NDP leadership change

Shocking ouster of Tom Mulcair

reflects deep divisions inside NDP

By John Twigg

It's an understatement to say the federal New Democratic Party reached a turning point Sunday at its convention in Edmonton with its ouster of Tom Mulcair as leader - it was more like an atom bomb.

Mulcair will stay on as interim leader (and thereby keep his salary) for at least some of the period up to two years before there's a new leadership convention, which extra time (it's normally one year) the party backroomers gave themselves (slyly but also wisely) in an emergency motion rushed through soon after Mulcair's support vote came in unexpectedly low at only 48% from about 1,750 delegates from across Canada, whereas most observers including Mulcair supporters were expecting around 70%.

That steep shortfall apparently included most of the disproportionate 365 delegates from Alberta where the party just elected its first NDP regime under Premier Rachel Notley, almost all of whom would have been annoyed to see Mulcair apparently endorsing the radical Leap Manifesto in an apparent cheap bid for votes at the expense of many thousands of jobs in Alberta (more below).

However the divisions over energy and climate policies in the Leap Manifesto were on top of many other divisions and single-issue factions now more evident than ever in the NDP such as age, gender, region and employment or union status, among others (sexual orientations, language, race, culture)!

Mulcair himself noted that problem right after his crushing loss in a much-repeated video clip; "Don't let this very divided vote divide us," he said, seeming to plea for common sense to somehow prevail.

Thus the lengthy wait to get a new leader could become problematic in the party's Parliamentary caucus, where there also are divisions, but it may be a benefit to the party because it could enable the leadership vote to be scheduled for long after British Columbia's election in May 2017, which suggests the federal NDP leadership convention probably will be held in the summer or fall of 2017, maybe even in Vancouver since that's where much of its strength is now.

But that delay also makes it more feasible for upstarts, newcomers and even outsiders to enter the contest and sign up supporters to try to kidnap the party and it gives more time for the same-old old-guards and power cliques to regroup and try to regain control and thereby hold sway in what becomes the party's next platform and campaign strategy - and candidate selections, hiring of consultants and specialists, advertising, social media messaging, donations-seeking etcetera, all of which they botched badly in 2015. [For those unaware, since I have international followers, the Mulcair NDP entered the 2015 federal election with high hopes of winning their first-ever majority but instead they blundered repeatedly in the campaign and instead fell to a low third place, an ignominious loss after such high expectations.]

Divisions over Leap Manifesto directions

Meanwhile the post mortems of what happened in Edmonton are revealing a party that is deeply divided about where the party's policy should be heading and how it proposes to get there, which seems to be its perennial existential challenge now made all the more obvious.

Is it a semi-organized cabal of single-issue activists, or is it a machine of smart and well-meaning people working together as a team to develop, sell and hopefully implement a real pragmatic and popular strategy for how to make things better in Canada for as many people as possible, from top to bottom everywhere?

The debate is particularly sharp over what the NDP should do with the radical Leap Manifesto that features a roster of drastic changes in energy policy as parts of an urgent attack on climate change but also has some less-reported social policy reforms such as improvements for aboriginal people, a universal basic annual income, local agriculture, home retrofits and so on which can be reviewed at this link here .

The manifesto itself was neither approved nor rejected at the convention but instead delegates voted to refer it to constituency associations for local debates on it, including public meetings with non-members - which was a clever ploy by its backers because the sense was that that approval meant it is a done deal and foregone conclusion, and Mulcair's apparent support for that may have been part of his downfall.

"Everyone knows there's no greater threat than climate change," Mulcair said (approximately) in a French portion of his final appeal speech to delegates on Sunday, which to me he seemed to not repeat in English and by which he seemed to be appealing for the Leap supporters to support him too, but probably in vain because heretofore Mulcair was among those advocating a business-like approach to governing which disastrously included his campaign stance in support of balancing the budget at any and all costs first [which by the way was the turning point in his election campaign downfall and not his malarkey about niqabs].

Mulcair's mealy-mouthed support of the Leap Manifesto probably reflected that it had been constructed well in advance by a who's-who of the NDP establishment, notably Avi Lewis, son of Stephen Lewis and grandson of David Lewis, Avi's wife Naomi Klein, a noted climate campaigner in her own right, plus a cabal of fellow-travellers and a coterie of accomplished economists on its website who came up with a recipe of ideas on how to pay for it all. And when it was posted online they did so in 12 languages!

Notley opposed Leap Manifesto

But all that was in sharp contrast to a rousing speech by Notley on Saturday against the Leap, which according to a Tyee report was quite well-received by delegates and was acknowledged by Mulcair.

"I am asking you to leave here more persuaded than perhaps some of us have been that it is possible for Canada to have a forestry industry, an agriculture industry, a mining industry and -- yes -- an energy industry... while being world leaders on the environment," said Notley, suggesting Alberta's path could be an example of a pragmatic, progressive route the federal party could follow in the future.

But when Notley said Alberta still needs new pipeline construction projects now in order to get its energy products sold at fair market value only about half of the delegates stood and applauded and the other half sat even though she had explained that tens of thousands of jobs are at stake as well as government revenues needed to pay for health and social programs.

When Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer visited Jon McComb on CKNW this morning (April 11 6:45 a.m.) he mentioned that the problem is so serious that it might force the Alberta New Democratic Party to separate itself from the federal version, which is quite drastic but telling of how serious it is.

Michael Campbell's commentary this morning (April 11 8:25 a.m. on CKNW) also was on that conundrum and it was devastating against the folly of the majority of federal New Democrats who apparently want to shut down Alberta's energy industry for the sake of political optics and dubious climate science. His remarks can be heard here . But the gist is that most New Democrats are clueless about the financial and economic realities of it all.

However many New Democrats and other climate zealots such as in the Green Party probably will be willfully oblivious to such logic, perhaps some inclined to dismiss it as merely the blatherings of Gordon Campbell's biased brother.

But it's obvious that in this case - the NDP's energy policy - Michael Campbell is correct, and a series of disastrous election losses prove it, certainly including the Adrian Dix NDP loss in B.C. in 2013 (he weathervaned for and then against oil tankers), maybe a factor in the recent Saskatchewan NDP loss, and probably a goodly part of the federal NDP's loss under Mulcair in 2015. Perhaps also somewhat in Ontario, the Maritimes and maybe coming soon in Manitoba.

Late insert: B.C. NDP leader John Horgan has come out against the Leap Manifesto; see Globe and Mail report from April 11 here

The always-bang-on Bill Tieleman took a similar tack in his analysis in the Tyee, viewable here .

In the Times-Colonist, columnist Lawrie McFarlane surmised that the federal NDP is taking a huge leap off a bridge here and Les Leyne said the NDP is headed to a permanent third place here while reporter Cindy E. Harnett surveyed the reactions of Horgan and other Island New Democrats here . 

Climate alarmism is exaggerated in Canada

Why the New Democrats want to climb aboard the Climate Alarm Train is weird, especially when they profess to want to win elections, but also because the supposed science of global warming and climate change is far from being settled despite what some other zealots claim and proclaim.

First, there are few if any really serious climate crisises in Canada though there have been some manageable shifts needed, such as better forest fire suppression in B.C. recently, and plans to raise some dykes around Richmond even though sea levels have not yet risen anywhere near to what the alarmists warned of, and maybe some ocean acidification, but Tuvalu is still there, and winter Arctic ice is still impenetrable, and B.C.'s ski hills just had a great season, and the water reservoirs are mostly full.

Which is not to say there haven't been any environmental problems in Canada because there have been, perhaps most notably how under-regulated fracking and general oil and gas drilling has polluted the groundwater in thousands of Alberta wells, and the similar pollution of drinking water around the tar sands, as well as Alberta's heavy (but not really damaging) emissions of CO2 from thermal power plants.

But energy is a complex and highly variable industry from dirty to clean coal, undisposable nuclear fuel, abundant natural gas, too much diesel used in remote communities, a gamut of petroleum grades and B.C.'s remarkably clean and renewable hydro-electric power, not to mention IPPs, solar, thermal, tidal and more.

While zealots may like a one-size-fits-all approach, the reality is that climate conditions can vary by location, situation, season and year, such as Australia being drier some years, the Arctic Ocean being more or less passable in different years, the El Nino and Blob effects being more or less pronounced, and all such variables being subject to irregular cycles related to a great many factors such as solar flares, the variations in Earth's orbit and tilt and lunar effects and factors science is only now discovering (such as a new discovery that there is a big valley on the surface of the sun, which appears to affect flaring).

Meanwhile the human impacts are variously exaggerated both under and over but the climate alarmists' general allegation that there has been too much increase in carbon dioxide emissions is patent nonsense if or when one realizes that it's still miniscule at only 0.04% of the atmosphere (up roughly 0.01% since the industrial revolution), and only about half of that comes from human activities, it's far less than has been the case in previous eons, it has some positive effects too (it's good for plants, and a bit of warmth helps in cold countries like Canada), and CO2 is not the main culprit in greenhouse-gas caused global warming (it's methane).

Local climate issues do need action

However there are some local climate situations that do demand a more urgent approach, such as reducing Beijing's over-dependence on dirty coal for both heating and cooking, which at some times of year requires drastic shutdowns of commerce, and Los Angeles and other large cities in the U.S. would noticeably improve their air quality if/when there was/is more use of electric cars and less use of thermal power.

In fact Vancouver is a good example of that because on a few days in summer the upper Fraser Valley has problems with inversions concentrating Vancouver's various emissions but most of the time there is no problem whatsoever yet the B.C. government and B.C. Hydro are still planning to shut down the gas-fired Burrard Generating Station in Burnaby for the sake of political appearances even though it provides an essential backup service to the whole provincial grid. Which would be irresponsible folly.

But then there is Rio de Janeiro's huge problem with untreated sewage, which has little climate effect, but is disgusting and dangerous to health. And then there is Victoria's modest discharges of screened and pre-screened sewage far out into a salt-water tide rip that has no health and climate impacts but still for the sake of optics cause the taxpayers to pay about $1 billion for a superfluous costly tertiary treatment system.

My point is that climate politics like many other environmental and economic issues is an area that needs to be treated with care and caution, not emotion and idealism, but the federal NDP and the B.C. NDP as well as the federal and provincial Green parties seem to have many members who believe as Mulcair claimed that urgent action against climate change should be the dominant issue now.

Furthermore, if or when there are some climate issues that need to be addressed, such as say converting remote aboriginal villages from diesel power to clean renewable sources (such as Hartley Bay on B.C.'s coast as reported recently by the Victoria Times-Colonist), then those situations need to be addressed within a proper balance of all other problems.

For example, Vancouver's iconic Bruce Allen on CKNW this morning noted that the world has a huge problem handling the trillions of non-recyclable cigarette butts now polluting cities all over the world, but little or nothing is being done about it.

In fact there are a great many threats facing Canada and the world now but few of them are appreciated yet and fewer still are being addressed, while many issues that aren't really problems are getting huge subsidies from governments and businesses to work away on.

Stephen Lewis gives policy recipe

An excellent survey of those problems was given somewhat ironically at the same federal NDP convention by Stephen Lewis (Avi's father), who used his extensive experience in global problems via the United Nations to give delegates of sort of Top Six list, in a speech transcript available here .

Stephen Lewis said he was ebulliently optimistic because of progress being made by and for feminism and electoral reform, he opposed Bill C-51 (about a security clampdown), supported universal health care, cautioned against international trade agreements in general and the Trans Pacific Partnership in particular (because it would kill too many North American jobs for the benefit of corporate profits) and he railed against arms sales (especially Canada's recent sales to Saudi Arabia), among other such topics.

In fact his elocution was so wise and learned that afterwards I suggested via Twitter that he (Stephen) should consider running to succeed Mulcair as leader, but only if he toned down the supposed urgency of addressing climate change and instead merely phase in the reforms in a more orderly manner (i.e. not throwing tens of thousands of Albertans out of work).

I have had no reply yet to that suggestion but it wasn't tongue-in-cheek because Lewis clearly has gained a rare awareness of social, political and economic conditions around the world and the New Democrats easily could do far worse, and probably will.

U.S. preparing to bomb in Syria

Meanwhile we see the little-noticed news that the U.S. is sending B-52 bombers to Qatar apparently in preparation for a massive bombing campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, which move follows a recent warning to Americans in Damascus that they should leave the city as soon as possible.

Do you understand the significance of that? Few do, yet, but it portends a possible fulfillment of the Bible prophecy in Isaiah 17 that predicts Damascus will become "a ruinous heap".

Some parts of Damascus already are rubble but some are not but if or when it is demolished then it will be yet another sign that the dreaded World War 3 also known as Armageddon will soon be here and our focus on false problems like carbon emissions in Canada will be seen as the folly they really are, and maybe then mankind will turn to addressing the needs for mass improvements in how humans relate to each other.

It's a question of balance and perspective; yes carbon pollution should be abated, but so should taxes on health care, and carbon taxes on low-income families and schools and hospitals, and subsidies to frackers and so many other false economies.

And instead we need electoral reform, food production closer to home, a revived Bank of B.C. with its own new parallel currency, a new clean-fuel ferry from Gabriola to YVR, a universal income plan, universal child care and so many other good things such as outlined in Guy Dauncey's book Journey to the Future which envisions numerous transitions to a greener and more sustainable economy ( more info here ).

The point is that many things could and should be done to make things better in Canada but will the federal New Democrats learn how to do that? Probably not, though now with Mulcair departing there is at least an open door to sunnier ways and sunny days.

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By the way on the weekend I Tweeted that one of the NDP's problems was that it has too much of a polyglot problem; I meant that as both metaphorically and literally but I did so BEFORE I noticed that the Leap Manifesto had been posted in 12 languages!
Here's what I posted: NDP has become a polyglot potpourri of diverse single-issue special interests, not a unified movement for socio-pol change

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Tyee summary of NDP convention
http://thetyee.ca/News/2016/04/10/NDP-Choose-New-Leadership/
Tyee summary


Tyee
Notley defends pipelining
http://thetyee.ca/News/2016/04/09/Rachel-Notley-Pipelines-Convention/
Notley defends

As New Democrat leader Tom Mulcair faces a leadership review at the party's convention this weekend, his biggest competition may be the premier of the host province.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley's speech to convention Saturday galvanized a contingent of western New Democrats, making the case that it's possible to have a thriving energy sector while also taking a progressive approach to climate change.
And she made a plea to New Democrats across the country not to turn their backs on her province's energy industry.
"I am asking you to leave here more persuaded than perhaps some of us have been that it is possible for Canada to have a forestry industry, an agriculture industry, a mining industry and -- yes -- an energy industry... while being world leaders on the environment," Notley said.
It was a rousing speech that echoed the energy of Notley's momentous May 2015 win, and a change of pace following a number of sombre and reflective sessions earlier in the weekend on the party's dismal 2015 federal election results.
In her speech, Notley framed Alberta as an example of a pragmatic, progressive route the federal party could follow in the future.
She said the Alberta New Democrats campaigned on a progressive platform and then implemented it after being elected, listing off the change from a flat tax to progressive, the removal of corporate party donations, and the investment of $34 billion into infrastructure.
She reaffirmed her commitment to implementing a $15 minimum wage and her dedication to public services, health care and education by removing the $1.5 billion in cutbacks the Conservatives had planned in the wake of a low price of oil.
But the speech also delineated some clear tensions and challenges for the federal NDP ahead.
"In electing a progressive NDP government last spring, the people of Alberta took away one of your favourite enemies," Notley said. "There's no climate-change denying, science-muzzling, regressive Tory government here anymore."
A difficult debate
The party is now caught in a difficult debate over the energy sector and progressive climate solutions, with the presence of 350 Alberta delegates at convention and a vocal provincial New Democrat government caught with unemployed Albertans in the resource sector.

The challenge was demonstrated in the divided reaction from delegates when Notley uttered one word: pipelines.
As the premier made her argument that her province needs pipeline construction to put hard-luck Albertans back to work, around half the delegates opted to sit, while others stood in applause.
It's a debate that has snaked its way into this convention held in the heartland of Canada's resource sector. Tomorrow, delegates will face the question of if and how to support the Leap Manifesto, a sweeping strategy for climate action that Environment Minister Shannon Phillips on Friday called a "betrayal" of Albertans who voted for Notley's New Democrats.
The difficult situation that Alberta's NDP government faces -- 60,000 people laid off in the resource sector in 2015, coupled with pressure to implement climate change solutions -- came as a surprise to some delegates from across the country.
"As an Ontarian, coming here and learning more about what's going on here in the prairies has been beneficial," said Ben Diaz, a delegate from Ottawa.
Diaz said conversations with prairie representatives on how the question of LEAP affects the Notley government has given him pause on the manifesto he was ready to support.
"What happened here with now Premier Notley has given the party an opportunity to reflect on the prairies and how they fit in the larger party, and the voice they have on some of our policies," Diaz said.
Deputy Premier Sarah Hoffman said she's hopeful the convention will show delegates the challenges that the Notley government faces, and said that Edmonton is a good place to host these discussions.
"People east of Ontario don't necessarily hear what we're doing out here in Alberta," Hoffman said. "Hopefully the 4.4 million people here are a little less strange" to New Democrats across Canada, she said

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Misc Tweets


1. John Twigg Retweeted Michael Geoghegan

   good analysis but it omitted sevral other key factions in divisive #NDP espy feminists, LGBTQ, pot legalizers, labor

   John Twigg added,

   
   

   Michael Geoghegan @BCLobbyist
   

   From socialists to good-old-boys: A taxonomy of the NDP’s Edmonton factions http://natpo.st/22m8ZJc  via @nationalpost #cdnpoli
3.   John Twigg ‏@TwiggJohn 3h3 hours ago Canada

   @ThomasMulcair pays price for weak campaign platform due to his failing to control single-issue activists and #climate alarmists inside #NDP
5.   John Twigg ‏@TwiggJohn 16h16 hours ago

   John Twigg Retweeted James Laxer

   This is a good sign that populist anger vs rich-get-richer cld soon be felt at ballot boxes all over the world

   John Twigg added,

   
   

   James Laxer @jameslaxer
   

   Thousands of mostly young people protesting outside Number 10 to demand #Cameron's resignation. We've all had it w rich avoiding taxes.#tax
7. In reply to Charlie Angus NDP

     John Twigg ‏@TwiggJohn 16h16 hours ago Canada

   @CharlieAngusNDP Oh no! Didnt you hear @StephenLewisNDP et al say that #climate is the most urgent issue now in #cdnpoli @MeganLeslieHFX

@StephenLewisNDP you shld consider running for #NDP leader but only if you tone down climate alarmism, phase in yes mad panic no


CBCTV just showed images of massive "hole" in surface of sun; another new proof that "solar variation" cld be main factor in #climatechange?


More Tweets viewable via @TwiggJohn

Feedback welcome at john@johntwigg.com