Most Americans won't know from the article who Jack Layton was because
the article doesn't give the basic background, which every Canadian
already knows (this is the number one news story this week): he was the
head of the national NDP political party, a party on the left which
emerged from the shadow of the Liberal party in the last election after
being in decline.
Actually, some Americans might need to be reminded that Canada is the
country just to the north of the US. Since there hasn't been a war with
Canada since early in the nineteenth century, it's easy to forget.
Some would say that the resurgence of the NDP was largely due to the
force of Jack Layton's personality, helped along by a general aversion
to the leader of the Liberals, a party of corrupt centrists.
Unfortunately, the decline of the Liberals allowed Harper's
conservatives to take advantage of a split on the left to form a
majority government with less than 40% of the popular vote. Harper has
been clear that he wants a Canada that will be much more like the US-- a
bigger military, reduced taxes for corporations (already the lowest in
the West), and a larger prison population.
In contrast, Layton stood for social spending, including being an
effective advocate for mass transit. His constituency, and that of the
NDP, was the common man.
Layton was known to be ill, but his death was unexpected.
Here's a link to the heartwarming letter that Layton wrote to the
Canadian people:
http://www.ndp.ca/letter-to-canadians-from-jack-layton
Vision like this is a knife in the back of toads like Harper, who serve
an entirely different constituency: one of moneyed interests in a
cynical alliance with rural social conservatives (sound familiar?).
Here's hoping that the Canadian people take the opportunity to twist
that knife. Unfortunately, we just had an election.
Anybody else notice that the pipeline to bring Canadian synthetic crude
south from Albertan tar sands to Oklahoma and the Gulf was approved this
week? Surely the worst environmental news since BP's Gulf oil spill.
Here's a three-year-old YouTube of Jack talking about the tar sands
during a visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFX3wmdgCa0
Note in the comments the attempt to rebrand what's been known for
decades as tar sands as "oil sands." Apparently some smart marketing guy
ran some focus groups and determined that that sounds less dirty.
On 08/28/2011 01:56 PM, [email protected] wrote:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/tabatha-southey/jack-layton-you
-dont-know-what-youve-got-till-its-gone/article2144124/
--
S. Morris Rose
Vancouver, BC
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