Is The NDP Is Ready For Its Battle Against Green Party?

I am delighted that under Singh the NDP is finally taking a bolder stand on climate change. I will look forward to seeing the concrete plans once the platform is revealed. 

Continuing to hold back would be like recreating the scene in BRAVEHEART where Wallace keeps telling his archers to "Hold!" until the English troops are inches away-only in the NDP version, Singh-as-Wallace would keep shouting "Hold!" after the English had breached their lines and his archers were all dead.

This loss seems to have lit a fire under Singh, now I'm glad the NDP lost the by-election.

If Singh makes a full renewable energy program part of a Green New Deal that addresses social issues, housing affordability through social housing, income inequality and Indigenous problems, the wedge will be with the Liberals who cannot abandon the pipeline after buying it and promising to build it without looking like fools. If the Liberals propose a Green New Deal as part of the campaign, the inherent contradictions because of the pipelines and fossil fuel subsidies can be exploited, as well as the failure to address the other problems that they have failed to deal with in a major way during their four years in power. His proposal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half goes way beyond what the Liberals have proposed, and they way behind in even meeting that goal. 

Today Singh's parliamentary motion also asked the government to declare a climate change emergency, something the UK and Ireland have already done. During the debate Singh noted that the Liberals are using the same greenhouse gas emission targets that Harper ahead and are failing to meet them, which is exactly what happened with the Liberals and Conservatives under the 1997 Kyoto Accord goals. It's Groundhog Day all over again under the Liberals and Conservatives.

Last October, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned drastic cuts to emissions are needed in the next decade to prevent global warming from becoming catastrophic. That report suggested Canada’s Paris climate change commitment, which would mean cutting annual greenhouse gas emissions by about 28 per cent compared to where they are now, is nowhere near enough.

The Liberal government’s climate plan, including the carbon tax, getting rid of coal as a source of electricity and subsidizing the purchase of electric cars, still leaves Canada nearly 90 million tonnes shy of hitting the existing goal.

To slash more deeply would require more drastic action in Canada’s energy sector. Oil and gas production and refining accounts for about one-quarter of all Canada’s emissions.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/05/13/news/ndp-unveils-parts-clima...

R.E.Wood wrote:

jerrym wrote:

If Singh makes a full renewable energy program part of a Green New Deal that addresses social issues, housing affordability through social housing, income inequality and Indigenous problems, the wedge will be with the Liberals who cannot abandon the pipeline after buying it and promising to build it without looking like fools.

Unfortunately, there is a clear avenue for the Liberals to do exactly that - abandon/cancel the pipeline expansion - and get away with it without looking like fools. That avenue is Alberta's new UCP/Kenney government.

This thread was started by Mighty Middle, partly to divert attention from the Liberals own problems.  That won't work. They have already spent $4.5 billion buying the pipeline, overpaying in the process according to most experts, and promoted the hell out of the purchase,  especially in BC in the hopes of building support for it. They have also spent a considerable amount trying to get it approved. The purchase looks horrendous from any point of view, including the estimated construction costs rising from $7.4 to $9.3 billion (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/kinder-morgan-trans-mountain-pipe...).

The Liberals are in tough on the pipeline. Even the Financial Post and Bloomberg Business News, hardly tree hugging environmentalists, admit that. 

The promise of shipping more Canadian crude to fast-growing importers like China and India — and relying less on the U.S. — drew Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government into shelling out US$3.5 billion for a pipeline project that was facing abandonment. Whether that gamble will pay off is anything but certain.

With U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade wars showing no sign of abating and pipeline bottlenecks damping prices for Canadian crude, the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion may seem like a godsend for the northern nation. But lost in the debate over the government’s purchase from Kinder Morgan Inc. is the fact that very few of the 300,000 barrels of oil and refined fuels a day the existing Trans Mountain line ships from Alberta to Canada’s Pacific coast are making their way to Asia.

In the past year, only two of the 48 tankers that entered the Westridge Dock or Parkland Burnaby terminals have departed directly for Asia, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. One of those vessels left for South Korea in April, and the other departed for China earlier this month. Both were carrying an estimated 550,000 barrels of crude. The result is that essentially all of Canada’s crude oil exports for the first four months of the year have gone to the U.S., according to National Energy Board statistics. Some doubt that the Trans Mountain expansion will change that trend.

The idea that Trans Mountain will help Canadian producers get better prices in Asia is “fiction,” said Jeff Rubin, an independent economist who previously served as chief economist of CIBC World Markets. “The highest prices for heavy oil are in the U.S. Gulf, and that’s because that’s where the greatest amount of heavy-oil refinery capacity is.”

https://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/amid-trump-trade-w...

The Liberals are looking like terrible economic managers.

It was the Chretien-Martin Liberals who did away with a wide range of social programs, including on housing, that the Trudeau Liberals have failed to deal with. 

Not only did this mean that Canada became one of the few developed nations without a national housing strategy, but it also meant that many vulnerable people would be at risk of inadequate housing and homelessness.

http://www.cwp-csp.ca/2014/01/20-years-ago-canada-had-a-housing-plan/

And the Trudeau Liberals continue following this approach. Promising to do something worked in 2015 in terms of winning the election. What we get is a lot of fine sounding words. The problem this time is their track record says they are not going to deal effectively with either the staggering social or environmental problems facing this nation. 

"Ottawa has put not forth a housing strategy ... Yet the report mentions the middle class only twice. The document provides no assessment of Canada's housing system, what ... The word affordable is mentioned about 70 times, with nodefinition of affordable housing.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no...national-housing.../article37173057/

 At the same time that they have spent next nothing on social housing, something even the middle class now needs, especially in Toronto and Vancouver where prices have gone through the roof, they have failed to deal with the money laundering issue that has helped drive housing prices so high. This primarily rests on their and the Cons heads since they have jurisdiction over criminal law. It is only NDP BC Justice Minister David Eby's report on the situation that has forced Trudeau to admit that something (what?) needs to be done about it. 

Some $7.4 billion overall was laundered in B.C. in 2018, out of an estimated total of $47 billion in Canada, concluded the report by an expert panel led by former B.C. deputy attorney general Maureen Maloney.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/5-billion-laundered-through-b-c-real-estat...

Admitting throwing billions down the drain by now canceling Trans Mountain when there are so many other urgent problems that need attending, of which social housing and money laundering are only two, will open the Liberals up to criticism from both the left and the right. 

On VI we now have 5 NDP MP's and 2 Green. In 2011 there were 6 ridings and we had 2 Conservatives, 1 Green and 3 NDP.  If the Greens take votes from the NDP it will be the Conservatives who gain seats. The majority of VI voters believe that climate chaos is real and an emergency that needs to be dealt with by major radical changes. The NDP and Greens and Liberals have all put out decent policies for at least a decade. The recent by-election showed that voters believed Justin's lies about the environment but aren't likely to buy what he is selling a second time.

I am not sure what you thought I meant. The problem is that myself and my neighbors are all wondering who to vote for in the next election. The NDP and Greens are both competitive on VI and if they split the vote we will have the majority of the voters who want action on the climate saddled with climate change denying Conservatives. In my riding we have Gord Johns who is a good hardworking NDP MP who is an environmentalist more than a socialist. Now if the NDP continues to support the BC NDP's right to destroy the planet I might consider voting Green but it will almost certainly guarantee that the Conservatives will win.

I think that our only hope is in the streets not in the voting booth. This is from my youth when YIPPIES helped end the Vietnam war and the civil rights movement made major progress. Elders like myself and other old folks on this board need to support the children who are taking to the streets as our first priority.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5M_Ttstbgs

Mighty Middle wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

I am not sure what you thought I meant. The problem is that myself and my neighbors are all wondering who to vote for in the next election. The NDP and Greens are both competitive on VI and if they split the vote we will have the majority of the voters who want action on the climate saddled with climate change denying Conservatives.

And Elizabeth May is countering that "vote-split" narrative on VI by digging up past quotes by the NDP (when they tried to ward off talk of "vote-splitting") by using the NDP own words of "Don't vote out of fear"

I am not talking about a vote split "narrative" I am talking about a real people who are not partisans trying to figure out what the fuck to do to stop Conservatives from regaining ridings on this Island. Neither the NDP not Green partisans on this Island play nice and they mostly really dislike the other side.

What are you trying to say? May attacks the NDP just like I said above. There is no doubt that all parties have used "strategic voting" as an sword. The more they attack each other the better the oiligarchy likes it.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Mighty Middle wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

I am not sure what you thought I meant. The problem is that myself and my neighbors are all wondering who to vote for in the next election. The NDP and Greens are both competitive on VI and if they split the vote we will have the majority of the voters who want action on the climate saddled with climate change denying Conservatives.

And Elizabeth May is countering that "vote-split" narrative on VI by digging up past quotes by the NDP (when they tried to ward off talk of "vote-splitting") by using the NDP own words of "Don't vote out of fear"

I am not talking about a vote split "narrative" I am talking about a real people who are not partisans trying to figure out what the fuck to do to stop Conservatives from regaining ridings on this Island. Neither the NDP not Green partisans on this Island play nice and they mostly really dislike the other side.

I think the point being made by Mighty Middle, Elizabeth May, Paul Manly, etc. is that voters on Vancouver Island and elsewhere shouldn't be told that they're not allowed to vote Green for fear of electing a Conservative.  Not all voters on Vancouver Island want to vote NDP -- some want to vote Green this time.

And the results in Nanaimo-Ladysmith (and in Saanich-Gulf Islands) and in other provincial ridings in B.C., Ontario, New Brunswick & PEI show that the Greens can win in certain places.  Some voters would like to see more Greens and are tired of all the old parties (eg. NDP, Liberal, Conservative).

If you're a member of the pro-Israel community in Canada - an increasingly powerful and influential little band out of all proportion to its diminutiveness -   and you perhaps fancy a change from the same old Lib/Con lickspittlers, and may even be considering your electoral walk with Israel on the pseudo-left/faux green wild side, it must be damned difficult choosing between the No Difference Party and the Green Slime Party as to which is likely to be the more sensitive and responsive to the continuing and boundless well being of  the Apartheid state of Israel, an interest which is after all as it should be of primary concern. What's a true friend of Israel to do?  Well for what it's worth, it seems to me, based on this, that Elizabeth may have it by a nose...

Elizabeth May Misleads Canadian Jewish News, Smears BDS

https://twitter.com/dimitrilascaris/status/1128393325533454337

"In light of Paul's history, it is all too predictable that the Zionist lobby began attacking Paul within days of his victory. 'We have nothing to do with BDS', May said. 'We repealed it.' We are not a party that condones BDS. We would never tolerate anybody in our party who violates our core values, who are anti-Semitic..."

Bravo Lizzie May. Jagmeet, we know you can crush a bds insurrection in Convention but that was then and this is now. Show us how much you love Israel. Can anyone go one better...?

Your thread title is misleading, MM.  You should consider editing it to say what it looks like you meant it to say, and to ask the question which is on the minds of a lot of people in BOTH of these parties:  "IS The NDP Ready For Its Battle Against The Green Party?"

Just because the greens are climbing in support doesn’t mean that they won’t be taking votes away from the liberals and just the NDP. If anything I think kropotkin is right, the conservatives are the big winners. 

Now I still believe that the NDP will be hurt in all of this. But if the conservatives can’t get a 50%+ 1 majority of seats in the lower house, I can see a coalition toppling Scheer. This is probably Justin’s best hope of a second term as pm. 

Over the years there have been few conservative (small c) governments to prop up. Going back over the last 62 years, there have been only two minority conservative governments before Harper’s minority governments in 2006 and 2008. The Liberals didn’t prop up Joe Clark’s minority government in 1980 nor did they prop up John Diefenbaker’s in 1958.

There are actually times when the Liberals have had arrangements with the NDP.

The Pierre Trudeau Minority in the early 1970's is the best example.

And the Paul Martin Minority worked with the NDP for a while.

Trudeau might prop a Conservative government but  I don't think so.The Liberal party powers that be didn't want Dion to make the deal with Layton so they betrayed him. After that the Liberals were in no shape to face another election so they supported the Conservatives. 

Times change. Now we have the example of the Greens and NDP working together in BC to overthrow the Liberals.  Trudeau is much more married to the progressive mantle. He would have to wear supporting the Conservatives. Granted it could still happen and it wouldn't be great but it would further establish that the Liberals and Conservatives are two sides of the same coin. 

That would improve NDP chances for 2023.

Policywonk wrote:

JKR wrote:

Over the years there have been few conservative (small c) governments to prop up. Going back over the last 62 years, there have been only two minority conservative governments before Harper’s minority governments in 2006 and 2008. The Liberals didn’t prop up Joe Clark’s minority government in 1980 nor did they prop up John Diefenbaker’s in 1958.

Three. Diefenbaker had two of them (1957-58 and 1962-63). 

I forgot that one. The Liberals also didn’t prop up that one. I suspect if we do end up with a Conservative minority government that it will likely be short lived like Diefenbakers’s and Clark’s were.

Debater wrote:

There are actually times when the Liberals have had arrangements with the NDP.

The Pierre Trudeau Minority in the early 1970's is the best example.

And the Paul Martin Minority worked with the NDP for a while.

The entire Pearson era, as well.

May is also vulnerable to attack as indifferent to unions, and by simple extension as indifferent to workers and the poor.  She also has a reputation for supporting "economic pragmatism", which is code for "if I'm prime minister, the rich won't notice I'm there".