Convention resolutions are binding on the party, not MPs. In this case the resolution binds the party to take this position publicly - although MPs could theoretically vote any way they wish! https://pharmacare.vote has details

That’s a good idea. I think I’ll cut out torstar because they paywall so many articles

NDP is actually pretty decent, especially compared to the leading brands :)

At least in the browser, adding an exclamation mark redirects you to the community. Without the exclamation mark my phone thinks its an email address.

Would love if you could add !ndp@lemmy.ca, and perhaps combine it with canadapolitics under a “politics” category?

Completely agree!

Doesn’t seem like enough to me, although he’s had success with these small asks (he got the GST credit doubled a few times now)

Vacancy control is a policy that would fix this, and has been proposed by the Ontario NDP! It would tie rents to units instead of tenants, which would mean landlords can’t raise rents beyond the rent control guideline when putting a unit back on the market. This removes the incentive for landlords to renovict tenants.

Here’s a video with details on that policy

The fact is, the NDP and conservatives lost the last election. The NDP won 25 seats. And polling right now shows that the conservatives are going to win the next election if it were called tomorrow.

In the last parliament, from 2019-2021, there was also a Liberal minority, with deal between any party. But the Liberals simply got what they wanted because they could count on the support of either the Bloc (when shooting down legislation over jurisdiction), the NDP (for childcare), or the Conservatives (when legislating workers back to work), and have a working majority.

So, the NDP has three options:

1. Have little influence and get played like they did from 2019-2021
2. Bring down the government, with a high chance of a conservative majority: which would mean tax cuts for the rich, cuts to healthcare, and giant cash handouts to the private-sector for housing that will enrich developers and effectively scam the taxpayer - I mean, just look at Ford’s absolutely transparent greenbelt corruption
3. Use their power to broker a deal with the Liberals, guaranteeing them stability in exchange for serious concessions on healthcare (dental care and pharmacare), worker’s rights (paid sick days, anti-scab legislation), climate (phasing out fossil fuel subsidies), childcare (ensuring that care is done by public and non-profit instead of private providers), and housing (a few extra billion dollars, which is wildly insufficient IMO)

Option 3 is probably the best deal. Would an NDP government do more to tackle the housing crisis? Yes, but in the current parliament, with only 25 seats, you get what you can get. I think the NDP should push for more, be more aggressive, and have a more credible threat of pulling the plug in order to extract more from the Liberals, and for that reason, I’m not super excited about the way things are going. I’ll certainly push for more at the party convention.

However, let’s look at the bigger picture. What policy goals have the other parties (including the conservatives) actually accomplished in Parliament over the past decade? They’ve made a bunch of noise, but gotten pretty much nothing done.

We need a massive, WW2-style investment in home construction, and we need housing prices to go down. That’s something that the NDP believes in more than any other party. Take a look at this response in the last leader’s debate, where Singh actually pushes back on the notion that housing should be an investment and prices should keep going up. You think Poilievre or Trudeau are going to say anything like that?

The fact is though, that REITs are buying up massive amounts of property, have perverse tax incentives, and have a lot of political influence through their accumulation of capital over the past decades.