James Laxer: Tom Mulcair and Labour Leader

james laxer: James Laxer passed away in France, February 23, 2018, according to Rabble. Matt Fodor In what area do you feel you made the biggest difference for the NDP James Laxer I would say that what the Waffle did and I was very much involved in that in the late '60s and early '70s was to do, I think, two or three things. Note at the time this was conducted Tom Mulcair was still NDP leader and Corbyn was not yet Labour leader. One was to bring the debate and discussion about the American empire and its control of Canada much more into the NDP than it had been before -- doesn't mean that it hadn't existed before but there's no question is what the Waffle did, and what I did as part of it, hugely increased that perception, the perception that Canada was a dependency of the United States as a capitalist power, and it was in terms of American economic domination of the country, and political domination and military domination of the country, that this was a very serious crisis that Canada faced. Related to that very much was the focus on the resource sector, the primary sector of the Canadian economy and the need to Canadianize through public ownership parts of the resource industry, especially the petroleum industry, and so we were the people in the NDP who really brought the debate about the petroleum sector into the party and I think we had a huge influence on the country and on the creation of Petro Canada in the years following that. I think that would be the first thing. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.