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Liberals’ lead shrinks as Canadian mood plummets to historic lows (www.hilltimes.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] 8 points 11 months ago (14 children)

I think we need an actual left-of-centre party. The NDP is just a right-of-centre party who support some minor social programs as long as they don't interfere too much with extracting money via capitalism. I'm not looking for a socially progressive right-of-centre party. I want to see an actual left-of-centre party. A party that would nationalise our resources and use the proceeds to fund centralised housing, healthcare, education, parks and recreation spaces, infrastructure, and other things that people need and enjoy. A party that wants to improve labour standards and invest in ourselves, and move away from US style capitalism. It can be done.

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (13 children)

    NDP is not a right wing party

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (10 children)

    I didn't say they are a right wing party... I said that they are drifting right of centre and not really a left-of-centre party any more. They have a socially conscious platform, and in my opinion are the best of the bunch. But economically, they aren't really a left-of-centre party. They still subscribe to a generally free market and even in their 2025 platform, while they commit money to a national housing strategy, they still aren't trying to centralise housing and omit the private developers entirely. They still want to try and legislate private industry in a free market rather than centralise. What I would like to see is an ACTUAL left leaning party, where the government controls the means of supply for our basic needs and critical industries. The government should be directly employing crews to build a variety of housing options. Not just banning REITs and hedgefunds from purchasing affordable housing, but also eliminating the private landlords and having strict standards for property management. The government should be in control of our oil and minerals. The government should control our ferries,mail service, and other services and operate them like the services they are and not corporations, or crown corporations. While I think the NDP is the best we have, I also feel like they have drifted more to the centre and even passing over it during the past 30 years, and I think there is room for a proper left-of-centre party that is more than just words and bandaids and actually has a desire to overhaul our economy to be able to support the social programs that don't really work when everything is trying to operate as a business, crown corp or not. Nationalise our resources and actually get some income for the government that isn't just taxes, and invest it into our country, services, and infrastructure.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (7 children)

    This is the reverse mentality of alt-right ideology. Their general opinion is that anything left of them is left-wing while you seem to think that anything right of central planning and government-controlled industries is right-wing. Maybe you don't like how the words are used, but trying to convey your ideas to people by using language in a way no one else does isn't going to work.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (6 children)

    Not at all. I'm saying there's a spectrum between a full centrally planned left wing wing government, and a full free market right wing government, and the Canadian political parties generally fall somewhere towards the centre of that spectrum, and that over the past 30 years the NDP along with the Liberals and Conservatives have shifted towards the right. In the case of the NDP, I think that while they have been a centre-left party, some of the concessions they have made with Singh have pushed NDP economic policy to the centre of that spectrum, and possibly crossing over the centre-line. Maybe they aren't quite at that point, but if they continue on that trend, I think it would be good to have another party further to the left. NOT communism. NOT authoritarian. Democratic, but willing to use more government intervention rather than keep looking at only free market solutions, tax cuts, and bailouts. The NDP just isn't quite left enough, in my opinion.

    That's hardly a comparable to alt-right shit. Oh, the horror of Canada profiting off of it's resources in order to run BC Ferries and Canada Post (and all the other services that never make the news) like services instead of companies and have well funded health and education systems. The NDP needs to stop selling out (and admitting defeat before the election has happened) or we need an actual centre-left option. Seems like a pretty valid opinion! Not everything has to be black and white, fully right or left with no in-between, or ability for political parties to shift over time.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    But you're also saying NDP is right of center, and I suspect even Europeans in general wouldn't agree with that, let alone North Americans.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Sure, you can put centre wherever you are comfortable. You're missing the point I'm trying to make though (deliberately, I assume), and that is that the NDP used to be a bit more to the left, and now they have moved a bit more towards the centre-line moving in the rightward direction on that spectrum. Some might say "shifting a bit to the right". Maybe not a lot, but enough to water down their platform and push them at least firmly into just centrist territory and not centre-left, but I still consider them just to the right of centre.

    I think so much of Western societies have shifted quite a bit to the right along with increased globalisation and free trade, and a bunch of US influence and missions trying to eradicate socialist governments, that it has blurred where 'centre' is on the spectrum, and 'centre' to many people has moved rightward along with the general sentiment of society today. Which is why I think a centre-left party a little bit further left of the NDP would be nice. That or if the NDP shuffled left a couple times and decided to be bold and go all-in on a proper all-encompassing left of centre policy.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Sure they shifted right but they are not right of centre.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Agree to disagree. Maybe not right of the centre in the US, and maybe not right of centre in Germany these days, or right of centre in the UK. But right of where centre should be, and used to be in many different countries. Our whole political system needs a kick to the left and push centre back from it's constant rightward creep. I mean, the US is collapsing into fascism and our own Conservative party have been mimicking a lot of their actions. Liberals keep moving to the right and now overlap what used to be Progressive Conservative territory, and the NDP keep trying to water down their policies to draw Liberal voters without going too far. Centre has shifted, so maybe the NDP is left of what centre has become in our current political landscape, but is right of where centre used to be. And there's a whole heck of a lot of room between the NDP now and full-blown Leninist bullshit. I think more people should reflect of what 'centre' has become, and that a little bit of socialism is NOT communism. The US just keeps spewing everywhere, all over our media, that socialists are commies, and commies are bad.

    In Chile, for example, they wouldn't view the NDP as being as being particularly left of centre if at all. Their current government with Boric is quite a bit left of the NDP, and their pre-US-fucking-everything-up government was even more left. Relatively, the NDP is a pretty firmly centre party that has been selling out to more and more 'free market solutions' and bandaid fixes rather than being a socialist party. None of the Chileans I know in Canada consider the NDP to be a left of centre party, and my friends feel totally unrepresented by any of the parties because none of them are really left-of-centre.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    I actually agree with a lot of what you're saying, except perhaps what is considered center. I absolutely agree we could use a more left-leaning party, whether that is the NDP or a new party, but more importantly, we need a system that allows more than two parties to consistently have a meaningful impact in government.

    I don't necessarily think this new party, or the new NDP, should be as left-leaning as you do, but that also wouldn't matter as much if we didn't have the lack of representation that parties with less but still notable support receive in our current system.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    I think I may be a bit more extreme in my examples to try and highlight the point. And I agree to disagree on the centre. My wife is Chilean, and their current government is quite a bit left of the NDP and she would totally consider the NDP to be even more right of centre than I do. But that doesn't really matter. I think somewhere in that left of centre bubble there is a good place to be found.

    And I agree with you that we need more parties. And a new electoral system, maybe a mixed-member proportional system or something that retains some geographic representation. Ideally I think minority governance is where it's at. We can't and shouldn't all have the same ideas, and nobody should be able to just force through legislation with a majority. The whole point of that with some brainstorming we can make something better together that generally works for everyone, although some people can never be pleased.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    Never going to happen. And I don't know if I would want it to. I mean it well just be as corrupt as could be, we would need to fix our electoral system before this.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Fixing the electoral system and having another left-of-centre party don't have to be mutually exclusive. I'd like to see both. And maybe a few more parties that represent other peoples perspectives so that we can do away with majority governments and let parties work together and make compromises to govern instead of the constant political ping-pong of majority governments undoing everything of the previous government and the constant negativity and attacks and tantrums. And I'm talking about a moderate, democratic, socialist party. Not some authoritarian communist party.

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