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The manifesto played its part in the non-confidence vote that hit NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair. Had he brazenly called its silliness out, many would have seen it as a token of his courage and good sense, taken it as a sign that even post-election and up for review he was not going to stand for the green dictates of dilettantes and globe-trotters when it comes to made-in-Canada NDP policies. But he temporized, leaving the Leapers (to put it mildly) unimpressed, and those delegates retaining some contact with reality seriously questioning his judgment.

Many thought the manifesto was a real milestone, a marker for just how far cause-politics could distance itself from how things really are, and how out of touch with workers, families, and those with day to day concerns the millenarians of the global warming crusade can be. Alas, that was a vain expectation. The green mind acknowledges no boundaries.

The authors of Leap were out of power, merely projecting as it were private fantasies into the public arena. If, however, they had presented in Ontario, if they had urged Ontario’s government with the dreams they urged in Edmonton, I suspect they would have been mocked as timid, restrained, unimaginative, even perhaps, regressive. For the Wynne government’s recently revealed plans for the ‘transformation of the Ontario energy industry,” is of a reach and scope, depth and range, that defies all comparison.