Is the NDP dive deliberate? (Sid Ryan)

WWWTT wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

Scariest thought:  is the Executive Council holding Singh hostage in some way?  Are they saying "dump us and we'll take you down!"?

I think that's a little over the top paranoia.

I agree with you on this one.

I don't think the NDP are deliberately trying to sabotage their own leader.

I think some of them just feel he may have been a mistake as leader, the same way many Liberals felt that way about Ignatieff & Dion.

So glad we're putting in all this extra effort for vetting...

NDP candidate dropped over social media spat with pro-pipeline activists 2 years ago

Brothers and sisters in the fight for the interests of working class Canadian families, First Nations peoples, LGBTQ2S peoples, and marginalized peoples, it is with a heavy heart that I write to you to inform you that I have been asked to, and have agreed to, withdraw my candidacy for NDP MP for Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo.

I am incredibly disappointed that I won't be able to be the voice to offer a social democratic alternative to the Liberals and Conservatives in the riding of Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo. I am not stepping down for personal reasons. Rather, I have been asked to step down as a result of problematic social media engagement two years ago, made in a context in which I was a graduate student without any designs on public life. The comments I made then were flippant and aggressive, and do not reflect who I am today, nor do I stand by them in the form in which they were made, and I understand completely that they would be an unnecessary and unwarranted distraction from the vital message and campaign of the NDP across the country.

I absolutely support, endorse, and believe in the NDP's New Deal for People and Power to Change policy documents. We live in a moment of crisis, and the only party with policy prescriptions that both resonate with everyday Canadians and can address the massive disparities and contradictions in wealth, housing, healthcare and reconciliation is Canada's New Democratic Party. I am truly and deeply sorry to my friends, neighbours, colleagues, fellow party members, and citizens across Canada that I cannot and will not be the champion for these policies, as much as I wanted to and want to be.

I want also to make clear that while I regret and apologize for the comments I made to two pro-pipeline activists two years ago, and understand how they would be a needless distraction to the party and national campaign, I nonetheless disagree with both the content and process of the decision that prevents me from championing these policies that I deeply and passionately believe in. The run-up to this campaign has been marked by questions around the nature, purpose, and procedures of candidate vetting, in all parties, and how social media plays a role in who can, and cannot, take part in political life. If all those who advance the interests of the wealthy and powerful need do to stymie and sabotage a campaign or candidate is to unearth an uncouth statement, or make a political party answer for any out of context social media engagement, then that is exactly what they will do, and become better at doing.

With that said, as the Ontario Labour activist Sid Ryan has already noted, the issue of candidate vetting, what it consists of, and who makes decisions concerning it "will need to be addressed in a serious way following the election [but] meanwhile, we have work to do to elect Jagmeet Singh and his team of candidates." With this I wholeheartedly agree. There will be plenty of time for analysis and questions after the election campaign has ended, as we survey the political scene that we will have to live with for several years.

Right now, I encourage all Canadians across the country to get involved with the campaigns of all the great local candidates for the NDP, inspiring individuals who passionately advocate for policies that will materially better the lives of the communities we live in, and get them into Parliament. I am incredibly sorry that I will not be among them.

I am humbled, grateful, and inspired by the local Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo labour activists, campaign volunteers, and electoral district association members who put their trust in me, and it will forever sit uncomfortably with me that I could not be their candidate.

In love and solidarity always,
Dock Currie

Pondering wrote:

Dion was deliberately sabotaged. 

I don't think Dion was sabotaged so much as he was given a lack of support in certain quarters.  Star candidates (eg. Martin Cauchon in Outremont) decided to sit on their hands because they thought they would do better under Ignatieff.  Ironically for all of them, Ignatieff took the party down further.  Had Cauchon run in 2008 rather than waiting until 2011, he might have beaten Mulcair.  Mulcair saw a drop in his vote share from the 2007 by-election, and Quebec actor Sébastien Dhavernas who ran for the Liberals placed a strong 2nd in 2008.

The Liberals also spent nowhere near the amount of money they should have in 2008.  Not only did they spend far less than the Conservatives, I think they didn't spend much more than the NDP (or perhaps less as in 2015).  The NDP had strong fundraising which was better than the Liberals once the election laws on banning corporate donations came in at the end of the Chrétien era.

The problem was that Dion should not have run for leader in the first place.  He was not fluent in both languages and was too much of an academic/intellectual to be a good communicator as a leader.  Like Ignatieff (and possibly Singh) he worked better as a team player rather than a leader.

So any person who has passionately taken on pro-pipeline people on the internet are not allowed to run for office. How about if you have been rude to anti-abortionists or racists or homophobes? So who the fuck does the NDP think is going to change the world, people who ask for it cap in hand and never be impolite to the enemy?

bekayne wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

So any person who has passionately taken on pro-pipeline people on the internet are not allowed to run for office. 

The person who was at the other end of the conversation bears no ill will. This is getting ridiculous.

I am unsure about what you mean by your response to my flippant comment about flippant comments. I think the fact that this person is not running is an outrageous example of how our system is designed to stifle dissent and replace it with mewling. 

The run-up to this campaign has been marked by questions around the nature, purpose, and procedures of candidate vetting, in all parties, and how social media plays a role in who can, and cannot, take part in political life. If all those who advance the interests of the wealthy and powerful need do to stymie and sabotage a campaign or candidate is to unearth an uncouth statement, or make a political party answer for any out of context social media engagement, then that is exactly what they will do, and become better at doing.

It appears the goal of the vetting crew is to make sure all NDP candidates are bland, passionless robots.  Those are the only sorts of people who are being allowed to stand this year.

We can assume that nobody who is allowed to stand, for example, in Oshawa, after Sid Ryan was effectively blocked, will have any strong convictions about anything or speak with any passion on any issue, that whoever the vetters approve of will be a cypher who simply parrots whatever meaningless phrases the campaign word generator tells them to repeat.

I'll bet Maxime Bernier is in discussions with Cameron Ogilvie. His Facebook posts make him a good fit since they are proudly white, anti-immigration and fanatically Christian.

https://pressprogress.ca/proud-to-be-white-conservative-candidate-resign...

kropotkin1951 wrote:

I'll bet Maxime Bernier is in discussions with Cameron Ogilvie. His Facebook posts make him a good fit since they are proudly white, anti-immigration and fanatically Christian.

https://pressprogress.ca/proud-to-be-white-conservative-candidate-resign...

Yeah.

Luckily for the Conservatives this happened in Winnipeg North, a riding they're not in contention to win anyway.  It would be a bigger issue if it happened in one of the other Winnipeg ridings they want to win back.

Ken Burch wrote:

It appears the goal of the vetting crew is to make sure all NDP candidates are bland, passionless robots.  Those are the only sorts of people who are being allowed to stand this year.

Left candidates with passion are allowed to run for the NDP only so long as they're smart enough to shutter their existing social media accounts when they chose to run for the nomination, and to create new social media accounts. I'm currently volunteering on the campaign of one such candidate, but for their sake I won't name names.

Or alternately, as in the case of Svend Robinson, basically had no social media presence prior to his decision to run in this election.

None of this makes the NDP's vetting process any less shameful.

Left Turn wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

Debater wrote:

WWWTT wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

Scariest thought:  is the Executive Council holding Singh hostage in some way?  Are they saying "dump us and we'll take you down!"?

I think that's a little over the top paranoia.

I agree with you on this one.

I don't think the NDP are deliberately trying to sabotage their own leader.

I think some of them just feel he may have been a mistake as leader, the same way many Liberals felt that way about Ignatieff & Dion.

OK...Perhaps they think he's a mistake.   He's going to lead the party through the election though, and these people need to get past those feelings and do the job they are supposed to be doing...holding the NDP losses, if there must be losses, to as few as possible and making sure the party runs the strongest, most effective campaign it can.

Singh's failings are not the only thing that matters here, folks.

The NDP brass doesn't seem to get the need to save the deck furniture in this eletion. They also seem to be giving Ontario far too much importance in their overall election strategy, ignoring (at least at this stage) ridings like Burnaby North--Seymour, Winnipeg Centre, and St. John's East, which they could pick up due to a combination of local candidate and previous NDP history.

If they don't see the importance of at least saving the deck furniture, the brass shouldn't BE the brass.   It's meaningless to make gains in Ontario of the party gets wiped out everywhere else.

Debater wrote:

Pondering wrote:

Dion was deliberately sabotaged. 

I don't think Dion was sabotaged so much as he was given a lack of support in certain quarters.  Star candidates (eg. Martin Cauchon in Outremont) decided to sit on their hands because they thought they would do better under Ignatieff.  Ironically for all of them, Ignatieff took the party down further.  Had Cauchon run in 2008 rather than waiting until 2011, he might have beaten Mulcair.  Mulcair saw a drop in his vote share from the 2007 by-election, and Quebec actor Sébastien Dhavernas who ran for the Liberals placed a strong 2nd in 2008.

The Liberals also spent nowhere near the amount of money they should have in 2008.  Not only did they spend far less than the Conservatives, I think they didn't spend much more than the NDP (or perhaps less as in 2015).  The NDP had strong fundraising which was better than the Liberals once the election laws on banning corporate donations came in at the end of the Chrétien era.

The problem was that Dion should not have run for leader in the first place.  He was not fluent in both languages and was too much of an academic/intellectual to be a good communicator as a leader.  Like Ignatieff (and possibly Singh) he worked better as a team player rather than a leader.

I'd concur with that assessment (including of Dion as leadership material).  I have briefed him on fiscal federalism when he first became a Minister, and later sparred with him in a debate at a cabinet sub-committee to which I was invited to give a report.  All I can say is that I never found him compelling, whether as a leader, spokesperson, or even intellectually (to my surprise).  He was undoubtedly resolute in his principles, which is a virtue but hardly enough to be a political leader.

Dion's team was also a bit green and didn't really have the depth of contacts to rally support around Dion when he/they messed up on the Duceppe handshake and inclusion in the media conference and when it all later came apart during the barrage of Conservative Ads and social media and Harper's prorogation of Parliament.  A few had longer experience (Herb Metcalfe and Johanne Senecal) but had been relatively minor figures during Chretien's era and nowhere during Martin's ascendancy and brief period in power.  Andrew Bevan and Katie Telford have since become major players with Wynne and Trudeau but were not then. 

Add in the fact that almost none of the Liberal Pooh-Bahs had supported Dion during leadership and that he had only 18% first ballot support from rank-and-file delegates and it suddenly became very lonely in the room when things went badly in December 2008.  I spoke to Johanne Senecal that night and had the impression that she was almost alone in his office trying to hold it all together.

I suspect that Joe Clark, as a compromise candidate for the PCs in '76 had some similar experiences after the 1980 loss.

No question that Ignatieff''s forces later pulled off a coup that saw him become de facto leader with only the support of the LPC Executive (later "legitimized" by a foregone-conclusion convention) but Dion had already lost the moment in December and in January of 2009.

radiorahim wrote:

The election campaign is on and nothing about the vetting process is going to change between now and October 21st.  Everyone's focus is on the election campaign and winning as many seats for the NDP as possible.

But post election, and looking forward towards the next federal policy convention (2020?) there needs to be a focus on internal party democracy.   For those on here who are NDP members, we need to look at what went wrong and then look at how we would like things to be.

There will need to be a "post mortem".

I am not opposed to some kind of vetting process as such, but vetting someone out needs to be for a substantive reason and not simply because someone has made some intemperate comments online.    We're living in a time when everyone has made them.

And I suspect, that at some point, as the millenial generation that has grown up online starts getting into positions of power that all this online stuff will no longer matter.

How about people who have made posts that are homophobic, racist, sexist, ableist, ageist, or downright cruel? I understand that everyone (myself included) would have made angry comments at people online. That will be the case when it comes to politics because people feel very passionately about it. At the same time, I feel there has to be a basic standard of decency and respect that should be expected of people running for public office. If you allow a free-for-all, that poisons political discourse to the point of turning people off, and may even discourage good people from putting their names forward.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

radiorahim wrote:

The election campaign is on and nothing about the vetting process is going to change between now and October 21st.  Everyone's focus is on the election campaign and winning as many seats for the NDP as possible.

But post election, and looking forward towards the next federal policy convention (2020?) there needs to be a focus on internal party democracy.   For those on here who are NDP members, we need to look at what went wrong and then look at how we would like things to be.

There will need to be a "post mortem".

I am not opposed to some kind of vetting process as such, but vetting someone out needs to be for a substantive reason and not simply because someone has made some intemperate comments online.    We're living in a time when everyone has made them.

And I suspect, that at some point, as the millenial generation that has grown up online starts getting into positions of power that all this online stuff will no longer matter.

How about people who have made posts that are homophobic, racist, sexist, ableist, ageist, or downright cruel? I understand that everyone (myself included) would have made angry comments at people online. That will be the case when it comes to politics because people feel very passionately about it. At the same time, I feel there has to be a basic standard of decency and respect that should be expected of people running for public office. If you allow a free-for-all, that poisons political discourse to the point of turning people off, and may even discourage good people from putting their names forward.

While I agree that we don't want candidates who have posted racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist ect. language on the internet, can we at least agree that criticism of Israel's treatment of the Palesinians -- however that may be expressed -- does not constitue racism?

And can we agree that candidates should not have to violate their online privacy (and that of their friends and comrades) in order to be allowed to run for the NDP?

Criminal convictions, except for social protest, or crimes that NO LONGER EXIST, in particular cannabis possession.  And I certainly wouldn't want Svend refused because of a crime he admitted to and paid for in full, and more so.

While I understand the problem of fixed election dates, not having them creates different sorts of problems.

In NL, the government did a "surprise" early election.   The NLNDP had just been through a change of leadership and only managed to field candidates in 14 of 40 constituencies.   Even the provincial Tories were shy a candidate in a couple of seats.

Lucky for the NLNDP, they managed to win in three constituencies.