Rex Murphy
National Post, Oct. 27, 2022
“If the imposition of emergency powers, the raiding of bank accounts, the jailing of protesters, the invasions of privacy rights, if all of this is determined to be nothing more than an overwrought prime minister exercising his distaste for opposition and legitimate protest, should that be the inquiry’s findings, would Mr. Singh stay with his Liberal partner?”
What will it take to break the hoops of steel that now bind Jagmeet Singh to the fortunes and political health of Justin Trudeau?
What bonding between the two is so adamant that nothing can sunder it?
Hold on.
Before I seek an answer to that dark query, there stands a preliminary point of curiosity.
Mr. Singh and Mr. Trudeau may have sat on a sofa of mutual comfort. But what, speaking of the NDP party itself, its followers, its MPs, explains their easy acceptance of this strange tryst?
Has there been a single member of the once stalwart NDP caucus ( by “once stalwart” here I mean the long and distinguished period when the NDP were the eagle-eyed critics of the natural governing party, its fiercest challengers, the uncompromising champions of forgotten workers, from auto shops to oil workers to farmers) who has publicly questioned and objected to the little explained nuptials between Jagmeet and Justin?
Is there no single NDP MP who finds the puzzling embrace embarrassing? Or will at least offer some comment?
Is there no concern in the NDP caucus that their impeccably styled chief has, by the deal with Mr. Trudeau, effectively and objectively reduced the greatest protest party Canada has ever had to a mere sidecar, or to vary the metaphor, a political-airbag should the Liberals ever face some collision in The House of Commons?
Does Mr. Singh rule the party so stringently that when he denies his own party’s character by effectively merging it with the Liberals to making it a tail on a Mr. Trudeau’s minority kite, that no one in that caucus objects? The silence of the NDP caucus on this arrangement is a grim and possible embarrassing puzzle.
What holds them back? It cannot be that they see this cynical abandonment of the NDP’s great parliamentary role as in any way accordant with the legacy of its heroes, be it Mr. Layton or the iconic Tommy Douglas. Would either Layton or Douglas have so bent and genuflected? Anyone at all with the slightest memory of political tradition in Canada knows the answer to this question. … SOURCE
