Thomas Mulcair and Stephen Harper Dance to the Beat of a Shared Drummer

Someone posted a link to an interesting article yesterday, from January of this year.  At the time the NDP were third in the polls and going nowhere, so the party met in the Conservative caucus room, to discuss strategy.

Tom Mulcair is trying to turn around the NDP’s flagging fortunes as he gears up for a federal election within nine months, shaking up his office and campaign team and stepping up his attacks on Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.

That the NDP has been more focused on Justin Trudeau, than Harper, has been evidenced for quite some time. However, there was another comment made by Mulcair, in the context of the following, that was a bit revealing.

And he contrasted that with Trudeau’s upbringing, implying that the Liberal leader was born into privilege as the eldest son of a former prime minister and believes “he can just inherit power without proposing a thing.” 

“Whether it’s meeting with premiers to work on the future of our federation or with world leaders to discuss global economic opportunities or terrorist threats, being prime minister is not an entry-level job,” Mulcair said.

"being prime minister is not an entry-level job".

This was several months before the Conservatives used that in a national ad campaign.  Bruce Carson, in his book, relates that Stephen Harper had met with Jack Layton in 2008, wanting him to join the Conservatives in destroying Stephane Dion.

So did Mulcair provide Harper with his talking points?  

Yes this is politics, and Canadian politics have become nasty since Harper came on the scene.  We also know that Jack Layton and Stephen Harper had worked together in the past, beginning with their 2004 coalition attempt, to take down Paul Martin and make Harper prime minister.  So it's only understandable that Mulcair and Harper would make natural Samba partners.

But Who's Providing the Dance Music?

Thomas Mulcair never did inspire his way to a bump in the polls.  It was the over the top campaign against Trudeau and Bill C-51.  What made this completely bizarre, was the media's complicity in it.  They are supposed to be the Fifth Estate, not the staff of the wannabe Second Estate.

Jooneed Khan, a former journalist, had helped with Mulcair's 2007 campaign in Outrement, that won him his first federal seat.  However, by 2012, be noticed that something was happening.

A piece in La Presse, glowingly comparing Mulcair to Tony Blair, caught his attention.  By then, he knew what the current NDP leader stood for, and was sounding the alarm.

Revealingly, they all look backwards to 1990s Britain and to Tony Blair's so-called "New Labour" as the appropriate recipe for a Mulcair-led NDP ...

No statement has struck me as more contemporary and forward-looking than Brian Topp's unhesitant and courageous answer to a media question on Palestine's bid for a UN seat when he launched his own NDP leadership campaign: "We want Canada to vote with the rest of the world."

Mulcair's ultra-Zionist position on Palestine and the Middle East would never countenance such a possibility. On this issue, he remains solidly entrenched in his bunker with Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman (and their friend Tony Blair, the Quartet's very ineffectual special Mid-East envoy), while the entire Middle East is changing as people demand a future of social and economic justice and democratic participation.

Khan could see what was happening, as the major Quebec, and many other media outlets, were promoting Mulcair as Harper's replacement.  If he could turn the NDP to the right, just as Blair had done with the Labour Party, they would never have to worry about a progressive agenda, that might threaten their hegemony.  First they had to get rid of the Liberal Party, where they no longer had many friends.

Rabble also published a piece by their editor Derrick O'Keefe: Following the money: Is Bay Street backing Thomas Mulcair?

Information on individual donors to Canada's political parties, and to the NDP leadership candidates, is made publicly available at the Elections Canada website. Mulcair's donor list is of particular interest, since he is a perceived frontrunner and because some have speculated that he would aim to move the NDP further to the right of the political spectrum, given that he was a Liberal cabinet minister in a right-wing Quebec provincial government.

What I found out about Mulcair's donors should be of interest to NDP members and to everyone watching and covering this leadership race ...

I've actually printed out the list, and Khan is not wrong about the newspaper conglomerates.  They are not only promoting Mulcair, while trashing Trudeau, but are also financing his career.

After Mulcair's coronation, long time NDP supporter, Murray Dobbin, wrote of a party in mourning.  They chose the bombastic right-winger to take out Harper,  but, says he:  "Facing a ruthless tough guy? Get your own ruthless tough guy. And possibly create a monster you can't control."

It's pretty obvious that the media is once again trying to engineer the making of a prime minister, just as they did for Stephen Harper, with the help of Conrad Black's empire.  Now it's the Power Corp and allies.

When are we going to say enough is enough?

My Little Experiment

As I've mentioned in several posts, Thomas Mulcair was a horrible Environment Minister in Quebec, who earned the wrath of many environmental groups, in part because of his deregulation and privatization agenda. 

Yet our media continues to allow him to perpetrate this lie.

Another lie, that is going unchecked, is his claim that he left the Charest government on principle, because he opposed the sale of a portion of Mont Orford Park.

I posted on this before in my other blog.  The story went something like this.

1.  Mulcair proposes selling the park in a caucus meeting.  Charest told him to look into it.

2.  Mulcair approaches developers who only ask if it is legal.  He assures them that he can fix that.

3.  Mulcair prepares the legal framework, required to pass legislation, allowing the sale to go through.

4.  Mulcair launches a public attack on Coca Cola, after they announced that they would be ending the voluntarily can deposit on non-carbonated beverages, without even consulting them.  The company was understandably upset.  This was the last straw for Charest, who had already been embarrassed enough by Mulcair..  He called him into his office and told him that he could no longer go to the media unless it was first cleared by him.

5. It was common knowledge that Mulcair was after Charest's job, so he pulled a stunt that might assure his boss's defeat.  He released to the media that the Charest government wanted to sell portions of Mont Orford, creating a public outcry.  Everything was gong in his favour, until Charest called a press conference, showing the papers that Mulcair had drawn up.  Oh, oh!

6.  Mulcair went into hiding for a month, refusing to talk to anyone, not even his beloved press.  Then he came up with a new strategy.  He announced that the papers were only hypothetical and that he hadn't signed them.  

7. This rift in the party was fair game to the opposition.  A committee met, and several witnesses were sworn in, who testified that it was indeed Thomas Mulcair who proposed the sale of the Park.  Mulcair went ballistic.  It created a lot of tension, and it took several government staff, to hold him down. 

His lie was exposed and his dreams of being premier, were dashed.  He left Quebec in shame. 

Yesterday, I sent a link to a 2006 story, confirming the actual events, to several key members of the Canadian media:  Rosemary Barton, Susan Delacourt and Don Martin.  I put it on their Twitter pages so that it could be viewed by many.

I wanted to see if any of them would do the right thing, and inform the Canadian public, that Thomas Mulcair was not being truthful, in his representation to us, or to his followers.

This is the link and this is what it reveals:

"L'Esperance also revealed in testimony that Thomas Mulcair, who resigned from Charest's cabinet, saying he disagreed with plans to sell off the mountain, assured him last fall the government would approve his plan to build condos on 85 hectares of park land. 

"It was definitely confirmed to me several times," he told reporters. "Once by himself (Mulcair) and other times by his representatives." 

L'Esperance said that, on the strength of assurances from Alain Gaul, then Mulcair's chief of staff, that "You have a project. Go ahead and prepare your winter season," Mont-Orford invested another $1.5 million to $2 million for the 2005-2006 ski season. 

Questioned by Mulcair, L'Esperance admitted Mulcair, at the time environment minister, raised the issue that the sale of provincial park land was illegal."

And remember this wasn't just "testimony" but "sworn testimony".

Witnesses at National Assembly hearings are rarely sworn in but, at the request of the Parti Quebecois opposition, L'Esperance took an oath, swearing to tell the truth, before he testified.

And then there's this:

"However, according to the Canadian Press, Mulcair had indeed approved the project Monday. The proposal would have been accepted ten days prior to the redesign of 27 February." 

"Mulcair had indeed approved the project Monday."  Ten days before he resigned after being demoted.

Now that we know that we are not only fighting two right-wingers, but also the Canadian media, we have to be diligent.  Own the comments sections to set the record straight. Go after those in the media who refuse to be honest with us and out them.

We cannot have another election where the press determines the results.  Only we, the voters, should have the right to do that.

Besides blogging on this, I'm going to create a list of links to articles that reveal the real Thomas Mulcair.  His admiration of Margaret Thatcher was no passing fancy.  He lived and breathed her Neoliberal legacy.

This country will never survive another Stephen Harper, whether it's in the form of our current prime minister, or the man who wants to replace him. Another " monster" we "can't control".