To: elizabeth.may@parl.gc.ca, elizabeth.may.c1a@parl.gc.ca
hi.
i think you really need to push mulcair on free trade in the debates, and generally.
whatever his recent rise in the polls is attributed to, the ndp base has been rooted in it's opposition to free trade since 1993. and, i'm not convinced that mulcair is really in line with this.
consider what happens if the ndp win and he takes the neo-liberal consensus on this and just pushes the tpp through. you're going get protests and strikes and the whole thing when it really kicks in. and, the liberals have no credibility on this. who wins when their base collapses? you.
but, it's not just self-interest. i'm a pragmatist; i'm not going to vote for a fourth or fifth place party, and i don't want to see you knock him down to win harper another majority. it's a really serious public debate that isn't happening and something that voters in general need to get a better grasp in - both in terms of what's at stake and in terms of where the guys stands on it. nobody's voting for the ndp to elect another (neo)-liberal government.
we don't have a lot of checks and balances in parliament. but we perhaps have too many parties, and this surplus of parties could maybe serve canadians better by acting as one.
we're not going to get another "nation's conscience" type ndp leadership, and they're not positioned to make sure much of anybody is sticking to their word and keeping their promises. rather, somebody needs to step in and fulfil that position as it relates to them. as a party that is (in some ways) to the left of the ndp, that's a role you can actually fill. the best the liberals can really do at this point is parrot the conservatives in critiquing their budgets.
there's lots of things in that platform of theirs that look pretty good. somebody's gotta make sure they're actually doing it.