The NDP has let an individual who applauded a Nazi, supported buying a tar sands pipeline, engaged with a CIA talk shop, sits on a NATO parliamentary body and praises Canada’s leading proponent of a state committing a holocaust to participate its leadership race. But they may block someone who has spent two decades challenging racist Canadian foreign policy.
Heather McPherson has been vetted by the NDP to run in the leadership race. A committee of party officials has decided she adheres to “the principles and core values of the Party.” Apparently, she will formally announce her bid to seek the NDP leadership on Sunday.
Yet McPherson applauded an individual who fought for Hitler and supported Ottawa paying $35 billion for the Trans Mountain pipeline. She has also repeatedly spoken alongside and praised leading Zionist Irwin Cotler, attended a CIA influenced Trilateral Commission meeting in 2022 and is a member of the NATO Parliamentary Association.
While popular pressure and electoral considerations has pushed McPherson to become “vocally tepid” in criticizing Israel’s holocaust in Gaza, as NDP foreign affairs critic over the past four years McPherson has generally backed the Liberals’ US empire aligned policy. In February 2023 I wrote an article that began by asking, “Would the world be better off if the NDP didn’t have the position of foreign affairs critic? I began thinking about this question after seeing a recent tweet from Heather McPherson calling on the Liberals and Conservatives to get tough on Iran.
“As the third national party, the supposedly social democratic federal NDP rarely criticizes the Justin Trudeau government from the right on domestic issues. It’s uncommon for the NDP to call for the Liberals to increase privatization in healthcare, cut daycare funding, weaken the labour code, reduce assistance to reserves facing water advisories, etc. But on international affairs the party’s foreign affairs critic regularly pushes the government to be more aggressive against those in the crosshairs of Western imperialism.”
In the article I raised the NDP’s endorsement of the racist colonial Core Group. In 2021 Haitian political commentator Madame Boukman Justice 4 Haiti tweeted: “The all-white Core Group of ambassadors (US, Canada, France, Brazil, Spain, Germany, EU, UN, OAS) in Haiti hold multiple meetings per month to discuss how to continuously tighten the stranglehold on 12 million Black Haitians.”
During the 2021 federal election the NDP explicitly endorsed Canadian participation in the racist Core Group, which has heavily shaped Haitian affairs since US, French and Canadian troops overthrew the country’s elected government in 2004 and instigated a UN occupation force. While widely condemned in Haiti, there’s been almost no criticism of the Core Group outside of the Haitian community in Canada.
Similarly, I’m one of the few white Canadians who has repeatedly criticized the “Butcher of Africa’s Great Lakes”. In Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation and in dozens of articles I’ve detailed Canadian support for Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame’s violence in Congo. Incredibly, my principled opposition against Canadian policy on the continent has been weaponized by NDP critics and Zionists. (After I announced my bid to lead the NDP, B’nai Brith claimed I was a Rwanda genocide denier.) At the Ontario NDP convention in Niagara Saturday two individuals asked if I denied the Rwandan genocide. Of course, they knew nearly nothing about the subject, Canada’s role therein or my writing on the subject.
My principled opposition to Canada’s complicity in apartheid and the genocide lobby has also driven a slew of individuals to smear me and call for me to be blocked from running in the NDP leadership race. It requires a huge dose of anti-Palestinian racism to believe that my bold challenge to Canadian complicity in a live streamed holocaust justifies blocking me from running for the NDP leadership. History will judge harshly all those who sided with Israel or trafficked in these types of smears.
The racist double standard is stark. On June 11 McPherson did a public event with leading apartheid and genocide apologist Irwin Cotler, who recently wrote “Don’t reward terror with statehood” while a month into the genocide, McPherson pushed to expel NDP delegates who supported a Palestinian Canadian led protest that entered the Hamilton hotel hosting the NDP convention.
What would it say about “the principles and core values of the Party” if the NDP was okay with Heather McPherson participating in the race but not me?
To assist, donate or learn more about my bid to lead the NDP, including an ongoing tour of BC, Regina and Winnipeg, check out yvesforndpleader.ca
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