On immediacy

It didn't take long for the opportunities I'd mused about to emerge in Canadian politics. But while the Libs haven't yet decided on a structure for their leadership campaign, we can see what the NDP is doing to ensure voters have an option to resist a Trump takeover.

And that now includes Jagmeet Singh taking on a lead role in fostering both resistance and hope (if only after Charlie Angus had shown how readily a leader can win support just by standing up to Trump):

But I would note there's room for further work in indicating not only a willingness to fight against Trump and his Con allies, but also the determination to build the alternate structures needed to support people caught in the violence in time to help them. And that's where I'd argue there's still room for a change in mindset.

Over the past few years, the main indicator for the federal NDP's success has been one of incremental progress. The achievements most valued by the party have involved negotiating the partial implementation of much larger ideas including dental care and pharmacare. And with the Libs holding power, the manner and pace of implementation has been almost entirely out of the NDP's hands - resulting in the habit of treating any step forward as a win, full stop.

But the reality is that there's still ample work to be done in developing what those programs can and should be. Plenty of people will have reason to ask why their needs haven't yet been addressed - and what an NDP government plans to do differently. 

And that question will become all the more important when the humanitarian crisis blows up later this month, creating imminent and severe risks to all kinds of people facing a hateful and emboldened Trump administration. I've already noted what the policy response might look like - but it's worth also pairing the "what" with attention to the "when" and "how".

Fortunately, there's a compelling example to point out thanks to Wab Kinew. His Manitoba NDP government is combining clear timelines for larger goals with a commitment to dealing with urgent circumstances as soon as possible - addressing immediate homelessness through proactive outreach in a matter of weeks, while working on a longer-term plan to ensure everybody has housing. 

Similarly, it's worth emphasizing the NDP's determination to identify the most significant needs where they exist, and commit the resources needed to deal with the full scope of a problem on a defined schedule.

That should make for a particularly compelling message on the housing front when compared to a Con position based on nothing more than meddling in municipal decision-making while actually reducing the federal government's resources applied to home construction. 

Among the other glaring problems with treating deregulation as a panacea, it involves precisely zero attention and focus toward people's immediate needs where they don't offer the largest opportunity for immediate profit. And that leaves an opening for the NDP to advance direct action to ensure the right to housing is met, rather than asking people to settle for the bare hope someone else (or a mythical invisible hand) will fix the problem at some point in the future.