April 18, 2016
The New Democrat Party (NDP) took another step towards re-enacting the Bolshevik revolution when they voted to replace party leader Thomas Mulcair and fully embraced the Communist Leap Manifesto.
Mulcair’s ousting –albeit, not exactly a good old fashioned exile to Serbia or a KGB assassination– comes after the party’s damming defeat in the last federal election. The NDP lost nearly all held seats to Mr. “the Baltic nations aren’t a thing” Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party.
The New Democratic Party’s downing has prompted two main elucidations. Mulcair’s defenders suggest his national election loss was merely a result of strategic voting against the nearly decade-long governance of Harper’s Conservatives, rather than a symptom of Mulcair’s weakness.
Others suggest Mulcair ran too far to the right when he said Canada ought to balance its federal budget. Reminder, his platform included a federal childcare program, a nationalized pharmaceutical program, a federal minimum wage of $15/hour, higher corporate taxes and the elimination of interest rates on student loans. If Mulcair thought he could deliver on these promises whilst balancing the budget, he’s not qualified to work as a cashier,let alone Prime Minister – but if this guy was too conservative for you Leninist lemmings, you’re going to love what’s coming next.
The Leap Manifesto, a neo-Marxist policy platform cooked up by socialist couple Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein, has officially been embraced by the party base. Re-branding the original creed of the Soviet Union as “environmentalism,” the far-left party now aims to run a scorched earth campaign against the fossil fuel industry.
The Manifesto reads like a seven-year-old’s Christmas letter to Santa, with passages claiming that reductions in taxation and government spending constitute “a threat to life on earth”:
“We declare that ‘austerity’ – which has systematically attacked low-carbon sectors like education and healthcare, while starving public transit and forcing reckless energy privatizations – is a fossilized form of thinking that has become a threat to life on earth.”
Where will the money come from, you ask? According to the LEAP Manifesto, Canada has trillions of dollars, all just a few pieces of legislation away from the hands of NDP politicians:
“The money we need to pay for this great transformation is available — we just need the right policies to release it. Like an end to fossil fuel subsidies. Financial transaction taxes.Increased resource royalties. Higher income taxes on corporations and wealthy people. A progressive carbon tax. Cuts to military spending. All of these are based on a simple ‘polluter pays’ principle and hold enormous promise.”
Looking towards the future, this gives the Canadian Conservative Party a sound opportunity to retake Ottawa in four years.
In a political landscape where both left-wing parties prioritize political grandstanding vis-à-vis environmentalism, we can attract traditionally liberal-voting blue collar workers whose livelihoods are de facto brushed away, just so a few NDP politicians and their supporters can feel morally superior.
Harry Khachatrian. 