What "Being at the Table" Tells Us About the Cartel Party System of Politics
We often hear it said that Canadians should vote for candidates whose party is likely to form the government so that these candidates, or the ridings they allegedly represent, can have "a seat at the table." Those who invoke this phrase and the monopoly media who normalize it lower the level of political discourse to turn everyone into a pragmatist who thinks the cesspool that is the "politics" of the banker technocrats and the billionaire oligarchs who own, control and run society in their own image and interests are in some way worthy of their endorsement. Those who speak this way and what they are espousing deserve utter contempt and public condemnation by thinking people. Thinking Canadians do not condone such self-serving arguments.
When MP Lori Idlout (NDP) crossed the floor to join the Carney Liberals, she explained her decision without even consulting those in Nunavut who elected her. She said she did so with high ideals, to secure "a seat at the table" where decisions are made affecting the lives of the people in the north, that is in government, rather than the opposition. In the grand scheme of things, her decision to "be at the table" will have little impact toward improving the living conditions in the high north because the Carney government's agenda is all about war preparations, not people's well-being. It serves only the Carney Liberals' efforts to secure, by hook or by crook, a majority in Parliament to be able to implement an agenda in service of the global oligarchs that control our country.
The real treachery belongs to Prime Minister Mark Carney, the man who prides himself in being a pragmatic realist who secures floor crossings and desertions in the name of high ideals. In the speech Carney delivered to the pool of rich people attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January, he was applauded by them for declaring, "If we're not at the table, we're on the menu." Far from being clever, it was used to promote the agenda of the technocrats, bankers and those in service of the global oligarchs. Whether one is "at the table" to divide the spoils of conquest or "at the table" not "on the menu," it is the language of predator versus prey, exploiters and exploited, not the language of relations between humans and humans and humans and nature and what they reveal. What they reveal is the need for people's empowerment, not the empowerment of the bankers, technocrats and financial oligarchs reaping the profits the likes of Carney are handing them on a silver platter by usurping the decision-making power which rightfully belongs to the people, not narrow private interests.
First of all, who IS at the table? Certainly not the Canadian polity, the citizens and residents who have absolutely no say in determining the affairs of our society. Carney's Liberals won a minority government in the 2025 federal election with barely 30 per cent of the eligible voters, 44 per cent if one only considers the number of eligible voters who actually cast a ballot. That means 70 per cent of all eligible voters did not vote Liberal -- 56 per cent if we consider only those who actually voted.
Yet it is normalized in the first-past-the-post, cartel-party system of so-called representative democracy that the majority of the electors and those they elect to parliament are "not at the table" and have no say in setting or implementing the direction set for society. That is essentially what Lori Idlout is saying.
It is even further deception to suggest that by being "at the table," she or any other MP has any say. Quite the opposite. Global oligarchs set the agenda for their banker friends turned politicians and technocrats to implement while the rank and file MPs are told when to vote and how to vote on pain of being removed from "the table."
Ask Jody Wilson-Raybould, former Liberal Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada who was forced to resign from Cabinet and removed completely from the Liberal caucus for refusing to toe the party line in the SNC-Lavalin criminal corruption affair.
Another example. A few years back, after 18 years of one Liberal MP holding the seat of Nickel Belt in Sudbury, the Liberal Party, sensing it could lose that election, decided to threaten the electorate that if they did not vote Liberal this time, and the Liberals still won the national election, then Nickel Belt would be left without "effective representation." It was scandalous. The long-standing Liberal MP, who at the time was Liberal Party whip, was asked what being "at the table" had achieved for Sudbury over the previous 18 years. Sudbury was, and still is, a resource extraction town. In terms of economic development, secondary industry and so forth -- there was practically nothing to show for it. He was "at the table" but the decisions that affect society and everyday lives of the people are made in the back rooms, in the corporate board rooms here and abroad. The MPs of the party in power are told when and how to vote. That's their role. That is the truth of it.
Canadians and Quebeckers refuse to be dragged down to such a vulgar level of existence. These corrupt practices are not the politics and outlook of everyday people. Times are calling on us, on all humanity, to settle scores with everything "being at the table" stands for. It's not a bigger piece of that pie we are after. We want no part of such a table with its bankrupt, unrepresentative "democracy," its racism, its genocidal wars, its destruction of Mother Earth and trampling of sovereign rights of nations and peoples. A new world is in the making that will sweep all this rot away. This is the conclusion thinking Canadians draw when told to survive we must "be at the table."
This article was published in
Volume 56 Number 10 - March 25, 2026
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/TML2026/Articles/T560103.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca