On Wednesday, MP Sana Hassainia, who represents the Montreal area riding of Vercheres-Les Patriotes, announced she was leaving the socialist NDP to sit as an independent until the next election. Fortunately for the NDP and Canada, she also said she will not run for re-election in the next federal election.
Hassainia gave a few reasons for leaving the party; she claimed leader Tom Mulcair was too authoritarian (who knew political leaders could be this way) and claims she was punished for having supported Muclair’s rival, Brian Topp, during the last leadership campaign.
But her main reason for parting ways with the progressive party was Mulcair’s pro-Israel position. Unlike Prime Minister Stephen Harper who is a staunch supporter of the only democracy in the Middle East, Mulcair’s position is what he calls a balanced approach. Unrealistically, as most progressives are, the NDP leader wants to see a utopian two-state solution where both Israel and the Palestinians, including Hamas whose main goal is to rid the world not only of Israel but of Jews, living side by side in harmony.
Although Mulcair has made several statements concerning what is happening in Gaza, what Mulcair said that the 39-year-old Tunisian-born MP found “despicable” was that Israel has a right to defend itself terrorist attacks from Hamas.
Hassainia’s position goes well beyond the normal lefty mantra that Israel deserves what it is getting because the country is occupying Palestinian lands or that Israel is engaging in a “disproportionate” response to rockets being fired into it. The MP clearly believes what Hamas believes; Israel should be wiped off the map and Jews in the Middle East should be exterminated. There is no other explanation for her criticism of Mulcair’s statement that Israel simply has the right to defend itself from acts of terrorism.
After her resignation, Mulcair said, “The NDP has a long-standing position in favour of the two-state solution in the Middle East—a safe, secure state within negotiated borders for Israelis and a safe, secure state within negotiated borders for Palestinians.” Obviously, the rookie MP is totally unaware of her party’s position on foreign affairs and probably of everything else.
Hassaina was first elected as an NDP MP as part of the so-called “orange wave” in 2011. The Liberals have had a rough time since former PM Jean Chretien retired and party replaced Chretien with a bad leader and ever since then have found even worse leaders to replace the former ones. By 2011, when Michael Ignatieff was leader, the electorate realized it was time for a change. The academic, who spent most of his adult life in the UK and the US, came home to visit and to become prime minister. Canadians were fed up.
Under the late Jack Layton, the NDP increased the number of seats they held in Parliament from 37 to 103 in 2011. For the first time in Canadian history, the NDP formed the official opposition while the Liberals were knocked down to third place.
Most of these new seats were won in Quebec and most of these new MPs, like Hassaina, were virtually unknown outside of their immediate families.
Hassainia’s ignorance of her own party is noticeable. In her resignation statement, she criticized Mulcair for not being more like Layton. She has never figured out that Layton worked his way to become leader of the Official Opposition by moderating the socialists’ stance on issues such as nationalizing banks and yes, even on foreign affairs. Muclair’s position on Israel is really no different than the previous leader’s was.
At least Mulcair can take comfort in the fact that losing Hassainia from the caucus will be no great loss to the NDP. Since first being elected in 2011, her main occupation seems to be dropping babies. She’s had two children since being elected three years ago and made the news in 2012 when she walked into the House of Commons with her newborn.
Canadian Press reports Nycole Turmel, the NDP whip, had an extremely difficult time getting the 39-year-old to show up in the House or do any parliamentary work. During the current year, Hassainia had the worst voting record of the 308 MPs, showing up for only 8.7 per cent of the votes.
She made not bad money for the little work she actually did.
With her belief that Israel has no right to defend itself and therefore should be destroyed by terrorists, Hassainia would not even be welcome in the fringe Green Party of Canada. Two weeks ago, the party forced its Jew president, Paul Estrin, to resign for daring to write a blog post referring to Hamas as terrorists. At least Green Party leader Elizabeth May prefaces her anti-Israel remarks by saying Israel has a right to defend itself. No doubt Hassainia would believe she’s as bad as Mulcair is.
In a way it is unfortunate Hassainia did not decide to sit in Justin Trudeau’s Liberal caucus. As former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker might have quipped, the IQ of both parties would have gone up.
Goodbye and good riddance! This is a sentiment the NDP and its harshest critics can share.
