Kelly McParland: Can a broke and battered NDP deliver utopia?
Journalistic tradition dictates that the New Democratic Party be treated as an organization of consequence, with lengthy historical roots and some significant achievements. Lately it hasn’t been acting like it, though. Its standing in the House of Commons slipped to fourth place three elections ago and shows little sign of revival. Its seven paltry seats aren’t enough to qualify for official recognition. Its finances are dire . To its more successful provincial cousins it’s become an unwelcome distraction.
Not a pretty position. Yet two of the three top candidates seeking to become leader have broader ambitions. Forget finances, seat numbers and party status. They’re out to reconstruct Canada as a northern utopia.
The party’s troubles are big and serious. In 28 elections since the 1932 founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, the NDP’s predecessor, it’s never had a worse result than last year’s election. In the depths of the Great Depression, CCF founder J.S. Woodsworth garnered seven seats on 9.3 per cent of the national vote. Ninety years later NDP leader Jagmeet Singh also won seven, in a much-enlarged Parliament, on 6.3 per cent of the vote.
It might not be fair to blame the performance entirely on Singh, who was likeable enough and had better numbers in two previous campaigns. But it left the party struggling to define just what it is, what it stands for, where it wants to go and how it wants to get there. This is not the first time it’s faced this dilemma. Unlike the Liberals, a chameleon operation that regularly finds ways to redefine itself according to whatever principles seem best suited to getting it elected, NDPers can never manage to sort things out.
Maybe it’s in the blood. While Liberals rarely adopt beliefs they can’t change, discard or overlook when necessary, New Democrats tend towards strong views they resist abandoning even when circumstances would suggest it.
There are five candidates seeking the leadership, though only three — Rob Ashton, Avi Lewis and Heather McPherson — are given a reasonable chance of success. Of the trio, Ashton and Lewis share space on the left flank of the leftist party. McPherson, the only one currently holding a seat in Parliament, occupies the middle ground, relatively speaking. Lewis has raised the most money and the most celebrity endorsements, including one, oddly enough, from Jane Fonda, Hollywood royalty. That should wrap up the Vietcong vote, if nothing else. Ashton boasts the most street cred as a life-long longshoreman and union boss, and easily the most intriguing facial hair. McPherson has the most direct experience.
Though they have starkly different backgrounds, Ashton and Lewis largely promote similar ideas. Ashton promises a guaranteed job for everyone who wants one, “building homes, caring for others, restoring the environment, or strengthening our communities.”
Not only would there be work, but good wages achieved by having the government set “fair pay standards,” bring far more Canadians into labour unions, order the Bank of Canada to change its focus to job creation and by pushing public activity into whole sectors of the economy where private enterprise hasn’t been doing a good enough job.
One of these would be the housing market, which Ashton would fix by dedicating public funds to building “homes ordinary people can actually afford,” which would never go up in price because speculation would be banned.
Lewis’s goals are so similar he could be forgiven for accusing Ashton of plagiarism. Lewis is co-author of the Leap Manifesto, a radical 2015 document outlining a path to a utopian future in which “caring for one another and caring for the planet could be the economy’s fastest growing sectors,” anything to do with oil would be condemned and “people could have higher wage jobs with fewer work hours, leaving us ample time to enjoy our loved ones and flourish in our communities.” Just like that.
Despite their shared high-mindedness Ashton and Lewis don’t appear on the best of terms. Ashton takes great pride in his 30 years working the docks of B.C. and his decade as president of the International Longshore Workers Union Canada. “I’m not a politician,” he likes to boast. “For most of my life I’ve been a worker.”
Lewis, in contrast, is a princeling of the Canadian left, son and grandson of previous NDP leaders, married to a best-selling author, a sort of NDP version of Justin Trudeau who’s spent his working life writing, broadcasting, activisting and chasing a seat in Ottawa, having twice run for office and twice placed third.
In a January video, Ashton decried Lewis as a divisive figure who has criticized NDP premiers in B.C. and elsewhere over energy and environmental issues. “His kind of politics turns New Democrats against each other,” he charged. “That doesn’t make us stronger, it leaves us divided and weaker.”
With the left-of-left well represented, McPherson qualifies as the moderate in the middle. For a time she was the only non-Conservative MP in Alberta, defying Singh by supporting expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, a show of practical politics not always identified with New Democrats. Her positions otherwise largely reflect traditional NDP concerns on social issues, “fairness” and hostility to perceived corporate villainy, while pointedly pledging a shift away from a leadership style that under Singh was seen as too top-down and Ottawa-centric.
Unfortunately it will likely take more than a change in style to rebuild a badly battered and bewildered party. By all indications its finance issues are acute . The $6.3 million it raised last year pales next to the Conservatives ‘ $42 million; only 50 of the NDP’s 343 candidates placed well enough to earn federal rebates on expenses; supporter contributions have declined in each of the past four elections; and its failure to achieve official party status relegates it to a bare-bones Parliamentary existence without the financial aid for offices, salaries and administrative costs accorded to other parties.
It’s a tough challenge and it’s not clear all the candidates fully grasp the extent of it. Ashton and Lewis want to reinvent the country from the base of a party outnumbered 336 seats to 7, with threadbare finances at best and trailing even the one-province separatist Bloc Québécois for support.
When it comes time to pick a winner on March 29 in Winnipeg, the decision could rest on an elementary choice: do they want to save the world or save the party? They might not both be doable at once.
National Post
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