Mable Elmore and her NDP family secrets

Current Position: NDP candidate in Vancouver-Kensington

Past Positions: Elmore got her start as a Federation of Labour Regional Political Coordinator during Jim Sinclair's term as president. She is also an activist in CAW local 111, and an active member of stopwar.ca

Family Connections: Elmore is a proud member of the NDP’s “Socialist Caucus,” a group of people who think that the rest of the NDP are not socialist enough. 24 hrs columnist and NDP activist Bill Tieleman is one her biggest fans.

Family Secrets: Why does Elmore have the shortest “official biography” of any candidate on the NDP website? There is nothing about this or this.

Do the NDP agree with their apologist?

Bill Tieleman, a left-wing journalist and commentator in favour of all things NDP, was on CKNW on Easter Monday saying that if a business is only barely profitable, then it shouldn’t be in business at all.

A caller to the radio show made the point that raising the minimum wage would cost jobs for many small businesses and significantly hurt profitability in this unstable economic climate. Host Bill Good agreed with the caller. But Bill Tieleman spoke up and firmly stuck his foot in his mouth, saying:

“Why do we support businesses that are marginally, minimally profitable in the first place? If you are that marginal then maybe you shouldn’t be in business.”

After a commercial break Tieleman went on to dig his hole by saying:

“When you’re paying all minimum wage, odds are the state is subsidizing that business with medicare premiums, benefit relief. If you cannot survive without state intervention then maybe you shouldn’t be in business.”

Gee, so if you’re suffering during these tough economic times and not staying profitable, you should just go out of business. Wonder if the Canadian Auto Workers would agree with that, given that Tieleman’s logic would certainly shut down all the North American auto manufacturers.

Think Carole James would agree?

Carole James and the NDP. Wrong party, wrong leader, wrong time.