After Avi Lewis won the NDP leadership race a leftist playwright labelled him an “anti-imperialist”. Today he reappointed Heather ‘CIA’ McPherson party foreign critic.
As NDP foreign affairs critic over the past five years McPherson has generally backed the Liberals’ US empire aligned policy. McPherson, a member of the NATO Parliamentary Association, applauded an individual who fought for Hitler, has repeatedly spoken alongside Irwin Cotler and attended a CIA-influenced Trilateral Commission meeting in 2022.
In a long X post in response to Israel’s genocide in Lebanon, three weeks ago McPherson declared that resistance organization Hezbollah “must surrender their weapons to the Lebanese Army”, which has basically never fought the genocidal Jewish supremacist state. In mid-January McPherson boasted about backing the US/Israeli/Canadian war on Iran. She noted, “I secured a study at the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on the federal government’s refusal to list the IRGC as a terrorist entity, as well as the connection between people or assets in Canada and the IRGC… For years, I have advocated for stronger sanctions against Iranian leadership.” McPherson made these pro-Zionist statements more than two years into Israel’s genocide in Gaza and during an NDP leadership race that pushed her to the left.
On Russia McPherson is an uber hawk. Ten months before Russia’s February 2022 invasion she said Ottawa should promote Ukraine joining NATO and expand its military presence in the nation. She’s repeatedly opposed calls for a negotiated, diplomatic, solution to the war and is close to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which promoted Nazi soldier Yaroslav Hunka and many other members of the 14th Waffen-SS.
McPherson has also pressed the Liberals to be more hawkish on China. She has called for sanctions on Chinese officials, backed the media panic about Chinese interference and promoted the government’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, which augmented Canada’s military presence in the region. McPherson has also pushed Ottawa to adopt Washington’s position on Taiwan and was part of a Taipei-sponsored parliamentary delegation that stoked tension over the island.
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.”
Since then popular pressure and electoral considerations pushed McPherson to become “vocally tepid” in criticizing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. But even on Palestine there are major questions. McPherson pushed to expel NDP delegates who supported a Palestinian Canadian led protest that entered the Hamilton hotel hosting the NDP convention a month into the genocide and in December 2022 openly cowered to the apartheid lobby by throwing Canadians United Against Hate founder Fareed Khan under the bus. McPherson doesn’t appear to have mentioned the dozens of registered Canadian charities that (illegally) support the Israeli military, racist organizations and West Bank settlements or Canada’s two-decade old initiative to train and assist Palestinian Authority security forces to act as the subcontractor of Israel’s occupation. Nor has McPherson said anything about Canada’s anti-Palestinian terrorism.
Alongside her silence on important contributions to Palestinian dispossession, McPherson has worked with and praised Canada’s most prominent anti-Palestinian. On June 11 McPherson participated in a press conference led by Irwin Cotler and has collaborated with his Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights on multiple occasions.
McPherson has largely ignored Canadian belligerence towards Haiti and Venezuela. Nor has she said much about the immense support Ottawa gives to a rapacious international mining industry.
After Lewis won the leadership race playwright Carmen Aguirre posted, “The fact that he won the NDP leadership on an abashedly leftist, anti-imperialist, green, pro-Palestine campaign is inspiring.” The statement appeared hyperbolic at the time since I’ve never heard Lewis describe himself as “anti-imperialist” but now appears completely removed from reality.
Putting Heather McPherson in charge is, in fact, a disaster for all those who hoped the party would push a more left-wing foreign policy.
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