Meet the Real NDP

7 years ago

While nobody was paying attention, Andrea Horwath has been recruiting conspiracy theorists, bigots, and extremists as star candidates for her party.

Despite Andrea Horwath’s claims to the contrary, the NDP under her leadership remains as beholden to bizarre, radical and extreme special interests as it ever has been, Ontario PC Candidates Lisa MacLeod and Peter Bethlenfalvy announced today.

“It’s time to pull back the curtain on the real NDP,” said MacLeod, “because the reality of the NDP is that Andrea Horwath has recruited a number of candidates with radical, hateful and extreme views.”

In particular MacLeod and Bethlenfalvy highlighted five star NDP candidates with a documented history of hurtful and hateful rhetoric as well as involvement in a number of extremist causes.

“Andrea Horwath was caught with a $7 billion dollar hole in her platform,” said Bethlenfalvy, “yet her response was to shrug it off. She’s just like her candidates — she believes the consequences of her decisions, her words and her actions do not matter. It is time that Ms. Horwath owned up to her candidates behavior, as well as her own.”

Backgrounder:

Mississauga Centre NDP candidate Laura Kaminker:
- Refuses to wear a poppy, writing in a 2014 blog post, “I just wear my peace button on my jacket as always, and wait for the collective brainwashing to blow over. When our masters give the signal, everyone can take off the fake poppy – made with prison labour – and create a bit more landfill. And another annual ritual of war glorification comes to a close.”[1]
- Has attacked sports teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs, Ottawa Senators, and Toronto Blue Jays who honour our troops at games.[2]
- A 9/11 conspiracy theorist who strongly believes we should stop memorializing the 3,000 lives lost, including 26 Canadians. In 2010, she wrote “Enough about September 11…for the US. For the world. Enough already,” and in 2011 she wrote “It makes me want to shout: Go away! Go the fuck away! All of you fixating on this one event, the whole world expected to stand in hushed silence because a bad thing happened to Americans.”[3]
- While she does not want to honour the troops who have fought for the freedom and rights we all hold dear, she does want to wage a war on Christmas, writing ““If there were a war on Christmas, I’d think about signing up.”[4]
- Is a self-described Marxist, who after a conference wrote that it was a “weekend of inspiration, education, and revolution.”[5]

Scarborough North NDP candidate Dwayne Morgan:
- A 9/11 conspiracy theorist who tweeted, “Now if they could do something about Bush’s role in 9/11, people could finally get closure” [6]

Ottawa Centre NDP candidate Joel Harden:
- A supporter and organizer for the radical Leap Manifesto.[7]
  - The Leap Manifesto opposes all resource extraction and the use of all fossil fuels, including the development of Northern Ontario mines, and the use of affordable natural gas for home heating.[8]
- Supports the radical and extreme Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.[9] Silvana Goldemberg, writing for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, described BDS as “Antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism.”[10]

University-Rosedale candidate Jessica Bell:
- A professional protester, who co-wrote a handbook on organizing radical protests, and endorses strategies like “occupation,” and “property destruction”[11] and a manual accusing the police of targeted assassinations.[12]
- As an activist with the Rainforest Action Network, she was part of a group of paid protesters who climbed a crane in Seattle and were arrested for criminal sabotage.[13]

Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston candidate Ramsey Hart:
- A career anti-mining activist who has opposed development of the Ring of Fire.[14]
- Bragged about the fact that mining companies dislike him.[15]
- Wants to raise mining taxes as a roundabout way of shutting down mining exploration across the province.[16]
- Has attacked “the [mining] industry’s dirt and dangerous legacy.[17]