In Alberta, 1993 was mockingly referred to as the ‘Year of the Family’ for Conservative MPs.
At the end of the Mulroney era, with Kim Campbell as their unpopular new leader, the province’s incumbent Tory MPs could see the writing on the wall. With Preston Manning and the Reform party on the rise, many sitting Progressive Conservatives imagined it was time to leave politics before voters tossed them out.
NDP MPs Charlie Angus, Carol Hughes and Rachel Blaney all announced Thursday that they will not be seeking re-election.
“After seven elections, 20 years of service in Parliament, and the privilege of being the longest-serving MP in Timmins history, it is time to pass the baton,” Angus wrote in a social media post on Thursday.
What began as a race to pick a new leader for Alberta’s Opposition NDP has triggered a broader existential debate over why being provincially orange must automatically tie you to the federal brand.
According to party constitutions, members of a provincial NDP are automatically members of the federal party.
It’s a linkage that caused headaches for Alberta’s NDP when it was in government from 2015 to 2019 and continues to prove politically problematic as it seeks to wrest power from Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservatives in 2027.
Who wants anything to do with Singh?
It’s become crystal clear why there have been four ministers of foreign affairs in the past five years under the Trudeau government: it is are a rudderless ship with no vision for how Canada should be represented on the world stage. The prime minister’s leadership has been catastrophic for Canadian foreign policy.
The Liberals have failed to meet our NATO commitments, leaving our allies questioning our ability and our resolve. They’ve failed to stand with our Israeli allies, who are facing an existential threat. They’ve left Canada’s image degraded, tarnished and nearing the point of total collapse.
New Democrats are bringing a motion to Parliament on March 18th and demanding Justin Trudeau takes a stand.
Add your voice to the calls, ahead of the vote.
Fill Justin Trudeau's inbox and demand he does the right thing.https://t.co/McNjppaBIW
— Jagmeet Singh (@theJagmeetSingh) March 16, 2024
h/t SweetPea
Earlier this week, Edmonton MLA Rakhi Pancholi said that buying a membership in the party she hopes to lead — the Alberta NDP — should not automatically bring a membership in the party Jagmeet Singh leads — the federal NDP — as it does now.
And even before that, the Alberta NDP and Saskatchewan NDP took it upon themselves to issue a joint statement denouncing a proposal made by federal NDP MP Charlie Angus that New Democrats in those two provinces saw as an unhelpful and inappropriate anti-oil-and-gas idea.
The deal between Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrats has already lasted longer than most minority governments in Canadian history.
Within a matter of days, that deal will either collapse or carry on — depending on whether the two sides can come to some kind of agreement to bring pharmacare to Canada.
Two questions hang over that fork in the road for the two parties. Can the deal last? Beyond that, though, should the deal continue?
Is it possible for the NDP to steal Liberal seats next election?
Would that possibility be aided by keeping this sorry alliance together thus earning goodwill from LPC voters looking for a new home?
Both Trudeau and Singh are preening virtue signalers with grating personalities. Canada has had enough of both.
CALGARY — The race to succeed Rachel Notley as Alberta NDP leader is heating up, with three high-profile MLAs announcing runs over the past week. Yet the biggest name cited as a possible contender for the job, former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, remains on the sidelines for now.
Energy critics within the NDP’s provincial affiliates in Alberta and Saskatchewan are pushing back against MP Charlie Angus’s private member’s bill targeting fossil fuel advertising.
The dispute between provincial and federal New Democrats comes days after two candidates to lead the Alberta NDP expressed openness to loosening the formal ties that bind the party branches.
However, federal party leader Jagmeet Singh said while there may be disagreements on some particular matters, “we’re a large party and that’s a normal thing that happens.”
Health Minister Mark Holland says he has “every confidence” his government can deliver pharmacare legislation by the promised March 1 deadline, and that the Liberals are “not pulling the fire alarm” on their confidence-and-supply deal with the NDP over the issue.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said this week there will be “repercussions” if the Liberals don’t table a sufficient piece of pharmacare framework legislation by next month, and signalled he’ll consider a missed deadline to mean they’ve “walked away” from their confidence-and-supply agreement.
With NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh putting the Liberals “on notice” that it could be a deal breaker if they don’t deliver on a pharmacare framework by March 1, the weekly panel of political strategists on CTV’s Question Period weigh in on the future of the parties’ confidence-and-supply agreement.
The deal — inked in the spring of 2022 — sees the NDP prop up the Liberals until 2025 in exchange for progress on key policy issues, such as pharmacare.
The parties had initially set the deadline for tabling pharmacare framework legislation for the end of last year, but in December, they pushed back that cut-off date to March 1.
Pity Jagmeet Singh’s communications staff, constantly tasked with finding new language for the same empty threat the NDP Leader has been making for years. Mr. Singh has to sound serious but not be serious; he needs to project resoluteness even though he’s the political equivalent of an accordion, bending in every direction and emitting sounds that appeal only to a very niche subset of people.
Earlier this week, Mr. Singh warned that he will rip up his party’s supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberals if the government doesn’t meet its deadline to introduce a pharmacare plan.
The federal NDP has warned its Parliament Hill staff to prepare themselves for the possible sudden termination of the party’s supply-and-confidence deal with the Liberals — a bipartisan cooperation agreement which may be holding off an early election.
A senior NDP source who was not authorized to speak publicly told CBC News the party held a meeting Tuesday to tell staffers that, with negotiations with the Trudeau Liberals on pharmacare dragging on, the deal could be headed for an early grave.
Garbage Fake News.
Former British Columbia post-secondary education minister Selina Robinson could not have imagined that when she called what would become Israel in 1948 a “crappy piece of land with nothing on it” in a late January Zoom panel, she’d be setting off an ugly chain of events leading to her departure from Premier David Eby’s cabinet. Her comments were hardly a lie, if impolite, but Robison had made herself a target with the NDP simply for being a Jew who supports Israel.
We decorated Selina Robinson's office to let her know we don't want her as our MLA and that she needs to be ousted out of the NDP party. #freepalestine #Canada #NDP #coquitlam #ResignSelinaRobinson#FireSelinaRobinson @seanorr @critcrim @sasa_ghada @Dave_Eby @theJagmeetSingh pic.twitter.com/YXWGpP5hw4
— Canadian Antifa 🇵🇸🇵🇸🍉🍉 (@Exposeisrael123) February 6, 2024
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Monday his party’s deal to prop up the minority Liberals will be off if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government doesn’t meet the deadline to introduce long-promised pharmacare legislation.
However, the New Democrat wouldn’t rule out still supporting the government on confidence votes, such as the budget, even if the two parties no longer have a formal deal.
