NDP Leadership Convention 2017

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"Jesus announces run for NDP Leadership"

.... Does he speak French fluently? No? DISQUALIFIED.

Speaking some amount of French is important, that's clear, but to be completely disqualifying or qualifying candidates as Leader based on that sole attribute, even if it is important, is reckless.

Sorry but we have two official languages in Canada. If you cannot express yourself in both of them then you have no business seeking the leadership of a national political party. Its as simple as that. Can anyone imagine a unilingual francophone running to lead the NDP or the CPC and people accepting him or her after being told "don't worry he'll learn English"? (thought so)

It MIGHT have been acceptable for the NDP to have a leader who spoke poor French back in 1989 or 1995 or 2003 when the party had no support at all in Quebec and there was nothing to lose. But even back then it was always an issue. One of the main reasons why Dave Barrett lost the leadership to Audrey McLaughlin in 1989 was his total inability to speak French (and he didn't help matters when he said "so what i also don't speak Chinese"). In 1995 the NDP picked MacDonough, whose French was abysmal and the party was rewarded with 2% in Quebec in 2000. In 2003 one of the factors that gave Layton  an edge over Blaikie was the fact that he had Quebec roots and spoke passable French compared to Blaikie who spoke no French whatsoever ("don't worry he will take a crash course and become fluent in a few month we were told" yeah right).

I'm just saying that if being able to speak French was important back when the NDP had non-existent support in French, its not going to suddenly be LESS important when the NDP has 16 seats in Quebec.

FWIW, Peter Julian is very fluent in French. Charlie Angus's French seems to be a work in progress. He has a base, but his French is surprisingly poor for someone who has been MP for a riding that is 40% francophone since 2004 and who has had access to free state of the art French lessons that all MPs get for the last 12 years. Still, I'd give Angus a chance. He can make conversation and he can understand. What would be ludicrous would be someone like Sid Ryan running to be leader and speaking no French whatsoever and i mean NONE. i have never even heard him say "bonjour". That would be an outrage and would be seen as an insult to French Canada.

Why are so few NDP politicians (and would be politicians bilingual) in the first place? Some people speculated about Avi Lewis - but again he speaks ZERO French. What's his excuse? He grew up in the 70s when French immersion was very much "in vogue" among the English Canadian intelligentsia and he was sent to private schools in Toronto.

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On At Issue there was talk about Jagmeet Singh and also speculation that Nathan Cullen would change his mind and run for the job after all

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There is nothing in the NDP constitution that allows for having co-leaders of a party and i doubt if Elections Canada would allow that either. Its possible that at a future NDP policy convention (I believe the next one is slated for sometime in 2018) one could try to get delegates to vote a 2/3 majority to change the party constitution so that instead of there being a leader there are two co-leaders but of course that could not apply retroactively.

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It's too bad that Ruth Ellen Brosseau decided to not run, she has a lot of potential.

Her time will come.

I just hope she doesn't lose her seat in 2019, those Quebec voters are quite fickle...

If I recall correctly, she was the only NDP MP to increase their vote share in the last election, so that gives me a bit of hope though.

Guy Caron did as well, but he's totally unknown.

Pierre Luc Dussault also increases his margin in Sherbrooke

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I believe Boulerice also increased his margin a lot in 2015 compared to 2011 and if i'm not mistaken Helene Laverdiere beat Duceppe by more in 2015 than in 2011

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Yeah Boulerice got 51% in 2011 and 49% in 2015 but his margin went way up because the BQ vote collapsed and the non-NDP vote was more evenly split between BQ and Liberals

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Caron has quit shadow cabinet to consider a bid, will decide by month's end.

Translation - he is definitely running!

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Am still skeptical Singh leaves Queen's Park.

Jagmeet is running for the federal leadership...he is playing coy for now but he already has a campaign team working

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I find Ashton to be a bit of an annoying dingbat. But i hope she runs since it would look bad not to have any women in the contest

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Ashton entering next week.

I'm pleased that there will be at least one woman in the race, but I find Niki Ashton to be trite, tedious and strident.

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and Chisholm and Saganash both dropped out of the race long before the actual vote took place. Even if Nash and Dewar had won their seats, I doubt if either would have run again. Dewar was really humiliated last time when he only got 7% of the vote and his French is as awful as ever. Nash is now in her mid-60s and underwhelmed a bit last time so i can't see her doing it again.

Of all the people who ran for the NDP leadership in 2012, the only people who I could really see running again were Cullen and Ashton

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Ashton wins Cheri DiNovo's (Parkdale-High Park) support... I think, maybe someone who pays for iPolitics can confirm?

That seems like strange timing. Ashton is not even formally running yet and has made no announcement...usually the endorsements happen at the earliest when a candidate announces...or later...not before!! But there have been rumours for some time about DiNovo's mental health

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I have a lot of time for Megan Leslie and I would have liked to have her in the race but her French is just as abysmal as Charlie Angus's

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Ryan will decide by month's end.

He explicitly says that the next leader of the NDP must be bilingual and admits that he speaks no French.

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I find it interesting that the NDP might be optimistic enough to think Canadians will elect a brown guy Prime Minister.

Are we not supposed to say that? I have no faith in our people whatsoever.

The US is a much more racist society than Canada and yet they twice a elected a black president names Barack HUSSEIN Obama.

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I like everything about Charlie Angus...except his French is no where near good enough

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I like everything about Charlie Angus...except his French is no where near good enough

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I like everything about Charlie Angus...except his French is no where near good enough

He represents one of the most Francophone ridings in Ontario. I think he's good in that regard. Love him!

The fact that Angus represents a heavily francophone riding in northern Ontario makes it even more inexplicable and inexcusable that his French is as bad as it is.

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To me Leap is just a platudinous statement of principles most of which are just sentiments, e,g, we must do more for poor people and First Nations and we need in invest more in renewable energy etc.) we can debate whether it's good politics or not but I don't see how the economy of Timmins lives or dies based on some vague motherhood sentiments - most of which the federal Liberal government has already implicitly agreed to by signing the Paris agreement

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To me Leap is just a platudinous statement of principles most of which are just sentiments, e,g, we must do more for poor people and First Nations and we need in invest more in renewable energy etc.) we can debate whether it's good politics or not but I don't see how the economy of Timmins lives or dies based on some vague motherhood sentiments - most of which the federal Liberal government has already implicitly agreed to by signing the Paris agreement

It's not hard to connect the dots from platitudes to policies though. Leap's platitudes are anti-resource extraction, so it follows that it's supporters policies would be too if they ever formed government. If one's livelihood depends on resource extraction, one can hardly be blamed for opposing Leap.

If you take that view than shouldn't anyone working in resource extraction also reject the Paris Agretany Canadian government policies that commit to major bugs in GHG emissions? If we actually wanted to meet our commitments we would pretty much have to bring in Leap style policies!

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The conventional wisdom used to be that most Ontarians were homophobic as well - especially in places like northern Ontario...didn't stop them from voting for Kathleen Wynne (who isa  dreadful Premier for reasons having nothing to do with her sexuality).

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Jagmeet Singh is IN. He is launching his campaign on Monday.

It can't hurt his prospects that he spent four days campaigning for NDP candidates in suburban Vancouver last week and the NDP sweats all the areas of Surrey and delta where he campaigned. For the NDP to have done that well in Surrey the Sikh community must have swung its votes pretty decisively behind the NDP

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I see no reason why Jagmeet needs to get into Parliament before the 2019 election (when he would almost certainly run in his home riding of Brampton East). He could ask Mulcair to stick around and lead the party in the House for the next two years while he spends the time crisscrossing the country drumming up support. Trudeau had a seat in Parliament the whole time he was leader of the third place Liberals - but he was so seldom in the House that he may as well not have had a seat at all.

IF (a big IF) Jagmeet Singh did want to get into parliament sooner it would have to be relatively safe seat with an MP who is older and who may want an exit strategy anyways and ideally it would be in Ontario. There are two ridings that come to mind - Hamilton Centre where Christopherson is getting old and Windsor West where Brian Masse has been MP for 17 years now (though he not that old) but Windsor has the added bonus of being Jagmeet's hometown

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Plus she will get a certain amount of support just by virtue of being the only woman in the race

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Angus is not against free post secondary education. He simply challenged those proposing it to present a real plan to implement it including how it would funded and how to deal with the provinces which have 100% jurisdiction over education. These are perfectly valid points and I hope people who want free post secondary plan to address these issues.