Jagmeet Singh Strips Niki Ashton Of Her Critic Role

Let me also add that with recent scandals of politicians and in some cases health officials having meetings in close contact without masking or distancing, that I do not believe for one second that the politicians and the government health officials are themselves giving up close family gatherings during this time.

Yeah, looks like he was just looking for an excuse to get rid of her.

Then steer clear of the Hill & Knowlton NDP obviously. There's been no socialism there for some time.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

It shows me that she has a very large sense of entitlement and a lack of integrity. We are not all in this together some people are more privileged than others and she tried to take full advantage of her privilege. I did not have a feast this year with friends and family for the first time in decades because I believe in communal actions in a public health crisis. She acted like a libertarian not a socialist. I prefer to elect socialist.

a feast and an ill grandmother sound like they might be fairly different contexts. 

there's lots of people moving around.   the problem isn't the odd, properly isolating-on-reentry compassionate traveler.  the problem is... are we even taking temps of arriving passengers _YET ? 

hopefully her reaction is a polite version of " piss off, i've broken no laws, my paperwork is in order, and i'd do it again to see my grandmother ".  

humanist.  i'd vote for that.

eastnoireast wrote:

melovesproles wrote:

I support social distancing but I think there can be exceptions. We certainly make enough to make sure capitalism keeps rolling on. This is a disappointing move by the NDP. The Party never seems to miss an opportunity to throw their people under the bus. One of the few things I envy about rightwing parties: they seem to fight for each other more.

i really think there are fundamental character types who bulk out the right and left. 

complicated/fiery/waffling/insecure/outcasts/sensitive/non-pack = cats

simple/focussed/set/insecure/follow-the-alpha/thick/pack = dogs

the cats, of course, claim the moral high ground, meowling at each other from their respective and socially distanced branches. 

the dogs, well, the religeous pack has joined up with the elite pack from the fancy houses, and are blaming the cats (and dogs of colour) for all the missing deer. 

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I'm thinking that maybe left-right politics is inherently anti-democratic, and that something new has to be done. It seems to me that, at core, people on the left and the right are afraid and, when they feel threatened, want to control the population as a way of managing their fears. The only difference is what those specific fears are and the vision, or utopia they have that would address that fear. The right wants to restrict the definition of the family to exclude those headed by couples not legally married in a heterosexual relationship. The left at least accepts legal restrictions and limits on how many family members people can visit. The right wants its religious viewpoint to be the dominant viewpoint to the exclusion of all others. The left at least accepts restrictions and limits on any practice thereof. In the United States, it was the left who, after supporting the idea that everyone had to stay inside to stop covid and not even sing in church, cheered on large crowds of BLM supporters.On the other hand, while right-wingers supported anti-lockdown protests and even cheered on churches and businesses that broke the law to open, they had no problem with curfews in response to the BLM protests, and cheered on the police violence directed against BLM.

Is it any wonder that average, everyday people who aren't programmed to jump off a cliff on the orders of whichever political faction they support are, in greater numbers, thinking, "I don't have time for this shit, I need to get to my second job or to my kid's school for teacher interviews and make supper, and then I have to get ready for a 12-hour workday that starts at 5:30 AM tomorrow morning?"

Debater wrote:

I was close to my both grandmothers and they both recently passed away so I can sympathize with Niki Ashton for wanting to visit her ill grandmother at a time like this.

However, the issue appears to be that she did not inform the NDP leadership of her decision to travel overseas and that may be a valid reason for Singh to be upset.

Do you tell you boss about all your travel and holiday plans? She isn’t in the army.

I disagree with her leaving the province, and country while so many other Canadians have not had the opportunity to dee their dying love ones.  I am glad she had the chance to see her dying grandmother.

Canadians aren’t even allowed to travel to Greece as per the Greece Embassy website.

“As of October 25th, 2020 and until further notice, following relevant EU decisions, residents of Canada are not allowed to enter Greece.”

Travel restrictions to Greece for residents of Canada - News from the Consulate General in Toronto (mfa.gr)

Overall, I think she showed poor leadership for someone that wants to lead the country some day. She should be leading by example and staying home.

Debater wrote:

I was close to my both grandmothers and they both recently passed away so I can sympathize with Niki Ashton for wanting to visit her ill grandmother at a time like this.

However, the issue appears to be that she did not inform the NDP leadership of her decision to travel overseas and that may be a valid reason for Singh to be upset.

Even if true, the punishment didn't fit the crime.

Mighty Middle wrote:

Webgear wrote:

Is she required to inform the party of her travel and holiday plans?

When it is a minority government, and the government can fall at any time, an MP has a responsibility to inform the Party Whip your wherabouts.

Where is it written? Not that I am in disagreement with you.

Mighty Middle wrote:

Webgear wrote:

Where is it written? Not that I am in disagreement with you.

From House of Commons website

"The whip of a party is a member charged with keeping other members of the same party informed concerning House business and ensuring their attendance in the House or in committee"

It is a two-way street - because there are more MPs than one Party Whip, it is the MP who is responsible to let the Whip know if they will be leaving Canada

https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/house-officers

But the house isn't sitting, does it still apply? 

Michael Moriarity wrote:

Webgear wrote:

To the working class and poor, there appears to be two different sets of rules. One for the workers and one for the ruling class.

Sadly, this is not merely a perception, but the reality.

This is why I don't carry for politicians or political parties.

Pondering wrote:

I'm really torn on this one. What was the travel advisory when Nikki left? I have been seeing packed airports and Canadian snowbirds going to Florida. In the past week or so there was an advisory not to take non-essential travel without specifying what essential is. 

Nor are people in Canada forbidden from seeing grandparents. Anyone living alone can join a family bubble. Only the care homes are barring people and I think even they are now making exceptions. 

For all parties, this smacks of virtue signaling. I would rather the NDP fight a lot harder for basic income and pharmacare.

You and I have disagreed quite vehemently on the pandemic response, and are probably going to find many more points of disagreement before this thing is over, but I'm absolutely 100% in agreement with what you have written here. Sure Ashton may have "broken the rules," and the argument seems to be the that she shouldn't have. But this is the problem with government over-reach on something as personal as who people choose to spend their time with, and that is what needs to be questioned. It has been a difficult year for everyone as it is, we don't need to add to that with an environment where we're all scrutinizing each other's actions and accusing each other of murder for doing the basic things that humans like to do.

My position on familiy gatherings during the pandemic has always been and continues to be: there is an active pandemic, which is a risk to health and safety. Everyone should talk to their friends and family about this risk, and make a decision about gatherings (in-person, virutal, or whatever) that they feel comfortable with. Some people want to see their grandchildren and to take the risk. Some people want to have virtual dinners. Some people want to wave through windows. Some people want to gather in parks. Some people want to have socially distanced conversations in the front yard. Who is any of us to judge?

NDPP wrote:

Then steer clear of the Hill & Knowlton NDP obviously. There's been no socialism there for some time.

The great dilemma of West Coast politics. I send Gord Johns to Ottawa to deal with people who think Jack Layton was a saint, while he is the man responsible for driving my last MP Bill Siksay out of politics. However neither Gord nor Bill could have gotten elected in any other electoral vehicle in either Burnaby or Mid Island. Bill got good cross party legislation passed that has positively affected people and Gord has been amazing at getting a series of small but none the less significant private members bills though the House. The Ottawa cabal cost the NDP its generational opportunity by trying to out liberal the Liberal's. If its a lying liberal a voter wants then the real Liberal's have just the leader for them.

I don't expect any major change in parliament like the election of a socialist government but it is worth while to at least send an MP to Ottawa to inch forward while shouting into the wind. The alternative where I have lived if the NDP falters is electing a fucking Conservative.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

eastnoireast wrote:

a feast and an ill grandmother sound like they might be fairly different contexts.

I guess if you exclude the fact one of the guests is 90 and she will not be celebrating with her grandchildren and all the new great grandchildren that are tootling alone. She is not "ill" but she is not the same woman she was two years ago. If you know anything about the old age process you will know what I mean. There are millions of us with family stories that make us believe we should be exempted because we have accessed the risk as minor. Hard to have a public health policy if we all get to make those choices. We are either in this together or we are not.

My position was and remains that families need to make these choices themselves, and that the role of governments is to provide needed health care resources rather than blanket over-reach of what we can or cannot do in our personal lives. You're correct that we are all in this together. You don't foster that sentiment with sweeping decrees about what needs to happen and then pathologize as "entitled" or "selfish" anyone who questions or disagrees.

Worst of all, we have been fighting with each other over masks, social distancing, why it's okay to shout anti-cop slogans in large groups but singing in church is tantamount to murder, being okay with calling the cops on our neighbours because they had too many people over, or shaming people who want to celebrate religious or cultural events that are imoprtant to them. As a result, the politicians responsible for the neglect of elder care homes, underfunding of schools and early childhood education, the cuts to health care and lack of surge capacity, mass incarceration, poor housing and living conditions in First Nations, the shameful living conditions of temporary foreign workers, lack of affordable housing in our cities, lack of economic opportunities in smaller areas that force people to move to large cities to survive, the destruction of the natural world which releases more deadly diseases into the human population, and the increasing wealth of the billionaire class that has happened as a result of this pandemic are left off the hook for their role in creating this mess.

I'm thinking that maybe left-right politics is inherently anti-democratic, and that something new has to be done.

I hear people say this but almost everytime I see it in practice, it just means a centre-right program with a few crumbs for the left. Can you think of any examples where 'post left/right' politics has been anything else?

I would rather the left reexamined what it wants and how it plans to achieve it than abandon its identity. Labels certainly aren't always necessary but I don't see what is gained by discarding political history/ideology completely. Hard to imagine how the result of that would not just protect Capitalism and the ruling class.

dr wrote:

Oh please.

kropotkin1951 speaks the truth, and I hardly ever agree with him.

Webgear wrote:

Two different standards.

Two Liberal MPs resign from government roles after traveling abroad amid coronavirus (msn.com)

One for the poor and one for the politicians. 

I agree. However, I do see this a three levels of failure with the worse being the Rod Phillips, Ontario's PC Minister of Finance and lberta United Conservative Party MLAs Municipal Affairs Minister Tracy Allard and MLA Pat Rehn, who not only left the country but sent out messages emphasizing the importznce of making sacrifices during Covid in videos that appeared to show them in their home province while away. Then there are politicians from a wide range of parties that took holidays but spared the public lectures on staying home. Finally, there are those who felt it was urgent to go to visit seriously ill relatives who may well be near death. I would put Ashton in this category, although she should have notified the party, giving me mixed feelings about how her case was handled. 

Interesting to see what our Liberal posters have to say about the two Liberals, Pierrefonds—Dollard MP Sameer Zuberi and Kamal Khera, who now have stepped down from their committee roles, since they were eager to post about NDP problems in this and another thread (Ontario) where the general issue came up.  

I'm honestly kind of surprised at Kenney's stupidity on this one.  I know he's kind of stupid at the best of times but he clearly had time to think about it, and still went ahead with a big press conference to announce nobody would be losing their jobs over this. 

melovesproles wrote:

I'm thinking that maybe left-right politics is inherently anti-democratic, and that something new has to be done.

I hear people say this but almost everytime I see it in practice, it just means a centre-right program with a few crumbs for the left. Can you think of any examples where 'post left/right' politics has been anything else?

I would rather the left reexamined what it wants and how it plans to achieve it than abandon its identity. Labels certainly aren't always necessary but I don't see what is gained by discarding political history/ideology completely. Hard to imagine how the result of that would not just protect Capitalism and the ruling class.

I feel like what has actually happened is that the left has gone down that exact route, and that large scale, structural, and economic problems are essentially off the table for discussion. That needs to change. It's true that the left has raised some issues like funding of health care, the condition of migrant workers, and the need for proper income supports. The main problem is I feel they have bought into public health messaging about the coronavirus that is very harmful overall. In the first place, public health messaging essentially encourages everyone to stay at home as much as possible. What kind of communitarian response is that where everyone who can stay home and conduct everything behind a computer with a Zoom connection does, and anyone who cant is essentially thrown under the bus? What's particularly strange to me about the left's support for lockdown measures is that the working-class base of the left (many of them black and brown) don't even benefit. As essential workers, they have to move around so that those behind their Zoom computers are fed and have their items delivered. The other problem with lockdowns is once they go into effect, police enforcement for non-compliance is on the table. Guess which segment of the population is going to be hit especially hard with enforcement. Even so, white people are not immune to overzealous police enforcement. One of the reasons I feel so alienated by the left is, in a year where public awareness of police abuse of power was heightneted, there was near dead silence from the left on Australian police arresting a pregnant woman for organizing an anti-lockdown protest on Facebook, and another cop choking a woman for not wearing a facemask. Not to mention other more blatant human rights abuses, like Viktor Orban's attacks on the LGBQT community in Hungary that the left is very silent on these days. Speaking of lockdowns, restrictions on gatherings in private residences are also an indirect (even if unintentional) attack on newcomer families, as large extended family networks play an important role.

The other problem is the left seems to have bought into messaging around prevention of transmission of the virus which is very individualistic. It's one thing to say what reasonable steps people should take to protect themselves. In this case, it feels like there is a stigma behind the virus that every time it spreads, it's because an individual acted irresponsibly and either caught the virus or spread it. In other words, it's somebody's fault. Why, as a society are we still treating infectious diseases this way after the horrible way society treated the gay community during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s? Think also about the horrible implications that will have down the road. When there's a wave of refugees coming to Canada, and there's a disease outbreak in their country of origin, how will these people be treated given the precedent we have set with the coronavirus?

Essentially, I agree with what I would call the "old left's" focus on big picture issues, like tackling income inequality. I feel like we're spending too much time tearing each other down, and we should look for ways to build each other up and to protect people. I'll give 2 examples. One example, pointed out by the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, speaks about the plight of older workers in essential industries at high risk. The suggestion here is to use the pension or some other system so that these higher-risk workers can essentially stay at home for the duration of the crisis, and be kept out of harm's way. The second example I can think of is about young people. There has been too much shaming of young people for doing things young people typically do, like dancing and partying. Why not instead encourage them to use technology and come up with innovative ways to help the older population? Why not encourage (or even have a government job's program) them to deliver basic essentials to older people or use technology just to check in and see how they are feeling to help with isolation? As the precentage of older people without direct descendants is expected to rise, I think this could be a great jump-off to build the kinds of important support networks that our elders are going to need in the coming years and the coming decades. Those are just 2 ideas I can think of. Some them could work. Some of them might not. You might come up with ideas that are better than mine. But doesn't that conversation at least feel better than constantly fighting over whose fault it is for this, that, or the other thing?

That was a bit of a long-winded answer, but essentially my feeling is that we have lost sight of the big picture, especially when it comes to structures of power, and we need to refocus if we are going to survive this crisis. We might not label things in the exact same way, but I feel that on the broader themes our views and goals overlap a great deal.

You'll only be considered for an exemption to border restrictions for compassionate reasons at Canada's ports of entry if:

• you don't have symptoms of COVID-19, with the exception of a protected person
• your reason for travel is:
  • to be present during the final moments of life for a loved one or provide support to a loved one who has a critical illness or
  • to provide care for a person who has a medical reason for needing support or
  • to attend a funeral and you have applied for a limited release from mandatory quarantine before arriving in Canada

NIkki did nothing wrong at all. Other politicians who traveled did it for fun and at least one prerecorded Christmas messaging before departure so it appeared as though he were here. 

We are not post left/right in terms of theoretical political discussion. We are post left/right when it comes to talking to the public although socialism seems to be returning as a possibly worthwhile concept as it is associated with medicare which is extremely popular. 

People want to hear about policy not political theory, and all parties are considered corrupt to some extent so even that is not much of a game changer. Witness Trudeau/Liberals continued popularity. 

People would not vote or not vote for the NDP based on Ashton being demoted because she visited her dying grandmother.  They might vote NDP if Singh had defended her vigorously as most people do consider visiting a dying relative different from going on a southern holiday to have fun. He could have emphasized her adherence to protocol. 

The NDP could be insisting that PPE's be made available to people visiting longterm care homes so everyone can visit their grandparents. 

The left seems incapable of balancing practical considerations with compassion. Instead the left seems to focus on the right and on reacting to the right. 

The NDP should have focused the last 6 months on basic income and the expense of keeping people on the street.  They should be promoting buying some of those hotels that can't stay in business as rooming houses. Instead they waste time on the WE scandal. 

The NDP needs to ignore what the Liberals and Conservatives are doing (for the most part) and focus on presenting Canadians with concrete proposals that would positively impact their lives. 

That was a bit of a long-winded answer, but essentially my feeling is that we have lost sight of the big picture, especially when it comes to structures of power, and we need to refocus if we are going to survive this crisis. We might not label things in the exact same way, but I feel that on the broader themes our views and goals overlap a great deal.

I would like to respond in more detail on where I think we agree and disagree when I have time.

One can expect this kind of behaviour from the Liberals and Conservatives.

Too bad Ashton thinks she, like them, is special, and she has discredited the NDP with her behaviour. Thank goodness someone at Head Office clamped down on her.