Beyond The Commons

 Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

Back to work

by Aaron Wherry on Monday, August 29, 2011 9:05am - 17 Comments

Olivia Chow politely brushes aside questions. Gary Doer’s friends and associates say he likely won’t seek the NDP leadership. Brian Topp acknowledges he is considering a run. The race is now on.

“The leadership race effectively begins Monday morning, I would say,” Mr. Martin said. “It won’t be a divisive race, it will be a uniting experience and respectful experience,” Mr. Martin said. “That’s the tone Jack has set; he’s raised the bar for civility in political discourse in this country, and the first demonstration is going to be a very interesting but respectful leadership race.”

Greg Fingas reviews some of the potential contenders.

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  • TonyAdams

    msm finally decided to do its job? Astonishing, I guess I should be grateful it only took a week for msm to figure out they were stuck on stupid, once again. 

    NDP types were discussing topic of succession all last week – nature abhors a vacuum and all that – but only now is msm reflecting new reality. For the past week journos have thumb up their collective arse and were in mourning, apparently.

    • Anonymous

      This is completely and utterly false.  The media was talking about the future leadership hopefuls all last week.  Anyone who was asked about said it wasn’t the time or place to talk leadership until after Layton’s funeral (including Mr. Topp).

      • Anonymous

        Don’t worry about it too much. The reality Tony lives in and the reality the rest of us inhabit rarely intersect.  So long as people keep that in mind, he’s a fun read.

      • Anonymous

        I thought (over the)Topp was the one secretly one putting his name out there.

      • TonyAdams

        “Anyone who was asked about said it wasn’t the time or place to talk leadership …. ”

        I am good friends with two NDP types since university days. It has taken us years but we are now capable of discussing politics without too much rancour. I was talking to one of them on weekend and he was saying leadership is all that NDP types have been talking about all week. 

        However, our msm does not remotely reflect conversation that is actually taking place within party. Msm colludes with party members and allow them time to get their act together. All msm does is report official statements – which are pure spin – as truth while entire party is talking about who they hope to see succeed Layton. 

        Human beings gossip like teenage girls – we all do it – and some are also extremely ambitious and would love to lead party of Official Opposition. Msm is tremendous at stenography and reporting official party positions but entirely lacking when it comes to  reporting reality.

        Heinlein ~ When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, ‘This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,’ the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives

        • Anonymous

          There’s a pretty significant difference between NDP types chattering amoungst themselves and giving on the record quotes to the press gallery.

    • Anonymous

      Five or six days is a fairly standard length of time between death and funeral for most families. Throw in the arrangements that have to be dealt with for a state funeral, I am always amazed how quickly these can be put together.I am really fed up with the suggestion that anything was dragged out. 

  • Anonymous

    Who is Mr Martin?

    • Anonymous

      Pat Martin, MP.

      • Anonymous

        Does the MP stands for “master puppeteer?”

  • Anonymous

    With the OMOV and the weight of the labour vote it will be a very interesting race to watch, and interesting to see what the governing council does with the existing rules in the coming weeks. The NDP membership could explode. I’m tempted to join so that I can vote by mail for the leader.  I guess I wouldn’t have to rescind my membership in another federal party – if Nycole Turmel was allowed to do this, so should I.

  • Anonymous

    ‘It won’t be a divisive race, it will be a uniting experience and respectful experience’
    I guess that’s  what he had to say… ‘It will be a divisive, scarring experience’ would have been a bit awkward. 

    • Anonymous

      Yes I have a feeling that Mulcair will be scarred.

  • Anonymous

    The first women elected into both the BC and SK legislatures were elected to replace their husbands — and this was in 1918 and 1919, respectively, not long after women finally won the right to vote.  Certainly their wins were based on emotional response from the voters.  Given the emotional response to Mr Layton’s passing, and to the rhetoric and symbolism we witnessed from the NDP over the past week, Olivia Chow’s leadership of the party could very well happen — they have spent the past while telling us they are “family” and that Canadians will be impressed with what happens.

    • lawoh

      As a matter of interest, none of these woman noted below was voted in to take the place of their husbands:

      The first woman ever elected to any public office (Federal, Provincial or Municipal) in Canada was Hannah “Annie” Gale, elected Alderman in Calgary 1917.  
      First two woman ever elected to a legislature in Canada: Louise McKinney, one of the first woman elected anywhere in the British Empire, member 1917-1921 of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for the Non Partisan League, a left wing prohibition and social welfare party and Nursing Sister (not a nurse but a dietitian – the only dietitian in WWI) Roberta MacAdams, a member of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, who was also elected as a Non Partisan in the 1917 Alberta general election, as a member at large in overseas voting by Albertans serving in the First World War. McKinney was the first woman declared elected because the overseas voting was completed after the in-province election and it tok some time before she was returned to Alberta from France to be sworn in.

      An interesting aside is that Loiuse McKinney was defeated in her second election in 1926, and retired from active politics. In 1929, she was one of the five women of Alberta who carried the appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council which finally established the status of women as “persons” under the British North America Act of 1867. 

      The first woman elected to the Federal House was Agnes Macphail, Progressive, United Farmers of Ontario-Labour, Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) MP Grey Southand Grey—Bruce, from 1921-1940 (She was also one of two women who were the first women as MPPs in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for the Ontario CCF (the forerunner to the New Democratic Party) for the riding of York East 1943-1945 and 1948-1951.

      The first female magistrate to ever sit on the bench within the British Empire was Emily Murphy in Calgary …. It was mostly because of Mrs. Murphy that women succeeded to public life ….. see:  http://www.abheritage.ca/famous5/achievements/emily_murphy.html

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