The Cowardice of Left Anti-Communism: A Reply to David Camfield

The attack on the Communist Party of Canada by David Camfield recently published in Passage doesn't merit a response, but rather necessitates one. That is to say, the arguments made in the piece aren't good ones, but left unresponded to they may mislead young radicals exactly in the manner that Camfield erroneously charges against the Communist Party of Canada. In the piece, which is itself a response to Kimball Cariou's exemplary article 'Canada Still Needsa Communist Party,' Camfield makes a number of charges. The most prominent of these charges is the least compelling, and is in large bold letters at the top of the page: "Since the 1950s, Canada's Communist Party has lacked the size, and degree of influence on a mass scale, needed to be a genuine party." What is one even to do with this? What is this argument other than an incoherent tautology? The Communist Party of Canada has lacked size and influence, so therefore it ought not have size and influence? It hasn't been sizable or influential, so its growing size and influence ought to be checked? Nothing in the following paragraphs in any way turns this frustrated lament into an actual argument. But beneath the charge that the Communist Party of Canada cannot be a revolutionary force in Canadian politics lies a more insidious and bitter argument, that the Communist Party of Canada ought not be a revolutionary force in Canadian politics.

The real substance of David Camfield's argument is that he simply doesn't want young people to fall under the sway of the Communist Party of Canada. He portrays them in the manner of Socrates' accusers: corrupting the youth. But the fact of the matter is that the Communist Party of Canada is growing in size and influence not because of the nefarious machinations of its elder members, but rather because its positions are right and principled. This is what Camfield is actually attacking, the taking and holding of principled positions whatsoever, and that is precisely why young people are gravitating towards them.

On the front of Social Democracy, Jagmeet Singh is undeniably an improvement over Thomas Mulcair, and does not deserve the racist treatment he has received in the House of Commons. And yet, it is no accident that while a majority of NDP MPs have denounced the Israeli annexation of the West Bank, he and Randal Garrison have not. On foreign policy most of all the NDP compromises with and reproduces imperialist falsehoods and reaction. The Communist Party of Canada does not do this, ever. At no point does the Communist Party of Canada split the difference with those who champion and cheerlead for Israeli apartheid, or the disastrous and bloody war in Yemen, or reproduce the grotesque sinophobia being promoted by US Empire today. On the foreign affairs front that is why young people are inspired by the line of the Communist Party of Canada, it is not an aftereffect, something smuggled in after the fact, it is rather the reason that young people are turning to them. The same is true of domestic politics and a resolute commitment to justice for working class people and indigenous people.

Older Social Democrats, or more broadly older Trotskyists, are allergic to principle, to belief, to solidarity with global class struggle. So long have they prefaced anything resembling socialist principle with qualifiers and disclaimers of responsibility that all that remains are the qualifier and disclaimers. And worse, they hold forth their qualifications and disclaimers as a virtue in and of themselves. 'We are the real left,' they claim, 'because we have for so long denounced the left.' And that is all that remains, paranoiac denunciations and pious idealism. That is what David Camfield's argument amounts to 'don't fall under the sway of the Communist Party of Canada, who have solidarity with Palestinians and Yemenis and Chinese people, instead hold fast to doing nothing and believing in nothing.'

Ultimately the dispute has little to nothing to do with the Communist Party of Canada itself, the institution and its personages. The fact that the Communist Party of Canada expresses the principled anti-imperialist positions domestically and internationally that it does merely exposes those for whom those positions are anathema. That allergy, that remove, that refusal to have unwavering and unequivocal love and solidarity for working class and indigenous struggle against the Canadian State and Capital at home, and unwavering and unequivocal love and solidarity for actually existing socialist states and minoritarian movements abroad, is what young people are rejecting and moving away from. The fashionable nihilism of the geriatric and deteriorating 'new left' is no longer fashionable, and they are enraged. That is the substance of David Camfield's objection to the Communist Party of Canada, that they believe too much, and are encouraging younger people to believe too much.

Whether one chooses to become involved with the Communist Party of Canada or not - and I am neither a member nor do I speak for the Party - I wholeheartedly encourage everyone, especially young working people, young indigenous people and young marginalized people, to read and study their program 'Canada's Future is Socialism!' adopted and ratified at the 39th Central Convention of the Communist Party of Canada. This document is the gold standard of contemporary Socialism. Not only do critics like David Camfield not offer a credible alternative to this program, they lack the ability to. Their argument is, in effect, that it is wrong and dangerous to so earnestly and unreservedly endorse such an unvarnished socialist program. This argument is failing to gain traction precisely because young people are exhausted with late capitalism and are sick of exactly the kind of compromise and complicity that saturates Camfield's critique.

Young people are not being duped, misled, scammed, grifted, or anything else left anti-communist allege. Young people, working people, indigenous people and marginalized people are inspired and united by rigorous critique and principle, and that is why its critics launch such facile attacks against the Communist Party of Canada today.

Anticommunist Sinophobia by Any Other Name

One thing I have never been good, or able to do whatsoever really, is compartmentalize. The cognitive dissonance I see in others I cannot understand, and very often I simply throw my hands up at what appears to me to be obvious, glaring hypocrisy. I accept, however, on an abstract level, that other people may not be associating things together in the same way that I do, that they do not see how two things are connected and logically refute one another.

So, I'll give you an example. Today a reporter I know on the one hand retweeted Mayor of Port Coquitlam Brad West's ignorant one-sided polemics against Huawei on twitter, while on the other tweeted condemning anti-asian hate-crimes ginned on by racist and sinophobic sentiment on the part of public officials. To my mind, these things are inextricable from one another. There is functionally no difference whatsoever between the rhetoric of Brad West and Mike Pompeo. They are equally complicit in inflaming ignorance and sinophobic hate-crimes.

The rhetoric of Brad West is not saved because he is 'nobly' demanding the release of Global Affairs Canada spooks Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, precisely because he elides, ignores and obscures that this country, Canada, took an illegal economic hostage first.

The responses are incredible to pointing out that (1) Wanzhou has broken no Canadian law; (2) what she is accused of breaking are unilateral American sanctions against Iran; and (3) those unilateral US sanctions were declared illegal in 2018 by the International Court of Justice. It amounts to a shrug, 'oh, someone in our government signed off on it, so it is okay.' No, it absolutely isn't. The fact that Meng Wanzhou was illegally detained, contrary to the terms of the extradition treaty, which explicitly requires that the alleged offence be an offence in both jurisdictions, which it is not, was already a mortifying embarrassment for a liberal-democracy claiming that kidnapping a hostage for Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo has anything to do with the 'rule of law.' Now, in the context of the Coronavirus, where Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo are refusing to participate in global coordination on medical relief efforts unless it is called 'Wuhan Virus' and those unilateral US sanctions restricting vital medical supplies are currently murdering people in Iran, complicity with American anti-Communism and Sinophobia is even more loathsome and inscrutable.

What Brad West does, with his jingoistic sabre-rattling, is racist opportunism. He preys on Sinophobic sentiment for political gain. Parsing the 'good' anti-Chinese sentiment from the bad, trying to claim that your anti-Chinese sentiment is noble and good, whereas the people murdering asian people because they are frightened and scared, and have been told by officials that China is bad and should be reviled, is bad, is a grotesque and self-indulgent spectacle.

Denouncing and condemning China because Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are detained while remaining uncritical towards the interests of US Empire and the radical anti-Chinese hatred emanating from the US right now is complicity, it is actively choosing to regurgitate the lies and falsehoods of US Empire, and it is at best indifference to the general atmosphere of sinophobia and hatred it fosters.

Yes, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor should be freed. So should Meng Wanzhou. We should disassociate ourselves from American state-sanctioned Sinophobic racism as much as possible, and so too should we dissociate ourselves from a corrupt and degenerating American Empire and its particular geopolitical ambitions. We should stop allowing Canadian sovereignty to be merely an appendage of racist apes like Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo.

Why the BCNDP Nerfed the Emergency Program Act

The BCNDP Government is irresponsibly putting the safety and security of British Columbians at significant risk by not ordering the closure of construction sites. In order to ensure that local authorities don't close them using the powers specifically and concertedly delegated to them under the Province's Emergency Program Act, RSBC 1996 legislation, the Provincial Government announced on Thursday that it was suspending all the emergency powers afforded to local authorities under the Act.

If you imagine legislation as something like the software which runs on the hardware of the State and its capacity to mobilize, the Emergency Program Act was specifically designed in contemplation that local authorities would take action in the event of a cross-Province emergency, and those specifically  delegated emergency powers are the mechanism by which they are supposed to be able to do that, by empowering their city managers, their fire chiefs, their police chiefs, to take actions which the local authority perceives would ameliorate risk or prevent the loss of life.

The suspension of local authority emergency powers by Premier John Horgan and Mike Farnworth is to force the LNG camps to stay open, over the objection of local authorities and the specific powers enumerated to them under the Emergency Program Act. The Emergency Program Act is specifically designed and structured such as to delegate emergency powers to local authorities to take the steps most necessary to protect their communities according to local conditions. Premier Horgan and Minister Mike Farnworth just gutted that ability.

Why have Premier Horgan and Mike Farnworth nerfed and gutted the Emergency Program Act? In other words, why have they abrogated the powers afforded to the local authorities under the Act? For the same reason Dr Bonnie Henry has not ordered the camps closed: they are prioritizing accumulation by dispossession over the safety and security of workers and British Columbians. They are prioritizing the interests of extractive industry over the safety of workers, First Nations peoples, and British Columbians generally. The 'coordinated approach' of Premier Horgan and Minister Mike Farnworth is in fact a vehicle to deprive municipalities of the life-saving emergency powers which were specifically contemplated for them in an event of an emergency precisely such as this one.

Of all the low-down half-measures pursued by this so-called 'social democrat' BCNDP government, insisting workers continue extractive industry in unsafe conditions while the First Nations they are dispossessing are compelled to take shelter is perhaps the most loathsome and vile. And, in order to facilitate that extractive industry in unsafe conditions against the wishes of the First Nations society concerned, Premier Horgan and Minister Mike Farnworth have effectively left British Columbia without a functional Emergency Program Act.

Local authorities who had depended on those emergency powers to pursue strategies of ameliorating the risks to their community, now cannot do so, the Province's legislative instrument for emergency management crippled, all to keep the man-camps churning, irrespective of the health concerns. Not closing the LNG camps, and gutting the Emergency Program Act to facilitate not closing the LNG camps, is a bloody albatross that ought to weigh on the shoulders of Premier Horgan, Minister Mike Farnworth, Minister Adrian Dix, and Doctor Bonnie Henry. These people are talking out of both sides of their mouths. From one side they say they are resolutely combating the health crisis, from the other they are sanctioning the exacerbation of the public health crisis by forcing unsafe work to transpire.

There are a million different circumstances in which it was specifically contemplated, and authorized by the Emergency Program Act, that a local authority would act for the interests of its specific locality. What Premier Horgan and Minister Farnworth have ensured is that now no municipality will be able to avail itself of the emergency powers authorized to it under the act, in order to ensure that some local authorities do not use those powers to interfere with resource extraction.

For a Provincial Government to gut the function of its own emergency powers legislation in entirety in the middle of a global pandemic in order to facilitate the continuity of unsafe extractive industry is criminal, cartoonish villainy. It is impossible that Premier Horgan, Minister Farnworth, Minister Dix and Doctor Henry do not know that what they are doing is reckless, irresponsible and unsafe. They have rather made a knowing, cynical calculation to exempt extractive industry, even though it is unsafe, even though it poses a significant public health risk. They have placed the interests of extractive corporations above those of the health, safety and security of all British Columbians, and, moreover, above the need for all local authorities to be able to delegate emergency powers in the midst of an emergency situation.

Section 13 of the Emergency Program Act, RSBC 1996 delegates to local authorities the powers enumerated in Section 10 (d) to (l). In order to unsafely keep LNG going, Premier Horgan and Minister Farnworth have just stripped local authorities of all of those powers. These are powers under S 13 of the Emergency Program Act like to control travel to and from areas, to cause evacuations, to construct structures, to authorize assistance, that is, vital measures that local authorities absolutely ought to have at their disposal.

When Premier Horgan says that stripping these powers from local authorities is meant to prevent 'leapfrogging,' what he means is that the BCNDP has decided to keep the LNG camps open irrespective of the risks, and has deleted any recourse of objection by local authorities. The purpose of Nerfing the Emergency Program Act is to ensure that municipalities do not restrict economic activity farther than the Provincial government is comfortable with, irrespective of local circumstances. They are placing the accumulation imperative above human lives and relations between settler-society and First Nations societies.

What Premier Horgan and Minister Farnworth have done in abrogating the emergency powers specifically afforded to the local authorities across British Columbia by the Emergency Program Act is enforce a minimal, blanket, one-size fits all non-response to the public health crisis. Does your municipal council feel travel ought to be restricted right now? Do they want to empower local police chief or fire chiefs to make necessary determinations about emergency measures? They can't anymore, because Premier Horgan and Minister Farnworth don't want them trying to close LNG camps.

Again: in a complete gutting of the carefully thought out Emergency Program Act, no local authority may now avail themselves of the emergency powers afforded to them by the act, because Premier Horgan and Minister Farnworth don't want some of them messing with LNG. Why even have an Emergency Program Act if, in an effort to exempt extractive industry, you are willing to gut the Act and deprive every local authority of their lawful authority to act to protect their communities in the ways they know best to do so?

There is something so insidiously grim about a so-called 'social democratic' government knowingly, cynically putting workers in harms way to ensure plunder during a global pandemic, and crippling the ability of all communities to respond to do so. Abrogating the powers of local authorities delegated to them by the Emergency Program Act leaves communities vulnerable, and for what? So Premier Horgan and Minister Farnworth can keep ramrodding through an LNG pipeline in recklessly, irresponsibly unsafe conditions.

'You Called Me a Liar:' The 2020 He-Said-She-Said that Wasn't

The last three days of 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate horse-trading has been goddamned looney-tunes. From the Neo-Keynesian dynamic duo of the first debates, suddenly Sanders and Warren are mortal enemies, betrayed and betrayer? It is ludicrous. If the CIA hadn't conceived of it they'll be studying it to deploy against social democrats the world over. The privately owned media have interjected strife between the world's two leading voices for left-liberal to social-democratic Keynesian political economic theory. It is a salacious, nonsense, reality TV gaffe trainwreck which has, unfortunately, world-historic significance. There are plenty of disingenuous smear tactics that weaponize identity politics against this or that politician who espouses class politics. Let me tell you why I believe this is different: what is disturbing is the lack of empathy for Warren's position, which is hypocritical with respect to the entire ontology of belief espoused by Sanders.

We believe women, but when a woman expresses that she thought something a male friend said to her was sexist then suddenly she is a liar turncoat who conspires with CNN to stab Bernie in the back? This is sub-comic-book level Manicheaen myopia, and the willingness to cast Warren into the ninth circle of hell for having not denied the allegation made that Senator Sanders said to her something which basically amounted to 'a woman can't win,' or 'is less likely to win,' or something effectively similar.

We know essentially what was said: The two spoke; both noted how Trump was a bigot and misogynist who would weaponize Senator Warren's gender against her. And maybe, just maybe, the good Saint Bernard, guiding light, lapsed Trot from Vermont, noted how Warren's gender would be weaponized against her so much, and emphasized how that cynical weaponization could, and would, be combated and overcome so little, that he inadvertently hurt and wounded a close friend and ally. The total inability to conceive that Bernie, human, fallible old man that he is, may err, may be in the wrong in a situation, is deeply disturbing, and belies Sanders essential message: that it is up to the whole of society to be critical.

Everything is explicable from the hot-mic meeting after the debate:

'I think you called me a liar on National TV.'

'What?'

'I think you called me a liar on National TV.'

'Let's not do this right now. You want to have that conversation, we can have that conversation.'

'Anytime.'

'You called me a liar. . . alright, lets not do this right now.'

Neither of them understands what the other is talking about. Both are absolutely certain that they are correct. Both of them are correct and neither of them are. It is not a case of 'he said, she said' from which we can divine no sense of the truth of the matter. Rather we can get a picture of exactly what the truth of the matter is, and it is right in the middle, at the border of 'noting Trump will do x' and actually being critical with respect to that, and being willing to challenge that. Senator Sanders maintains, quite rightly, that he would never ever say that a woman can't win the presidency, and I believe him. But did he follow up 'noting' how Trump would weaponize Warren's gender with an equally fulsome analysis of how the two could beat Trump nonetheless, or did he bootstrap off from that as a postulate to imply that he invariably ought to be the nominee? Senator Warren maintains, quite rightly, that she disagreed with Senator Sanders about whether a woman could win the presidency (importantly irrespective of whether Senator Sanders said as much and in those terms), and I believe her. But is she now allowing Senator Sanders to be suspected of saying 'a woman can't win' when in fact he simply didn't state positively 'a woman can win' in that particular conversation? Is this an important distinction? If you fail to positively state, in each and every instance, 'a woman can win,' are you therein contributing to and reproducing 'a woman can't win,' even if you don't say it in those terms?

Ultimately the situation is very sad. Two close friends are inscrutably fighting and being sharp with one another in front of a general audience. The gods clashing. Nobody is coming off well from this conflict, and how could they? Its one thing to be slandered by one's enemies and to slough them off, but it is quite another to be misunderstood by one's closest friends. It is unnerving and anxiety producing that these titans of policy and thought could be laid low by the kind of inexplicable family meltdown which punctuates the holidays. Acquiescing to this Sanders v Warren fight, to their supporters being acrimonious with one another, is boneheaded, self-indulgent pouting and catharsis. The most malign influences are ecstatic about the rift.

The non-aggression pact gave them both legitimacy and room for maneouver, now they have neither. 'She's a liar,' 'she's a traitor,' 'she's a snake,' these are really gross, knee-jerk oversimplifications, and they reflect really really badly on Sanders' support base. Hardcore Sanders fans don't seem to appreciate how tenuous and fledgling their little class-consciousness bloom actually is. In the short term the beneficiary is Biden, insofar as Sanders and Warren voters becoming inimical to one another cuts them off from each other's 15% to 20% of primary voters and caucus goers. In the long term the beneficiary is Trump insofar as what Trump requires to be elected, as in 2016, is a catastrophic rift between the Liberal Democratic and Social Democratic wings of the Democratic Party.

At the same time, Warren had an opportunity to push back against CNN's salacious framing of the conflict, and demurred from doing so. I don't want to endorse Senator Warren, or say that her political and economic plans are sufficient to the present moment, or that her baggage with Native American ancestry claimancy was legitimate or culturally sensitive, but just to say that it is okay to say that you don't think a friend was supportive enough, which is all she did. I don't want to detract from absolutely endorsing Senator Sanders by saying that the man is not god, that he is right politically and economically only in the very modest reformist context of the United States, and that I can very easily believe that in a conversation about how Trump would weaponize Senator Warren's gender, that Senator Sanders may have not emphasized that this could be overcome enough so as to not hurt and wound his friend. What we are looking at in this inscrutable upside-down through-the-looking-glass last three days is an open wound between two long-time friends and allies. On the one hand we ought not stare at that wound. We should let Senator Warren and Senator Sanders talk about what is evidently a strong disagreement between themselves. On the other hand we should acknowledge that the truth isn't binary, that what amounts to saying 'a woman can't be president' is not necessarily self-same with saying 'a woman can't be president.' Or is it? That's what this ought to be about, whether the distinction matters, not who is lying or telling the truth, but shades of what was emphasized, and how, and for what purposes?

Oil Chauvinism and the Western NDP Schism

The schism between the Federal NDP and the Alberta NDP cannot be, and should not be, papered over. It represents a real, material disagreement, and, in the case of the Alberta NDP, a massive departure from the policies and principles of the Federal NDP.

Having had my candidacy here in Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo for this past election blown up by the gotcha-sliming of Alberta NDP pipeline partisans, and having had to sit through an election while those same vestigial 'Alberta NDP' personalities slagged off and demeaned the leader of the Federal NDP, I think it is high time for the 'leadership' of the remnant, rump 'opposition' of the 'Alberta NDP' to be called out for oil chauvinism, climate change hypocrisy and reaction, denigrating and excluding ecologically conscious young socialists from the Alberta provincial party, and for making backroom deals with Liberals for pipelines.

Yesterday, on the CBC's Power and Politics, Alberta NDP 'leader,' Rachel Notley said of Federal NDP Leader, Jagmeet Singh, that "he needs to stop hurting jobs and accelerating anxiety around the kitchen tables in the province ofAlberta." For Rachel Notley to be phrasing this in such an insulting and incendiary way on the day that the BC NDP recognizes the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into Law is irresponsible, ignorant and petty. In unilaterally adopting ecocidal, oil-chauvinist policies, and insisting that they be made federal policies, Rachel Notely has 'accelerated anxiety' in all of Western Canada, and sown confusion and discord within social democracy.

Rachel Notely and the provincial NDP's 2015 win in Alberta was absolutely and wholly conjunctural, that is, it was dependent on and impossible without particular circumstances which no longer exist (oil crash, separation of Conservatives, etc.). For her to be slagging off the leader of the party, in the middle of an election, and dictating energy policy to the federal party, from her rump legislature, is ludicrous and treasonous. She got elected on a fluke and squandered it perpetuating the same ecocidal policies of her predecessors.

In 2015 Rachel Notley used the chaos in the aftermath of a Federal election to broker a unilateral backroom deal with Justin Trudeau, without consulting the party, and is now livid that her deal hasn't been accepted as de facto party policy. If she wants to challenge Jagmeet Singh for leadership of the federal party she should do so, otherwise she should either put a sock in it or shove off to the Liberals or Conservatives. If Jagmeet Singh wants to 'grow into the role as leader' he cannot simply respond to this with 'we will discuss this in private.' Rachel Notley is already explicitly not discussing this in private, she is discussing this in public. The 'leadership' of the Alberta NDP needs to be told to get its head on straight and, instead, the Federal party keep kowtowing to these kind of whiny denigrations of the leader's intelligence.

All Jagmeet Singh has been able to offer is in response is "I’m not going to negotiate what we’re going to fight for in media like this." Far be it for me to call the leader of the party naive and unlearned, as Rachel Notley and her sycophants did during the election, but this statement is nonetheless meek. I believe the Party is demonstrating a deficit of spine and backbone by not pushing back against Rachel Notley's public statements for oil companies and against the leader of the NDP, against the scientific consensus, and against serious action on climate change and reconciliation. Of course this must be litigated in public, there is no other means of doing so. Jagmeet Singh must negotiate what the NDP is going to fight for in the Media. That is literally his job now: to go out into the media and explain not only what the priorities of an NDP Government are, but why they are important, why they matter. If when confronted with pro-pipeline criticism his response is simply to not discuss it, then the Party loses the opportunity to say why opposition to the TransMountain expansion is the position of the Party. It is not enough to simply have a policy position, that policy position must be defended and advanced, even as against oil chauvinist members of a provincial section.

The TransMountain expansion environmental and duty to consult processes have been shot through with bad faith on the part of the Harper and Trudeau governments. The cheap, post-hoc, after the fact consultation and environmental review the government have engaged in, is neither in keeping with our Paris Agreement emissions obligations, nor our s 35 Constitutional obligations towards First Nations, nor with reconciliation, nor with the Honour of the Crown, nor with our moral obligation to ensure the survival of vulnerable coastal habitats for future generations. If it is NDP policy to oppose the TransMountain expansion, then these arguments must actually be prosecuted, vigorously.

It is not sufficient to simply say 'I am against the transmountain expansion,' and simply leave it at the index, just like that. No, the argument that the pipeline approval processes have irrevocably damaged the possibility of free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples, that such an expansion would constitute a massive 9 billion dollar giveaway to oil and gas conglomerates, directly from the public purse, in addition to the already dispensed 4.5 billion, and that the increased bitumen tanker traffic it would entail represents an intolerable risk to vulnerable coastal habitats, must actually be made, right now.

When Rachel Notley slags Jagmeet Singh off in the press and shouts 'jobs, jobs, jobs,' it is imperative to push back, immediately and publicly, and note how the policy of the party is based on environmental science, economic analysis which accounts for economic growth in an ecologically sustainable way, and our constitutional and moral duties with respect to First Nations peoples. If your policy on TransMountain is that you're against it, then defend that policy! Explain the reasons why and care about those reasons! Shout from the rooftops that you care earnestly about the environmental and inter-societal ramifications of ramrodding through a pipeline without social license.

Justin Trudeau says his intention is to have the TransMountain expansion constructed "as quickly as possible." Any hope or expectation that Trudeau would want to govern in a collaborative and progressive manner are extinguished. His intention is to pick and choose who to solicit votes from on an issue by issue basis, and to exclude the NDP as much as possible. The time for backroom deals on oil chauvinism are over. It is insulting to suggest that these contradictions can simply be glossed over in public and hammered out in private. The forces which work for the oil companies do not operate in private, they loudly condemn the communities and social forces which stand in their way as 'Native extremists,' 'foreign funded radicals,' 'ecoterrorists,' and all manner of dispicable, denigrating language. Disdain and contempt towards settler society's historical relationship with First Nations is characteristic of the discourse emanating from Alberta, and this is sick and dangerous.

The abject failure of Rachel Notley to be critical with respect to herself and her society is appalling. There is 'brexit-like' talk in her province and she has not denounced it or tried to address the real reasons for it, which are not that 'Albertans don't feel listened to,' it is rather that they have refused to diversify their economy for fourty years, and are refusing to do so now. Oil has become a religion and symbol of toxic masculinity and white-supremacism, it has become a cipher for disdain and contempt towards ecology and Canada's relationship with First Nations peoples.

What the NDP ought to do in response to these counter-productive insults from Rachel Notley is institute mechanisms by which membership can hold provincial and federal leaders to account, in addition to mechanisms of enforcement, whereby if the leadership of a provincial section acts wantonly in opposition to agreed upon party policy, as in the case of the Rachel Notley and the TransMountain expansion, that they can be either removed from leadership, or at very least made to answer for their contradictions.

It is not enough to simply be handed a piece of paper with a bunch of policy positions on it. What matters is the degree of care and solicitude you invest in those policy positions, the degree to which you will go to defend and advance them. Military force is being applied to Secwepemc people who are opposing the TransMountain expansion right now. The Canadian State is violating the sovereignty of First Nations lands right now. To have made the kinds of comments that Rachel Notley did is ignorant and irresponsible, and to not push back, as the Federal party has, is cowardly and rudderless, and makes it appear as though the Federal Party isn't as committed to the scientific, ecological, and reconciliatory goals as it needs to be to really fight this fight.

There is Nothing Wrong with Jagmeet Singh.

While Jagmeet Singh may coast to victory in Burnaby-South, alarm bells are nonetheless still going off. The most recent polls have the NDP federally at an absolutely abysmal 14%. Older MPs, for better or worse, are choosing to retire rather than fight the upcoming election. This all sounds rather grim, but, as always, it is less grim than the rich-man's newspaper would have you believe. There is nothing wrong with Jagmeet Singh.

Jagmeet Singh is an intelligent, literate, personable, and charming guy, more than capable of commanding and leading a social democratic party in the spirit of the times if he sets his mind to it. Jagmeet Singh is eminently capable of leading a political party, the question is whether he is as capable of grasping the significance of the historical moment and articulating a clear-headed socialist response to both the vile xenophobic rhetoric of the far right, on the one hand, and the hypocrisy and economic criminality that characterizes liberalism and the monopoly form, on the other. This is what Jagmeet needs to be better at, louder at, more unrelenting at, bring the soapbox and shout it from the rooftops at, if he wants to rise to the occasion.

The commentariat across the spectrum whispers behind his back, 'he will flunk and be churned up.' I don't think so. I hope not. The problem, the reason the NDP is still at 14%, is not Jagmeet Singh. The problem is rather that Jagmeet Singh is hamstrung by all the elements that allowed him to rise to the position of party leader in the first place. With all due respect to the scaffold, Singh needs to kick away this scaffold of party patronage if he's to rise to the occasion. So far Jagmeet has trailed and stumbled in Canadian political discourse with late, polished, superficially uncontroversial language on whatever problem or issue of the day. His position on LNG was and is boneheaded and tonedeaf. The BCNDP has for political reasons, and not all of them especially convincing, made its peace with LNG. But Coastal GasLink was nonetheless, as the chart below illustrates, spearheaded by the BC Liberal Government in all its criminality and indifference.

If you are for LNG then state your reasons, defend that position, but don't materially be indifferent to the RCMP forcibly rounding up First Nations elders and shrug your shoulders because you've been assured by some shrivelled party Iago that its checked the boxes, or because it calms the waters between you and Western NDP Premiers. That is shallow opportunism, and Jagmeet Singh should be, and needs to be, better than that.

The same goes for foreign policy. In order to win the leadership, Singh slyly gladhanded exactly those elements of the party that were most culpable for the defeat in 2015, the worst, most lazy, most unimaginative vestigial apparatchiks of the party. Characteristic in this respect, is Helene Laverdiere, a viciously right-wing ex-Liberal spook. It is a great development for the NDP and for Canada that she will no longer be foreign policy critic for the NDP, it cannot come soon enough. And so, when there is a situation of disagreement between the 'leader of the party' and the 'foreign policy critic' whose support had been solicited for the leadership, the 'leader' has to lead. All around the world socialist and social democratic parties are dealing with the cynical instrumentalization of claims of anti-semitism wielded by neoliberal centrists as a cudgel. As Israel slides further and further to the right, Jagmeet Singh needs to be, and has a moral obligation to be, standing up for the basic dignity and human rights of Palestinian peoples and against illegal settlement, dispossession, and oppression by the State of Israel, as well as against real antisemitism against Jewish communities. Instead, Singh countenances Israeli-apartheid cheerleaders like Randal Garrison when they make exactly this cynical and weaponized conflation of criticism of the state of Israel with anti-semitism. On all the touchstones of foreign policy, Singh must chart a different line than the Liberals. Oftentimes these positions that he unreflectively adopts are the very thing which causes him trouble, because in many cases the apparatchiks who have survived through Mulcair and into the Singh party administration have bad and incoherent positions. The point is that it is not enough for Jagmeet to simply internalize the extant positions of the different pontiffs whose support he solicited, he's got to understand the issues and be vociferous in responding to them in a principled and consistent manner in real time.

Jagmeet Singh is going to win in Burnaby-South, but to change the political landscape in October he has to be much, much better. Jagmeet Singh is more than capable of seizing the moment, galvanizing a mass movement, and offering a credible alternative to the xenophobic right wing, on the one hand, and hypocritical and ethically bereft centrism, on the other, but this requires a gravity, clarity, and ferocity of thought and principle that Singh has in his power but has thus far not exercised. I have actually said this before to Jagmeet Singh, briefly at a leadership debate held in the Empress in Victoria, where I was pleased to have met and talked with him for a while. I told him that he needed to be more critical, off the cuff, less polished. 'On what issue?' he said. 'On all the issues,' I told him. Its even more necessary now.

The point of this writing is in the most comradely spirit I can imbue to it. I want Jagmeet Singh to hook into the general social democratization going on across the continents, to be Labour not Independent Group, AOC not David Brooks, and to galvanize working class, marginalized peoples, and First Nations peoples into a powerful force for social and environmental justice. More pessimistically I can foresee the dystopian hell-world that Andrew Scheer and his fascist henchmen would create were they to, in the demise of the reputation of St. Trudeau, take power. For better or worse, the only person who can forestall that now is Jagmeet Singh.

The Palace-Coup that Wasn't

The speaker of the legislature, Darryl Plecas, took his position over partisan cries of 'traitor' from the cratering wreck of his former party, the BC Liberals. They, and the media personalities that support them unequivocally (postmedia), unequivocally hate Mr. Plecas's guts for having done so, and hate his guts moreover for playing such a part as would allow the NDP to govern. 

The way the BC Liberals and their friendly media mouthpieces (notably Postmedia lickspittles Vaughn Palmer and Rob Shaw) are portraying the bizarre scenes emanating from Victoria this week is as a kind of minor palace coup, in which an authoritarian and ambitious speaker appointed his 'crony' (as Vaughn Palmer called Mr. Mullen) to oust the longtime and beloved clerk and sergeant-at-arms, seeking to install said crony in the latter position. Is this what happened? Is this the story? Or is the story rather that an avowedly and enthusiastically non-partisan speaker of the legislature, having no incentive to bolster the NDP whatsoever, at every risk to himself, discovered evidence of impropriety on the part of legislative staff; and that, having discovered such evidence, Mr. Plecas appointed a trusted and extremely well qualified associate, Alan Mullen, to quietly look into the matters? 

This is no longer 'the Mullen investigation.' Craig James, the suspended legislative clerk, and Gary Lenz, the suspended Sergeant-at-Arms, are now under active RCMP investigation with two special prosecutors appointed to the investigation. On Tuesday, November 20th, The Province's Mike Smyth, tweeted out the particulars of a hiring document of BC Prosecution Service. This document stated that "the Assistant Deputy Attorney General for the British Columbia Prosecution Services, Peter Juk, QC (ADAG). . . [had] concluded, based on the request [from the RCMP] and the information available about the alleged circumstances of the case that the appointment of Special Prosecutors is in the public interest." As the hiring documents note, Special Prosecutors work "independent[ly] from government, the Ministry of Attorney General and the British Columbia Prosecution Service." Their mandate includes to determine whether "a prosecution is warranted" and to "conduct the prosecution and any subsequent appeal."

Today former Attorney General Wally Oppal agreed to be the second special advisor to speaker Darryl Plecas. Do you think Wally Oppal would have signed his name on to Mr. Plecas's minor palace-coup? I don't. I believe, reasonably I think, that the only reason why the RCMP, the Deputy Attorney General, and the British Columbia Prosecution Services would take up the investigation, and the only reason Mr. Oppal would lend his credibility to the speaker in such an instance, is because evidence of gross impropriety and inappropriate dealings on the part of Mr. James and Mr. Lenz has in fact been discovered. 

Why, then, is there the current furor surrounding Mr. Plecas's actions? Venture out in a speculative endeavour with me for a moment. Could it not perhaps be that this impropriety in fact implicates Mr. Plecas's most vocal critics in some way? We do not know what this investigation entails, what it pertains to, what brought it about. The RCMP have explicitly and publicly pleaded for public patience as the investigation is ongoing. With that said, there has been far too much slack-jaw recrimination of Speaker Plecas from his aggrieved former colleagues and postmedia sycophants, and not not nearly enough hard-nosed inference from the present circumstances of the investigation into the activities of Mr. James and Mr. Lenz, which required two special prosecutors because of (as their hiring documents reveal) the "size and scope of the investigation," as well as Mr. James history of loose financial dealings.