For over a decade, I've been dissatisfied with the control of the NDP. They have given control over to a marketing arm and during the last two sittings I've noticed how Mr. Singh modelled his opposition after that of PP to the point of making demands in the government that as a constitutional lawyer he knows tread on Provincial jurisdiction. Then there was a campaign that my partner and I were discouraged from helping as they wanted our children to help. We were not part of their preferred age group - totally marketing.
And, ffs, run campaigns bragging about what they are good at, what they have accomplished not about how the opposition sucks.
This isn't only the NDP -- "Canadian" political parties, operating within the Westminster Parliamentary System, adopted US-Presidential leadership conventions. Canada has been gradually adopting all the flaws of the US system, while still not not separating votes for the extremely different branches of government.
Adopting leadership conventions may have started with the Liberal Party a little over a century ago, but the NDP allowed that flawed idea to create an extremely hierarchical corporate culture: a culture that contradicts the stated values of the party.
How about if the membership force the corporate fan club to the side, and allow the NDP caucus to forever more determine its own leadership? Parliamentary leadership must always be accountable to parliamentary party caucuses. Democracy needs to be allowed to happen within the House of Commons, and we should never be allowing an external corporate entity to dictate to parliamentarians (no matter the branding of the corporation).
I'm a citizen living within the new boundaries of Ottawa Center, where this and other issues with the party (vs the person) is why I didn't vote for the NDP nominated candidate.
And I blame it on a castrated media. Cutbacks have forced them to restrict coverage primarily to the national audience leaving the local in the dust. Parties, and I agree not just the NDP, focus on having a single message spoken by The Leader. This is not in itself insurmountable but, when these same parties massage their platforms to meet the dictates of marketing political "scientists" it destroys any hope of democracy. The extreme manifested itself this past election as the CPC didn't even let reporters attach themselves to campaign travel.
We need a system where all parties present their ideas transparently so we can decide who to support. Of course how to best do that can be open to discussion. What they are cannot be compromised or we just get a winning advertising campaign.
Restricting information/access is the opposite of a democracy…
I was born the year P.E. Trudeau first became PM. My entire life the media has reported in Canadian elections as if they were Presidential Elections, even in provinces.
The CBC trying to report a Nunavut or NWT election (which uses a consensus rather than party system) makes my stomach turn.
If the media were actually holding politicians to account, rather than acting as foreign interference, then I'd probably agree.
My experience trying to do just that, both provincially and federally, is that a large section of NDP members are very pleased with the party as it is, and will fight tooth and nail alongside the exec/leadership/staff to keep it that way. The party has done a good job of pushing anyone who wants change or yearns for more out of the party, with the result that the only people left are the sycophants.
I'm not sure what to do about that, but the grassroots at this moment more or less reflects the feckless and incompetent staff and leaders. All the good people leave.
Well, I hate to rain on the parade of Nora and friends, but on this topic Argos has it right. I see a need to put in a link to my own recent blog post on it. https://timrourke.substack.com/p/about-ndp
I say that NDP is a perfect example of the principle that bad drives out good. It did not suddenly become like this ten or twenty years ago. It was created from the start as a phony party, a stalking horse for capitalism.
I cannot understand why people become so attached to rotten institutions. They imagine these can be returned to some pure state that never was.
Why in hell can they not just create the kind of institutions they really want? While they are at it, confront rotten institutions like NDP and demand they shut down?
If we are going to create a party that can lead a transition away from capitalism, its founding members must have a much better understanding of what a democracy entails than the typical Canadian leftie activist. It is not about elections and debates and all such nonsense. That is a way of insuring that those with the resources to plant their agents into key positions will always control and corrupt a socialist party.
Most activist types will really hate a real democracy. That is because such a thing is based on consensus. Facts are determined, direction on direction arrived at, through disciplined dialogue. People trying to break consensus because it does not suit them, or does not make them important enough, are dealt with.
A socialist party is not about making everybody feel good. It is about achieving a political and economic transformation. It must do this in the face of an entrenched order which will do anything to protect itself.
Golly, doesn’t creating a socialist party sound like practice for creating a socialist country? If you cannot handle the former, you will not be up to the latter.
I have long suspected that the NDP's backroom crowd (federal and provincial) are determined that the party will never be elected or, if they are, they do nothing a Progressive Conservative government would not have done. Thus, while I'd rather see a viable socialist party, a revitalized NDP with some social democratic goals would be an improvement.
I agree with ron thx to Nora for daring to say that when sing resigned, perhaps the whole leadership should've done the same frankly they're responsible for this
Well said Nora. Sounds a lot like the British Labour Party . The NDP hasn't changed since 1992 when I left the country and moved to the UK. Canada and the UK both need the same thing: a mass socialist party. Alan Story, THE LEFT LANE substack , Norwich, England.
Hey Nora...a grassroots convention is critical. The NDP establishment crushed the last one fifty years ago when the Waffle was more than an icon in Microsoft 365. As for new parties, please check out the Victorian Socialists in Australia for grassroots inspiration and consistent class-struggle politics.
But pls be careful of the clickbaity headlines... We're talking politically simple steps here, not baby-simple steps. McAlevy scared off loadsa activists because her steps were simple for experienced class-struggle organizers but not for anti-neoliberal protesters.
There are many areas of policy where my views align with the views of the NDP, but the hyper-hierarchical centralized corporate culture of the NDP that insists democracy is something that happens outside parliament rather than within parliament has meant I only ever voted for an NDP candidate once: for a person that didn't seem very aligned with the NDP corporate culture.
Perhaps it is time for people who have long felt shunned by the NDP to step up, join, and make their voice heard. If they are looking for direction, it's time to for the grass roots to show them the way.
I dunno Glenn, if we've been shunned, why would we step up, given the legit belief that our voices will not be heard? Our voices are heard elsewhere, so we go there, or is it here? 😎
I say let our voices be heard everywhere we can. I canvassed for my Candidate and was surprised by how responsive the organization was at local level. I am going to keep talking there and where ever else I can make myself heard.
For over a decade, I've been dissatisfied with the control of the NDP. They have given control over to a marketing arm and during the last two sittings I've noticed how Mr. Singh modelled his opposition after that of PP to the point of making demands in the government that as a constitutional lawyer he knows tread on Provincial jurisdiction. Then there was a campaign that my partner and I were discouraged from helping as they wanted our children to help. We were not part of their preferred age group - totally marketing.
And, ffs, run campaigns bragging about what they are good at, what they have accomplished not about how the opposition sucks.
This isn't only the NDP -- "Canadian" political parties, operating within the Westminster Parliamentary System, adopted US-Presidential leadership conventions. Canada has been gradually adopting all the flaws of the US system, while still not not separating votes for the extremely different branches of government.
Adopting leadership conventions may have started with the Liberal Party a little over a century ago, but the NDP allowed that flawed idea to create an extremely hierarchical corporate culture: a culture that contradicts the stated values of the party.
How about if the membership force the corporate fan club to the side, and allow the NDP caucus to forever more determine its own leadership? Parliamentary leadership must always be accountable to parliamentary party caucuses. Democracy needs to be allowed to happen within the House of Commons, and we should never be allowing an external corporate entity to dictate to parliamentarians (no matter the branding of the corporation).
https://www.davidgraham.ca/p/leadership-by-caucus
I'm a citizen living within the new boundaries of Ottawa Center, where this and other issues with the party (vs the person) is why I didn't vote for the NDP nominated candidate.
And I blame it on a castrated media. Cutbacks have forced them to restrict coverage primarily to the national audience leaving the local in the dust. Parties, and I agree not just the NDP, focus on having a single message spoken by The Leader. This is not in itself insurmountable but, when these same parties massage their platforms to meet the dictates of marketing political "scientists" it destroys any hope of democracy. The extreme manifested itself this past election as the CPC didn't even let reporters attach themselves to campaign travel.
We need a system where all parties present their ideas transparently so we can decide who to support. Of course how to best do that can be open to discussion. What they are cannot be compromised or we just get a winning advertising campaign.
Restricting information/access is the opposite of a democracy…
I was born the year P.E. Trudeau first became PM. My entire life the media has reported in Canadian elections as if they were Presidential Elections, even in provinces.
The CBC trying to report a Nunavut or NWT election (which uses a consensus rather than party system) makes my stomach turn.
If the media were actually holding politicians to account, rather than acting as foreign interference, then I'd probably agree.
My experience trying to do just that, both provincially and federally, is that a large section of NDP members are very pleased with the party as it is, and will fight tooth and nail alongside the exec/leadership/staff to keep it that way. The party has done a good job of pushing anyone who wants change or yearns for more out of the party, with the result that the only people left are the sycophants.
I'm not sure what to do about that, but the grassroots at this moment more or less reflects the feckless and incompetent staff and leaders. All the good people leave.
Well, I hate to rain on the parade of Nora and friends, but on this topic Argos has it right. I see a need to put in a link to my own recent blog post on it. https://timrourke.substack.com/p/about-ndp
I say that NDP is a perfect example of the principle that bad drives out good. It did not suddenly become like this ten or twenty years ago. It was created from the start as a phony party, a stalking horse for capitalism.
I cannot understand why people become so attached to rotten institutions. They imagine these can be returned to some pure state that never was.
Why in hell can they not just create the kind of institutions they really want? While they are at it, confront rotten institutions like NDP and demand they shut down?
If we are going to create a party that can lead a transition away from capitalism, its founding members must have a much better understanding of what a democracy entails than the typical Canadian leftie activist. It is not about elections and debates and all such nonsense. That is a way of insuring that those with the resources to plant their agents into key positions will always control and corrupt a socialist party.
Most activist types will really hate a real democracy. That is because such a thing is based on consensus. Facts are determined, direction on direction arrived at, through disciplined dialogue. People trying to break consensus because it does not suit them, or does not make them important enough, are dealt with.
A socialist party is not about making everybody feel good. It is about achieving a political and economic transformation. It must do this in the face of an entrenched order which will do anything to protect itself.
Golly, doesn’t creating a socialist party sound like practice for creating a socialist country? If you cannot handle the former, you will not be up to the latter.
I have long suspected that the NDP's backroom crowd (federal and provincial) are determined that the party will never be elected or, if they are, they do nothing a Progressive Conservative government would not have done. Thus, while I'd rather see a viable socialist party, a revitalized NDP with some social democratic goals would be an improvement.
I agree with ron thx to Nora for daring to say that when sing resigned, perhaps the whole leadership should've done the same frankly they're responsible for this
Well said Nora. Sounds a lot like the British Labour Party . The NDP hasn't changed since 1992 when I left the country and moved to the UK. Canada and the UK both need the same thing: a mass socialist party. Alan Story, THE LEFT LANE substack , Norwich, England.
Hey Nora...a grassroots convention is critical. The NDP establishment crushed the last one fifty years ago when the Waffle was more than an icon in Microsoft 365. As for new parties, please check out the Victorian Socialists in Australia for grassroots inspiration and consistent class-struggle politics.
But pls be careful of the clickbaity headlines... We're talking politically simple steps here, not baby-simple steps. McAlevy scared off loadsa activists because her steps were simple for experienced class-struggle organizers but not for anti-neoliberal protesters.
While I was partisan in the past, I'm now an outsider to partisan politics.
I can offer an outsider perspective on the corporate culture of the NDP.
https://r.flora.ca/p/not-ndp
There are many areas of policy where my views align with the views of the NDP, but the hyper-hierarchical centralized corporate culture of the NDP that insists democracy is something that happens outside parliament rather than within parliament has meant I only ever voted for an NDP candidate once: for a person that didn't seem very aligned with the NDP corporate culture.
Perhaps it is time for people who have long felt shunned by the NDP to step up, join, and make their voice heard. If they are looking for direction, it's time to for the grass roots to show them the way.
I dunno Glenn, if we've been shunned, why would we step up, given the legit belief that our voices will not be heard? Our voices are heard elsewhere, so we go there, or is it here? 😎
I say let our voices be heard everywhere we can. I canvassed for my Candidate and was surprised by how responsive the organization was at local level. I am going to keep talking there and where ever else I can make myself heard.
Tall order getting the party Cotters dislodged. However, it will be impossible if the grassroots waits for them to volunteer for their own sunsetting.
Its got to come from the grassroots, unfiltered, molded or shaped by image consultants and ideolog purists.
Absolutely spot on.