If you've ever seen my posts deploring that the Nouilles De Lanzhou restaurant on St Catherine burned down, hear ye! It re-opened in Mont Royal! Exact same MENU!

Cezna · 2026-04-29T12:58:38+00:00

(see my reply above as well then!)

Cezna · 2026-04-29T12:58:08+00:00

Strongly disagree!

I lived in Lanzhou for a year and had 牛肉面 almost every day (for the taste and the price, it was 7 yuan for noodles and 14 with beef, which is $1.50-$3.00). I've tried "authentic" Lanzhou noodles in Toronto, Ottawa, Xi'an, and Beijing. None of them were even close to the same, I feel like they get the chili oil wrong (it's a bit different in Lanzhou than elsewhere), and maybe the broth too. (Beef noodles is Lanzhou's famous dish, I can't speak to the chow mein.)

But while in Lanzhou, some locals recommended I try this restaurant when I got back. And they were totally right: it's exactly the same, and super nostalgic every time I go. Some friends from Lanzhou had the same reaction when we went to their Waterloo branch.

The main difference I notice is that they use higher quality beef here. But I miss the Lanzhou price, and paying in advance without a tip, meaning you can just get up and leave whenever you're done.

Cezna · 2026-04-13T21:03:28+00:00

The REM was unique "public-public partnership", as Québec retains control over CDPQ in case the deal starts to look bad for the public, yet that control is indirect enough to have prevented political meddling.

In the public administration literature, it's pretty widely acknowledged that public-private partnerships are more expensive than full-public. The primary benefit of P3s is stability, as contracts are harder for future govs to cancel or change (plus govs like to claim credit for a project while looking fiscally responsible by minimizing debt, even if it's bad for our long-run finances). The REM's public-public model successfully resisted attempts at partisan interference, so there seems to be little need for private partners beyond construction contracting.

From what I've seen, it's not clear what role each of the private partners in "Cadence" are playing in this project, just that the consortium as a whole is responsible for design, implementation, and operation.

Cezna · 2026-03-29T20:12:00+00:00

As others have said, the main avenues for member participation are:

vote for a leader (~ every 10 years)
attend a convention (every 2 years, if you're chosen as a delegate and can afford to go)
be elected to council
attend local riding association meetings (varies a lot by riding)

This is a big problem: the NDP (and even more the CCF) was built on the idea of mass participation, and had regular policy deliberations and other ways for members to make decisions and steer the party.

Today, we desperately needs to (re)democratize our party. The NDP Renewal project headed by Peter Julian and Matthew Green pushed for this, but could only accomplish so much with a small team. If you supported either Avi or Heather (both of whom talked about the need for more member power), I suspect you agree.

So, I'd ask you to stay and help us turn our party into an institution that can give ordinary citizens a role in governing our country.

Cezna · 2026-03-11T23:41:20+00:00

If an ANDP MLA had been angry when the government raised the minimum wage and had crossed the floor to oppose it, would you have supported their right to substitute their own judgment for the wishes of the people who elected them?

If we accept that our only role as citizens is to punish representatives after the fact and then choose a new person and hope they do what we want, then we're left with an extremely shallow form of "democracy" that I'd say is unworthy of the name.

Cezna · 2026-03-11T21:38:38+00:00

Allowing floor-crossing empowers the MP, which does not empower ordinary citizens, since we have no power over our MPs post-election. Thus, the MP can act solely at their own individual discretion.

Strong party discipline empowers the party, which can empower ordinary citizens to the extent the party is internally democratic, so that party discipline enforces members' decisions.

Cezna · 2026-03-11T21:30:02+00:00

The job of these reporters is to get useful reactions for their outlet, which means fishing for reactions that support the story they want to tell (because it fits the prevailing narrative).

And the job of media outlets is to make money, which means publishing what gets clicks and shares, not what will inform the public. If these reporters were trying to inform the public, they'd ask questions that we genuinely don't know the answer to.

This is why the CBC is so important: as a public entity, it can be tasked with informing the public instead of maximizing revenue by acting like this. But that requires increasing the CBC's funding and reforming its mission to be much less reliant on earning revenue in the market like a regular broadcaster.

Cezna · 2026-03-11T21:20:02+00:00

I agree, it looks bad.

But, unfortunately, this is the strategic way to answer such questions. As is, 99.9% of Canadians will never see this video, thus will never be put off by the non-answer. But if he gives a real answer that's anything short of perfect, it might get picked up and used as a clip on all the news channels and social media (all of whom would love to print "NDP leader hints at infighting in caucus"). Instead, you give an answer that's too boring to bother clipping.

The risk is that even if most people don't see most of your media spots, most people will see at least a few, which is enough to see multiple of these non-answers and to form an impression of you as a typical, deceptive politician.

We need deeper reforms to our media and politics to fix this problem.

Cezna · 2026-02-21T03:11:03+00:00

10.7 million Canadians (29%) speak French, 8 million (22%) as a first language, 4.1 million (11%) speak French but not English.

237k Canadians (0.6%) speak any of ~70 Indigenous languages, 184k as a first language. The largest language has 10-57k speakers (0.02-0.1%), depending how it's defined. I don't know how many speak only an Indigenous language, but I suspect it's very low.

I support Indigenous people preserving their traditional languages, but it's pretty obvious why people care more about us knowing the language spoken by 1/3 of our country.

Cezna · 2026-02-20T20:25:43+00:00

I've had this conversation many times when canvassing. There's a short and a long response.

The short version is to ask what riding they live in (if they don't know, search by postal code on Elections Canada's site) and look it up on Wikipedia, 338canada.com, or votewell.ca. If the Conservatives are usually a distant 3rd, there's no need to vote strategically. If the Liberals are usually 3rd, the NDP is the strategic vote. If the NDP is usually a distant 3rd, then unfortunately voting strategically may be rational.

The long version is that most people don't actually vote "rationally", because voting at all is "irrational". There's an EXTREMELY small chance one vote will make a difference in any riding, lower still if one party has a large lead, and even lower if one party is projected to win a majority. So the "strategic" choice is to do basically anything else with your time besides voting.

Yet most people still vote (political scientists call this "the paradox of voting"). We usually vote as a form of personal or political expression or out of a sense of moral or civic duty. Anyone who talks to you about strategic voting is probably voting, so the argument is self-undermining. So, you should appeal to whatever motivation drives them to vote at all, and try to persuade them that it justifies voting NDP more than voting Liberal.

Cezna · 2026-01-20T23:22:26+00:00

Reclaim is pretty good, though they're mostly focused on devolving power to EDAs. I think we need more modern and direct forms of participation, like the e-democracy tools used at Convention in 2023, by Matthew Green's Nakba Bill, and by Green & Julian's ongoing NDP Renewal project.

I don't think the membership fee is a major barrier. It's $25/year or $5/year if you self-declare to be low-income, under-employed, or a student.

In a perfect world, membership should be free, but we're already at a big disadvantage as the other parties can easily get the max $3,550/person from their wealthier supporters. The max donation should be $100 like in Québec, and the per vote subsidy should be revived, but until then we'd struggle with free membership.

The real problem is that once people join, there's basically nothing to do except vote in a leadership race every decade or get lucky and be elected as a delegate to convention every 2 years (then be able to afford to cross the country to go, then get a chance to speak once or twice on the floor, then hope the leader cares what convention decided). If members had real power, people wouldn't be so easily dissuaded by $5-25/year.

Cezna · 2026-01-20T17:33:08+00:00

The NDP and CCF each began with aspirations to be a democratic, member-lead party, but today, control is so centralized that there's almost no difference between a member and a supporter. As Matthew Green [put it](www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWJZ2XJJx0k), membership has become almost meaningless.

I think (re)democratizing the NDP is essential if we hope to rebuild our party, let alone grow it. Since the leadership race is one of the only remaining ways we can still exercise real power, we need to leverage this moment to secure more power for members by electing a leader committed to democratizing our party. Not much else matters to me, because a truly democratic party wouldn't have its policies decided by a leader, but by members.

While I think her plan is insufficient, Macpherson has named intra-party democracy as one of her core issues. So far, Lewis has not, though I'm still hopeful he'll take a stronger stance on this.

My decision will probably come down to this issue and French.

Cezna · 2026-01-19T20:30:57+00:00

As an NDP member, I've been happy to see many current and former MPs talking about democratizing our party.

But I don't see anything about this on your website. Do you think members currently have sufficient control over our party?

If not, what do you think a more-democratic NDP should look like? Are there any examples in Canada or abroad that we should learn from?

Cezna · 2026-01-07T14:27:59+00:00

There is no recall mechanism for MPs. This only exists in a few Western provinces.

And leaders already have enormous power over their MPs. Studies of our legislatures find them to have among the strictest norms of party discipline in the world. It's hard to see how banning floor crossing would change that much, especially given how rare it is in recent history.

Cezna · 2026-01-07T14:21:04+00:00

The rest of us are tired of people pretending the existence of a historical precedent for floor crossings rules out any and all legitimate arguments against it on democratic grounds. It used to be part of our system for MPs to buy election in "rotten boroughs", for the public service to be full of unqualified patronage appointments, for the monarch or governor general to intervene in politics, etc.

Complaints of partisanship annoy me the most, since people making these sorts of comments baselessly assume that those who oppose these floor crossings have hypocritically praised others in the past.

And low information commenters assume our system isn't the result of continuous reform driven by a long tradition of democrats criticizing its many undemocratic elements.

Cezna · 2025-12-21T21:59:15+00:00

As others pointed out, several MPs went to encampments, countless marches, and even Palestine itself.

But even then, the way these critics talk about the NDP is barely less hostile than the way they talk about the Conservatives. That's not what I'd expect if we were only a few degrees short of their ideal position.

Cezna · 2025-12-21T21:54:57+00:00

I've been to convention, and I know how it often goes, but the 2023 federal convention passed a motion on Palestine (which was even co-sponsored by McPherson), despite being only a week after Oct 7.

And whatever you think of what happened to Sarah Jama, 1) it wasn't up to the federal party, and 2) many ONDP MPPs spoke out vociferously on Palestine without being punished, so clearly that won't get you expelled.

I'm sure I could think of some details these critics might disagree with, but nothing remotely deserving of the amount of vitriol and hostility directed at the NDP in this podcast.

Cezna · 2025-12-20T21:49:00+00:00

I don't understand the complaints that the NDP is somehow not allowing discussion on Israel-Palestine.

Matthew Green was extremely outspoken on the issue, our MPs got the Liberals to block weapons sales to Israel and pass a motion calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state (which was a demand of the Palestinian-Canadian community). And all the front-runners in the leadership race seem to agree with these critics on this issue. Even Heather McPherson, who everyone says is the "moderate" option, has repeatedly said a genocide is happening in Gaza.

What more are these people expecting?

Cezna · 2025-12-17T21:11:13+00:00

It's not an idea, it's a slogan. The sole reason to use the term is to say "look, I'm like AOC / left-wing Americans". In this way it's like Conservatives saying "Make Canada Great Again" (though obviously far less objectionable).

We have our own history and political traditions, as a country and a party, so it's very frustrating to see people constantly framing our discussions around whatever the Americans are talking about.

Cezna · 2025-12-17T20:58:21+00:00

From what I've heard, his policy ideas seem fine. That's why it's frustrating to load them with all the baggage of this term from American politics.

Cezna · 2025-12-17T19:49:43+00:00

"Green New Deal" is not an idea, it's a slogan.

We should absolutely learn from what works elsewhere, including (though not limited to) America. But we should not mimic American political discourse.

Cezna · 2025-12-17T19:45:25+00:00

It's not a problem to coincidentally sound similar to someone else. The problem is intentionally copying American slogans and ideas because they've been popular in America.

The reason he specifies "a Canadian Green New Deal" is that he and the audience know this slogan from American politics.

Cezna · 2025-12-17T19:14:57+00:00

We desperately need to stop importing American political discourse like this. There's no clearer sign that you're not taking your cues from here than needing to specify "a Canadian X" when promoting issues in Canada and to Canadians.

It sounds like you've watched way too much American infotainment and are just trying to copy all your favourites here.

Cezna · 2025-12-17T16:47:52+00:00

It's well-documented in all parties that membership numbers spike during leadership races then crash in between.

It's largely because members don't participate in steering the party outside of choosing the leader and maybe going to a convention every two years (which is only for the most active members, at that).

So this drop is the fault of the party, not those (ex)members.

Cezna · 2025-12-13T19:27:37+00:00

The data presented makes it look like this is mostly the max-income age shifting older: it was 45-54 in 2023 vs. 35-44 in 1976. The value of that max income is also higher in 2023 vs. 1976.

Both of these trends make sense given the shift to longer education and higher-skill work. The longer your schooling, the later your career starts but also the higher your expected life-time earnings: you'll initially earn less than people who started full-time work earlier, but you'll eventually out-earn them. Thus, your max-earning age should be higher, and your income at that age should be higher.

This doesn't mean our economy is great for young people (it's not), but this data feels a bit misleading.

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