Exactly How Many NB New Democrats Defected To Elizabeth May Green Party

Debater wrote:

But as Pietro said, it is also the case that Singh was presented as the NDP version of Trudeau -- someone who would be charismatic, young, attractive in nice clothes, good dresser, etc.  Singh himself even played along with it and said he was an even better dresser than Trudeau, etc.

And Misfit, it happens to be the case that several commentators such as Chantal Hebert talked about the generational change in Federal politics -- with Trudeau, Scheer & Singh all being younger than their predecessors.  Hebert pointed out that 2015 was probably the last time there will be a Federal leader from the baby boom generation.

OMG!!!

both you and MM have some real obsession with Chantal Hebert going on. And there is more to life and more to the media than just her.

Secondly about the baby boomers, who the hell cares?!? Um, aside from you and Chantal Hebert, that is.

I have a sister who is a baby boomer and she is 72. I have another sister who is a baby boomer and she is 66. And in four years they will be 76 and 70 respectively. Yes, some baby boomers are younger and the chance of having another baby boomer leader is definitely pretty slim but that’s life. They have gotten old. 

Elizabeth May on 'a Tempest in a Tea Pot' today on CP24 Toronto

Canada Wants To See Real Change: May

https://www.cp24.com/video?clipId=1773565

"...It appears 14 New Democrats were announced to be joining the Green Party, nine have been in touch with our office, 100%, they have their membership forms, they've joined. One who had actually joined, then got pressure from NDP headquarters, then claimed they didn't know anything about joining the Green Party. We'll let the dust settle on that one. I don't think it's a big deal but it's a shame Mr Singh reacted to it by attacking me...He bears responsibility here. As leader of the NDP he hasn't visited New Brunswick once. In two years. In that time I've been here three times because I get to all part of Canada. In the last seven months I've been in every province..."

Mighty Middle wrote:

You can say alot about Trudeau, but one thing you can't say is that he didn't work for it. That is where Singh falls short.

What a crock of bullshit. When he ran for leader he didn't even know a single back room operator, he did it all alone? I guess he had to work real hard at removing the silver spoon from his mouth after he was born so he could learn to speak properly. Justin won because he is Pierre's son.  Liberal talking points are so funny some days.

Really? I missed the part where Jack became one of Canada's most successful politicians and won numerous elections as PM. Not all coat tails are created the same.

What was the name of that movie, it didn't seem to come to my part of the world. Was it shown in a theater in the Beaches?

This one?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116669/

I found it and boy did it ever impress the world. Here is the review it got on the IMDB website.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2253566/

User Reviews

Progressive Irrelevance

16 August 2014 | by johnsmith73340 – See all my reviews

I do not know what to say about this film, except that it's very creation is unprecedented. It is unprecedented because never before has a full-length film been made about such an unimportant individual. This is a film about a man who nobody outside of Canada has even heard of; and who nobody inside of Canada really cared about.

This film was an irrelevant attempt by irrelevant progressives to glorify a man who was an irrelevant progressive. I can understand making films about famous progressive leaders: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro or even Kim Jong Il. At least they had some real impact on history, even if they were all genocidal lunatics.

You do not even need to watch this film to know it is propaganda. The very fact that a film was made about such an unimportant politician reeks (stinks) of political bias. You can be guaranteed that the political hacks who made this film will not be making a film about Steven Harper, the current conservative Prime Minister of Canada; unless - of course - it is to vilify and destroy him.

He was his campaign co-chair. That's about as 'inner circle' as you can get.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Mighty Middle wrote:

You can say alot about Trudeau, but one thing you can't say is that he didn't work for it. That is where Singh falls short.

What a crock of bullshit. When he ran for leader he didn't even know a single back room operator, he did it all alone? I guess he had to work real hard at removing the silver spoon from his mouth after he was born so he could learn to speak properly. Justin won because he is Pierre's son.  Liberal talking points are so funny some days.

kropotkin, what Mighty Middle said is not a "Liberal talking point".  (and btw, all parties have their talking points.  you realize the NDP has talking points, too, right?)

Almost every politcal commentator and historian and (even Justin Trudeau's opponents) acknowledged that his achievement in 2015 was remarkable.  As Chantal Hebert said, it was one of the biggest election victories in Canadian history.

What you forgot in your post is that Trudeau had to take over a Liberal Party that had fallen to THIRD and was in its weakest position in history.  He wasn't handed a party that was already in power like his father was, or like many other Liberal leaders in history.

He had to bring back a party that had nothing in Quebec except for its Montreal strongholds, and nothing in the West except for a few personally popular Liberals like Goodale, Fry & Lamoreux.  He became the first Liberal leader since 1980 to win a majority of seats in Quebec, and the first Liberal leader since 1968 to finish 1st in British Columbia.

I have not been pleased with Trudeau & his team in many ways.  As I said before the 2015 election, I quit my Liberal riding executive after Trudeau's team fixed the nomination in my riding for a star candidate against the Liberal candidate I was working for at the time.  I didn't vote Liberal in 2015 and I'm not planning to do so in 2019.

But like the majority of Canadian political commentators, I can recognize that Trudeau worked very hard in many ways to achieve that 2015 victory.  He worked a lot harder than his father had to in 1968 or than many other Liberal leaders have done since.  Despite some of my personal disappointments with Trudeau & his team I can be objective enough to recognize that.  Remember:  after the 2011 Election, most people in Canada, including many people here on this forum (check the threads from those days) predicted that the Liberals were finished -- or that if they came back it would be many years in the future and that they would never, ever win a Majority in 2015.

I was an extra in that film. They filmed a scene at the Winnipeg Centennial Concert Centre. Of course, I was buried in a crowd cheering for Jack with placards.

Ken Burch wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

I found it and boy did it ever impress the world. Here is the review it got on the IMDB website.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2253566/

User Reviews

Progressive Irrelevance

16 August 2014 | by johnsmith73340 – See all my reviews

I do not know what to say about this film, except that it's very creation is unprecedented. It is unprecedented because never before has a full-length film been made about such an unimportant individual. This is a film about a man who nobody outside of Canada has even heard of; and who nobody inside of Canada really cared about.

This film was an irrelevant attempt by irrelevant progressives to glorify a man who was an irrelevant progressive. I can understand making films about famous progressive leaders: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro or even Kim Jong Il. At least they had some real impact on history, even if they were all genocidal lunatics.

You do not even need to watch this film to know it is propaganda. The very fact that a film was made about such an unimportant politician reeks (stinks) of political bias. You can be guaranteed that the political hacks who made this film will not be making a film about Steven Harper, the current conservative Prime Minister of Canada; unless - of course - it is to vilify and destroy him.

There might well be issues with that film, but why would you quote someone who is obviously a spiteful, vindictive right-wing creep?

I didn't see the film either so I can't comment on it, but I agree with Ken's assessment. Layton took the NDP to Official Opposition status and won its highest ever seat count. Obvously NDPers are going to look on this as a major accomlishment. He also won the respect of Canadians, as evidenced by the outpouring of grief when he passed away. Even to this day he is still a respected figure in Canadian politics. I also think that another accomplishment of the NDP becoming Official Opposition is that had Harper faced a Liberal Opposition leader in his majority term, we might very well have Maxime Bernier as our Prime Minister.

If we are to judge leaders by the metrics this author wants us to, then Tommy Douglas was even more irrelevant than Layton, because Douglas never cracked 20% of the vote as leader of the federal NDP. I think if somoene argued that on these boards that that argument would be shot down very quickly.

Ed Broadbent stayed on waaaay too long. I lost respect for him when he ditched criticizing free trade and the Mulroney government and attacked John Turner. It was unethical and a party of principle would have attacked free trade during the election. Then he took a plum appointment from Mulroney. 

Mighty Middle wrote:

If a famous last name is all that is needed to catapult a political party up the polls, then the answer to the NDPs current problems is to have Mike Layton lead the NDP this uncoming election. And overnight they will be back to official opposition status in October.

You're full of revisionalist shit history  Mighty Middle!

The cbc hand picked Justin to be PM of Canada as soon as his old man died and he made a speech at his funeral! Holy fuck it's disgusting to watch the privelage pour on this corporate circus freek show. Work? My fucking ass this guy ever had to work!

When democracy finaly fails and Canada adopts Communism, historians in the future will point back at Justin as the catalyst.

Misfit wrote:

Ed Broadbent stayed on waaaay too long. I lost respect for him when he ditched criticizing free trade and the Mulroney government and attacked John Turner. It was unethical and a party of principle would have attacked free trade during the election. Then he took a plum appointment from Mulroney.

That's Liberal Party mythology. All parties talked about free trade. The NDP wanted a popularity contest between Broadbent and Mulroney because they saw that as their path to victory (and by extension, that would also have defeated free trade). The Liberals made that their issue because that was the only issue they had going for them. People also forget that free trade had a great deal of support in Quebec at the time, and there were other issues on people's minds out West. Incidentally, 1988 was the high-water mark for NDP support out West, and that came mostly at the expense of PC seats.

I agree that Audrey was very unlucky being leader during the late ‘80’s / early 90’s when almost everything going against the NDP was out of her control but after getting only 9 seats and just 7% of the vote in the 1993 election there was virtually no chance of Audrey leading the NDP into another election.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Misfit wrote:

Ed Broadbent stayed on waaaay too long. I lost respect for him when he ditched criticizing free trade and the Mulroney government and attacked John Turner. It was unethical and a party of principle would have attacked free trade during the election. Then he took a plum appointment from Mulroney. 

Too me the constitutional fiasco was his and the parties downfall. Note that the parties that actively opposed the Accord all reaped the benefits those like the NDP that chose to support this set of unpalatable compromises didn't fare as well in the next election.

The problem with opposing Charlottetown was that there was so much in that that was amazingly socially progressive, the NDP couldn't really have opposed it without sounding like it had gone right-wing on all of those issues, like it was pandering to uptight, narrow-minded Alberta rancher/preacher types.  I can't even imagine how a Left case against Charlottetown could have sounded, how the argument could have been made that there was still a way to get the social progressive stuff in Charlottetown enacted if it were to lose.   If you had to frame a Left argument against that Accord, Kropotkin, how would you do so?  How would you make the case that it was possible to vote against the "social charter" and still find a way to get the things in the social charter by other means?

The problem with opposing Charlottetown was that there was so much in that that was amazingly socially progressive, the NDP couldn't really have opposed it without sounding like it had gone right-wing on all of those issues, like it was pandering to uptight, narrow-minded Alberta rancher/preacher types. 

In defense of my home province, I will point out that there were two other provinces, BC and Manitoba, where the No vote on Charlottetown was higher than in Alberta. And BC was by a significant amount.

I suppose the BC results could be explained through cultural continuity between the interior and Alberta. Not sure how one would wave away Manitoba.

https://tinyurl.com/y22bvvbd

kropotkin1951 wrote:

It is worth noting that voters in 6 of 10 provinces rejected it as did the Yukon. I am not sure about the riding by riding breakdown so its hard to tell which parts of various provinces voted either for or against.

ETA: lets not forget the main proponent of the Accord was Lying Brian the author of Canada's austerity state.

I remember Rosemary Brown on CBC making a left-wing case against Charlottetown. Can't recall exactly what her arguments were, but I think she was concerned about the potential impact on social programs, possibly among other things.

(self-delete.  Dupe post).

kropotkin1951 wrote:

I believe the party would be vying for power today if it had stuck to the kind of socialist agenda that Audrey and the left of the NDP represents. Instead we got the wisdom of a right of center social democrat or was Alexa a left liberal. If the only point of the NDP is to supplant the centrist Liberals in a duopoly then the fight is not worth the effort.

As I recollect the time Audrey was leader, the NDP was basically still a centre-left party that didn’t veer that far from the centre. I think most of the people who’ve run the NDP since its inception have been convinced that the NDP have to remain a centre-left party in order to have any chance of attaining power. I’m not sure if they are right or wrong about that. Presumably they have opinion polls that back them up but having been a volunteer for the NDP in previous elections I wouldn’t be surprised if they are mostly in the dark concerning the opinions of the Canadian electorate. ;)   One overriding impression I have had of the NDP over the last 40 years or so is that compared to the other parties the NDP is not as aware of public opinion as the Liberals and Conservatives are.

I think because of FPTP the NDP will most likely continue to be a lite version of the Liberals. I think that under our FPTP system the left in Canada would be better off if we joined the Liberals big tent party and lobbied for socialist policies from within that party but I also think that’s not about to happen as many NDP’ers hate the Liberal Party. I think electoral reform would help establish a viable socialist alternative in Canada but for obvious reasons the elites are opposed to electoral reform and will likely be able to prevent it from happening federally for the foreseeable future. So I guess the best that can be expected for the foreseeable future is for the left to muddle through and hope the upcoming federal election produces a Liberal minority government that needs support from the NDP and maybe now the Greens.

JKR wrote:

 One overriding impression I have had of the NDP over the last 40 years or so is that compared to the other parties the NDP is not as aware of public opinion as the Liberals and Conservatives are.

I would say that's also the case for some of the long-time hardcore left-wing partisans on this board.

Some posters here often forget that most Canadians are centrist, and are often to the right of the opinions expressed on this forum.  Canada is not Europe or Scandinavia.  It is not a far-left country and it doesn't have as long a tradition of social democratic policies.  It's not as right-wing as the United States, and most Canadians would not support the Republican Party.  But Canada is not a far-left country either.  There's a strong right-wing base in this country, which is why the Cons still often do well even when they lose an election.  About one-third of Canadians are Conservative.  And another third are centrist.

I realize that those such as kropotkin above are frustrated and think that Alexa M, Mulcair, Layton, etc. were too centrist, but that's not what most Canadians think.  And although many people here think the Liberals are right-wing, they are actually a centrist party.  Many Canadians think the Liberals are too left-wing.  Plus, there are Conservative columnists like John Ivison who have spent the last several years saying Justin Trudeau is the most left-wing Prime Minister in Canadian history.

Likewise, there are many progressives in the United States complaining about Obama, and then not wanting to support Hillary and insisting that Bernie Sanders had to be the nominee in 2016.  Now many of those people are finding out the hard way under Trump & the Republicans what a real right-wing party is like.  Trump & the Republicans are filling the judiciary with hundreds of right-wing judges and eliminating environmental regulations and destroying things that the EPA did under Obama.

There's not going to ever be a perfect utopian left-wing leader.  The left is much harder on its leaders than the right.  The right-wing almost always supports their person and falls in line.  Voters on the left and in the Liberals, NDP, Democratic Party, etc. are much more divided on the centrist vs. progressive debate than the right-wing is on the conservative vs. true conservative debate.

I don't expect the majority of Canadians to agree with me or the NDP. I have spent my time electing MP's who have spoken truth to power. That is all I ever expected to accomplish. Svend or Bill, two of our best left politicians would lose in the majority of ridings in the country. Under our system I only get to vote for an MP and not a leader or a party for extra members. Why would I try and send a mediocre centrist to Ottawa to represent me. I and my neighbours worked hard to send real socialists to Ottawa and there they were "handled" by people who didn't want to be tainted by those views.

I dream of a better system but in this one the only thing that can be accomplished is to keep the message that there is an alternative in front of the population by electing people who fight the status quo i.e. the liberal centrist view.