How the NDP frustrates me

[KeyStone]

It appears so In four years from now, knowing what I know now, I will not make the same mistake, and I will spend the next four years preparing to take a seat away from an incumbent NDPer by telling my story. Regular everyday folk?....what BS

Sometimes it's not really the decision of the party but a poor riding president who makes the decision based on nepotism, or some other random reason.

Given that you are making it your mission to run against the NDP in the next election, it would seem that personal vanity and revenge are more important to you than the ideals of any party.

Based on that alone, it would seem that the party made the correct decision and I suspect that there is more to the story than we know. Perhaps you are known in the community or by the NDP, and ruled out not on the basis for what you haven't done, but rather on the basis of what you have done.

[pegasus]

You ask me 'why', so start here:

http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=pol&dir=can/bck&document=index〈=e

You will note for a start that yes, your nominators must be eligible to vote in the riding for which you are being nominated.

Next, West end Montreal, NDG/Cote-St.Luc/Montreal West is not a federal riding. Cote-St. Luc is mostly in Mount Royal; Montreal West is in Lachine; could be Westmount; could be Lasalle; could be....(None of them, by the way, were won by a 19-year-old, male NDP candidate, so that bit is either a mistake, or a lie. )

Soooo... we've established that you know sweet nothing about the organizational structure, processes or personel of the NDP party, and shockingly little about the federal structure of Canada.. certainly nothing at all about basic party function.... Soooo what were your superlative qualifications again? You are a volunteer for an unnamed charity and you have passed through that riding recently? Me, too. I have the additional qualification of being able to find the Elections Canada site on my computer, and reading it.

Now, I know I'm being more than a little rude here, but let that be some hint about how offensive I find your sense of entitlement. Who do you think you are, marching in with no facts and no grasp, no perspective and no background, magnanimously offering yourself for the endorsement of starngers?

Trust and respect must be earned, and you've done so little of it that you don't even know that it must be done at all.

AND... then we get to the qualifications of the folks who were given those endorsements.

This young woman is not a teen-ager, and she's not 'a barmaid'. She is three years older than Ralph Goodale was when he was elected for the first time. She has been self-supporting outside of partisan circles (ie has held down a real job) for, I believe, more years than Stephen Harper has done.

She manages- not slings beer for, but manages- a successful pub. She is a parent. And she has been involved with (not just 'votes for' or even 'held a membership in' the NDP party for 'years'. (That's that 'earned trust' thing.)

So perhaps you should tell me again how you are more qualified than she is... or for that matter, more qualified than any of the new NDP MPs?

I'm not going to answer all the points here, because most are just flaming, and I received a good response from another forum. But I will answer a few. You are correct, the name of the riding is called NDG/Lachine. The coordinates of the riding have been changed since I last lived there. I also never once said that this particular riding was won by anyone unqualified. The woman is a teacher and I have quite a bit of respect for teachers, for I am one also. The only problem I have with Ms. Morin is that she does not speak any English in a riding that has a population that is around 60% English. The NDG/Lachine riding includes the cities of Dorval and Montreal West, the borough of Lachine and the part of the neighbourhood of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce west of Hingston Avenue in the City of Montreal. Trust me. I know it very well.

Apparently, collecting the signatures was a waste of time. But if I could have run, which apparently I couldn't in which an explanation will follow, I'm sure the party could have collected the signatures themselves as they did for Ms. Brosseau.

If you need to know, even though this is not the type of place I like to bring up personal items, but I volunteered coaching Little League Baseball for ten years in NDG and Verdun, in Montreal and I helped deal with certain patients at the Douglas Hospital in Verdun for 2 years. (If any of you remember this in 4 years, happen to live where I hopefully will be running, I guess this is as good a place as any to put up my resume ) My mother also lives in Montreal West and my friends in NDG. Therefore I visit quite often.

Ms. Brosseau is a bar manager. I'll give you that. But I never called her a teenager. But the NDP MP representing Sherbrooke is, however, a teenager.

I too have had an NDP membership for many years. It was handed down to me by my father who also was a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. Do you know who they are? Well you should. If you do not, do a google search.

Anyhoo. As mentioned earlier, I now have a better understanding as to how all this works. This has been an awesome learning experience over the last two days and 4 years from now I will try to use this to gain myself a candidacy somewhere in this great country of ours.

vermonster

rabble-rouser

Member: 23993

Joined: Apr 24 2011

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May 8, 2011 - 9:28am

#35 (permalink)

Based on what you describe, your candidacy would have been rejected because you didn't follow the proper procedures.

You generally don't collect nomination signatures from the public prior to securing the party nomination. The party nominates people either through riding nomination meetings, or through designation by the party leader.

In most cases, this nominee is designated long before the election is called. If you approached the party 2 days after the election was called, in all likelihood there was already a nominee in the riding you were seeking to run. The in Quebec CIty you describe approaching was the campaign headquarters for the already nominated candidate, Raymond Cote, focused solely on getting him elected. It had nothing to do with the nomination of candidates.

The filling in of vacant nominations once the election is called is handled by the party headquarters. That's when we end up with situations like Bethier-Maskinonge, where they have to scramble to find a name to put on the ballot. Under those circumstances, the party headquarters would look at names of known party supporters and approach them about running. If you had previously been in contact with them about your interest in running for Parliament or known to them as a party activist, you might have been in a better position - that's why several of the candidates running were selected from things like university NDP organisatons. (My understanding is that candidate recruitment for Quebec this election was handled out of the party's Montreal office, and was loosely overseen by Thomas Mulcair.)

But the most important thing is to actually buy a membership in your riding association and getting involved there. That is how you find out when nomination meetings are happening, talk to activists and organisers about who is thinking about running in the next election, and help build an organisation on the ground for the party. (This is especially needed in Quebec, where most of our riding associations have historically been very weak).

Election campaigns don't begin 2 days after the election is formally called, they begin long before when parties select their candidates, lay the groundwork for the campaign, and build the infrastructure necessary to compete for votes. Walking into a party campaign office once the election has already been called and saying "I want to run for Parliament" is simply not how it is done.

Finally, I would suggest that if you were told you were "not qualified" it was not a comment on your professional qualifications, but rather a statement that you did not meet the qualifications for obtaining the nomination - because you didn't go through the procedures to obtain a nomination through a riding association or designation from Ottawa prior to collecting signatures, or because there was already a candidate officially selected where you wanted to run. Approaching a local campaign organiser in Quebec city about wanting to run in Montreal wouldn't have helped matters either - there is no reason that person, overwhelmed trying to put together a campaign organisation in the Quebec city region, would know anything about your home riding.

-----

To which I responded

Thank you. This was the best response I have heard It makes me feel better as to why I could not run. I obviously went about this the wrong way, and I apologise if I cased anyone to get angry on this thread. It wasn't my intention. I was just looking for the type of answer that was posted above.

I assume that holding a membership is not enough to gain candidacy in the NDP, so I will do as you suggest. Now with the NDP being as large as it is, here in Quebec, finding the association should not be too difficult. How much is a membership in a riding association? I don't earn very much money amd I have a large student loan still to pay off. But I am more than willing to work. I have already given my name to the local MP, Richard Cote. I'm just waiting to hear back so I can get started.

I really would like the opportunity to do this 4 years from now.

[Mr.Canada]

Run for the Liberals. I hear they have quite a few openings. The NDP are the new party of the socialist elite. The champagne socialist if you will. They no longer care for the people.

[punked]

Run for the Liberals. I hear they have quite a few openings. The NDP are the new party of the socialist elite. The champagne socialist if you will. They no longer care for the people.

Oh stop already. Seriously. I don't want to hear you udder a word the next time someone calls Harper a fascist if this is the type of hyperbole you plan on over the next 4 years.

[pegasus]

Apparently its going to be next to impossible for me to run for the NDP next time around

Pegasus, if you want to get on the ballot for the next election, you should start working now.

1. Pick a riding with no NDP member and GO AND LIVE THERE. Otherwise you have to try and knock off a sitting NDP MP, which will put the whole local party against your interloping ways.

2. Join the NDP and find out all you can about the local riding association, and get involved with it.

3. Knock on EVERY DOOR in the riding and introduce yourself, while selling NDP memberships. You have time to do this. Should be about 40,000 doors. The more memberships you sell, the more the Party will like you.

4. Take on some local causes in that riding, advocate for people, and get known as a local activist. Try to get some media coverage, even if it is in the local free newspaper. Get some volunteers to help you with your local causes and nomination.

4. When the nomination meeting comes, make sure your new friends show up and vote for you.

5. Once Jack Layton signs your nomination papers, you are good to go!

In other words, I'd have to move tomorrow, spend alot of money I don't have, with probably little or no chance of being successful Some of these things I can do. Its the moving part, being the activist, and at the end, Jack Layton choosing someone else is what tells me that this all may be just a pipe-dream

But I really am going to try. I wanted to move to Ottawa in two years, but instead, I will try to do this in the next three or four months. I will quit my job here, and go there to look for another job. And hopefully the NDP has not found any candidates, by that time, for any one of the ridings they need them in.

[punked]

If you aren't going to do the work then why would the NDP have you run in the first place?

[pegasus]

There's already quite a few in the NDP caucus who never did the work.

[punked]

There's already quite a few in the NDP caucus who never did the work.

No they did the work that is why the party nominated them. Most of them have been involved in running, volunteering, going to conventions, and building the party. Even the ones in Quebec so please don't give me that shit. I will quote the great Liberal leader Micheal Ignatieff on this one.

"The only thing Canadians hate more then a loser is a sore loser"

Sorry. Even the young MPs all built a young New Democrat organization at their University where I am sure they got a lot of guff and heat from their professors and the young Liberals and Conservatives on Campus. They did work.

[pegasus]

No they did the work that is why the party nominated them. Most of them have been involved in running, volunteering, going to conventions, and building the party. Even the ones in Quebec so please don't give me that shit. I will quote the great Liberal leader Micheal Ignatieff on this one.

"The only thing Canadians hate more then a loser is a sore loser"

Sorry. Even the young MPs all built a young New Democrat organization at their University where I am sure they got a lot of guff and heat from their professors and the young Liberals and Conservatives on Campus. They did work.

But some did no work in their ridings that they represented. They didn't have to move to those ridings, nor visit. I have done quite a bit of work for the NDP and now I plan to move to a riding where the NDP is not represented in the House of Commons and do all the work necessary to try to become a candidate. But what I fear is another Berthier-Maskinonge, where I'm sure there were NDP activists, Ms. Bousseau had to get her list of names from someone going door-to-door, but none of those activists were chosen to run by Mr. Layton.

[cybercoma]

The above looks like a longer version of the exact same things that were said in this thread.

[Molly]

No they did the work that is why the party nominated them. Most of them have been involved in running, volunteering, going to conventions, and building the party. Even the ones in Quebec so please don't give me that shit. I will quote the great Liberal leader Micheal Ignatieff on this one.

"The only thing Canadians hate more then a loser is a sore loser"

Sorry. Even the young MPs all built a young New Democrat organization at their University where I am sure they got a lot of guff and heat from their professors and the young Liberals and Conservatives on Campus. They did work.

100%, Punked.

Reminds me of a guy picked up to complete a foursome for a small town bonspiel, who insisted, "I've never done this before, so I'll shoot last."... Where does one even begin the correction and explanation?

[bloodyminded]

I met with the first person at the NDP office for no longer than 20 minutes. I came in with my list of signatures and my diploma and references from the places I volunteered at. I was clean shaven and well dressed. Whatever underlying issues there were, were never conveyed to me. He looked over everything I brought, asked me a few questions, such as why I want to run as an NDP candidate. Then non-chalantly handed everything back to me and told me that I didn't have the necessary qualifications to run as an MP. Having no experience in this matter, I took what he said as gospel, and left thinking that all the ridings were already filled up with Doctors and Lawyers.

Little did I know they were being reserved for teenagers and barmaids.

How in the hell is a doctor even slightly, mildly, faintly, and in anyway more suitable than a..."barmaid," [sic] as you say?

Edited May 9, 2011 by bloodyminded

[madmax]

Nonsense deleted....

Mr. Pegasus, you sound like a person that is full of it...

I have a very hard time reading this thread and believing a single sentence coming from the new poster.

Little of what is said adds up.

I sense a credibility issue. And I would think this is the last place someone would show up at if this was true, especially considering the feeding frenzy that just went on in the press.

Go to the media and back up your claims.....

I would like to see an answer to some of your claims

Particularly this whopper you have posted on this forum.

I went out and collected signatures (which took me a few days) and ended up with more than the 100 necessary

As this process doesn't happen until after one has received a nomination and these forms come from Elections Canada.

So short of registering as an Independent, you would still require a witness, cfo and campaign manager.

Good luck with your tall tale...