New Party established in Riding

The new People’s Party of Canada (PPC) held an inaugural meeting in Cobourg tonight to establish their Electoral District Association (EDA) for Northumberland Peterborough South.  The new Federal Party was established in September 2018 when Maxime Bernier broke away from the Conservative Party.  With almost 40,000 members across Canada but not yet an official party, it is racing against time to be set up for the next federal election in October 2019.  At the meeting, a new executive was elected, or rather nominated since their confirmation is subject to some background checking.  There were about 18 people at the meeting held in Arthur’s pub – more than expected by organizer Adam Gray from Belleville.  All ages were represented with about five of them women.

Frank Vaughan
Frank Vaughan

Elected/Nominated were:

  • President: Frank Vaughan from Codrington – Frank has his own web site, see Links below.
  • Vice President: Paul Henderson from Codrington – he conceded that he was a libertarian at heart
  • Secretary: Melinda Tessier from Cobourg
  • Financial Agent/Treasurer: Bernadette Henderson from Codrington

Before agreeing to the roles, a sheet with a summary of the duties was passed around and everyone was advised that they would be expected to not publicly disagree with PPC policies and to not say anything detrimental to the Party. 

PPC initial meeting. About half of the group
PPC initial meeting. About half of the group

A copy of the Party’s policies was available at the meeting although it’s not new since it’s available on the PPC web site – see links below.

There were also two people who showed interest in being candidates in the election.  If they are confirmed soon, that would be earlier than any party other than the incumbent Liberals.

Although there were a good number of people attending, not all were actual members of the party – some were simply curious.

Links

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Maggie
5 years ago

So happy to see this party established.

5 years ago

Our European style parliamentary system was designed to thrive on many and more parties, yet our system flounders under the incomplete influence of the two party model.

American’s have primaries to narrow fields of sometimes dozens between the parties, in a cavalcade of Republican Democracy spiraling over a year and half to narrow the field to a pair of Executive options (alongside Congressional and Senate Elections, staggered, and checked and balanced all to hell).

We don’t have any of that, and yet we believe our system is a binary. This is why Canada is rated one of the least democratic countries in the west.

My friends, we need more choice, not less, and while we are at it, less labels. The PPC is not far right. It is socially liberal, fiscally conservative and very much into personal responsibility.

Our ranks swell with ex liberals, and former NDP, who also feel under represented and like what the party has to offer.

Have you read our platform?

To finish, I would welcome more political parties, and in my humble opinion, we all should.

Our system would function a heck of a lot better if we stopped treating it as though it were American.

Walter L. Luedtke
Reply to  Frank Vaughan
5 years ago

Why does the local PPC executive need to undergo background checks before being elected?
Is it because Maxime Bernier, your leader, “has had to fend off approaches from the far-right Canadian Nationalist Party and accusations of xenophobia after he called immigration “a burden” and promised fewer immigrants and refugees.” Vancouver Sun

Reply to  Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

Elections Canada has rules that everyone follows, including the Liberal Party and the CPC.

I would recommend you research their own vetting policies in accordance with such as you would find they are very similar to ours.

There is no xenophobia, but in the beginning, there were people from both sides (Far Left, and Far Right) who tried to hijack our open communications for their own ends.

They tried to take our party and re-frame it into something it wasn’t on social media, and they were removed.

What we stand for is in our platform, which you can read at your leisure, anytime, at http://www.peoplespartyofcanada.ca, and that is what we should be judged by: Not what the Vancouver Sun or any other mainstream media claim.

They are not known for their objectivity, often enough.

At our meeting last Saturday, I met a man named Jerry. He is a Philippine Immigrant who did it the right way, waiting his three years, putting in his time, and he is extremely upset about people jumping in line, the mess at the border, and other immigration issues. Is he a xenophobe? Is he a “white supremacist”?

Last night in Toronto we had people of all ethnic backgrounds represented in the crowd as proud supporters of our new party. Who do we believe? The media with it’s vested interests? Or our membership which includes scores of immigrants?

Walter L. Luedtke
Reply to  Frank Vaughan
5 years ago

Elections Canada has nothing to say about vetting.
The established parties vet candidates whom they will run in elections.
Vetting the executive of a tiny local riding association is a bit …odd.
The Vancouver Sun, like the Toronto Sun, is owned by PostMedia.
Anyway, blaming the ‘mainstream’ media is a tactic much loved by the likes of President Trump.

Reply to  Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

When you have to bring Trump into the conversation to make your point, you likely don’t have a point.

I think you need to review Elections’ Canada rules, as well as what is in practice for all political parties.

We ask nothing more than every other party does. Executives are important, and getting them right is important, especially when everyone and their uncle doesn’t want to discuss ideas, but would rather label us (Like you have, bringing up Trump).

If you think the mainstream media doesn’t have an inherent bias I have some ocean front property for sale in Alberta if your interested.

Walter L. Luedtke
Reply to  Frank Vaughan
5 years ago

“His language was not as extreme as Donald Trump’s – this is Canada, after all – but he made it perfectly clear, at least to this listener, that the implicit motto of the People’s Party is: Canada First.
For however many believe that the Canadian economy and social fabric are being undermined by environmentalists, do-gooders and immigrants, Mr. Bernier promises he will be their voice.” Globe and Mail
So Trump Lite?

manfred s
Reply to  Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

Walter, perhaps the motto, or slogan if you will, “Diversity is our strength” also includes diversity in opinions and beliefs. I can’t say that I know someone who holds to a belief that they know to be wrong.

Wally Keeler
Reply to  Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

Vetting the executive of a tiny local riding association is a bit …odd.

There you have it. Walter is troubled by something “odd.” The innuendo is that something is afoot. What a profound mildness of complaint — just because something is odd, then Walter is at odds with it. Oh, the political insight that can be had via petty polemics. Another example of political language’s depths to comment on something “odd“.

Oddly enough, Walter prefers the normal, not the odd.

Frenchy
Reply to  Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

Would the vetting of a large local riding association seem odd to you Walter?
Has Donald Trump taken over “you know who” in Godwin’s Law?

Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

A new far-right “People’s” Party should appeal to some folks posting on this blog.
Especially the ‘No GTA Tourists’ and the ‘Lock Up Trudeau’ gang.
But as long as we have a FPTP system, their votes will disappear into the tall grass.

Wally Keeler
Reply to  Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

their votes will disappear into the tall grass“.

Along with the federal NDP.

Frenchy
Reply to  Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

From Walter:
“A new far-right “People’s” Party should appeal to some folks posting on this blog.”
From Frank Vaughn:
“They tried to take our party and re-frame it into something it wasn’t on social media”

Reply to  Frenchy
5 years ago

Indeed. Everyone wants to label the PPC, but do everything they can to avoid actually learning about it.

There is a reason that we have signed up ex-liberals and ex-NDP members in this riding, and in fact, all over our country.

If anyone is actually willing to learn, I am more than willing to talk. But the death of conversation are labels, and such labeling should have been left on the grade-school playground.

Civil discourse begins by discussing facts and ideas, not being arrogant and dismissive.

Rusty Brown
5 years ago

If nothing else, a place to park a protest vote when the time comes, something like the purpose previously served – and availed of in my own case – by the now-defunct Rhinoceros Party some years back.

ben
Reply to  Rusty Brown
5 years ago

The Reform Party has arisen great news to those of us who want vote splitting on the right

Wally Keeler
Reply to  ben
5 years ago

great news“?

Hardly news at all. It’s the shame old shame old, including the boring political formula. It is as much leftist mediocrity as it is rightist mediocrity. Typical binary thinking Ben, no room for nuances — right bad – left good. Life is so simple with ideology to guide the way.

I have watched some of nature’s predators, how female lions attack a wildebeest at the moment it birthed a calf, when they are most vulnerable. The attack from the female lions was successful. Get it before it can stand on its own feet. That’s politics and Ben has illustrated the example. I prefer the poetical, rather than the political.

Walter L. Luedtke
Reply to  Wally Keeler
5 years ago

Wally! What’s the highest honour among cowboy poets?

Wally Keeler
Reply to  Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

Pork and beans.

Walter|! What’s the highest honour among prosebags?

Wally Keeler
Reply to  Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

Better to be a poetisan than a partisan.

Walter L. Luedtke
Reply to  Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

Getting to be Poet Lariat! hahahaha
Creative, no?

Wally Keeler
Reply to  Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

Where’s your wit Walter? gone with the prosebags on a major mediocrity flight?

Wally Keeler
Reply to  Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

hahahaha

It’s quite pathetic to see that you have such little faith in your wit and humour that you felt it necessary to insert your own laugh track.

cornbread
Reply to  Wally Keeler
5 years ago

Hey Walter and Wally…Why don’t you 2 old windbags give it a break.

ben
Reply to  Wally Keeler
5 years ago

Let the vitriol begin Wally for all of the stuf you write it just proves to me that you want to push your version of the world – an unimaginative way of looking at things and yet coached in challenges for the rest of us to dream and act on them. What is is going to be Wally your cynical and predictable look at politics or your usual challenge to the rest of us to be imaginative. Must be a problem for you to have both sides of your brain firing on all cylinders and yet still you emerge confused.

PS I remain firm to my resolution not to comment on any of your answers to this post

Wally Keeler
Reply to  ben
5 years ago

Oh gee look at you going all political on the poetical. You confuse satire for vitriol. That is a systemic mistake.

Spare me the “push your version of the world.” Everybody does that, Ben, even you. Get used to it. Political language is antithetical to poetical language.

all of the stuf you write

Not just some of it. Not just most of it. But all of it. (I’m flattered that you bothered to read any of it) Of course. That’s what a dedicated poet does. It’s my oeuvre. They are a sort of priesthood over language, and all those that debase language, and language is debased more than any else by political language. Political language is unimaginative, constructed from jargon, copy and paste of stereotypes and gross indulgence in mediocrity. Orwell had a lot to say about the perniciousness of political language. Political language oppresses, represses, and suppresses, whereas poetical language enhances, enriches, expands.

You might find these words of Dylan Thomas instructive:

“I came to love words more and to hate the heavy hands that knocked them about, the thick tongues that [had] no feel for their multitudinous tastes, the dull and botching hacks who flattened them into a colourless and insipid paste, the pedants who made them moribund and pompous as themselves … I use everything and anything to make my poems work and move in the direction I want them to: old tricks, new tricks, puns, portmanteaus-words, paradox, allusion, paronomasia, paragram, catachresis, slang, assonantal rhymes, vowel rhymes, spring rhythm. Every device there is in language is there to be used if you will. Poets have got to enjoy themselves sometimes, and the twisting and convolutions of words, the invention and contrivances, are all part of the joy.”

Must be a problem for you to have both sides of your brain firing on all cylinders and yet still you emerge confused.

No problem at all, Ben. I created the Imagine Nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry. One of its main functions is satire. Political hacks hate satire.

I remain firm to my resolution not to comment on any of your answers to this post.”

Atta boy, Ben. Hide from debate and or dialogue. I get it. You like the political stance of pontificating to the people but not dialogue with them.

manfred s
Reply to  Wally Keeler
5 years ago

Wally, from my perspective, I see three options for a performer, play to the audience in their language, play to it in your language and play to it for yourself, regardless of who or what the audience may be. The choice one makes will depend on the reason for the “play” in the first place. If I’m trying to deliver my message I’ll use the first option, if I simply want to express myself I’ll use the second, and if I’m trying to impress myself or shore up my own self-importance, I’d use the third one. In my opinion, I see plenty of all three examples from every corner here on this blog, and I’m wont to using all three myself, something I need to rectify if my contributions are to be truly helpful. Your comment on ‘language’ is helpful to me and I thank you for it, but for me, framing it in the context of ‘poetry’ sets unnecessary limits to your message. Nevertheless, I like it because “language” is where so much is said and misunderstood and to me it is the root of much conflict. Better use would be a huge step in the struggle to communicate well. Of course, it makes no difference when the audience does not bother to make an effort to ‘hear’. That can be due to, among other reasons, a poor or inappropriate delivery.