r/canadaleft • u/david_b7531 • 1d ago
Discussion Steve Boots - What the Hell is Jagmeet Singh Doing?
https://youtu.be/V0wOjM4hwYc49
u/WiartonWilly 1d ago
More than a week after the Liberals broke the rail strike, so it wasn’t that.
It was that. Wasn’t it?
Anyway. Mostly agree.
My theory is that Jagmeet isn’t able to make quick decisions. He should have done it the instant the Liberals broke the strike, but he waited and pondered and allowed this disconnect. Bad timing.
Indecision is also Trudeau’s problem. Both parties need to leaders who can lead decisively.
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u/ElRayMarkyMark 17h ago
Jagmeet is human cotton candy: zero substance, zero staying power. He made early gains as a leader based on charisma and personality but he has zero political acumen and even fewer political convictions. He, like Trudeau, is a holdover from the Obama era of fun guy leaders who are just repackaged neoliberalism. Politicians like this who are only interested in their personal brand are incapable of leadership or change.
We are in for a bleak decade.
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u/SnooHesitations7064 1d ago edited 1d ago
He has a pension.
That's about it.
He's fucked everyone who will suffer under a conservative rule, for nothing.
He can retire a failure.
Edit: To be clear, the pension thing was a throwaway line. Bolded for emphasis the main point. I agree with the video. His saying he'll vote non confidence has been a wet fart of zero leverage and nothing clear gained, but with an obvious downside for everyone in the country of speeding the descent into some "what if harper but shittier" polievre government during a neighboring trump regime.
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u/WoodenCourage 1d ago
This is a straight up conservative talking point. I presume then that you oppose pharma care and dental care if you think that Singh’s only reason for maintaining the government is to get a pension. He would make more money by just leaving office and returned to being a lawyer. He took a pay cut to run for office, so it wouldn’t make sense to argue he’s only staying in office to make more money.
It’s also a very conservative framing to attack the concept of an MP pension like that. The whole point of the pension is to make it easier for lower income Canadians to hold office. Would you prefer we got rid of pensions and only the upper class hold office?
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u/SnooHesitations7064 1d ago
It is mostly bitterness that his choice as similarly observed by the video is so arbitrary and unprincipled. He's created a system where we'll be going into a Poli gov in lock step with Trump's shit starting up.
I don't actually care about an MP pension, the primary concern I have is that we already have the alternative in the dichotomy that's being put forward.
The upper class monopolize the office. Outside of CBC, most media heavily bias to one of the incumbent parties. Paying workers to canvas, producing campaign materials all costs money. The idea of a good ground game for an independent is at best a municipal level hope, but even then not really. Most municipal govs are dominated by the rich. Our democracy is well and truly captured by the wealthy, pension is not the gate stopping people from participating, it's front loaded more than back.
Our state run media is no better, the parties which tend to have poorer constituents like the greens tend to be forgotten and excluded from a large portion of public discourse and pre-election media coverage. Just look at the east coast's last provincial election.
Pharma and dental were covered during the time that they did supply and confidence. Forcing an election with a non confidence that doesn't even have any posturing of trying to get a concession out of Trudeau prior to saying "Fuck this noise", doesn't really do anything for Pharma and dental. Just means that anything that isn't already ironclad can get rolled back or gutted by the impending shitty con majority.
I don't sincerely think he stayed in for a pension. I don't know what he thinks, I just know it sure as fuck isn't anything useful for those who are disatisfied with the existing government or the prospect of polievre. He should have got the fuck out of the way of better messaging from his party years ago.
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u/udee24 1d ago edited 1d ago
Why is it allowed to be a thing then? I don't really care about electoral politics but any competent leader would have thought about ways to combat conservative rhetoric.
I am not against pharma care and dental care but I do have to say he read the priorities of the people wrong. He should have pressured the federal government to start building and running social housing. This just shows that the NDP has no communication with working class people. Because of their choices, they pushed young voters toward the cons.
This shows because they elected a leader whose net worth is 78 million. Again not saying you can't have money and be a leftist. I am saying that the NDP has to listen to the needs of the people they talk about representing.The NDP died the moment they took out socialism from their platform. They just became a liberal party.
https://hamariweb.com/profiles/jagmeet-singh_17331Edit: As a commenter pointed out the 78 million figure was misinformation. I was wrong.
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u/SyntaxMissing 1d ago edited 1d ago
This shows because they elected a leader whose net worth is 78 million.
I've seen this figure touted, but is there an actual explanation of how they got to this number? Hamari Web (looks like one of those sites that scrape wiki and generate generic bios for public figures and makeup net worths), which seems to be the only source for this, never explains this figure. It seems ridiculously high for a rather well-documented politician. I could see him plausibly having a net worth in the single-digit millions, but $78 million seems suspect.
I also agree that a lack of focus on housing in lieu of expensive limited impact programs like universal pharmacare, was a misstep - but it seems like it might not be fully justified to claim he's worth $78 million, at least without something to back it up.
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u/udee24 1d ago
Sorry. I wasn't trying to spread misinformation. When I looked this up years ago there were reputable sources claiming this but now it seems I can find any other than some gossip magazines.
None the less I was wrong about the 78 million figure will cross it out of the comment.
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u/SyntaxMissing 1d ago edited 1d ago
No worries, and I'll edit my comment to strike out the misinformation bit.
As a random aside, imagine if Trudeau resigned, LPC had someone like Erskine-Smith as PM. He would announce a dual agenda platform:
- table pharmacare and instead pump those funds directly to regional municipalities to accelerate non-profits in acquiring private market units (and creating unionized jobs w/benefits and living wage to support the newly housed)
- promise mixed proportional representation (or some concrete non-FPTP system) referendum by May 1, 2025
Push past the provinces and let the premiers sue the feds while providing the people with housing, flaunting any opposition from the SCC.
Sorry, just random thoughts while numbing myself.
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u/platypusthief0000 1d ago
He is literally a multimillionaire he is not running after a pension that can't even sustain the life of an average Canadian.
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u/Jolly-Sock-2908 1d ago
Tell me that you don’t understand how pensions work without saying you don’t understand how pensions work.
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u/NarutoRunner 1d ago
I don’t think Singh realizes what he is about to do.
Here is what I think will happen.
Election will take place in late February or early March and it will have abysmal turnout. However, enough Conservatives will show up to give them a massive parliamentary majority. The NDP will end up with something like 15 seats, the Libs 25, and the Bloc will end up becoming the official opposition. Green will shrink down to May and continue its long tradition of irrelevance.
PP will use his majority to absolutely gut what Conservatives call the “administrative state”, which means social services will get ripped apart. Bye bye $10 day care, dental care, pharmacare, disability payments, and a massive reduction in child tax credit payments. Expect government departments like the CRA, IRCC, and whole bunch of regulators to have massive layoffs within his first six months. CBC English news division will be obliterated. The only part that I expect to stay operating as normal is the Francophone part because it’s political suicide to mess with that.
PP will be absolutely subservient to Trump. To get a preview, just look at the actions of Smith in Alberta. She rather side with Trump then defend Canadian interests. Expect supply management to go out the door, and your grocery store will be filled with American “cheese” and chlorinated chicken. Don’t expect it to be a bargain either because the Canadian dollar will keep collapsing further and further throughout the year.
If Singh was smart, all he has to do is wait it out until the Summer or Fall, and enough Canadians will see the disaster that is conservative governance in the US to not give them a super majority in Canada. Yes, it makes a difference to have have 30-40 voices versus a few people (smaller then a soccer team) in parliament. I highly doubt he will wait it out and it seems that he is just eager to be done with it all.