NDP filibuster reminiscent of Jack Layton’s city council days in Toronto

NDP Leader Jack Layton was in his element Thursday night during an all-night debate about legislation that would force locked-out Canada Post employees back to work.

The New Democrats forced the parliamentary filibuster because of the Conservatives' salary conditions included in the legislation, which are lower than what managers offered earlier this month during negotiations.

"We think that that's a particularly bad faith and unfair approach to bargaining," Layton said. "We will use all of the tools that are available to us in the parliamentary tool kit . . . to have the government take (that) off their plan."

Layton is no stranger to this type of political grandstanding.

Grandiose tactics were his "tools" of choice when he sat on Toronto City Council.

As a city councillor, he once lay down on the pavement to have a chalk outline of himself drawn to call attention to AIDS deaths.

He denounced an entire council as "largely corrupt" and, when pressed to support the charge, fell back on a Webster's dictionary definition of "corrupt" as "deteriorated from the normal standard."

In 1986, he was charged with trespassing for handing out pamphlets in the Eaton Centre in support of a unionization drive.

In 1998, he filled the council chambers with 450 homeless people to declare homelessness a "national disaster" in Toronto.

In October of 2000, he convinced NDP cohorts on council to grandstand for eight days in an attempt to derail the $1-billion contract to ship Toronto's garbage to the abandoned Adams Mine in northern Ontario.

A filibuster that goes on all night, and maybe into the weekend, is reminiscent of Layton's good old city council days.

Layton, the political activist at heart, might even be enjoying himself.

(Reuters Photo)