The Critical NDP-Watch Thread 2

Nora goes to the Conservative Convention

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When I covered the NDP convention back in 2018, I had the most bizarre experience; one that would have never happened had I been watching from home. During a vote on a motion in favour of Palestine, there was a long delay in counting the raised-hand vote. I left the media zone and walked around to hear and see how delegates were biding their time as the front of the room figured out whatever was holding up the vote. From one end of the convention hall, I started livestreaming the floor on my cell. I took care not to show people’s faces so I filmed the back of people’s heads and didn’t linger too long on anyone. An older man, a big guy who has a lot of respect in labour, started berating me. He demanded that I stop filming, claiming to protect his delegates in the process and tried to intimidate me into stopping. The asshole. I walked away, still filming, across the convention floor.

Next, a delegate got to the microphone to call a “point of personal privilege” — “someone” in the room was filming the vote and it was making them uncomfortable. By this moment, I was doing everything I could to stop my hand from shaking because somehow, now, I was the subject of the proceedings. I kept on moving. I don’t remember how the chair reacted but I walked towards the back of the room, leaned on the barrier between the convention floor and the press, still filming.

Nathan Cullen then tried. He came up to me, asked what I was doing. When I looked up at him (still with my arm in the air filming), I saw the CPAC camera rolling. He asked me to stop filming because it wasn’t allowed and I said “I don’t think that’s true. See that camera? It’s been rolling this whole time” I said, pointing to CPAC who had been livestreaming the whole convention. He slunked away.

It helped crytalize in my mind just how scared the NDP’s braintrust was about this Palestine motion. It’s one thing to know that that they’d do everything possible to sink the vote but it was another altogether to document it. That never would have happened had I been watching from home........

JKR wrote:

How does she know they wouldn't have done the same thing for any other vote? Why was this the only vote where voters were videotaped strangely like this while they were voting? Should everyone at political conventions be allowed to videotape everyone else while they are voting?

I don't see anything wrong with filming happenings on the floor of a political convention. I do see something wrong with a party that would attempt to prevent such filming. What moral precept do you think goes against documenting such public events?

Furthermore, your "why was this the only vote?" question smells strongly of the fake argument that Israel is singled out for special criticism of its behaviour, when obviously it is not. If anything the reverse is true, that Israel is given a pass on actions that other states would be punished for. Your aggressive, irrational zionism is showing.

The NDP is incoherent on Gaza genocide

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Following the article in The Maple detailing Canada’s acceleration of military exports to Israel after October 7, the NDP announced that it would “compel documents from Global Affairs Canada related to export and broker permits.” The NDP’s foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson stated:

I’m extremely concerned that Canada is contributing to the assault on Gaza through its exports of military goods and technology to Israel without ensuring they aren’t harming civilians… The Liberal government has refused to provide answers regarding their exports. We’re at the point where we need to compel Global Affairs to provide information so Parliamentarians can know what and why the Liberals are sending to Israel.

This is a positive move from the NDP, as Canadians deserve to know the extent of our government’s complicity in the destruction of Gaza. However, the NDP is talking out of both sides of its mouth. While criticizing the Trudeau government’s military exports to Israel, NDP leadership has largely adopted Israel’s framing of the war and condemned voices speaking out in support of Palestinians. This has occurred at both the federal and provincial level.

Following the October 7 attacks, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew quickly announced his support for Israel’s “right to self-defence.” The Ontario NDP expelled Sarah Jama, MPP for Hamilton Centre, for condemning Israel’s 75-year history of violence against the Palestinians. Meanwhile, federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh spoke at a conference organized by the ardently pro-Israel Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) alongside a man who, in the midst of the assault on Gaza, compared Palestinians to cockroaches.

Most recently, Singh has spread falsehoods about a pro-Palestine march in Toronto, claiming it “targeted” the city’s Mount Sinai Hospital “because of its ties to the Jewish community.” Earlier, he described the posting of messages on the riding office of former BC NDP MLA and minister Selina Robinson, who sparked a scandal by denying the Nakba, as “hateful.”

Meanwhile, when activist and author Yves Engler tried to ask Singh if he agreed with South Africa’s accusation of genocide against Israel, the NDP leader refused to answer while a member of his RCMP detail knocked a cellphone out of Engler’s hands.

The BC NDP’s removal of Robinson, provincial minister of post-secondary education, for describing pre-Nakba Palestine as “a crappy piece of land with nothing on it” stands as an outlier amid the party’s overall support for Israel and its framing of opposition to pro-Palestine activism. Robinson’s removal was only made possible by an upswell of grassroots activism that made clear the base’s opposition to having a genocide denier in the cabinet. If this mobilization had not occurred, she would likely still be a provincial minister.

While we should support the NDP’s call to investigate the Liberal government’s weapons exports to Israel since October 7, let us not harbour any misconceptions about the party. While 68 percent of NDP voters believe Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians, this is not a position shared by the party leadership at the federal or provincial levels. In fact, solidarity with Palestine has been actively punished.

There is only one moral position on this war: an immediate ceasefire, the resumption of aid deliveries, and an international investigation into war crimes in Gaza. As long as the NDP refuses to wholeheartedly endorse this position, their Gaza policy will remain utterly incoherent.

..this is quite disgusting. after all the cuts by the cons. after the ndp honoured the outgoing con tax cuts. 

Manitoba NDP increase policing spending by almost $30 million

After forming a majority government in October 2023, the Manitoba NDP delivered its first provincial budget on Tuesday. Understandably, much of the focus since has been on the budget’s big commitments to health care, as well as the dizzying array of targeted tax cuts and credits. But there are also some sizable updates to the funding of policing and jailing that warrant attention.

Premier Wab Kinew has constantly reiterated his fealty to cops, including rejecting accusations that he would defund the police, running a classic “tough on crime” campaign, and recently introducing a draconian set of bail system changes that have been blasted by Indigenous organizations. The new budget continues and accelerates this trend. There are many opaque and conflicting aspects of how the budget has been presented and communicated, but this is our current assessment of it.....

..audio.

Inside the NDP: A Deliberate Turn to Centre

We often speculate about what has happened to the NDP in Canada. With its origins in Socialism and grassroots membership, the Party has seemingly drifted to Centre while alienating its biggest supporters. Author and political scientist Matt Fodor joins host Jessa McLean to discuss the themes that come up in his upcoming book From Layton to Singh: The 20-year Struggle for the NDPs Soul. Matt is about to reveal just who made the decisions to sideline members and when party brass decided they would abandon its socialist values in favour of neoliberal policies. Matt describes the new NDP as 'Orange Liberals' - power hungry, with little interest transformative politics.