Is this a good idea?

In the short run it will mean getting rid of Iggy, but is it good for the long term health of our democracy?

pondering, Alex.   I dont' quite know what to think.  Tomorrow morning is looking better.   Good to hear someone on that end of the spectrum is talking about big change though.

2 thoughts.

1.  The status quo is not good for the long term health of Canadian democracy.

2.  The same sort of merger forned the current Conservative Party.  I'm thinking such a move between the Liberals and the NDP might be a good idea.  At least short term it might stop the string of spaghetti Parliaments. 

I'd say go for it. 

I think it is a good idea. It is good that they are at least talking. It could be a good thing if they take the good from each party and build on that.

It worried me though to hear people speak of the "Liberal Brand" and concern that this would water it down. What the heck is the Liberal Brand these days anyway? Do they stand for anything? Is their image or brand worth saving lately?

Really I'm surprised the two parties think the Conservatives are so hard to beat that they need to team up to take them down. I would've thought they would've considered it a cakewalk this time 'round. In any event, it doesn't matter much to me. The merger would just create another big party which if elected would just put in place another all-too-big government.

Libs & NDP, hmmm.  well, it declares that Red Tories are abandoned.  It leaves them with no place, as in recent years a number of former Progressive Conservatives felt alienated by the merger of the right.  Harper has not left room for them.  So now the middle swings left, and the PCs with a heart & soul are left homeless.

I choose Green over NDP, personally, and so this merger doesn't excite me as much as others who glow orange.  (perhaps I'm Green with envy??)  What I wonder is whether this gives the Libs, NDP (& the Greens) a chance to reconfigure everything - with the Greens too, since their policies are so great, but their name is so confining. 

With the NDP & Libs being the 2 traditional alternatives to Conservative, and the Greens not yet in the mainstream, that explains why the Greens are ignored.  BUT the NDP has policies on the workforce, on labour, etc that will pull the Liberals far to the left, or how can the NDP stomach this merger?  It leaves a gaping whole in the middle, I think, or the NDP have sold out.  On most other issues, this is easy, but labour relations and the labour lobby groups are not giving up.

I'll be back in a bit...

The NDP are just Liberals with an attitude and a pseudo-socialist twist.  The NDP has had an image issue in parts of Canada (I'm not sure if that's still the case.)  It would probably be good for the UCC since the United Church is just the NDP at prayer (I'm being facetious, so don't send me nasty replies).  The NDP had Bill Blaikie who made them look good, but now he's out of federal politics and now wants to be King of Manitoba (again, I'm being a bit facetious.  I'm in a weird mood today)  Are they that threatened by Steven Harper?  Personally, I like the guy.  It could have been worse.  Jack Layton and the NDP could have been in power.  (As you can see, I don't like the NDP.  As a student, years ago, I worked in an auto plant for the summer.  I was threatened for not saying to the union reps that I would vote NDP in an upcoming election.)

It confirms what I have thought and said for a while - that the NDP stopped being the voice of new thought some time ago.  I continue to say the hinge moment was the last leadership campaign, but the process had been underway for some time before that.  So, it can be a good idea, if it means that something new emerges to truly speak for progressive thought, to challenge the status quo of this badly broken society, to champion and speak for those with no voice.

But I doubt it.

Sorry - I'm editing this because RevMatt slipped a comment in after Joejack - so regarding Joejack's post:  the bit of your post that isn't facetious holds the content though - I think the big question is how much pull the labour unions will have on the new party, because that has been the defining factor of the NDP  in my mind.   I see little difference in social policy, (what the UCC likes), except that in the same brain as Union VS Business, NDP frames it as Little Guy VS Big Guy.  Liberals have avoided dividing their policies that way.

Perhaps though, in a merger, the Unions will be angry and abandoned (as are possibly the Red Tories), but where will they go?  They won't vote Conservative, so their choice is still the new party.  Maybe that means less of a stronghold on policy, and so a demand for moderation of Union demands.  The opposite response then is more impact of business.  Does that balance things out? We can hope.

I think the best opposition to Harper's hard Right is a wide Center with respected empowered left advocates.

(but we ought to plan such a major shift looking to a future of a less harsh Right wing Conservative party)

Sadly, Matt, we all must sit with the idea that even we will be the old voice sooner or later.  (egads!!)

The Green picked up that mantle (new ideas) awhile ago, mostly because the NDP is fettered by Unions (who have served an important role) who became too political and less people-centered. 

My hope is that the new party will look like the Greens, but with a broader, carefully considered political name. 

I saw a cartoon once that considered new party names (around the time of the Alliance) - something like:

• Conservative Republican Alliance People = C.R.A.P
• Democratic Order Revisionist Capitalists - D.O.R.C
• New Environmentalist Republican Democrats = N.E.R.D
• and so on. 

 The unions have no more power inside the NDP. I understand the reason the Liberals are interested in a merger. The NDP has money. The Liberals are broke and have no base to raise money from, unlike the Conservatives and NDP.

The NDP wants to stop the bleed of its provincial members in Saskachewan and BC, into the federal liberals and they think they can have a bigger impact inside government.

What worries me is that the NDP used to be an incubator of new ideas. Being a third party meant they were able to promote ideas outside the mainstream, until they became mainstream.  The Liberals in the UK did much of the same on issues like gay rights, and supporting peace against war.

I do not see any new ideas from the Greens, at best they are just the old Progressives from the Progressive Conservative Party., except they have jettison any concern for the poor and the developing world. they did this by embracing free markets, unfettered by anthing but environmental concerns.  Green Parties elsewhere in the world support social justice and minority rights, while in Canada they have abandoned these principles.  free markets are good, but they need limits and boundries which understand the need markets and societies have for social justice, education, a substainable environment and more..

Who will speak for the poor and other unpopular groups?

I hope that instead of merging, they decide to run a joint slate just for the next election with the intention of reforming our electoral system. We need propotional representation in Parliment or some other system, that will enable minority viewpoints to be heard in Ottawa. I believe we need more diverse voices, and more honest cooperation between them. We need both principled and pragmatic voices.  

The actions of the Tories are driving this because they have no intention or reason to cooperate with others.  If they win a majority they will distroy our markets and progressive change, just as Bush did in the US.

I want Jack Layton for PM!!!! This could do it.

Brilliant idea!

(Suck it up Joejack!)

 If this happens I can see Thomas Muclair being the new leader.  The Liberals would never accept jack.

Is there any answer I could give to that without getting censored by Admin.  I think I'll pass. One of us has to be the adult here, I guess.

Bill Blaikie is the only NDP I'd trust, and he's no longer there. They really screwed up when they turned him down for leader.

 Bill Blaikie was my second choice, after an unknown  guy from Quebec who was a practicing Catholic, and thus had  simliar viewpoints to Bill. However he was bilingual and Bill is not.

Jack speaks passable French, but since he grew up in Quebec, (in a privelged old anglo family) electing him is an insult to French speaking Quebecers, and English speaking Quebecers who decided to stay and learn French, rather than leave Quebec for Toronto.   This makes it unlikely that he could win many seats in Quebec.

He would make an excellant cabinet minister or deputy leader.

In the last election, the Conservatives won 143 seats. Together the Liberals and NDP won 114.  In the popular vote, the Conservatives had 37.6 and the Lib/NDP had 42.4% . It doesn't take a genius to see the advantage to uniting the centre left.  Much stronger united than just allied.

It will certainly be the last breath of the CCF as an influence to bring new ideas to the table. The NDP started the drift away from creativity when it courted the union vote and its money by forming the NDP. Now, even the ghost will leave.

The Liberals have survived by being a party financed by big business, but stealing enough CCF/NDP ideas to get a majority vote. As a result, the Liberals bring nothing to the table except ties to big business.

And neither party has a leader of any quality.

It's hard to get excited.

Hi Joejack... yeah!

You can be the grown-up. I was just pissing about. I try not to think too much about Canadian politics... it makes me cynical and depressed ...I start saving for air fares and that's bad for the planet.

Simplistic. The numbers don't tell the whole story. It assumes that all Liberals are centre-left and would actively support and vote for a centre-left party. From personal experience I know that a lot of Liberals are centre-right (which is one reason that the Grits traditionally campaign from the left and then govern from the right.) The centre-right Liberals wouldn't be at all happy with a merger with the NDP. We need a new, broadly-based centrist party - most Liberals, moderate NDP'ers, Greens, the former "progressive" Conservatives. The Liberal "brand" seems to have lost its magic.

Out of the new centrist party could also come an honestly socialist party - the left wing of today's NDP. Then there would be a clear choice - a right wing party, a centrist party and a left wing party. And if we could resurrect the old Rhinoceros Party, so much the better!

That sounds attractive. The old CCF had far more political influence based on the appeal of its new ideas than the NDP has with its shift to centre. I think you could get some progressive conservatives and Greens to support such a party.

 Things are getting interesting. All the "officials" in both party are denying what Kinsella is claiming. In response he has sworn in an affidavit that what he claims is true. As well another Liberal has done the same to support Kinsella.   The other Liberal also added that Joe Clark  is also involved the talks for a new party!

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Liberal+strategist+swears+affidavit+that+merger+talks+with+works/3133058/story.html

 It seems possible to me that Kinsella is playing politics at a very high level. I can imagine that what he claims is true, and that he went public to test the water with Canadians, after the talks started to fail. These talks seems to involve senior stateman/women of both political parties including people like Romanow, Broadbent, former PM Chretian. By involving Joe Clark, perhaps what they envision is what Rev Stephan Davis has laid out.

After he lost the leadership race years ago,  people like Judy Rebick and other prominant non NDP leftists were involved with Svend Robinson and other left wing New Democrats in talks about forming a new left wing party.  Surely that will happen if the NDP establishment decides to go with a new party. 

However I see most Greens as being to the right of the Conservatives on economics. The current leader is progressive, but living in Ottawa Centre, where the Greens achieve their highest number of votes, you can see how the Greens are actually right wingers.   The Ottawa Centre candidate came second to the new leader, in their leadership race, likely because she had better poll numbers.  Subsequent to this the Ottawa centre candidate became deputy Green leader, but than left to go work for Stephen Harper's Conservative government. However the New Leader has still not been able to get the Greens to adopt either centrist or innovative ideas on health care, education, or international affairs. They are more like Libertarians with an exception for the environment.

 Hi Alex,

I too was intrigued when I saw Joe Clark's name (and Roy McMurtry's) pop up in connection with this proposal this morning. Not that he'd be a significant player in leadership or anything - he's 71 now, but his stamp of approval would be a signal to other moderate conservatives that this suggestion was OK. It also suggests that the discussions haven't just been about a Liberal-NDP merger, but about a potential new party of moderates. Frankly, I don't think it will happen, but it's interesting to watch as the story unfolds.

Here's a pretty good explanation of why a simple Liberal-NDP merger or alliance in the next election won't work:

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/821415--parties-basic-differences-rule-out-liberal-ndp-merger

 That is an excellant analysis.

I would tend to agree except I have this thought that Chrétien did something to Canadian Politics that changes everything. Much like when the internet was created, we could not forsee how it would change things in society, I believe Chrétien electoral party finance reforms is  changing our  democracy in Canada in ways that we cannot foresee. We underestimate the importance of money in politics.

ICanada due to the need to accomadate differences created by living with French speaking peoples, and immigrants created a climate where pragmatism reigned. A significant minority of Canadian business people, unlike business people elsewhere saw the benefit not only of accomadating minorities, but also accepted and saw the benefit of certain aspects of socialism, like universal health care.  They fought it, and many still do, but many appreciate the competitive advantage certain socialist ideas give business.  

However politics was something most stayed out of, and as a result Politics was dominated by certain groups that would finance political parties. Unions, and Biog business, including foreign owned businesses financed our parties.

When Chretian created public financing and barred corporations, Unions, donations completley and rich people from giving large donations, he did so using the Adscam scandal as a reason. The NDP supported it to created a more level playing field.

However what it also did was remove the middlemen/women from Canadian politics. This is why the right wing idealogues were able to take control of the conservatives. Idealogues are those most likely to donate money to politics.   This is why the PC collapsed, and a major reason why the Liberals are in trouble. Before business supported these parties, and had rejected the Reform Party and the NDP. Business stopped supporting the PCs before the new law on finance reforms and demanded that the Alliance and the PCs merged. While the NDP never got enough to compete from the Unions. Public financing, and donations from idealogues of the left and other constituencies (social justice types, equity groups and so on) of the NDP make the NDP competitive today. The Liberals core support was in English Montreal, francophones outside Quebec and the Ottawa area, and they have abandoned the Liberals, because they saw in adscam the damage that comes from relying on one party to represent federalism.  They cannot raise money as easily as other parties.

At the same time the NDP has come to understand the limitations on their ideas in todays world.   Gary Doer's NDP in Manitoba, was in many ways to the right of the Liberals in Ontario. The best example of this is when you look at how welfare and disability supports were increased in Ontario and decreased in Manitoba. 

While the federal Liberals like Iggy might be opposed to a new party, I believe Kinsella (who is likely speaking for Chretian) knows that if they can get enough public support for a new party, than they will be able to force the leadership to do so, because the middlemen have no power and the people through our donations do.

The different groups inside the NDP ( all but the left of the party) are likely to support what people like Broadbent and the Western Provincial Leaders) support, especially if the new party changes the nomination system to include all supporters, and not just members. They would do so knowing that corporate donations, and large donations from the rich are banned.

Creating a system  that is half French and half American. The French have a run off election for the top two candidates, while the US two main parties have poltical parties (including social democrats) inside which support different candidates during primaries which have universal sufferage.   They would have to show how it would work like the French system,  accepting that our system would have to be managed inside parties like in the US. 

This would address some of the problems mentioned in the article, but not all.  However what makes it a serious proposal, is that because of Chretians reforms for political financing, it will be decided by the people who donate and what they want. (just as corporate donors forced the PCs to merge with the Alliance)  Donors will do so, not only because it will help them win elections, but also because  many will assume, especially NDPers that it is not necessary to win elections, but to create a real threat to the conservatives. The NDP knows that many of it's victories came from not winning elections, but by forcing the Liberals and the Conservatives to move to the centre and the left.    

Likewise, Thatcher in the UK said that one of her biggest achievements, was in forcing Labour to the centre left, away from the far left.

NDP donors would have there fears of a corporate run party settled by a good party constitution, while right wing Liberals would assume that the majority of electors are moderates, and the additional presence of former Progressive Conservatives, like Clark, McMurtry and others that reject the neo-cons. As well they have good reasons to fear that a broke Liberal party would never be large enough to challenge a well financed NDP and Conservative Party, and by the pressing need to have a strong federaly for National Unity, and to ensure the Conservatives have competion that will address the environment and international affairs. Many in business understand, that if we do not address these issues, there children will not have a healthy world to live in, nor a healthy market to make money. Federalists in Quebec will see it as a chance to shed the adscam scandal and cleanse the federalist with the likes of well liked and the respected integrity of Broadbent and Joe Clark.

Kinsella (Chretian) likely know this and is making a big power move that they hope that LIberal donors will accept.

 I am not sure through if it is a good thing in the long term. I would prefer a porportional representation system, but that is unlikely to happen.

I don't buy this crap! I have been NDP for 30 years, and was a Riding Assn. president. The membership would never allow this to happen. The organization of the party wouldn't allow it. No person or group has the authority to negotiate for the New Democrats.

This is an elaborate smokescreen by the Conservative press to shift the focus from their pork barrelling orgy known as G-8 and G-20. It's just good old Conservative dirty politics.

The NDP isn't leadership oriented, it is extremely democratic. Discussions cannot even start without a full national convention, and the membership is far too idealistic to approve such political maneuvering. While there may possibly be some Liberals making overtures, they would be completely one-sided.

It's more than a smokescreen, but probably won't happen.

The idea of an "arrangement" between Liberals and NDP has been around for a very long time - as long as there's been an NDP basically. There have been tentative steps taken at times - Pierre Trudeau's offer of a coalition to Ed Broadbent after the 1980 federal election; the deal between David Peterson and Bob Rae in Ontario after the 1985 election; the actual Saskatchewan coalition government in the 90's; the Dion-Layton coalition idea in 2008. That such talk would rise again isn't surprising given what seems to be the never-ending minority Conservative government that can't get much higher than 35% in the polls at best but also can't seem to be beaten. Actual proposals to "merge" the parties haven't really appeared formally, though, and I don't think this is such a proposal. This seems to be more of what I've been promoting for a long time - a new, moderate, centrist party. I was heavily involved in the federal Liberal Party in the 80's, and even then (even when the Party was in power from 80-84) there was such talk in some circles of forming a new centrist party - I can remember the name "People's Party of Canada" being very tentatively thrown around behind the scenes. (That name would have been rejected because it sounds too "communist" - like the People's Republic of China - but it demonstrated the desire for a more member-responsive party.)  It was based largely on the idea that the Liberal Party was essentially dead and buried in the West and was too top-heavy and unresponsive to the grassroots in the East and that something needed to be done to give Westerners a viable option to the PCs and the grassroots across the country more power. I'm not involved anymore, but I don't know that the "top-heavy" problem has ever been resolved. Eventually, Westerners of course got that viable option, but it turned out to be the Reform Party.

A coalition is very different. from a merger. The parties still remain autonomous - just co-operating in a government or a mutual activity.

By custom. NDP caucuses are extremely democratic, voting within themselves on all issues, while the other parties are top-down organizations.

Agreed, SLJudds. Warren Kinsella has some remaining axes to grind, it would appear, and his claims are not credible. Besides, any of the former big names in either party can talk about whatever they want, it's really up to the memberships to consent...which, as we've seen in this talk of a merger, is a non-starter in this case.

A coalition is what Jack and Stephane Dion worked out last time and what the parties in the UK have just agreed to. Jack and Stephane were ahead of their time and the Conservatives engaged in their campaign of lies to discredit the Liberals and NDP so as to retain power. Many Canadians believed their BS and have since been governed in the way people chose at the time, so while I abhor the legislation of this Conservative minority that the Liberals keep shoring up, we (collectively) are getting what we (collectively) asked for.

Perhaps following the next election, should it result in another minority government, talk of an accord or a coalition will be appropriate and desired, now that Britain has gone down that road and Canadians have seen that this form of government is legitimate. I have to laugh at our PM -- saying that the previous arrangement between the NDP and the Liberals would have been a "coalition of losers" at exactly the time he was playing host to Netanyahu, who leads just such a coalition in Israel. I wonder how Harper's guest felt about that.

Mergers are different - far more complicated, and that would involve a change in philosophy for both parties, as well as a majority agreeing to go that route. Neither are very likely, irrespective of the bad history between the two parties where the Liberals renegged on their signed consent to the coalition in 2008.