Brian Topp

Brian Topp is executive director of ACTRA Toronto. He also serves as chair of the board of Creative Arts Savings and Credit Union, and is a member of the board of directors of ROI Fund, a labour-sponsored venture capital fund. He previously served as a senior vice-president at Credit Union Central of Canada, the national office of Canada's credit union system outside of Quebec. He served as deputy chief of staff to Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow. He co-ordinated the federal NDP's campaign war room during the 1997 and 2004 federal elections, and served as that party's national campaign director during the 2006 and 2008 elections. This blog is cross-posted from The Globe & Mail's Second Reading.

The federal NDP after Jack

Brian Topp

| August 22, 2012

Jack Layton set out to convert the federal New Democratic Party into a governing party.

More than this, Layton aimed to be prime minister, to elect a government and to steer Canada towards mainstream social democracy -- a fairer, better, more equal Canada, one practical step at a time.

Layton aimed to modernize his party and its policies.

Layton aimed for a breakthrough in Quebec, the province of his birth -- and for badly needed breakthroughs everywhere and anywhere else in Canada. The federal NDP was in ashes when he assumed the leadership. He aimed to return to the work of Tommy Douglas, David Lewis and Ed Broadbent, successful predecessors with similar goals.

So how is that all working out, a year after his passing?

Greece's financial crisis is a world challenge

Brian Topp

| June 28, 2012

A year ago at about this time, I was in Athens attending a meeting of Socialist International. The president of SI, then and now, was George Papandreou, at the time also leader of PASOK and prime minister of Greece. I had the opportunity to meet with some of his key advisers (several of them ex-Torontonians) and listened closely when the prime minister addressed the meeting.

McGuinty's incoherent approach at Queen's Park

Brian Topp

| June 21, 2012

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Events at Queen's Park over the last week tell us two things.

First, that it is not easy for a government to try to pursue three different strategies simultaneously in a minority legislature. And second, that the NDP's toolbox in a minority legislature continues to represent a challenge to opponents.

Let's begin with the "three strategies" thing. Broadly speaking, there are three ways for a government to survive life in a minority legislature.

Debating the uses of resource royalties

Brian Topp

| June 8, 2012

In an interesting and well-argued column in the Calgary Herald recently, Mark Milke from the Fraser Institute took issue with my last post here. I can't resist replying to one of his points.

Mr. Milke paraphrases me this way: "Brian Topp wants sovereign resource funds to invest in uneconomic projects too expensive for the private sector -- this instead of shipping 'raw unprocessed resources to Texas and to China.' Topp mentions Norway's resource fund as an example."

Canada's economy: A debate fit for a national Parliament

Brian Topp

| June 7, 2012

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We have been doing something unusual in Canada in recent weeks. We've been having a substantive debate about the basic direction of our economy. That's what happens when there are real parties facing each other in Parliament, who have real disagreements about real issues.

History lessons: Resource management means reclaiming our environmental and fiscal futures

Brian Topp

| May 23, 2012

Just about at the same time that people in the province of Quebec decided, in overwhelming majority, that decisive action was required by their provincial government to protect the French language, people in western Canada decided that equally decisive action was required by their provincial governments to ensure control of their own natural resources.

The federal government of the day (led by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau) more-or-less accepted the Quebec National Assembly's right to address the language issue. But the same government waged a battle of sumo-like proportions to try to wrestle control over oil, potash, uranium and other resources from western Canadian provinces.

Which didn't go over very well.

Understanding the crisis in Greece

Brian Topp

| May 15, 2012

This weekend, the runner-up party in the recent Greek election, Syriza, seemed to rule out joining with New Democracy and PASOK to give them a majority in parliament. Instead, Syriza cheekily invited a smaller rival left-wing party, Democratic Left, to drink from that poisoned chalice in their place.

At least in the short term, this looks like excellent political hardball on the part of Syriza. They either get to go into opposition in the new parliament while their opponents further discredit themselves. Or there will be another election in June, in which Syriza seems positioned to make further gains -- perhaps enough to form a government.

Syriza then proposes to apply the same hardball approach to the European Union and to the International Monetary Fund.

France elects a 'normal' president in Francois Hollande

Brian Topp

| May 7, 2012

On election day in Paris, Place de la Bastille (home of the left) was full and Place de la Concorde (home of the right) was empty. As sure a sign as any that the Socialist Party was about to win the presidency, as it went on to do. Francois Hollande is the new president of France.

Why did Nicolas Sarkozy lose? He started remarkably well only five short years ago. Sarkozy's 2007 campaign captured a mood in France for a "rupture" from its own economic and social model. France was bored with itself, worried about its economy, tired of riots and debates about accommodating immigrants, and wanted to get on board the global economic bubble then roaring. Sarkozy offered a "hyper-presidency" that would deal with all of those issues and many more.

Liberals and the 'strategic voting' political drug

Brian Topp

| April 30, 2012

"For 'tis the sport to have the enginer hoist with his owne petar, an't shall go hard. But I will delve one yard below their mines, and blow them to the moon." -- Hamlet, Act 3

"Hoist with your own petard." Meaning: "Injured by the device that you intended to use to injure others." -- The Phrase Finder

For many years, Liberals have been eager advocates of "strategic voting" -- the idea that it makes sense to vote for a party you don't support in order to avoid the election of a party you don't support even more.

A pitch to this effect has been part of the closing argument of every federal Liberal campaign since at least 1993.

Lessons about Canada's political system from the Alberta election

Brian Topp

| April 26, 2012

Thunder Bay MP Bruce Hyer resigned from the NDP caucus this week for an interesting mix of reasons. He was disappointed he didn't get appointed to the NDP shadow cabinet. He is concerned the party will reintroduce a long-gun registry. And he rejects, in principle, the idea that the political party whose colours he carried in the last election can tell him what to think, what to say, or how to vote.

Now let's look at the Alberta election -- a true "Dewey beats Truman" fiasco for Canada's political commentariat, which predicted victory for Wildrose on the basis of the latest crop of junk polls, and then got to cover an impressive (as measured by seats) landslide for the Alberta Progressive Conservatives.

Why did Wildrose lose so convincingly?

Brian Topp

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