Muskeg Press

Or maybe, just maybe, the NDP could win more than 40 seats before the turn of the next century.
~Muskeg News, March 3, 2011, “NDP should trigger election”

In September 2007, I moved to Outremont, a neighbourhood few minutes north of downtown Montreal, for my final year of school. If Westmount is the English upper-class neighbourhood of Montreal, then Outremont is the French upper-class neighbourhood of the city.

The federal riding of Outremont takes up all of the neighbourhood, and it also branches out to Mordecai Richler country on Rue Saint-Urbain, as well as to the edge of The Plateau, where many students of McGill University live. There is a large Hasidic Jewish community in the riding, as well as a sizeable Greek contingent; I lived in an area known as Mile End, and it seemed that my friends in the area either had a Jewish or a Greek landlord.

When I arrived, the riding of Outremont was in the middle of a federal by-election. From 1935 to 2007, the riding had been held by the Liberals every year, save for a brief interval from 1988-1993, when it was held by the Conservatives. The by-election was triggered after Liberal Jean Lapierre stepped down.

In the ensuing election, the Liberals got killed, winning only 29 per cent of the vote. The riding was won by NDP Thomas Mulcair, who won a no-doubter with 47.5 per cent of the vote. He retained the seat in the 2008 election, and again in last night’s election.

When Mulcair won the seat in 2007, it was only the second time in the NDP’s history that the party had won in Quebec. I remember at the time a lot of punditry making the case the NDP would make a lot of in-roads in Quebec by winning this seat. This seemed like fantasy logic to me; after all, it was only one seat.

But last night’s election results proved me fantastically wrong, on many counts. I never thought I would live to see the day the NDP won over 50 seats in the House of Commons, but there they were last night with 102 seats, of which 58 were gained in la belle province. In hindsight, it appears Mulcair’s victory was indeed the start of something in Quebec, and it may have also been a metaphor for the fizzling out of the Liberal party across the country.

Whether it was the Outremont riding in Quebec, or the Skeena-Bulkley Valley riding in northern B.C., the NDP simply had more energy, more support, more organization, more drive than their left-wing counterparts. Look at our riding. Nathan Cullen’s NDP machine has always run a well-oiled & energetic campaign; the best the Liberals could do was to send up a UBC political science student who had only visited the area once before…on his way to the Yukon. There wasn’t a Liberal campaign office in Prince Rupert — was there one anywhere else in the riding? I don’t think it’s a big stretch to say that same energy and organizational abilities were what contributed to the NDP gains in Quebec.

That said, the promised “orange wave” of NDP support crashed against Ontario’s eastern border, spilling into 22 seats for that province. But the wave only splashed few droplets throughout the rest of the country: two ridings in Manitoba, one lonely candidate in Edmonton, 12 in B.C., and one in the Arctic. From Fortress Toronto to the prairie provinces to the B.C. interior, most of the electoral map is Tory blue.

If the win in Outremont grew into the win in Quebec, will that grow into a win in western Canada? Or will the NDP stay focused on Quebec? We’ve got five year (max) to find out.

~Written by Chris Armstrong

This week, Muskeg News begins a new feature: each Thursday, we will bring you a short opinion article on issues of the day. And we’re looking for your help. If you’d like to submit an opinion piece, please email editor@muskegnews.com and we will consider it for publication. This week’s article is written by your friendly neighbourhood hack, Chris Armstrong.

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Even the most hard-core supporter of the federal NDP must admit the party is nowhere near taking the reins of power; at the rate they’re going, their earliest chance at a minority government is in the year 2256. But even the most hard-core opponent of the federal NDP must admit that, in a minority government, the party has the unique power of choosing when to trigger an election.

Once again, the federal budget is on the eve of being released, and once again, wags are predicting an election. As reported here, the budget will be tabled on March 22, and the Liberals & Bloc Quebecois have already said they’ll vote against it. Of course, things could change in the next few weeks, but for the time being, it appears the NDP once again has the power to decide whether or not the country goes into campaign mode.

In this e-newspaper’s humble opinion, the NDP should vote against the budget and force a springtime election.

The Conservatives and their supporters will undoubtedly claim that Canadians don’t want an election; when your job is at stake, this is a natural reaction. We submit, however, that Canadians don’t want to keep hearing guarantees that an election is imminent, only to see pundits proven false once again. If an election is called, we’ll finally hear the last of them – for at least six months or so.

The polls show the Conservatives in the lead, but in minority territory, with the Liberals stuck in the mid-20s. So would an election change anything? If you’re answering this question strictly through the viewpoint of the number of seats won, then no, the election won’t change things that much. But outside of Parliament, there will be changes.

As anyone who has studied even a semester of Canadian history knows, this country is governed by the prime minister and his cabinet. The supporting actors are the leaders of the opposition parties, who feature prominently in Question Period and national news stories because they tell their party how to vote. Regular MPs are pawns in the whole game. As Pierre Trudeau once said, MPs are nobodies 50 yards away from Parliament Hill.

While an election may not change the seat count too much, it will shake things up at the top. Will the Conservatives really want to keep Stephen Harper around if he again fails to win a majority? Will the Liberals be as hasty to dump Michael Ignatieff as they were to purge Stephane Dion? Will Jack Layton stick around after his party once again comes in fourth? How will Gilles Duceppe spin his third-place finish as a win for Quebec?

And there is also the unpredictability of election campaigns. A flub here, an outrageous comment there, could send the Conservatives into majority territory, or give the crown to the Liberals. Or maybe, just maybe, the NDP could win more than 40 seats before the turn of the next century.

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David Smook, owner of Seahorse Trading Company, said it best: when he heard Norwegian Cruise Lines would not be visiting Prince Rupert in 2012, it was like a “shot in the gut.”

Indeed, for a town that’s been kicked in the gut a few times this year, the news yesteday was yet another punch that left us a little dazed, trying to catch our collective breath. But, as hard as it may be, catch our breath we must and press on to find another cruise ship for Prince Rupert.

It’s not just the money that comes into town whenever that floating city docks at Northland Terminal. When I heard the news about the Norwegian Star, I immediately thought back to the inaugural cruise ship visit to Northland back on May 20, 2004. Another Norwegian Cruise Line vessel, the Spirit, made its way through the harbour and pulled a 180-degree turn before docking on its port side. I had snuck down to Porcher Seafoods on the waterfront, joining a bunch of other people who watched the ship bear down on the dock. I looked up at the ridge of Mariners Park and saw a few hundred people lining the fence, watching the ship come in. Someone beside me yelled out, “welcome to Rupert!” which prompted applause from the cruise ship passengers and a loud “thank you!” On the top deck of the ship, someone played “O Canada” on a trumpet. Unless you were a grinch, you couldn’t help but be moved.

That feeling continued over the next few years, admittedly on a smaller scale. On sunny days — of which there were plenty when the ship came in — it wasn’t uncommon to see people cutting work, leaving the office for an hour to soak in the atmosphere of the crowds as they milled about, trying to find that shore excursion or that bus tour or the best shopping place in town. There was such an instant energy down there and it was very easy to get swept up in it.

And rubber-tire people from as far away as Smithers came to check out Rupert on cruise ship days, getting caught up in the joy and happiness of the moment. Restaurants along the waterfront would be full by the time the ship left the dock, as they enjoyed a sunset while the vessel floated westward, out of the harbour and then, usually, south to Seattle.

In short, there is a huge vibrancy, both economic and emotional, that’s created whenever a cruise ship comes to town. There’s still time to catch a cruise ship for the 2012 season, as the port takes formal berthing requests right up until the spring. If that doesn’t happen, we must not regress into pessimism (as usually happens in this town whenever bad news crops up). Instead, we must take a few moments to catch our breath, and then press on to make Prince Rupert an attractive port city for the cruise ship industry.

Prince Rupert may be small, but it has a lot to offer anybody who visits, even if they’re only here for a few hours. The scenery and aboriginal culture alone are great selling points, but even clever marketers could advertise the rain (especially to those tourists from New Mexico & Arizona). We’ve also got about a bazillion paths, both in town and a 10-minute drive away, that are fertile grounds for walking tours for tourists to stretch their legs after being cooped up on a ship. The Skeena River practically sells itself, and a short tour over to the ghost town of Port Essington is feasible. And for a town the size of Rupert, it’s got a lot of great restaurants. Heck, even bringing some tourists out to nail something to the shoe tree would be an experience they’d never forget.

Yes, this will all be hard work, but it will be worth it, especially on those sunny days when the ship comes to town.

~Written by Chris Armstrong

A cliché I ascribe to is that time heals all wounds. Things have changed since the spring.

Remember the spring rallies of 2010? Opponents were going to stand up to the HST. As unrealistic as it was, there was even an element of hope amongst the negative placards that if enough people signed the Fight HST petitions, the B.C. Liberals would back down and scrap the tax before July 1.

Fortunately for the provincial government, humans live life by calendars. What’s important in April is not always important in October. The social environment is much different today than it was three months ago. Before July 1, voters knew full well that the HST clock was ticking. Anti-HST supporters and sympathisers alike were forced in to action by pending doom and certifiable anger.

Now that it’s September 17 and the first summer under the HST sun has passed, talk on the streets isn’t one of feeling burnt. But the real discussion over the HST has yet to begin.

The HST was the right move to make. There. It’s out. I’m a confirmed HST supporter… excuse me while I vomit.

… Okay I’m back.

Here’s why I like it: the HST does scrap needless duplicate tax forms and it helps encourage primary-sector industries to consider investing in B.C. The biggest business savings as a result of introducing the HST in B.C. will be realized by forestry, mining, oil and gas, construction and manufacturing. These are areas the Northwest needs to have revived if we are to return to economic prosperity.

What gives me indigestion, though, is that there are few provisions for the main load carriers: low-income and middle class British Columbians. The tax is far from perfect.

Those who line up at the Sally Ann for dinner aren’t looking to hit the Thrift store for raw lumber. The sectors producing the goods that will benefit from the HST make goods that B.C. households do not directly purchase. As the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives noted in June, “It’s no surprise that households will face an extra $1.5 billion in HST on personal expenditures.

At the Cohen Commission inquiry in Prince Rupert September 1, three aboriginal chiefs tore the sport-fishing industry apart, and threatened “disciplinary action