The decision by the “unnamed, three-person vetting committee” tasked with overseeing the race to lead the federal New Democrats to nix a last-minute bid by Bianca Mugyenyi to secure a spot on the ballot after her husband, Yves Engler, was barred from the contest “has exposed the deep democratic rot that plagues the part,” according to Canadian Dimension contributor Nora Loreto.

“Mugyenyi, they say, is a proxy candidate,” she notes.

“She acknowledged that she decided to run after her husband (was) denied entry into the race. The committee argued that this constituted a breach of ‘honesty, professionalism and integrity’ and therefore disqualified her,” despite the fact that she “has been clear about her intentions,” and, did exactly what a democratic party asks candidates to do,” as Mugyenyi herself has pointed out.

“If the ‘democratic’ part of the New Democratic Party meant anything at all, the party brass would have recognized they had no real basis to reject her, approved Mugyenyi, and perhaps crossed their fingers that she would lose,” Loreto contends.

“Instead, they invented a reason to keep her out of the race” — a race that “is about far more than choosing the next leader of the NDP,” she contends.

“After the so-called Red Wave allowed the Liberals to cling to power, the party has been effectively dead in the water. The race has become a conduit for members to express their desire to rebuild the party — to renew and transform it.”

As she sees it, “the decision to bar Mugyenyi suggests the opposite: this is not a party genuinely interested in renewal,” and “by preventing a candidate from even clearing the vetting stage, the NDP leadership constricts who is allowed to participate, which ideas may be debated, and which political tendencies are kept safely out of the spotlight.”

Over at Rabble, Nick Seebruch asked the NDP for “specific evidence that Mugyenyi was not an independent candidate.”

In response, the party provided him with a statement that claimed her application “was publicly framed as contingent on the rejection of another applicant,” Seebruch reports.

“Rabble asked the party to cite the specific rules under which Mugyenyi was disqualified and have not received a response.”

He also notes that, “despite not being allowed to run, Mugyenyi, Engler, and other members of the movement they have helped lead said that they will be at the NDP party convention in March.”

Among those quoted is former Canadian Union of Postal Workers president Mike Palecek, a “vocal supporter of both Mugyenyi and Engler,” who says the fight is “far from over,” adding: “We are going to continue this fight right to the convention. We will be there in numbers. We will be on the convention floor. We will be at the mics. We will be fighting for democracy in this party at every step.”

Elsewhere on the site, Rabble politics writer Karl Nerenberg shared his thoughts on the race, which “has generated a fair bit of activity and controversy within the party itself, and in the Canadian progressive world more generally,” but has been “afforded … little coverage” by the “mainstream media,” leaving most Canadians “only vaguely aware, if they are aware at all, that the campaign is even happening,” he argues.

“With so much Sturm und Drang in the world right now it has been hard for a party with only seven MPs to get noticed – even if that party governs two provinces and forms the official opposition in four others.”

As for the state of play, “at this stage, it looks like this is a three-way race” among Avi Lewis, Heather McPherson, and Rob Ashton.

“It is quite possible the Ashton and McPherson forces are working together to stop Lewis,” he suggested.

“When pressed privately about Lewis’ main opponents, his supporters tend to focus on the fact that, in the words of one, ‘they have nothing to say’ – meaning the other candidates are running, essentially, on their biographies, not their policies. NDP members now have to decide what sort of leader they want.”

Meanwhile, Rabble contributor Bridget Potasky highlights how, amid near round-the-clock international coverage of the ongoing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Minneapolis and other U.S. cities, there are growing concerns in Canada that “Canadian companies are complicit in these abuses,” she reports.

Among the companies facing scrutiny: Hootsuite, which, as reported by the Globe and Mail, “has taken $95,000 in contracts from ICE to engage in ‘social media listening’ to gauge what the prevailing public sentiment about the organization is,” as well as Brampton, Ont.-based Roshel, which “has been accused of selling vehicles to ICE,” she notes.

“However, it has since been reported that it is not the Brampton branch of Roshel that is producing the armoured vehicles, but a new facility based in the United States. From a Canadian export controls perspective, the federal government has little action it can take because the vehicles are being produced in a different jurisdiction.”

There is, however, a New Democrat-sponsored backbench bill on deck “demanding greater transparency into Canada’s arms deals with the United States to ensure greater oversight for where our products end up,” she points out.

“While this had been put forward by the NDP to block Canadian weaponry from being used by the Israel Defense Forces, others have suggested it can be used to investigate whether or not the products of Canadian defence organizations are ending up in the hands of ICE officers.”

In fact, “there’s a great deal that Canada could do — and should do — in response to ICE’s brutality,” according to Ricochet correspondent Mark Kersten.

“It is false comfort to believe that ICE could only operate in the U.S.,” he warns.

“The agency currently has five offices in consular and diplomatic outposts in Canada: in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Montreal, and Vancouver, where they claim to work with Canadian ‘partners’ in enforcing laws ‘to protect the public from those seeking to harm [their] country. But what we are witnessing in America isn’t enforcing the law; it’s lawlessness waged by a well-funded and militarized agency doing the bidding of what experts and historians recognize is an increasingly fascist government.”

His first suggested action: “Close all ICE offices in the country. To do so, the Liberal government should work with all other parties to reach a consensus in Parliament that ICE is not welcome on Canadian soil because it is engaged in widespread criminal conduct.”

Even so, “just ridding Canada of ICE isn’t enough,” he concedes. “Canadian authorities should immediately take action to ensure that contracts between Canadian companies and ICE are scrapped,” as well as “welcome law-abiding people in the United States – 73.6 per cent of those targeted by ICE don’t have criminal records – by offering them resettlement in Canada through a new immigration pathway.”

For his part, The Maple’s Alex Cosh reports that “neither the Canadian government nor the United States Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agency keeps track of how many Canadians might be employed as ICE agents,” according to statements from both sides of the border.

“ICE’s employment guidelines require that applicants be U.S. citizens and have lived in the U.S. for the past three years (unless serving in the military or a federal job overseas). But the agency does not explicitly prohibit employing individuals who are also citizens of other countries.”

Queried via email about the number, “an ICE spokesperson said data about the dual citizenship of its agents was not readily available, and would require a freedom of information request for details about each employee’s file,” he notes.

Rounding out the progressive-left media circuit, Press Progress Alberta reporter Stephen Magusiak recaps his attempt to stop by Calgary’s Big Four Roadhouse, “one of the final stops on a month-long, province-wide speaking tour by the petitioners for an independence referendum,” where he was planning to ask Stay Free Alberta lawyer Jeffrey Rath about “his vision of the province’s future,” should the movement succeed.

“There were many potential questions,” he recalls.

“What would Rath say to Canadians and Albertans concerned about the movement’s courting of support from the American government? What about the First Nations that have resolved to oppose the petition on legal grounds? Why do so many of the separatist movement’s policy planks focus on immigration? Unfortunately, PressProgress was unable to ask most of these questions, as we were tossed out of the event before it started, and within minutes of sitting down with Rath.”

The full exchange, as per Magusiak:

Rath immediately became defensive at the mention of the movement’s coziness with the United States.

“It’s not coziness. We have mutual interests. So, I think ‘coziness’ is kind of a loaded word,” he said.

Asked how he would respond to concerns about his going to the US, he said that people “should be more concerned with Mark Carney threatening war with the United States,” which he called “the most asinine thing that a Canadian prime minister has ever done.”

When it was pointed out that nobody, including Carney, had threatened war with the US, it became abundantly clear this was not a line of questioning that the visibly flustered Rath wanted to field.

“Of course he has,” he said. “What do you think he means when he’s invoking Article 5 of the NATO treaty, vis-a-vis the United States?”

Carney, Rath continued, is “literally like a mouse biting on an elephant’s toenail. But if you don’t understand that, I’m done with the interview.”

He stormed away.

Moments later, Stampede Park security approached and asked PressProgress to leave the venue. When asked why, they said it was a private event and the organizers wanted us out. We complied.

Trending on the right-of-centre side of the Canadian activist mediaverse:

• As part of Rebel Media’s gavel-to-gavel coverage of the now-wrapped Conservative convention in Calgary, Sheila Gunn Reid talked to “children’s rights advocate” Chris “Billboard Chris” Elston about  a policy resolution “aimed at restricting medical gender transition for minors” that “was defeated after a divided floor vote.”
• She also spoke with former Conservative candidate David de Repentigny “about the similarities between Alberta and Quebec’s grievances with the federal government,” as well as “the independence movements and freedom-minded perspectives of many residents in both Alberta and Quebec.”
• Over at Juno News, Melanie Bennett also highlighted the failed resolution, which “reveals a deep strategic disagreement among conservatives who are united on stopping childhood transition and defending parental rights,” she avers.
• Last but not least, Juno News contributor Sue-Ann Levy recounts how Carney’s “trained social media seals came out in full force before, during and after the CPC convention this past weekend.”