Canadian Politics: What's Left of Jack?

What's left of Jack Layton?

Just about the entire socialist universe, apparently.

I think Jack is wasted in Parliament. Jim Balsilie could have used Jack when he was strategizing the acquisition of an NHL club for Hamilton.

Jack is turning out to be a weasel's weasel.

His notable achievements since the election?

Shutting up a prominent caucus member who dared question President Obama's version of the killing and "deep sixing" of Osama bin Laden. His solid backing of an extension of Canada's participation in UN (American) led operations in Libya. His attempt to get the word socialist out of the program of the NDP. And last but not least, a statement to the effect that the NDP will not rule out a merger with the Liberals!

Tommy Douglas must be puking in his grave.

Is Jack in the process of pulling the biggest "bait and switch" con in the history of Canadian politics since Pierre Trudeau ridiculed Robert Stanfield's election campaign platform plank of wage and price controls, only to adopt the idea himself when he won the ensuing election?

reply to post by ipsedixit


honestly i think so many people in canadian poitics were either corrupt or idiots. but i thought jack wouldnt be to bad. but im not thrilled that he backs obama on afganistan. this osma thing i really dont care about people can say what ever they want on it. but if he for afganistan than than he has something pulling for him i dont like

reply to post by connorromanow

From what I understand the NDP party members refused to go along with the idea of removing the word "socialist" from their literature, so apparently the party hasn't exactly been putty in his hands, but just the idea that he would attempt something like that is astonishing.

And a merger with the Liberals?!?!?

It's getting to be like science fiction, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".

reply to post by ipsedixit


merging with liberals another thing thought that sounded stupid. as for the ndp not completly supporting him thats at least good to hear. yet i still hate him less than harper

reply to post by connorromanow

Jack is a naked opportunist. He wants power and is apparently enroute to selling the voters who gave him his position down the river.

Who and what did Canadians vote for when they voted for the NDP led by Jack Layton?

Surely they were voting socialist. What he is trying to do is a disgusting development. There is no choice in politics.

If we see the Liberals and the NDP merge into one party, it will signal a tektonic shift in Canadian politics . . to the right.

There is no choice in politics.

reply to post by ipsedixit


with this election you had your choice of
harper a total idiot who works for obama
the liberals and ndp socialist merger possibility
not very good choices. but thats why i support the green party(they actualy had a good platform)

Originally posted by connorromanow
not very good choices. but thats why i support the green party(they actualy had a good platform)

They certainly had a good record.

They voted against the extension of Canada's violations of the spirit of the UN mandate to enforce a no fly zone over Libya. The original UN resolution on the matter was sold as a way to prevent Gaddhafi's airforce from carrying out attacks on civilians in the rebel held territories of the country.

Gaddhafi was portrayed as a terrorist on his own people. In the real world of modern military strategy that is unlikely to have been the case. In reality, what Gaddhafi was most likely doing, was attempting to strike at the command and control centers of the rebels. Civilian casualties were unavoidable collateral damage.

I'm not saying that Gaddhafi's African mercenaries or even his own troops were not carrying out atrocities. Undoubtely they were. The UN mandate, however was focussed on Gaddhafi's dominance of the Libyan skies. At least that's how it was presented to the public, who never would have endorsed the idea of NATO taking sides in an internal Libyan matter and making common cause with an assortment of unknown rebels.

At any rate, NATO is now doing precisely what it accused Gaddhafi of doing, before obtaining the Security Council's approval to enforce a "no fly" zone. They are killing civilians as they go after all manner of military targets in loyalist held areas of Libya.

Unfortunately there is no "bigger flea . . . ad infinitum" who can start nibbling at NATO's butt and perhaps put an end to another mugging of an oil nation in the Middle East.

This situation did not develop in the course of operations there. It was planned from the beginning.

Right here on ATS there was at least one thread which contained intercepted radio transmissions from the US Navy, as they went about interdicting Libyan shipping leaving the country's ports. A no sail zone had been slipped into the NATO mix, completely unannounced in the press at the very start of operations.

Thankyou Elizabeth May for voting against the ongoing fraud of NATO operations in Libya.

My question is this. Now that the NDP, elected as a social democratic party has, in the aftermath of the election, taken off its party masque and said "Surprise everybody! Fooldja!!! We're going to be the new Liberals!! We're trying to dump all that socialist stuff. We're the party of big unions and now we want to be the party of big business too!", will a genuine socialist party arise from the Monica Lewinsky-like knees of the old NDP?

Will we see someone providing a socialist program for Canadians who want it? Will we see a newspaper with a socialist slant available nation-wide in Canada? The lack of one was a dead giveaway as to the absence of real seriousness in the agenda of the NDP.

Everybody, let's have a big round of applause for the coming emergence of Canada's new political party, the ONDP, the Old New Democratic Party. Hurrah!!!

A merger with the Liberals has been the plan for a number of years now.

If Bob Rae or another sympathetic NDPer who is pretending to be a Liberal takes the Liberal party you can expect this merger to happen.

The NDP have successfully blurred the line between Liberal and NDP, with the help of the Liberal party. Much to my annoyance for a number of years now. Willful blindness? Backroom "we know what's best?" I don't know, but I don't like it.

I want my centrist party back.

reply to post by connorromanow


I don't like the anti-military bent of the Greens, and I have no intention of voting for them again so long as they continue to be NDP without the Orange, or have May as a leader.

I like the Greens better when they were centrist-conservatives with environmental-conservatism. At least they were consistent.

A list of Parties Left of the NDP, or at least as left as the NDP:

Bloc Quebecois
Animal Alliance
Communist Party of Canada
Marijuana Party - policies are largely what you'd expect though I'm sure there are Libertarian, Cons, and Libs who are all pro-legalization
Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada

Originally posted by Aeons
I want my centrist party back.

I want a leftist party on the political spectrum in Canada. Not that I am a leftist looney, but there needs to be some kind of organized resistance to the rise of fascism in this country.

Harper intends to legislate the privatized Post Office employees back to work and to settle their wage hike at a figure that is even less than the Post Office itself was offering. If that isn't right out of the fascist playbook of the 1930's I don't know what is.

Canada is facing an across the board right wing takeover of politics. Canadians are finally going to get the government that their lazy complacent butts deserve.

Originally posted by Aeons


I want my centrist party back.

The Conservatives?

Or the Liberals?

reply to post by ipsedixit


I think much of the abandonment of their previous rhetoric is due to their drifting away from Democratic Socialism and Populism towards Social Democracy and Third Way. Why would they do this? Well since NDP became the second largest party in Canada after the elections there is a real possibility that by bringing on many of the Liberal Party's platforms they can solidify themselves as the legitimate center-left political party in Canadian politics.

That would be done much easier if the Liberals are willing to sacrifice their party to merge with the NDP but all I could see that doing is forming a monopoly on power where Canada would return largely to a solidified two-party system rather than what this election gave Canada, a real option of three parties. However if NDP can move itself a little further to the left and still maintain such strong power then that would force the Liberals to move further right and become the centrist/moderate party in Canadian politics which would also allow the Conservative Party to move further right.

This is all typical of a transitional period in national politics and it will level itself off after the next election.

reply to post by Misoir

You make Canadian politics sound, quite rightly in my opinion, like the soda pop war between Coke and Pepsi. It's mostly about rhetoric and hardly at all about substance.

I think there is an appetite in Canada for a politics of issues, particularly on the left, but I don't see the NDP going for it. Instead I see them shape shifting into something designed to fool their supporters on either end of the political spectrum.

The NDP needs, in my opinion, to establish a national left wing press outlet of some sort to present the socialist worldview on all the issues that touch us as citizens and as human beings. There is a conservative press in this country, a liberal press and a responsible right wing press, but there is no left wing press in this country. To me that is absolutely astounding and all too indicative of a poverty stricken, "dog under the dinner table" mentality in the NDP leadership . . historically.

The socialists in this country should be girding their loins for a campaign to combat the ravages of globalism and to represent the people of this country who are an integral part of the wealth generating processes of the economy.

One can make an argument for private ownership, for entrepreneurship, for the right to take profits and even for the right to handsome compensation for owners and founders of enterprises, but someone has got to draw the line at just compensation for workers and run of the mill citizens of the country. One segment of the country shouldn't be allowed to economically cannibalize the rest of society.

I'd like to know the answer to this question: "When is Jack Layton going to his first Bilderberger meeting, or has he already?"

We need a socialist press to discuss the Security and Prosperity Partnership and its implications. We need to go after corruption in government much more agressively. These issues are there for the taking. Will the NDP take them or will it continue to shape shift under their shape shifty leader?

Recently the liberal press in the form of the Toronto Star has been pulling no punches as it takes the metropolitain Toronto Police Department to task over its handling of the G-20 protests. They even ran an "Abu Ghraib style" photo of prisoner abuse on their front page in exposing the high handed conduct of the police.

This is a real issue. Does this mean that the Liberal Party of Canada is going to start dealing with real issues in its attempt to rebuild, instead of following Justin Trudeau's direction toward more efficient deployment of "bag men" for fund raising? I hope so, but there is room for the NDP on the issues bandwagon. They should jump on it.

Harper should have lost the last election on a savage investigation of fiscal irresponsibility surrounding the 1.1 billion dollar bill for the G-8/G-20 conference at a time when rail lines have been closed in remote areas of the country.

We have issues but we don't have a politics of issues. That problem is not unique to Canada, but we, especially the NDP should be doing something to change that.

Misoir: My thoughts exactly, on election night (I campaigned for Lay Ton).

The Liberals will not merge, they will reinvent themselves in time for the next election and steal away some of the NDP's new seats. The Bloc may well return, and we will be back to the four party system that we had before this last election (but the NDP will be the largest opposition party, not the Liberals). I, for one, am glad that this power-shift has taken place because I am sick of the Liberals taking my vote for granted.


edit: Another thing. This is a significant shift in politics, even if the two leftist parties become carbon copies of each others' platforms. There is a new clique in the Opposition, now, a MUCH younger one. The old Liberals stayed in power because of their ancient power circles, and it's extremely refreshing that a fifty year old institution has replaced a hundred and fifty year old one. Cliques have lifespans, just the same as human beings, and every individual person is a cell in the social organism that is the clique. I am glad that there is a more youthful and vital clique in office, now, and that the Liberals may have to seek a transfusion of outsider blood.

As for actual policy, NOTHING will change on the federal stage. Canada has ALWAYS been a conservative country, check out Mackenzie King's pronouncements on race. It is extremely difficult to balance the different cultural and regional forces at play in Ottawa, and that is why the NDP could only win so many seats after diluting their platform to its weakest form yet.

If you care about seeing more genuine socialism in politics here, then you HAVE TO start contributing. You HAVE TO get involved in the local riding association, in the local party chapter (NDP or Liberal, your choice). If you want the NDP platform to change at the center of Canadian politics, you have to help the right (left) candidates win local elections in provincial races, you have to help grow the socialist brand in the provinces and help them to win governments. Then, if and when there is a sea change in provincial politics towards the left, after many years, that is when the federal NDP will be free to embrace socialism.


p.s. nobody cares about Toronto or the G20, and I say this as a Torontonian.

RIP Jack Layton

Oddly, the title of the thread takes on a new meaning with his passing. Time will tell what his lasting effect on his party and his country will be. I hope we catch some of his vitality and enthusiasm. Even a critic of his politics, as I was, feels the abrupt shock of the disappearance of that lively spirit from the scene.The drama of that political life will never be played out. We are all the poorer for that. May he fare well in the life beyond.