Peggy Nash will be among the NDP leadership candidate to answer your questions on babble March 2 at 3:00 pm PST/6:00 pm EST. babblers were asked a while back to submit questions about her candidacy and her designs on Stornoway. You can find that thread here.
Please feel free to add more questions in this thread, give your approval of previous questions, and variously discuss Nash's upcoming appearance.
We're very excited to welcome Peggy to babble!
Peggy: You've proposed allowing workers who quit or are terminated to have their workplace RRP accrued entitlement transferred to and managed by the CPP/QPP (if I understood correctly). I agree of course that we need to find ways to protect workplace pension plans. But I'm concerned your proposal would create a kind of two-tiered CPP/QPP, as well as introducing unplanned and uncontrolled liabilities to the plan. Could you please explain the origin of this proposal and whether I'm misunderstanding something about it? Thanks!
1. Peggy: the NDP platform in the last election said "we will propose a new, more democratic voting system that preserves the connection between MPs and their constituents, while ensuring parties are represented in Parliament in better proportion to how Canadians voted. Your vote will always count." (The Policy Book says "New Democrats believe in reforming Canada’s electoral system through mixed member proportional representation.") The party's motion in the House last March 3rd was that "the House appoint a Special Committee for Democratic Improvement, whose mandate is to (i) engage with Canadians, and make recommendations to the House, on how best to achieve a House of Commons that more accurately reflects the votes of Canadians by combining direct election by electoral district and proportional representation ...and...(6) that the Committee shall report its recommendations to this House no later than one year from the passage of this motion."
Neither of these mentions a referendum.
Should the party ask for a mandate in the next election to introduce a mixed proportional electoral system?
2. The convention in Vancouver last June overwhelmingly supported a resolution “That the federal New Democratic Party make electoral reform and proportional representation a priority issue within the coming sessions of parliament and in communities across Canada.” (The resolution was submitted by Palliser riding, in Saskatchewan, where NDP voters elected none of the province’s 14 MPs despite casting 32.3% of the votes, enough to elect five MPs.)
How would you do this?
The NDP voted unanimously to support a UN resolution by which NATO orchestrated a 'regime change' in Libya. In light of the death and destruction which resulted from your vote, in which Canada did much of the 'heavy lifting' and in light of the chaos and upheaval left behind, do you regret your support? Does the NDP also plan to support Westerm warmongering against Syria and Iran?
Peggy: You have impressed me throughout this race in terms of your ability to take on market fundamentalism and the traditional assumptions that the NDP cannot be trusted to run the economy. In the traditional political paradigm, you have been placed on the "left wing" of the NDP. How do you see the NDP branching out and winning support of people outside the traditional NDP/union base? How do can the NDP reach out to workers who are not unionized, and to rural Canadians?
Peggy: I want to know what penalties or consequences will befall a province if they impose user fees for healthcare? Plain and simple. What will you do in event a province imposes healthcare user fees on their population?
Bump!
Mrs. Nash, if you are selected as the next leader of the NDP and elected as the next Prime Minister of Canada will you do the following?
1. Nationalize all industries dealing with natural resources and place them under the control of the people of Canada?
2. Will you seize all former Crown Corporations and place them back under control of the people of Canada?
3. Will you ensure that no foreign government and business interests are never allowed to takeover Canada industries or companies?
4. Will you disband the Canadian Armed Forces? As a peaceful nation there is no need for a military force in Canada.
5. Will you force any industries in Canada to cease product of any material, equipment, products used in military applications?
6. Will you sure that any countries that Canada has bombed or invade (Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) over the last 20 years are paid for the damages the Canada military/Government illegally inflicted on this peace nations.
In the wake of the robo-call scandal, in a time of increased use of closure and 'in camera' meetings, my questions for you are: Will we see a policy plank in your campaign directed at making our democratic system more democratic? Will you provide stronger oversight mechanisms? Will you shift power from the PMO and give it back to cabinet ministers and backbenchers? How? What will you do to encourage more grassroots democracy? What will they do to move power away from party offices, and into the hands of party activists and ordinary canadians? Will you advance the policies of Open Source Governance?
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Ms. Nash: How would your prospective leadership address Central Canada's manufacturing crisis, and preclude the devastating effects as witnessed in the Midlands of the U.K., and the U.S. Midwest? How can cost structures under pressure from a strong Canadian dollar be mitigated, vis-a-vis commodity sector expansion, without alienating resource workers? What would be a sound industrial policy for Canada?
Do you support use of the Bank of Canada to create money for public services?
Would you limit the ability of private banks to create money from nothing, a practice which undemocratically gives finance more power than everyone else?
Would you respond to aggression in other countries with more aggression?
Would you prioritize the rights of humans and nature in any trade deals or negotiations?
(Need to think about my question some more)
On reflection, I'd just like it if Peggy answered my questions from the previous thread.
To Peggy Nash,
The NDP voted in support of a no-fly zone over Libya last year. That country has since been destroyed by sectarian violence. And Libya is now becoming a part of the Maghreb in North Africa ruled by right wing religious extremists friendly to AA countries and multinational energy corporations. Libya is an oil-rich country and the only country in Africa where black Africans are not welcome anymore since Gadaffi's government was overthrown with help from the Atlantic Alliance countries.
1. What evidence did Canada's Parliament possess detailing the Gadaffi government's air force bombing its own citizens? Or was the vote on no-fly in Canada's Parliament based on rumor and heresay?
2. Will the NDP be supporting more of the Atlantic Alliance countries' colder war geopolitical maneuvering in Africa or Middle East?
I wish I had asked this question of all the guest candidates, but here goes:
"Will you overturn Harper's defunding of important social programs - and one that's dear to my heart that may be on the chopping block next: Katimavik?"
Bump! Only a couple of days to get your questions in!
My question is about the financing of a redistributionist social democratic agenda. According to CLC economist Andrew Jackson (who has endorsed you), taxation represents about 33% of GDP in Canada but closer to 50% in the Nordic social democracies of Sweden and Denmark. Canada is now a low-tax country by comparative OECD standards. Yet unlike Brian Topp, you seem reluctant to talk about raising taxes during your campaign. Yet the level of equality in a country is strongly correlated with levels of direct spending. 20 years of "tax relief" in Canada has been a disaster - leading to major cuts to social spending and higher levels of inequality. Can we honestly talk about building a social democratic Canada merely by reversing the last round of corporate tax cuts, closing loopholes, etc.?
You have supported a financial transactions tax to discourage destructive speculative trading. Thank you. A small tax on each electronic transaction would limit the gains made by microsecond exchanges which serve only to boost the short-term profits and power of financiers and turn the economy into a casino, with ecology, our human rights, and governments as chips.
Presumably we would put in place effective public technical personnel to monitor and ensure that all electronic transactions are tracked, tallied, and taxed.
However, banks and their global affiliates, including the twenty SDIs (Systemically Destructive Institutions) which caused the ongoing financial crisis, would still have the ability to create money from nothing, to loan many times more than the money they actually have (as German banks loaned 170% of their equity to Greece). Finance would still be able to use their power in money-creation to control even 'accepted' stock trading, emissions trading, and labour markets to determine global commodity, carbon, service, wage and other prices, in addition to interest rates for debtors. Banks have continued to demand more privatization, cuts, austerity, unemployment, cheaper labour, and more resource extraction 'offset' with more 'green' credits, through their (financiers') power as creditors. It's not total size that counts, rather the power given through multiple levers of credit, trade, and policy influence.
How could the private financial sector retain power over democratic efforts even with an FTT? How would you address those problems?
Keep those great questions coming!
Dear Peggy,
Most of our candidates have been charged with being earnest but dull. In your case, the charges have included "vague". Given the importance of the mass media in reaching and swaying voters, and the greater media access of the other two parties, what is your strategy to fight and win the "air war"?
Looking for inspiration!
Just a couple more hours to get your questions in!
Peggy,
There have been many NDP governments in Canadian provinces, and most of them have on one occasion or another forced an end to workers' strike action, unilaterally modified signed collective agreements, and ended free collective bargaining through binding arbitration or similar means. Some such governments have been defeated in subsequent elections in large part because of such actions (examples available on request, but you likely know them better than I do - think B.C., Saskatchewan, Ontario...).
Harper and Raitt are on a rampage against workers and unions - but on the historical record, the difference between them and past Liberal or NDP or PQ governments seems to be more one of degree than of fundamental respect for human rights of workers.
My question: Under what kinds of circumstances (if any) and in what sectors would your government use ad hoc legislation to:
1. end work stoppages, and/or
2. impose binding arbitration.
Thanks!
