks, or that's what many of them said or claimed (or rather yelled) over the phone. We were "communisti!" who were ready to expropriate little old Italian nonnas (grandmothers). It was weird. And funny (images of mobs of tiny women in black descending on the office with brooms to beat us)
Phone canvassers were giwen no preparation or training on how to respond. The heat was very high so Layton may have felt forced to withdraw the idea.
Now the idea may appear tainted in Canadian politics for a few years despite being quasi universally adopted in the OECD.
[ 20 April 2006: Message edited by: Critical Mass2 ]
[ 08 June 2007: Message edited by: pink ]
It isn't, except it the fevered minds of people who don't pay attention.
There is nothing inherently wrong with giving money to people who need it - raising children is expensive. The problem is when giving a little boost ($100/mo) is all that is done, and it is done instead of a child care plan, which is needed a lot more.
Personally, I'd love to see parents recieve a family allowance or increase in the Child Tax benefit. We have a million kids living in poverty in this country - we should be ashamed and working to change it. An income boost would help.
That doesn't mean we don't need a child care system in place, which we very urgently do.
I think what bugs me about this whole thing is that we are told it is an 'either-or' discussion. Horsemanure - both policies should be implemented, the child care plan and an income boost. I suggest paying for it by cancelling the proposed GST reduction.
If that's not enough, take it from the dead.
You certainly aren't being told that by the NDP.
Layton is unfit for leadership
Strange, isn't it, that even though my views are not well thought out, nor show any deeply-held principles, that I'm just a "troll", that people still take them seriously enough to feel they need to reply. I guess your emotionally-charged witchhunt type of comment also applies to my views on support for the Palestinian people's struggle and my views that Canada should get out of Afghanistan now? Or is that just part of the troll's clever bag of tricks?
Try to be a teensy bit tolerant and stifle your yawns long enough to pay attention:
1. For a party with the NDP's history and credentials, an inheritance tax -- which is a good thing is just not inspiring or motivating enough by itself to carve out an space for progressive ideals in the current Canadian political landscape. It's already old hat in the U.S. and elsewhere. But it's a good thing for the NDP to pursue it.
2. When the NDP capitulates on this little point under fire, it weakens the progressive forces.
You can yawn now and condescend and call names again. Just wanted to make sure when you found my message tiresome and boring, you at least knew what you were condemning.
[ 20 April 2006: Message edited by: unionist ]
I know that, you know that. It appears that some people on here didn't know that.
Traditional social democratic or democratic socialist politics (to say nothing of full-blown Marxist-Leninism of the old Soviet Bloc which until a couple of decades ago offered an alternative to the free enterprise capitalist system in the developing world) are as dead as the dodo bird in western societies these days so the ideological difference between the NDP and the Liberals is not as great as it used in economic policy terms back in the 1970s.
The NDP could still be all about standing up for the more socially marginalized within society in a populist mad as hell and not going to take it any more sort of way against the more elite oriented Liberals and Conservatives but instead appears to push a more urban middle class social activist sort of agenda a lot of the time thus ceding the rural populist vote to the Conservatives.
1) Layton is from municipal politics. In city politics, partisan lines are not hard or set in cement and people fight over one issue, cooperate over the next, then split gain over the third issue. Perhaps the House is not the chambers of Toronto city council where Layton gained his political experience, but his actions may appear familiar to people who like watching city hall shenanigans
2) if Canada ever implements proportional representation, you will get minority governments with shifting alliances. Maybe Layton is just trying to show Canadians what PR would look like. He is "walking the PR walk" before it is even implemented. With PR, this is how I think Canadians would want their politicians to behave - act responsibly, oppose when needed, propose alternatives when possible, stop polarizing artificially all the time for the sake of being on the TV news by asking an artificially exaggerated question in an artificially angry tone of voice during the Question Period circus as if the apocalypse were just around the corner
Maybe he is where he wants to be. Or maybe that's just his style learned in municipal politics.
I just don't see any thing "Liberal" in Layton if you mean centrist а la Chrйtien.
The NDP is in a precarious position for its survival. I don't know how it is going to improve its standing. Where is the base for expansion? In the last election folks were originally predicting '65 seats', etc. The Liberal Party was in a tailspin, the Cons not yet tested and what did the party get with all these stars alligning in perfect order for an NDP breakthrough? Why will it be any better next election? The only silver lining for the NDP was the mediocre results of the Green Party. the Greens may have lost their momentum and thus attraction...maybe.
Layton knows a quick election could be a disaster. The Cons becoming the federalist alternative in Quebec and winning a majority. Everyone is waiting for the Cons to shoot themselves in the foot but that is a passive strategy. When you're losing in a hockey game you don't wait for the other team to pt the puck in its own net.
None of us is in the secret strategy rooms of the NDP or in the minds of electors right now.
Sure, he's weaker than everyone thought he could be (did people seriously say 65 seats? - NDP pollsters need a sense of proportion or a better calculator program on their computers). But less than 10% of teh population pay any serious attention to politics, and it's summer soon so none of this probably matters right now.
Some us are. Sometimes.
But, really, you overestimate both the secrecy and the strategy [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
[ 21 April 2006: Message edited by: Scott Piatkowski ]
A fellow called Garcia. Used to be with Actra, the performance union.
Does that mean I'm closer than I think to the secret room where the bad men pull the strings? [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]
[ 21 April 2006: Message edited by: Critical Mass2 ]
Wow, this thread drifted into a discussion about childcare. But back to the discussion about the direction of the federal NDP.
You cannot have this discussion without examining what took place in the 3 provinces where the NDP is most successful electorally: Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia. With the federal party looking to improve its standings, it's no accident that the federal NDP looked that way and took notes. Unfortunately, the NDP in those 3 provinces moved rightward to become successful, and became one of the 2 parties. But this is the crucial difference that should be pointed out to the federal party. Unlike the federal scene, there are no viable 3rd parties in any province that can make an impact on local politics, the way Reform, the Bloc, and the NDP have been able to impact Parliament federally.
Something else that hasn't been discussed, but I think may have something to do with this, is that the federal NDP did not have a convention before the last election, unlike the other parties. So perhaps in a sense, the party didn't really know what it thought of anything, and had to rely more on polling and marketing than it otherwise should. (Does this idea make sense or not?)
BTW pink:
I agree, and I've told him as much elsewhere.
Aristotleded24, you vacillate between serious comments and temper tantrums when the NDP is challenged -- or, more properly, when you feel someone is accusing you of being a blind NDP supporter (which in the same thread you quote, I specifically disclaimed). But to agree with pink that I am a Liberal supporter? Isn't that taking your tantrum to the infantile stage? I despise the Liberal Party and everything they've done especially over the past decade. Can you actually point to a single post where I've said otherwise? Or can you retract a mistake when you've made one?
Unionist, people love it when their positions are misrepresented, you should do that more often. [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]
I didn't intend to suggest that you are a Liberal supporter, I was merely seconding pink's other points about your general contributions to this board.
Thanks for that correction. But scroll up. When pink said: What's 'unbelievable' is that anyone takes 'unionist' seriously, when she/he continually trolls this board, I replied:
"I guess your emotionally-charged witchhunt type of comment also applies to my views on support for the Palestinian people's struggle and my views that Canada should get out of Afghanistan now?"
No one has any business dehumanizing anyone else or dismissing their seriously presented views by using words like "troll", unless of course you sincerely believe that my mission here is disruption of serious discussion. If you do, then I apologize for wasting both of our time. Otherwise, I ask you to reconsider expressions like "troll" or "get lost" (another of yours). I keep saying I don't think you really mean these things, but I stand to be corrected.
I can also certainly understand why they would be motivated to try to shut down such criticism by making collateral attacks on the critics' imagined motives, in order to avoid having to actually deal with the criticism.
What I don't understand is why people think that it's acceptable to smear other people as trolls because they don't toe the NDP party line.
And you have proof that I'm an "uncritical, craven, apologist for the NDP?"
I have no issue with people who aren't NDP supporters. What bothers me is when certain posters use any discussion about the NDP as an excuse to merely snipe at the party and its supporters and derail the conversation completely as opposed to actually contribute to it. As if this isn't annoying enough, many of these people object to the NDP not tolerating prominent Liberal supporters who use their NDP cards and CAW credentials in an attempt to derail the party and by extension any possibility of introducing even the slightest of leftist politics in Parliament.
Enough with the thread drift.
Toronto Star:
"Layton prides himself on getting things done. That's what he did on Toronto City Council where he and Chow, his even more practical wife, wheeled and dealt constantly with both ideological friends and foes.
They might not move matters dramatically. But they'd get something done — a windmill here, a sidewalk barrier there.
With its loose party discipline, its backroom deals and its log-rolling, Toronto City Council in those years resembled the U.S. Congress more than the Commons. It might not always accommodate grand visions. But it was a place where a canny councillor could trade a four-way stop sign in his ward for a speed bump in someone else's. etc."
I hope this tinyurl thingy works
Maybe this doesn't work on the national scale, but it is familiar process to people who follow municipal politics, where there is room for innovation more than we often think.
[ 22 April 2006: Message edited by: Critical Mass2 ]
Besides Hargrove, who else has been expelled from the NDP? Which lefties are you talking about? And Hargrove's a leftie? What about his enthusiastic endorsements of the most right-wing finance minister this country ever knew, along with accusations that he went back on his union's "no concessions" policy?