By Ray Rivers

August 11th, 2021

BURLINGTON, ON

OPINION

It’s been sixty years since the New Democratic Party was formed. Surely that must make them the old democratic party by now. In all that time they only once become the second party in Parliament. And that was only after their charismatic leader, Jack Layton, had catered to the separatists, promising to ignore a Supreme Court ruling and let Quebec separate on a 51% sovereignty vote.

The NDP’s socialist roots go back to Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas, who introduced Canada’s first universal medical care system. Douglas’ party merged with the Canadian Labour Conference in 1961 to become the NDP which also made them a labour movement, at least for unionized workers.

NDP’s socialist roots go back to Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas, who introduced Canada’s first universal medical care system.

More recently the NDP has tried to become the other green party, despite the potential conflicts between environmental conservation goals and jobs in the resource and energy sectors. And after a half century of marriage between labour and the socialists other cracks have developed. Some labour leaders have become frustrated being tied to a a party which was unlikely to ever become government, and so shifted their support to the Liberals.

The party faced a major crisis in the 60s and 70s when a determined group of members, called the Waffle, sought a more aggressive policy shift towards socialism and economic nationalism in Canada. Fearing a loss of the Quebec NDP wing, they also called for greater accommodation for Quebec’s sovereignty demands. The Waffle was booted out of the party. Still some of its ideas found their way into Liberal government policy at the time, such as the Foreign Investment Review Agency (FIRA).

A little over a decade later the Mulroney government replaced FIRA with the more welcoming Investment Canada. The folly of that move became particularly clear last year when this country was struggling to find COVID vaccines. Toronto based Connaught Labs, which had been a world leader in the development and manufacture of vaccines was gone, it’s technical know-how exported and its trained research staff relocated elsewhere.

Much of what the Manifesto called for has taken place – except for the elimination of fossil fuels

The Leap Manifesto presented another milestone issue for the party. In 2015 about 60 representatives from Canada’s Indigenous rights, social, environmental, faith-based and labour movements came together over two days to identify 15 policy actions for the future. Though the initiative was non-partisan, it had been driven by social and climate activists Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein, both with deep roots in the NDP.

LEAP was so well conceived and written that, within a couple weeks of its creation, over 25,000 Canadians had endorsed it. Yet, during the 2015 federal election NDP leader Mulcair shunned the initiative, thinking it was too radical, even as his party was endorsing LEAP riding by riding. Today almost all of the LEAP demands have been adopted, at least in principle, by the current Liberal government and some are even accepted by the Conservatives.

He was a powerful leader of the Opposition – but did not have the vision the country wanted and lost an election he thought he had in the bag. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand

Tom Mulcair had been an effective opposition leader but his lack of vision set the party back from the break-though which early polling in the 2015 election had promised. Jagmeet Singh, who replaced him, is an articulate politician but has not been able to bring the party back from its third place, though his class baiting has won him some support.

Singh’s problem is that the Liberals have learned to overtake the NDP on some key progressive policies. For example, when Singh promised an NDP government would ban single use plastics by 2022, Trudeau announced he would start the process in 2021. It is hard to determine how much the NDP does in fact influence government policy, though the Liberals mostly have to rely on the NDP to keep them in office.

Even should the Green Party collapse within itself, as it appears to be doing, the NDP are unlikely to supplant the Liberals, at least so long as Mr. Trudeau avoids something like another sponsorship scandal. And while Trudeau’s image and likability may have become tarnished over his last five years in office, as happens to all politicians, Canadians do not seem in a hurry to replace him in these scary times we are living through.

The LEAP project, now retired, can claim credit for stimulating debate and placing so many of its priorities into action. It was ultimately endorsed by the NDP and its ridings, despite the concern of the Alberta contingent over the language on fossil fuels. Today the NDP is looking south of the border for its inspiration, and is trying to develop a Canadian Green New Deal.

Jagmeet Singh chose to prop up the minority Liberals; there wasn’t much else he could do.

Whatever else Mr. Singh has accomplished by propping up the minority Liberals over the last couple years, he has failed to get Mr. Trudeau to move forward on some key socially progressive priorities, like universal pharmacare, a basic annual income and proportional electoral representation. Unless his party improves its position in the upcoming federal election, his leadership may well be at issue.

A strong mind, an incredible political pedigree and now a willingness to run for public office.

Avi Lewis, one of the instigators of the LEAP project, has thrown his hat into the ring to run for the NDP in the upcoming election. Lewis hails from a political heritage, including his father Stephen and grandfather David, which rivals that of Justin Trudeau. If Lewis wins his seat nobody should be surprised to see him advance to leadership in the NDP and to challenge Trudeau for the top job in the country. Maybe the party could even change its name, dropping the amateurish sounding ‘New” given how long it has been around.

There was a time when Pierre Trudeau and Ed Broadband mulled a political merger between the parties. But that idea was anathema to the western NDP movers and shakers at the time and nothing came of it. So unfortunately for both parties in Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system, a vote for the NDP will end up being another vote on the left which the Liberals won’t get. And that makes it just like a vote for the opposition Tories.

Ray Rivers, a Gazette Contributing Editor,  writes regularly applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking.  Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington.  He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject.   Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa.  Tweet @rayzrivers

Background links:

NDP –  

Leap –    More Leap –      Unions –      NDP Constitution –

Jagmeet Singh –    Waffle –   Avi Lewis –