rabble.ca - Coalition Stories

Activist Toolkit weekly roundup: Black history month, disability and union organizing, workshops on patient rights

The Activist Toolkit — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:52:41 -0500

Happy Black History Month! Start your February off right by checking out the anti-racist tools, history and workshops on the Activist Toolkit. The tools featured this week are tried and true methods of organizing to take your campaign through the month and beyond.

Big Charity: Who gets turned away at United Way?

Aalya — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 11:09:45 -0500

When I was much younger and used to canvass for union-buster extraordinaire Greenpeace, we all quickly learned that the holiday season was the time to rock those door-to-door donations. The United Way has long known this and 'tis the season for those United Way workplace fundraising drives. Chances are your workplace has one getting started right about now.

'The most important election of my lifetime'

rabble staff — Mon, 02 May 2011 04:18:19 -0400

A social media scan of the electoral race over the past month -- ShitHarperDid goes viral, with a graphite image of Harper as its icon -- drawn from an actual photograph -- strangling a kitten. The brainchild of Vancouver comedians, its Facebook page garnered 20,000 followers in its first few days of posting, and its website presents the bite-sized chunks of pithy critique that Twittersphere and Facebook groupies love.

Hail Harperius! A short history of the rise of a tyrant and the fall of Canadanian democracy

grumpfuttock — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 17:41:46 -0400

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back into bondage."

Hoping for opposition co-operation

M.Gregus — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:04:05 -0400

In December 2008, there was an electrifying moment in Canadian politics as the opposition parties threw away their usual scripts and boldly formed a coalition to prevent Stephen Harper's Conservatives from doing further damage to the Canadian social fabric.

When Harper responded by pressuring the Governor General into shutting down Parliament, thereby denying the opposition the chance to defeat his government, there were demonstrations across the country.

Yet now, with this same Conservative wrecking crew apparently poised to win a majority, there appears to be widespread apathy.

A coalition is good for Canada, good for parliamentary democracy

rabble staff — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 01:58:41 -0400

Stephen Harper can almost taste a majority. More than a decade of work to unite the right and make the new Conservative Party more palatable for Canadians has reached a point where the party has, as of mid-March, polled its highest ratings. With an election on May 2nd, Harper is very close to fulfilling his dream of majority rule.

Unless of course he falls short and the opposition parties form a coalition government.

Harper hates this possibility, naturally. He more than anyone recognizes the viability and inevitability of coalition governments.

Reckless coalition: Of language and politics

dionne brand — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 12:06:27 -0400

I admit to getting off to a slow start here but I simply could not make sense of anything said by Conservative leader Stephen Harper in the first moments after he announced the election. I'm still in a quandary because I take language too seriously and therefore I sometimes don't understand the systems of meanings used by politicians -- I won't call this language because as I said I take language too seriously. What politicians do is ventriloquise a set of sounds meant to gesture to some issue or event but if we really listen these words are completely incomprehensible and have no relation to their meaning.

Speaking the unspeakable: Do Canadian voters even care about coalitions?

djclimenhaga — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:54:01 -0400

According to the Canadian chattering classes, it's the political sin that dares not speak its name! But does anyone else really care about coalitions any more?

And I'm not talking about the one Prime Minister Stephen Harper proposed to build with the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP back in 2004.

That's mostly been consigned to the official Memory Hole, except at Canada's only remaining non-neo-con daily newspaper, the Toronto Star. The Star will be punished, presumably, if Harper gets his majority.

Coalition? Why not?

Pierre Beaudet — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 01:16:34 -0400

Harper and his crew are trying to terrorize ordinary middle-class Canadians with the "terrible prospect" of a "coalition government" in which the Liberal party would depend on "socialists" and "separatists." Of course this coalition would lead us along the path of North Korea.

Harper's dirty little game

Sharon Fraser — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 16:09:21 -0400

Okay, it may be too much to speak of one bright shining moment -- but there was a time (late 2008, early 2009) when it looked as if we had a chance to see the end of Stephen Harper and see the beginning of an era when a coalition of progressive and enlightened politicians were going to be able to turn things around.

Bring on the Liberal Green Democrats

Cathryn Atkinson — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 00:13:06 -0500

Canada's 40th Parliament ends its current session this week. It will resume sitting in February, and after a few weeks, a budget debate is expected to trigger an election show down. Shuffling of voting intentions between Liberal and Conservative has drawn most media interest; especially with the Conservatives back on top. However, going back to the 2008 election, what characterizes Canadian public opinion is how little things have changed. The Liberals and Conservatives share between them something over 65 per cent of voting intentions, while the three other parties share something short of 35 per cent.

A coalition: Still the only way out

rabble staff — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 19:11:04 -0400

When will the Liberals and the NDP get it? Without some kind of accord between these two parties, the country is locked into a kind of political version of the movie Groundhog Day -- doomed to repeat the same depressing, cynical and destructive politics day-in, day-out until our democracy is so damaged that no one will bother voting.

Vaughan by-election: High stakes, new opportunities

Gary Shaul — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:58:25 -0400

Cross-posted from Catch 22 Harper Conservatives.

Op-ed by John Deverell*

As Chantal Hebert points out so very clearly in today's Toronto Star, the moment of democratic choice for Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party of Canada finally has come.

It's precipitated in the Ontario federal riding of Vaughan where ubercop Julian Fantino has volunteered to carry the Harper Conservative banner in an upcoming by-election.

The Alberta talking points massacre: A frightening new fantasy for coalition-phobic Conservatives

djclimenhaga — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 03:11:06 -0400

As Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty worked themselves into a swivet not so long ago warning Canadians about the dire consequences of an imaginary future coalition between the Liberals and the New Democrats, they were impervious to the new coalition threat taking shape just over their horizon.

The Coalition is dead. Long live the Coalition, Alberta style!

djclimenhaga — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 02:36:51 -0400

The next Canadian legislative assembly to entertain thoughts of a coalition may well not be our Parliament in Ottawa but the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton.

What's more, a future Alberta coalition might not look at all like what you would imagine.

Never mind the Democratic Renewal Project, that hopeful little club of Alberta dreamers who fantasize about getting the Liberals and the NDP together for a happy progressive future out here in the New West. It just ain't gonna happen.

Building coalitions to create mass movements: Lessons from the Ontario Health Coalition

rabble staff — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 23:04:22 -0400

Social movement campaigners rarely get the chance to write up their own history. But in a new internationally comparative book on labour-community coalitions -- called Power in Coalition -- the successful strategies of Canada's Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) take centre stage. The OHC is one of three coalitions whose campaigns are documented as part of a grounded study of what makes community-based coalitions successful and what makes them fail.

Harper's lousy, pre-election summer: A review

rabble staff — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:09:11 -0400

After having his way with Canadians and our political system for four-plus years, cracks have begun to appear in Stephen Harper's carefully constructed tower of power. His minority government, elected by just one in five potential voters, is looking, well, pregnable. In other words, democracy -- that too-long-hijacked concept -- is starting to happen once again.

Yes, the Conservative power tower, which once loomed solidly over Canada, apparently invulnerable, and its often-arrogant inhabitants, have been rocked more than once recently. The structure is showing so many fault lines, it's difficult to know where to begin itemizing them -- but I'd love to try.

Let the (coalition) games begin

murray dobbin — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 20:10:04 -0400

After falling in the polls for weeks the leader of the Liberal Party seems finally to have received a reality check about his and his party's future. He is actually talking about the possibility of a coalition. Mind you, it took a rumour of a merger of the parties to get things really out there. Broadcaster Wendy Mesley -- who announced with dead certainty that serious negotiations were underway -- will now have a legacy of putting forward the most absurd political story ever featured on CBC national news. Whoever suckered her into this one should get some kind of medal. I don't usually give much credit to conspiracy theories but this smells like one.

That NDP-Liberal merger story: Smoke from a smoke-making machine

djclimenhaga — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 03:24:36 -0400

All of a sudden there's a lot of smoke billowing in the media about the possibility of a merger of the federal Liberals and New Democrats.

This raises the inevitable question: whatever can it mean?

One thing this story surely does not mean is that anyone in either party is seriously suggesting there should be a merger. Indeed, it's possible that a clear majority of Canadian New Democrats would vote for any party other than the Liberals, especially the Liberals under an unreconstituted right-winger like Michael Ignatieff.

Winners, losers and coalitions

Eric_Mang — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:55:21 -0400

Our Prime Minister is no dummy. He is cerebral and a proficient practitioner of the dark political arts.

Harper will also say or do many things to maintain his tenuous hold on power. Of course, Harper is neither the first nor will he be the last to pander, obfuscate, mislead and divide in a bid to stay in office. But one of his more pernicious actions is to exploit Canadians' ignorance of how our parliament works.

Budget Bill C-9 masks Harper's hard right legislative goals

Cathryn Atkinson — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:05:03 -0400

Can the opposition parties, primarily the NDP and the Liberals, actually get their act together and save the country from more destruction by the Harper Conservatives? There is evidence that there is at least some talking behind the scenes about the formation of a coalition government. Widely reported remarks by Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hébert suggest that Jean Chrétien and Ed Broadbent are talking. Bob Rae blogged last week on the 25th anniversary of the Ontario NDP/Liberal coalition government he was part of and ridiculed the Conservatives fear-mongering about the renewed "coalition threat." Reports that members of the Liberal caucus are eager for such a move are also being strategically leaked to the media.

Is it time to reinvent the Coalition to eliminate Harper's polarizing 'Reform Party' government?

djclimenhaga — Fri, 28 May 2010 01:44:33 -0400

Private polling conducted for Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government must be saying it can win a majority campaigning on such narrow, far-right wedge issues as restricting abortion rights, pandering to gun nuts, bigotry against gays and climate-change denial.

Alberta Liberals and New Democrats: Will they will, or will they won't, be buddies?

djclimenhaga — Fri, 21 May 2010 01:30:09 -0400

Will they will, or will they won't, be buddies? That’s the question a lot of Albertans keep asking themselves about the provincial Liberals and the Alberta New Democrats.

After all, as the Democratic Renewal Project, Alberta's minuscule but determined unite-the-left faction, endlessly repeats, if only the Liberals and the NDP could get together they might somehow be able to defeat the province's right if it splits its vote between the Conservatives and the Wildrose Alliance in the next provincial election.

Coalition to build a better BC launches

rabble staff — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:17:05 -0400

Building a coalition of 34 groups, including organized labour, education, seniors, anti-poverty, aboriginal, women, student and other movements, is no small accomplishment. A result of at least four months of meetings, The Coalition to Build a Better BC has done just this. The coalition kicked off with a rally in Downtown Vancouver, Saturday, April 10th.

A diverse and spirited crowd showed up in glorious sunshine to show their support for public and community services. Under Gordon Campbell it has been cuts, cuts, cuts for everyone but big business, which instead finds itself rewarded.

Catch 22 Harper Conservatives...

Gary Shaul — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 09:28:45 -0400

Murray Dobbin recently posed the question "Reform democracy or rid the country of Stephen Harper?" in response to the Canadian reaction to the prorogation of Parliament.

Quote:

The movement for democracy can only claim victory if it first dispatches Stephen Harper from the PMO -- simply because he is the immediate threat to democracy and will continue to be as long he is in office. Then the movement can work on achieving the reforms to the system so no one ever gets the chance to run roughshod over democracy again.