Putting the NDP on the right track: Rail policy, rural revival, and the NDP

NorthReport wrote:

Merci beaucoup. 

I know our global warming issue is an emergency but my hunch is that we will never adequately address it until we address inequality first, and rid ourselves of rich governments governing basically only for the rich, like in Canada.

It is obvious to me that unionization brings lower-class families into the middle class, which is where a lot of progressive ideas originate, so why in the world would we attack unions here on this board.

cco wrote:

Pondering wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

I've been thinking a great deal about why, if the NDP is supposedly on the side of every-day people,.....

Were they really though?  From my admittedly shallow knowledge of their history they have always been union centric.

Unions are made up of everyday people, despite decades of right-wing propaganda to drive a wedge between them and the unorganized working class. The only difference is that union members are everyday people who are paid something closer to what they're worth.

Some everyday people belong to unions. Unions represent a specific set of interests. The reason the NDP has been afraid to go green is in part the fact that many union jobs are connected to the fossil fuel industry. The NDP is not going to go after police unions for defending bad cops instead of being a good influence on police culture. 

I am not speaking of party members but of the leadership of the NDP.  I am talking about the current NDP that took "socialist" out of the constitution not the NDP of yore. This is the party of Layton, Mulcair and Singh. 

jerrym wrote:

For someone who now claims to be an ecosocialist, you have done a number of political cartwheels, supporting Trudeau in 2015, jumping back to him to say at the first possible moment that the We scandal was over and he would sail onwards and upwards in the polls, to attacking unions, which for all their human flaws like all organizations, are one of the few institutions working people can rely on.   

It is not attacking unions to say they are not the sum-total of everyday people. Everyday people vote Conservative and Liberal not just NDP. Most everyday people do not belong to unions. The NDP does not represent everyday people because everyday people have not chosen the NDP. 

If I could go back to 2015 I would still vote Trudeau as he was the best option at the time. Mulcair was promoting the Sherbrooke Declaration and Energy East as an alternative to Keystone XL as well as promising no deficits from his first year in office. 

Even when Mulcair refused to condemn the Quebec soccer league for barring girls from wearing sports hijabs which are perfectly safe you all defended Mulcair's reaction, sending a letter to the World Soccer Federation, over Trudeau condemning it instantly. That shocked me. 

Nobody here has ever admitted that a Mulcair NDP win would have been a disaster for the NDP. His government would have the same rep as Rae's and Mulcair would have solidified the move to the centre. 

This is because you, and many others here, are partisans. That is why you cannot understand that swing voters don't become Liberals one year and Conservatives the next and then NDPers. The Orange Wave did not mean that the NDP now had all those supporters. They supported Layton not the NDP. 

jerrym wrote:

  ​I don't see a lot of socialist action  in your version or in the Greens version of ecosocialist talk so far. Jumping all over unions will not impress me to think otherwise. Sometimes instead you sound very Liberal. 

For years I have said that the issue of this century is climate change and the NDP is failing to get ahead of the parade. For years I have said they shouldn't look to the next election but should be positioning themselves for 8 to 10 years in the future.

That is what Lascaris is doing. Canada isn't ready for an eco-socialist government yet. They might never be but I am betting there is going to be a sudden "great- awakening" in the next 8-16 years. When it happens Canada could go eco-socialist, or they could go extreme right. 

I practice strategic voting. Just because I am a member of the Green Party doesn't mean I now have to vote Green. If the candidate in my riding is ecosocialist then they will get my vote. If not I will vote NDP. It is a safe Liberal seat so I don't need to worry about a Conservative getting in. 

I said it in other threads and I will say it here again. VOTE NDP. There is no danger of the Conservatives winning. That makes it safe to vote NDP. 

Don't vote Green unless the candidate in your riding is eco-socialist. Otherwise vote NDP. 

Don't mistake that for my being an NDP supporter. I'm not. They are simply the only tool available.

I have an entire thread on why the Conservatives aren't going to win anymore elections. There would have to be some sort of miracle for the NDP to win the next election. That leaves the Liberals. It is simple deductive reasoning not a message of support. 

I am not an eco-socialist in general either. I am a Lascaris-eco-socialist. 

I have not done any cartwheels at all. I vote pragmatically. If you are going to label me or cast aspirations on my motives then I expect you to study my posts and my reasoning. Otherwise stick to labeling yourself. 

Pondering wrote:

By the way Jerrym, from your support of Mulcair I see that you place union jobs over climate change and you want the NDP to move to the right. 

I supported the NDP in 2015 because I had no faith in Trudeau's words because of the Liberal record on climate change. Mulcair was far from my ideal candidate on climate change and a number of other issues but appeared to have a chance on gaining power and beginning a change process. As it turns out I was right about Trudeau and the Liberals. Here's the documented record to back up what I said about Trudeau and the Liberals, the party that you supported. You also seem really hostile to unions, which was only one factor in my voting choice. 

The Liberal 25 year history of promising to deal with global warming has been one long series of promises followed by actions that always fail to meet their greenhouse emissions reduction targets and often result in an increase in emissions.

“Canada has missed two separate emission reduction targets (the 1992 Rio target and the 2005 Kyoto target) and is likely to miss the 2020 Copenhagen target as well. In fact, emissions in 2020 are expected to be nearly 20 per cent above the target.” (https://www.cpacanada.ca/en/news/canada/2018-09-18-canada-failing-to-red...)

The Liberals were deeply involved in negotiating the 1997 Kyoto Accord agreeing that "Canada's Kyoto target was a 6% total reduction by 2012 compared to 1990 levels of 461 Megatonnes (Mt)". Instead the 1997 emissions of 671 Mt during the year of the signing of the Kyoto Accord had risen to 747 Mt in 2005, the last full year of a Liberal government before the Conservatives took over. This was 33% above the 1997 Liberal Kyoto target. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Kyoto_Protocol)

The Liberals declared a climate emergency in June 2019 and the following day announced the tripling of the Trans Mountain pipeline to carry bitumen to the coast bringing about a massive expansion of the fossil fuel production. Trudeau won the understatement of the year award today when he said "Not everyone will agree with this".  

Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna called climate change a “real and urgent crisis, driven by human activity,” requiring the government to make deep emissions reductions to meet its Paris commitments. The Liberals have failed previously failed to meet their greenhouse gas reduction goals of 1992, 1997, and 2005.

 The Trudeau Liberals promised major action on climate change in the 2015 election then adopted the weak Harper greenhouse gas emission targets, but couldn't even meet those. In March 2018 the auditor general concluded  the Trudeau Liberal government "is likely to miss the 2020 Copenhagen target as well". (http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_otp_201803_e_42883.html)

In April 2019 Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand concluded "Canada is not on track to hit its 2030 target,". These targets were actually those of the Conservative Harper government. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/environment-commissioner-julie-gelfand-...)

Despite the warnings from the Auditor-General and Environmental Commissioner in 2018 and 2019 described in the last post that the Trudeau government would not meet its 2020 and 2030 greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and the growing scientific evidence of the rapidly growing impacts of climate change in Canada and globally, the Trudeau Liberals kept pushing further fossil fuel development.

The Trudeau Liberals have continued the massive subsidies to the fossil fuel industry that amount to $60 billion a year, according to the International Monetary Fund, which is far from being an environmental organization. 

According to a new International Monetary Fund (IMF) report, Canada subsidized the fossil fuel industry to the tune of almost $60 billion in 2015 — approximately $1,650 per Canadian.   (https://thenarwhal.ca/canadas-fossil-fuel-subsidies-amount-to-1650-per-c...) 

The Trudeau government, supposedly committed to dealing with global warming, continued to push forward with:

(1) the Trans Mountain pipeline to the BC coast to triple tarsands oil transportation;

(2) looked at approving the Frontier Mine in Alberta, which "would  cover 24,000-hectares (roughly double the size of the City of Vancouver) and would produce 260,000 barrels of bitumen each day at its peak (https://thenarwhal.ca/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-massive-new-o...) making it one of the largest oilsands mines until the company pulled out of the plan;

 (3) completed Enbridge's Line 3 to Manitoba in December 2019 that " will have oil export capacity of 760,000 barrels per day (bpd)" when the US portion is finished this year (https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/enbridge-line-three-shipping-oil-1.5377031),

(4) proposed a $14 billion LNG pipeline from Ontario to Saguenay Quebec for export to Europe, Asia and Brazil that only failed to come to fruition when Warren Buffet concluded it was not going to work financially (https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/may-2019/quebecs-natural-gas-ex...).

(5) The Trudeau government "treated Donald Trump’s election as “positive news” for Canada’s energy industry and welcomed the help of Canada’s main corporate oil group in lobbying the US administration, documents show." (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2018/feb/09/trudeau-g...) Therefore, there is no doubt the Trudeau Liberals are celebrated the announcement that work on the US portion of the XL pipeline would resume in February. Again this fell through, this time because of US court action, not because of the Trudeau government. 

As the climate change activist he claims to be, Trudeau is truly unique. No doubt his new climate change plan that is aimed at either sustaining him in power or provoking an election where he will again claim to be the climate change hero, will have as much success should he be re-elected as all the other Liberal climate change plans of the last 25 years. 

In 2020 Trudeau has continued subsidizing the fossil fuel industry while claiming to be a climate change champion. He has further increased subsidies during the pandemic recovery making Canada #2 in the world in fossil fuel subsidies, started new oil exploratation projects off the Newfoundland coast by eliminating marine envirnomental assessments for exploratory wells, and begun to redefine greenhouse gas emissions so that they appear lower than they actually are. 

Nobel-winning economists, financial experts and even the highly conservative International Energy Agency (IEA) are all pushing governments to use stimulus to decarbonize the economy. ...

So, the question for every government becomes: how much money are you spending on fossil fuels during the pandemic recovery?

Fortunately, a new coalition has come together to track the answers from each of the world’s largest economies. We’ve taken this data compiled by Energy Policy Tracker and charted new government support for fossil fuels by each of the G20 countries since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. (Note that to allow fair comparisons across countries, the charts list all values in USD per capita.)

As you can see in this first G20 chart, Canadians are at the top of the fossil support charts. Canada has committed nearly ten times the G20 average per capita — for a total of $12 billion so far this year in new fossil fuel support. Only France, with its massive bailout of Air France, has managed to spend more per person, at this point.

You can also see that we’ve added a little green cap onto the top of the bar representing Canada. That’s the amount of money Canadian governments have committed to clean energy (again, per capita).

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/08/12/analysis/canada-supporting-f...

In Newfoundland the goal is to produce 650,000 more barrels of oil a day by 2030 from the Newfoundland offshore. So much for Trudeau's greenhouse emission reduction targets. The excerpts from the following article are translated from the original French of the Le Devoir article. 

As Canada is hit by a health crisis that is hogging media attention, the Trudeau government continues to take steps to accelerate oil drilling in the marine environment, Le Devoir noted.

It is currently conducting a public consultation to eliminate the environmental assessments required for exploratory drilling in eastern Newfoundland. At least 100 of these holes are planned by 2030. ...

The ongoing process goes completely unnoticed as Canadians face the coronavirus crisis, but it is nonetheless crucial to foster the development of the petroleum industry in eastern Canada over the next few years.

https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/environnement/575559/le-gouvernement-tr...

Canada's mismanaged forests have changed from carbon sinks that absorb carbon dioxide to extremely large carbon emitters that release more CO2 than our fossil fuel industries during the last decade thanks to the logging practices that the federal and provincial governments have allowed. 

Instead of dealing with this critical climate change problem, as well as its effects on the logging industry, the Trudeau government has simply redefined the way emissions are reported in order to make the emissions look smaller. In other words, they are cooking the books to make the problem disappear from the public's eyes. 

Death and decay are winning in Canada's vast managed forest lands. And this victory is unleashing a rising flood of climate pollution. Put simply, our forests are dying and being cut down faster than they can grow back.In 2018, the flood of CO2 pouring out of them reached record levels, at nearly a quarter billion tonnes of CO2 in a single year. That's more than Canada's once biggest climate pollution source — the oil and gas sector — emitted that year. ...

The Canadian government isn't planning new climate policies to lower this new source of emissions. Instead, it's trying use creative accounting to shift all responsibility off the current books. They've needed three big changes, so far, to do it:

1. Exclude most forest emissions from the books
2. Shift billions of tonnes of logging carbon on to future books
3. Weaken forestry's climate target

Rule change #1 -- ignore most of it

The first change was to stop reporting on any forest areas that have been heavily impacted by fires, insects or extreme weather. This change pushed a quarter of Canada's managed forest lands -- and most forest emissions -- off the books.

In 2017, Canada's managed forests lost 230 MtCO2. That's what Canada used to report on its books. But now it reports only 17 MtCO2. Even so, that's still more than the entire province of Nova Scotia emits from all sources.

Rule change #2 -- push gigatonnes into the future

Canada used to count it all in the year the wood was cut. ... A couple years ago, Canada switched to reporting wood CO2 in the year it got emitted back into the air. That's a smaller number. ... Overall, this change retroactively shifted 2,500 MtCO2 from Canada's current and past books onto the future books for Canadians to deal with later.

Rule change #3 -- weaken the target

Ottawa has been wanting to use a big whack of forest carbon "offsets" to meet Canada's 2030 climate target. But our forests are collapsing so fast that even the two huge rule changes discussed above weren't enough to save any. So, the government made a third rule change to weaken the target used to claim offsets.

Historically, Canada has used the same target for all its land use sectors, which includes managed forests and the wood logged out of them. This target is zero per cent below their 2005 baseline level. My next chart shows how this applied to managed forestry.

So, the government decided to create a new, weaker, type of climate target just for managed forests. It's called a "reference level" target and is shown by the orange dotted line on the chart. This is their guestimate for business-as-usual. Now, anything below this guestimatewill be used to "offset" emissions elsewhere. As you can see, this third change weakened the target so much that it turned zero credits into more than twenty million tonnes of credits. ...

The climate science is clear that the path to a safe and sane climate future requires us to eliminate all sources of excess CO2, regardless of origin.

So far, however, Ottawa has responded to this emerging CO2 threat by trying to push this rising new flood of CO2 off the books. To do this, they've had to roll out a series of big and controversial changes in how they account for forest carbon. 

But the atmosphere and the laws of physics don't care what kinds of creative accounting we try. They only react to the total amount of CO2 accumulating in the air. And in Canada, total emissions of CO2 are not going down as promised and as required for a safe future.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/03/30/opinion/canadas-forests-beco...

And yet you yourself have stated that climate change is an urgent issue, but somehow not urgent enough to vote for the party that has the best plan on that file, even if all the plans are inadequate?

They will all sink the ship at the same speed. A bucket will not keep the ship afloat longer. Maybe if it was a rowboat it would make a difference but it isn't. It's a ship. The Conservatives are not better on the environment just because you think so. It doesn't even matter. The tiny differences between all of the parties means I can't help the environment through voting for any of them. 

This is far right:

Historically used to describe the experiences of fascism and Nazism,[7] today far-right politics includes neo-fascism, neo-Nazism, the Third Position, the alt-right, white supremacism, white nationalism[8] and other ideologies or organizations that feature aspects of ultranationalist, chauvinist, xenophobic, theocratic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-communist, or reactionary views.[9]

... he didn't win the leadership. Paul did. Party membership often drops off after a leadership vote, and it remains to be seen how engaged with the Green Party he remains, or more importantly if his followers stick with the party. Nothing is guaranteed. There could even be internal strife within the party over competing visions.

Of course it will be a battle. It will be work to sign up enough Lascaris supporters. They aren't going to appear out of thin air. I just have confidence in Haddad's ability to sign up young people and Lascaris to appeal to people from idle no more and other movements. There already is internal strife. May and Paul tried, and failed, to get both Lascaris and Haddad barred from the leadership competition. 

No there isn't any guarantee of success but Lascaris isn't going anywhere as he already made clear in his and Haddad's webinar after the election.  Apparently you think the NDP is guaranteed success, otherwise why would you support them? Your "political analysis" falls short in my opinion. 

It's all well and good that Lascaris is advocating those positions, but gushing and fawning over someone's leadership qualities, as if this leader has a magic wand and can transform the party, after the party members voted for someone else doesn't come across as serious political analysis or informed opinion.

 That someone is willing to consider voting O'Toole Conservative doesn't mean they will. It certainly isn't political analysis just to quote a number.

When Mulcair was in first place in 2015 people here were crowing that Trudeau had been exposed and that Mulcair's support was solid because it was built over time and based on the platform planks the NDP released a year before the election.

Trudeau was tanking and wouldn't say anything about his platform. I still said he was going to win and I was right. I based my opinion on knowing the Liberals had a plan and were going to come out guns blazing during the campaign. He did just that. People here were going on and on about the lack of platform but obviously he would release a platform before the election. I don't get what serious political analysis concluded that the Liberals didn't have a plan up their sleeves. Trudeau had a huge economic team working on it but that didn't give you a clue. 

Then Trudeau promised a deficit and Mulcair promised there wouldn't be one. The NDP has long fixated on deficits as the be all and end all of proving they are good economic stewards. 

O'Toole will crash and burn just like Mulcair did because of who they are.

Even if Lascaris manages to get control of the Green Party there is no guarantee there will be a "awakening" that will send Canadians into his arms. 

Looking around I am not seeing any other opportunities to bring eco-socialism into electoral politics. A long shot is better than no shot.

Your serious political analysis is so weak (non-existant) you resort to sexist attacks to try to belittle me. Instead you revealed your character. I doubt you even watched the debates.

Political analysis that doesn't take into account current events or the motives of voters or their likely reactions to leader's style and policies isn't serious. 

By the way, in the thread you linked to nobody presented an argument for why enough people would vote for O'Toole for him to gain enough seats to win. He has to win more than the popular vote.

Jerry, the Liberals are trash. They still get elected over and over again. Calling them trash, long lists of their crimes does nothing to stop them. Hitler was a horrible person and an excellent politician. Same goes for Trump.

Trudeau is just a man of his class that believes the ruling class knows best. Trudeau is just a front man. He doesn't get all the policy shit the way his father did. 

The Liberals aren't going to offer anything unless they have to. If they were worried they would at the least be introducing limited pharmacare but he isn't going to because he doesn't have to.  The Liberals know that neither the Conservatives nor NDP are a threat electorally. The NDP is not a threat to him at all. The Conservatives are a little closer but they will be easy to slap down with something for Conservatives in Ontario and the maritimes. 

They don't even need to dangle retreaded baubles. 

Being right is not enough to get people elected. How many centuries of political analysis and history lessons do people need to figure that out? 

If memory serves, the privatization of CN led to immediate increases in train length and concurrent increases in derailments. Longer trains mean fewer crews to pay, so railway owners love them. I think a new federal railway policy should involve simply renationalizing all of Canada's railways. The lesson learned by CN and CP from Lac-Mégantic is that railways should organize themselves as shell corporations so they're never held liable for doing something like blowing a town off the map.

I went back and looked. Most of the posts are off topic. Aristotled, you went off topic in post 9 ending the post with asking to stay on topic.

I do think the thread title is misleading. The term "going off the rails" was clever but I didn't interpret it as having anything to do with actual trains. Saying the NDP is going off the rails makes sense in general.

Even when there is no confusion it is difficult to keep threads on topic. I will echo the suggestion that you change the thread title. 

It is. I did think the play on words was clever. I'm just a tad dense sometimes.