I share your sadness at the loss of Ed Broadbent. He was a politician to be respected and admired.
However, "The extent to which the right can and will capture the working class is an indictment of the institutional left in Canada today" is true...but only partially true.
Just because Poilievre articulates policies attractive to the "left" is no reason to imply that they are "wrong" (or only marginally beneficial) to "working people" (left undefined, too often methinks). That sort of commentary feeds the polarized beast eating at the guts of Canadian (and US) politics. Today's intelligent voter embraces beneficial ideas regardless of source and should ditch the sorry political party demand for thoughtless "loyalty. I am a vociferous defender of free markets and individual responsibility but worry about automation and the skills required to use it.
I'm thinking that the end of "prepackaged identify politics" is near. Yesterday's young socialist are today's young Conservatives...because the "packaged NDP socialists" can't cut it. But that doesn't negate the presence of strong social undercurrents amongst the young.
The giants of the left of the political spectrum including Ed Broadbent fought passionately, respectfully and factually for social and economic justice.
The reality of political campaigning that we continue to import from the United States is no longer about proposals around the issues that will improve the life of Canadians it's about making issues of everything and demonizing the party in power - at least at the national level.
A country where people blame every problem on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a country with an electorate that's lost it way. See a street crime in the news, make sure to add a comment 'this is Trudeau's Canada.' CTV and CBC political panel shows with shills and 'journalist's from across the spectrum feed into the simple narratives totally devoid of actual policy discussions.
Try to have a conversation these days where you discuss the facts driving inflation or housing costs through the roof and how we got here is impossible. Who's talking about the $170 billion bing in share buybacks from publicly traded Corporations in 12 months in 2022/23 and people don't care about that despite the reality that share buybacks come from EXCESS profits and line CEO pockets. Bring up the income gap that's shot through the roof for CEO's in recent years and how back in the 60s and 70s union workers in grocery stores actually owned homes but they crashed their wages - no one cares.
Ask a university student if they study basic income schemes these days - something I was exposed to in the early 70s and maybe they heard about it but have no sense of its origins in capitalism.
We're dumbing down our electorate.
People get that the Bank of Canada is inflating their mortgages as only the consumers can be disciplined with their only tool in raising interest rates - not capital.
There are many organizations touting basic income including the Broadbent Institute, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Jim Stanford's Centre for the Future of Work and Floyd Marinescu - Founder UBI Works that includes bank economists but all of that is disjointed.
Yet the federal Liberal caucus apparently voted this as their no. 1 issue before Covid and my Liberal MP Ron McKinnon wrote in response to my signing a petition that he'd vote for a basic income scheme if it comes to Parliament.
I see a comment that the astute young voter is aligning with the Conservatives on policy issues. There is no policy there. Just anger and that's get's little done.
If you're ranting in anger, you're likely missing the plot.
They want to rant about government spending since the pandemic.
Bring the food giants to the House of Commons and who notes that the Competition Bureau said that not all were entirely forthcoming
As we have seen in the US, the "worker" is complicated (as all humans are) and the "working class" is not a monolith. You are right in the sense the "worker" has been abandoned for the most part by the institutional left, taken for granted, and also that the right and conservatives in general think they can get appeal based on "values" without also the economic realities (meaning they see the "working class" as a monolith as well). Ed Broadbent had IT. He never took anything for granted and never assumed he was going to be PM and just put in the work. In that sense, yes, Canada does need a new Ed.
I read this great distinction made by Cory Doctrow recently, to the effect that "Progressives are those who want power and money more-evenly distributed than nearly all of both concentrated in a few hundred people; liberals are fine with that, as long as the few hundred have proper representation of minority groups".
That's how the Right has divided the Left for decades: pick a liberal wedge issue - it was the "gay agenda", now "transgenderism", what with the former unable to wedge any more - and make that the main topic in the media and electioneering.
Broadbent reminded us to stay progressive, progressive, progressive, ever-more important than being liberal. Women's rights were for half the population; rights of those of colour perhaps an eighth; LGB rights a tenth. Transgender persons are less than 1%. And we're talking endlessly about that, rather than the 14% of homes that have hunger. We talked about the "cost of living", not about the "wages for living" for the last two years, as the hunger spread up from 14% to 16% of homes. The news pounded out stories about the additional 2%, while continuing to ignore the original 14%, as always.
Unable to restack for some reason at this time. I'll try again. 👍
I share your sadness at the loss of Ed Broadbent. He was a politician to be respected and admired.
However, "The extent to which the right can and will capture the working class is an indictment of the institutional left in Canada today" is true...but only partially true.
Just because Poilievre articulates policies attractive to the "left" is no reason to imply that they are "wrong" (or only marginally beneficial) to "working people" (left undefined, too often methinks). That sort of commentary feeds the polarized beast eating at the guts of Canadian (and US) politics. Today's intelligent voter embraces beneficial ideas regardless of source and should ditch the sorry political party demand for thoughtless "loyalty. I am a vociferous defender of free markets and individual responsibility but worry about automation and the skills required to use it.
I'm thinking that the end of "prepackaged identify politics" is near. Yesterday's young socialist are today's young Conservatives...because the "packaged NDP socialists" can't cut it. But that doesn't negate the presence of strong social undercurrents amongst the young.
The giants of the left of the political spectrum including Ed Broadbent fought passionately, respectfully and factually for social and economic justice.
The reality of political campaigning that we continue to import from the United States is no longer about proposals around the issues that will improve the life of Canadians it's about making issues of everything and demonizing the party in power - at least at the national level.
A country where people blame every problem on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a country with an electorate that's lost it way. See a street crime in the news, make sure to add a comment 'this is Trudeau's Canada.' CTV and CBC political panel shows with shills and 'journalist's from across the spectrum feed into the simple narratives totally devoid of actual policy discussions.
Try to have a conversation these days where you discuss the facts driving inflation or housing costs through the roof and how we got here is impossible. Who's talking about the $170 billion bing in share buybacks from publicly traded Corporations in 12 months in 2022/23 and people don't care about that despite the reality that share buybacks come from EXCESS profits and line CEO pockets. Bring up the income gap that's shot through the roof for CEO's in recent years and how back in the 60s and 70s union workers in grocery stores actually owned homes but they crashed their wages - no one cares.
Ask a university student if they study basic income schemes these days - something I was exposed to in the early 70s and maybe they heard about it but have no sense of its origins in capitalism.
We're dumbing down our electorate.
People get that the Bank of Canada is inflating their mortgages as only the consumers can be disciplined with their only tool in raising interest rates - not capital.
There are many organizations touting basic income including the Broadbent Institute, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Jim Stanford's Centre for the Future of Work and Floyd Marinescu - Founder UBI Works that includes bank economists but all of that is disjointed.
Yet the federal Liberal caucus apparently voted this as their no. 1 issue before Covid and my Liberal MP Ron McKinnon wrote in response to my signing a petition that he'd vote for a basic income scheme if it comes to Parliament.
I see a comment that the astute young voter is aligning with the Conservatives on policy issues. There is no policy there. Just anger and that's get's little done.
If you're ranting in anger, you're likely missing the plot.
They want to rant about government spending since the pandemic.
Bring the food giants to the House of Commons and who notes that the Competition Bureau said that not all were entirely forthcoming
As we have seen in the US, the "worker" is complicated (as all humans are) and the "working class" is not a monolith. You are right in the sense the "worker" has been abandoned for the most part by the institutional left, taken for granted, and also that the right and conservatives in general think they can get appeal based on "values" without also the economic realities (meaning they see the "working class" as a monolith as well). Ed Broadbent had IT. He never took anything for granted and never assumed he was going to be PM and just put in the work. In that sense, yes, Canada does need a new Ed.
I read this great distinction made by Cory Doctrow recently, to the effect that "Progressives are those who want power and money more-evenly distributed than nearly all of both concentrated in a few hundred people; liberals are fine with that, as long as the few hundred have proper representation of minority groups".
That's how the Right has divided the Left for decades: pick a liberal wedge issue - it was the "gay agenda", now "transgenderism", what with the former unable to wedge any more - and make that the main topic in the media and electioneering.
Broadbent reminded us to stay progressive, progressive, progressive, ever-more important than being liberal. Women's rights were for half the population; rights of those of colour perhaps an eighth; LGB rights a tenth. Transgender persons are less than 1%. And we're talking endlessly about that, rather than the 14% of homes that have hunger. We talked about the "cost of living", not about the "wages for living" for the last two years, as the hunger spread up from 14% to 16% of homes. The news pounded out stories about the additional 2%, while continuing to ignore the original 14%, as always.