Rest in Peace Jack Layton
A great loss to Canadians. Thanks Jack for your dedication, passion and public service over the decades. Everyone owes a debt of gratitude to Jack and others, also now passed on, who dedicated their lives to the public good and enrichment of Canadian society.
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Memories of Jack Layton
I had the priviledge of knowing Jack Layton back in the 70s when we were both with the NDP in the same North York riding. I could see even then that Jack had a unique ability of connecting with people, of listening to what they had to say and encouraging them to pursue their goals. I remember one meeting of our riding association in which we were deciding who we would support for the provincial leadership of the party at the convention where Stephan Lewis was stepping down. I believe it was the tradition of the party for riding delegates to vote as a unified block for their choice of leader. Although I'm not a very good speaker, I got up and made a motion that our delegates cast their votes in proportion to the vote of our riding membership. Jack was quick to spring to his feet to eloquently second my motion and the motion was carried. At the convention, David Lewis, formerly the federal leader of the NDP, sat with our riding delegation to show his support as we voted proportionally for our new provincial leader.
Fast forward to the 2011 leaders debate:
"Let's listen to what Mr Harper is saying here. He's ready to accept that were he to get a majority, and I'm doing everything I can to stop it cause I'd like to lead this country despite what Mr Ignatieff says, but he could possibly do it with significantly less than 50% of Canadians supporting him. That's undemocratic. We need to change our electoral system. There's something wrong with a system that when a party - the Bloc Quebecois, we'll pick that example, has 1.3 million votes and gets 50 seats in the House, and we've got the Green party that gets 900,000 votes not that far behind the Bloc, that gets zero seats. It's time that we had proportional representation in this country so that we had a proper representation of everybody's point of view when it comes to that House of Commons."
Our work is not finished. We need to change our electoral system so it truely reflects the will of the people. I hope you'll join us in that challenge. Let's have a fair vote in Canada and in every province and territory of Canada.
Honour a man while he is
Honour a man while he is alive.
All the media wimps and suck-ups to the status-quo took their perverse pleasure in beating-up on the NDP and Jack over the years saying, "Well you know Jack, you really aren't going to be the PM, or even the official opposition now, are you...?" snickering and sneering at him openly - right on camera.
And all the politicians who contemptuously derided him as a short, mustached, out-of-touch, bleeding-heart socialist who didn't know up from down and would plunge the country into an irretrievable debt spiral (like the Conservatives actually did):
they now are suddenly inconsolable, heart-broken, playing their assigned roles like paid mourners. What a disingenuous lot of losers we have running our country and media.
He was the conscience of Canada. And now we are left with nothing but the ethic of, "Money first, money only." Invented by the Americans, adopted by Harper and perfected by China.