Actually what's even more scandalous about Deborah Coyne is that she was the chief "constitutional advisor" to that francophobic bigot Clyde Wells who brought the whole country to the brink of destruction when the Meech Lake Accord collapsed in 1990. Caveat emptor...Then again she was also once married to Michael Valpy who ran for the NDP in Trinity-Spadina in 2000.
probably good in the sack. (just thought i'd invite some wrath my way)
I pointed out this nasty tendency of Stockholm in one of the leadership threads, but everyone seemed to think at the time that I was being a big wimp. Now we see again that he really is a nasty piece of work. As I said in that old post, a worthy disciple of Karl Rove.
I've seen a lot of people post wayyyyy nastier innuendo during the NDP leadership contest than I ever did (and btw "Michael Moriarty"'s attacks on me are and were way nastier and more personal than anything I ever wrote in the first place - if I'm Karl Rove I guess that makes him Warren Kinsella!). In fact, if anything, I went out of my way to be diplomatic and try to see the good in all the candidates. Now I'm 100% satisfied with Tom Mulcair. I'm glad that the concerns I (and many other) had back in the Fall - as a result of having heard some anecdotes about him - have been completely laid to rest.
This is politics and on top of that Canada is a small enough country that many of us hear first hand accounts about the various personalities. I don't think there's anything wrong with discussing what we each know or feel about various candidates personalities and character. There were certainly enough stories in the mainstream media about Mulcair's supposedly "prickly" personality during the NDP leadership contest that I don't think anyone can claim that I "invented" it.
During the Toronto mayoralty contest there were also lots of postings and comments about how George Smitherman had a horrible personality and was reputed to treat everyone around him like shit. I don't recall anyone getting all defensive about poor "Furious George" being maligned.
As one of the NDP's main stalwarts the petty partisan views you espouse on this board have become one of the reasons I have little trust in the NDP as a progressive force.
Damn! You've figured out my plan to make sure that you stayed as far away from the NDP as possible.
Let's also consider the other-end-of-the-spectrum's attempts to put a thuggish lid on the Ford family's rumoured past indiscretions, drug dealing etc...
This thread has jumped the shark. Truth is the Liberal leadership race is just an unfortunate distraction from the real battle between the NDP and the Tories, the Liberals provide nothing to the debate.
I think the point to be made is that the more scandalous the claim, the more need for justification. So far Stockholm has only got "I've heard" for saying something pretty outrageous. Pushed on it he then comes up with a personal analysis from afar. Clearly that isn't enough evidence to make such a big claim.
i'm still kind of puzzling over what you folks are talking about.
Don't worry, your not missing anything.
Actually what's even more scandalous about Deborah Coyne is that she was the chief "constitutional advisor" to that francophobic bigot Clyde Wells who brought the whole country to the brink of destruction when the Meech Lake Accord collapsed in 1990.
Meech Lake collapsed because it was a bad, bad piece of drivel. You keep forgetting the part played by the NDP MLA who filibustered so the racist piece of shit that the Accord was in its treatment of FN's didn't pass. I don't remember Clyde during the debate but I sure remember cheering for Elijah Harper when he killed it in Manitoba.
Your attempt to rewrite history is pathetic. An NDP MLA killed Meech and most of us were glad.
Meech died because Canadians were no longer willing to defer to elitist compromises.
A friend of mine filled out a political survey apparently funded by the Liberals. It asked a lot of questions about the various parties and issues... but also slipped in a lot of questions about "is it important that the Liberals invented universal health care / charter of rights / official bilingualism / multiculturalism / the national energy program?"
We talked about it briefly. A lot of different issues, from conservative darlings (crime, taxes, security) to NDP darlings (child care, senior care, equality). And everything in between, both big (immigration, the environment, the budget, health care) and small (farming, drug laws). No insight there except that they seem to want a pretty robust reading on what issues might be important to people.
He said there were a few questions about national unity that stuck out to him. Too many? Too hard to tell. I suspect the Liberals are hoping that they can beat the NDP should national unity become an issue again.
He also said there were a lot of questions that wear the Liberal party's political positioning on their sleeve. "Is it important to stop the Conservatives at all costs?" "Is it important to stop the NDP at all costs?" "Can the NDP be trusted with the economy?" "Are the conservatives too socially conservative?" "Do you want a party of the center?" "Do you want a party that's fiscally conservative and socially liberal?"
It sounded like standard Liberal thinking. Not that I'd expect any new ideas in that party to come from a survey, if at all.
Speak for yourself. The federal NDP supported the Meech Lake Accord and so did all the provincial NDPs. Looking back the things people objected to about it were pretty picayune. Most of the opposition to Meech from the francophobic bigots who couldn't stand the the idea that it made reference to Quebec being a distinct society (duh!). There was nothing in the Meech Accord that took anything away from First Nations - the opposition to it was over the idea that it didn't do ENOUGH to improve the status of first nations. So it was shot down they were stuck with the status quo. The purpose of the Meech Lake accord was to get Quebec to sign the constitution - it was not to right every single solitary historical wrong in Canadian history.
It was a bit of a race between Manitoba and Newfoundland to see which province would kill the accord and create five more years of constitutional wrangling. But Clyde Wells bears the brunt of the blame since he had Newfoundland rescind its ratification and that caused the clock to be set back by two years and let opposition (largely led by the Reform Party) to build. As for Elijah Harper - he was the dimmest bulb in the Manitoba NDP caucus and went on to serve one terkm as a federal Liberal MP - where his biggest claim to fame was saying absolutely NOTHING for four years and then losing to the NDP's Bev Desjarlais (who was no great shakes herself).
Nice to know that you were so gleeful at how Quebec was huimiliated and rejected by the death of Meech - did you pop champagne corks with that bigot in Brockville who celebrated by wiping his boots on a Quebec flag???
I hope that now that the NDP has 58 MPs from Quebec - the francophobic micro-minority that once existed in the NDP knows that its no longer welcome and gets lost.
Meech Lake collapsed because it was a bad, bad piece of drivel. You keep forgetting the part played by the NDP MLA who filibustered so the racist piece of shit that the Accord was in its treatment of FN's didn't pass. I don't remember Clyde during the debate but I sure remember cheering for Elijah Harper when he killed it in Manitoba.
Your attempt to rewrite history is pathetic. An NDP MLA killed Meech and most of us were glad.
An NDP MLA killed Meech and most of us were glad.
I remember exactly one progressive friend who was against Meech, and she was more of a Trudeau-phile than anything else. The defeat of Meech almost cost us Canada.
It also, looking at the bright side, laid the way for Jack to say "We have an historic problem. We have a quarter of our population who have never signed the Constitution. That can’t go on forever. What we do believe is you start to create those winning conditions by replacing the Harper government, by respecting the people of Quebec and their hopes and their aspirations and starting to take steps in the House of Commons that show to Quebec there is an appreciation of some of their key issues. That’s how we’d get started. You don’t get into constitutional discussions until there’s some reasonable prospect of success. It has to be addressed some day, but we don't see it as an immediate issue."
So let's not go back to pretending the death of Meech was no problem. Please.
Long thread.
