By Tom Parkin
NDP official opposition leaders, left to right: Naheed Neshi (Alberta), Carla Beck (Saskatchewan), Marit Stiles (Ontario), Claudia Chender (Nova Scotia).
UCP premier Danielle Smith is dividing Canadians and tearing up Canada at exactly the moment Donald Trump is attacking our economy, sovereignty and security.
Saskatchewan Party Premier Scott Moe, under opposition pressure and dithering for weeks, finally yesterday came out in favour of a united Canada. Weak stuff.
Wherever PC Premier Doug Ford goes, a film of land speculator ooze follows. His political dependence on them has hiked the cost of living and people are leaving, the economy is faltering and unemployment is up.
Nova Scotia PC Premier Tim Houston is focused on concentrating power rather than fixing healthcare and building housing. Only because of opposition-led backlash he was stopped from giving himself the power to fire the Auditor General and sidestep Freedom of Information laws.
There is no mission more important to Canada and social democrats than handing defeat to these four conservative governments.
The next evolution of the federal NDP will either help win these battles and, in so doing, rebuild. Or be an obstacle, letting provincial conservatives win and setting the federal NDP on the path to extinction.
Pulling together the string that unites the pearls
If the federal NDP is not working on gaining popularity in the places where people are already voting NDP provincially, it is not on a rebuilding path.
This doesn’t mean the federal NDP is subordinate to provincial NDP sections. It can’t be. It has a national role to play, one that can only be carried out from Ottawa.
What it does mean is the federal NDP needs to be aligned and in step with key provincial sections, especially as they take on Smith, Moe, Ford and Houston. If each province is a pearl, a good federal leader adopts national themes that are the string uniting them.
Conservative dividers, cutters and cheaters, given long enough, will destroy Canada. Canadian nationcraft is in its essence a social democratic project.
The New Democrats’ job is to find unity in diversity, tell the story of shared values and build co-operation to advance each regional economy and respect the people who do the work. It’s about finding points of agreement and building on them. That is the federal NDP leader’s job. Really, it’s every social democrat’s job.
With U.S. President Trump and 100 million MAGA supporters at our back, that job of political co-operation and co-operative economic development has never been more urgent.
It’s the pearls and the places
But it’s not just the pearls. It’s also the places on the electoral maps.
If Danielle Smith is to be defeated, it’s not enough for the Alberta NDP to take all the seats in Calgary and Edmonton. In Saskatchewan, it’s not enough for Carla Beck to win all Regina and Saskatoon. Marit Stiles winning the GTA and Niagara isn’t enough. Claudia Chender taking Halifax-Dartmouth and Cape Breton isn’t enough.
Provincial NDP sections need to win Lethbridge and Red Deer, Prince Albert and Moose Jaw, Sarnia and Kingston, Lunenburg and Colchester.
The federal NDP must help in those places. Or at least not be getting in the way.
Against Smith and Moe, we’ve recently seen how hard Nenshi and Beck are leaning into a feeling of Canadian community. New pearls of national themes are being grown. A new federal leader can help string together those emergent pearls, creating a strand of national themes uniting the key places provincial New Democrats needs to win.
And in building its story of Canada, and its role in it, it builds the foundation of the next federal NDP.
It’s an incredibly hard job. It’ll be a lot easier to shoot spitballs at those trying to do it.
It’ll take trust, goodwill and sure-footedness. But there is one path to defeating bad governments and rebuilding the federal NDP.
Off that path, the federal NDP will be obscure at best, eventually extinct.
In recent elections it has once again shown that Canadians do NOT want Socialism in our country.
Having lived and worked in la belle PQ and AB, had it not been for Trudeau 1 and 2 the good Canadians from AB would not be thinking of separation. If nothing else I “understand” why. My take so far is Carney is at least giving the AB file the appropriate attention.