It is 13 years now that Andrea Horwath has been leading Ontario’s new democrats. It has been a sad four years of lacklustre leadership that Horwath has provided the official opposition. She only became opposition leader in the Ontario legislature because former premier Kathleen Wynne of the liberals gave up before election day in 2018.
If Andrea Horwath was a real leader, she would never have lost Brampton North MPP Kevin Yarde for the coming election. She needs him in the NDP caucus. She lost him to an ethnic putsch in his electoral district.
And there was nothing new about that. All major parties have suffered from one ethnic group or another ganging up and dictating that it will be one of their own who will represent their riding. If it is not the Italians in one riding, it is the Sikhs in another. And you can hardly complain that the federal government passed an amendment to the election act back in the 1990s that the party leader has to sign off on all candidates for his or her party. (Which only stupid leaders abuse by simply appointing who will represent their party.)
But the entire provincial electoral district of Brampton North should be embarrassed by the loss of Kevin Yarde. He was one of the effective people in the legislature. He was a strong advocate for his riding. The Sikh community, that obviously ganged up on him, should be embarrassed by the foolishness. The Sikh community in Ontario does not lack representation in the legislature.
And it was hardly as though Kevin Yarde just represented the black community. It was unfortunate that Howarth told the black NDP members that they could have their own caucus. Five members who happened to be black made a good number for an interesting lunch but they hardly need their own caucus. The NDP caucus was not so large that their opinions could not be heard. Next thing we will hear is that the NDP has a women’s caucus.
It reminded me of years ago, I decided to drop in on my local riding annual meeting. I had been traveling frequently and was not as active in the association. What struck me when I got there was that we seemed to have a large number of new members. I was moving about saying ‘hello’ to people when I bumped into a young chap whom I knew because my son had invited him to our back yard swimming pool.
I welcomed him to the liberal party and asked him what encouraged him to take an interest in politics. His answer was most upsetting. He smilingly told me that he had been recruited to help it to be what he called “Our turn.”
I just stood there and looked at his dusky brown face and realized that the riding association had been taken over. How was I going to explain to this young man that liberals do not take turns? We pick the best person to represent all of us. We do not pick by skin color or religion or country of birth.
And maybe, I’m just an idealist.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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