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There are plenty of really bad ideas floating around the federal campaign, but here’s my choice for some of the worst.

NDP

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Thomas Mulcair’s pledge to reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership takes the cake for the New Democrats. It blew an instant hole in his attempt to convince Canadians the party had matured beyond its socialist roots to the point it could be trusted to form the first-ever NDP national government. Mulcair put great effort into that goal, then threw it away the moment evidence suggested Justin Trudeau’s Liberals had passed New Democrats in the polls. Instead, he exposed the party as the same old diehard protectionists, with Mulcair playing the reasonable face on a party still rife with zealots and ideologues.

Rejecting the TPP is just bad economics. Canada is a trading nation: with 36 million people it is too small to thrive without access to wider markets. The TPP represents nearly 40% of global gross domestic product. Isolating Canada from the pact wouldn’t stop the TPP from going ahead, it would just leave us on the outside looking in. Mulcair’s reasoning – that the pact would be bad for dairy farmers and the auto parts business – is parochialism writ large. The Harper government conceded an increase of just 3.25% in the dairy market, softened by $4.25 billion in compensation. The pact may indeed represent a challenge for auto workers, but the NDP position demonstrates it’s willingness to subvert the entire economy to the interests of one disgruntled union.