The situation in New Brunswick has turned to complete melodrama as it turns out that maybe it wasn’t fourteen former provincial NDP candidates who defected to the Greens, and that maybe it was only eight. Some said they were surprised to see their names on the list, others said that they were under the impression that this was really a discussion about merging with the Greens provincially to form a more progressive alternative party (given that the NDP were wiped out provincially, and it doesn’t help that their former leader crossed over to the provincial Progressive Conservatives and is now sitting as a cabinet minister). All the while, Elizabeth May is taking swipes at Jagmeet Singh for not visiting the province, while she also alleges that the NDP engaged in strong-arm tactics to force some of those former candidates to recant their cross to the Greens (which some deny). Amidst all of this are the allegations that some of this was because these NDP candidates felt that there are people in the province – singling out the Acadiens on the North Shore – would react poorly to Singh, and the howling that this is all about racism.

And it is possible that there is an element of racism in here, and we shouldn’t deny that it does exist in Canadian politics, even if it’s not overt. To that end, Andray Domise writes in Maclean’s that leftist parties in Canada don’t critically engage with issues of race because bigotry can be useful politically and economically, and it’s the kind of thing they should be engaging with but don’t. It’s a fairly damning condemnation of the state of leftist politics in this country, and nobody comes out looking good as a result (though, it should also be noted, that the Greens are not really a leftist party in most respects, and the NDP have turned themselves into left-flavoured populists over successive elections and leaders, so perhaps that makes the point even more trenchant).

Good reads:

• At an editorial board meeting at the Toronto Star, Justin Trudeau said he won’t force pharmacare or childcare on provinces that don’t want them.
• Also at this editorial board meeting, Trudeau called out China’s use of arbitrary detention as a political tool.
• Surprising nobody, a NAFTA panel ruled that the US can’t show any harm from the Canadian softwood lumber industry, but the dispute remains at the WTO.
• The Canadian Forces are testing new browner-hued camouflage uniforms as a “refresh” of the CADPAT they’ve been using since the early noughties.
• The F-35 will be showcased at an Ottawa-area airshow this weekend as part of Lockheed Martin’s sales pitch for the fighter jet procurement process.
• A Senate security guard was overzealous in interpreting the rules around political message bans regarding an oil and gas t-shirt, and has been forced to apologise.
• The National Post tries to ascertain what we know of the party platforms.
• The United Steelworkers Union is advertising against Justin Trudeau in favour of Jagmeet Singh and the NDP.
• The Liberals are claiming that the decision to only attend the two commission debates (and maybe TVA) has to do with logistics.
• Here’s a discussion about how Jagmeet Singh’s ethno-cultural identity may factor into people’s votes.
• Elections Canada filings showed the NDP ended 2018 deeply in the red, and in their worst financial shape in at least 17 years.
• The interim leader of the NDP in New Brunswick (which has no seats) is a 22-year-old with three other jobs, which gives you a sense of the state of the party.
• Kevin Carmichael parses a speech by a deputy governor of the Bank of Canada about the state of the economy in this country as compared to others.
• Chris Selley reminds us not to believe party leaders when they swear they won’t work with certain parties in a hung parliament.

Odds and ends:

New lieutenant governor for New Brunswick has just been appointed. pic.twitter.com/FJCu7IEhfw

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) September 5, 2019

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