I think one of the NDPs biggest problems is their sheer economic illiteracy. Singh’s nonsensical solutions to the housing crisis didn’t cost them this election all on its own but it’s emblematic of how useless they are at actually solving problems plaguing the working class. It frustrates me to no end how leftist types treat economics with such contempt. If they understood the underlying rules and dynamics of our economy better they could craft better policy that would better achieve their goals (which are themselves very noble imo), but no instead let’s call economists “free market preachers” or whatever and keep proposing the same dumb policies that didn’t work the last 30 times they were tried.
There’s clearly a constituency for a pro-economics position on the left. OneCity Vancouver, unlike literally every other municipal party in Vancouver, recognizes that the supply side of policy is also important to solving the housing crisis, and does so while having progressive positions on basically everything. Those in housing activism spheres in Vancouver love them.
I think you missed one of the biggest issues with the NDP: the stock of brutally incompetent and out-of-touch staff and consultants running the party. Any good leader will be ground down to nothing by them so long as they're around. The Lucy Watsons, the Michael Balagus's, and so on and so forth.
The people who came up with a housing policy that can best be described as "the lacklustre Liberal housing policy but without the best bits". The people who advised Singh not to run on universal dental care, so when the opportunity for a CaSA came around, he couldn't even ask for it with a straight face.
Otherwise, yes, as a long-time dipper, agreed. The party needs to focus on pocketbook issues.
It's clear the party bosses and staff running the party don't want to change a thing - Randall Garrison on election night on CBC talking about how this was a fluke and how the party needs to guard against anyone trying to take over the party, and to keep the party in the "mainstream" - you know, the "mainstream" that scored 6% of the vote and 2% of the MPs; one of the party's marketing people stating that if it wasn't for Trump everyone would be talking about how "brilliant" the party's campaign was; a strategist for the party saying people were telling him how much they liked Jagmeet but they just had to vote Liberal this time, etc., etc.
Even Jagmeet could only bring himself to say how sorry he was candidates didn't get elected - at no point did he accept responsibility or apologize for deliberately sacrificing the party to stop the CPC from winning, when every leader from Tommy Douglas on has been saying the LPC and CPC are virtually the same, including Jagmeet himself (remember "Mr. Delay vs. Mr. Deny" from 2019?).
As you mentioned in a previous column, the premise of the NDP is that the CPC and LPC are two sides of the same coin, which is why a third party needs to exist. The question I have, as do many disaffected and pissed off New Democrats, is why should we continue to waste our time and donate money to a cause that will be sacrificed at any moment to keep the Conservatives out of power? If the main goal of the NDP is to keep the CPC out of power, since they're apparently so much worse than the Liberals, then why don't we just become the left wing of the Liberal Party and solve the problem of keeping the CPC out of power forever, since that's the main objective?
If the party's next Convention decides to keep electing the same people and doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result (that's the definition of insanity, right? Keep doing the same thing over and over again until it works out on the tenth try?), I'm going to stop wasting my time and my money, even at the local level. The party consultants and executive need to be replaced from top to bottom and the party needs to figure out a new path forward. If the worst result in the history of the party doesn't wake the NDP up, nothing will.
In 1970, I was a young impressionable 15 year old who heard Jim Laxer and Mel Watkins speak at a conference on youth and Canadian nationalism. My 15 year old brain absorbed what they said and I became a lifelong NDP supporter. They were both economics professors from Ontario and Quebec. Provincially I listened to Stephen Lewis, in the 70s and he furthered my belief in Social Democracy. He was born in Ottawa and raised and educated in Toronto. Another key influencer was Ed Broadbent a professor of political science from Oshawa. My long winded point here is that in my experience the NDP were never the workers' party. They were a party of socialist intelligencia that strongly believed in human rights, equality among sexes/genders, pacificism and the duty of society to take care of the less fortunate. Jack Layton and his unfortunate successor Thomas Mulcair tried to make the NDP more "voteable" by moving the party more towards the centre. If the NDP are to reinvent themselves, they must move further to the left and perhaps rename themselves as the Social Democratic Party.
So refreshing to see this perspective written so coherently. Everyone I know wants to vote NDP but feels the party has completely lost its way and doesn't represent the actual merits of leftist politics. We need a real workers party. The election of Sean Orr to Vancouver City Council and the campaign that COPE ran is a great example to look to for the future.
I don’t know how much of COPE’s win was on the merits of COPE as a party or on Sean Orr as a candidate. You run into the same “cult of personality” problem mentioned earlier. There’s also a degree of economic illiteracy, with COPE not wanting to take all the steps needed to genuinely solve the housing crisis in Vancouver. I do prefer them to the Greens, though.
I think a better example to follow would be OneCity Vancouver. OneCity clearly strives for equality and progress, with solid policy fundamentals backing it. The party brand is as strong as the candidates running for it, and it does attract a broader spectrum of support than COPE does.
OneCity is not really a true leftist party. The candidate that just won, Lucy Maloney, previously worked in the private sector for a mining company. OneCity reminds me of the provincial NDP here in BC - they are basically centre-left and trying to woo Neo-liberal "progressives", not working class people.
COPE seems to genuinely understand leftist economics and has been great on policy that isn't alienating - for example their analysis of the provincial and municipal plans for building housing and how it's more focused on market-rate housing rather than deeply affordable/social housing, which is what's actually needed. Sean Orr is popular because he's authentic and trustworthy.
The fact that the CPC and even the Republicans in the US are borrowing policy ideas from 80's/90's leftists and spinning them as conservative solutions shows that leftist economics has real merit and relevance. The major difference being the CPC/Republicans are campaigning on these issues disingenuously and actually working for the benefit of the capital-owning class. The federal NDP should be showing that leftists would actually be working on behalf of working class people with integrity.
If you actually took a moment to interact with the people involved in OneCity and look at what we stand for, you would think differently. COPE and OneCity policy are 90% the same, only differing on housing, where OneCity objectively has the better approach. We want vacancy controls. We want to build public housing, including social housing and co-ops, by giving the city the right of first refusal to buy land. However, we also want it to be easier for market housing to get developed and built, because having a supply of market housing is important to. It’s not a binary choice between one or the other.
Neoliberalism died in 2008 because the financial crisis showed the consequences of deregulation, and we’re still dealing with its effects. We need to stop fighting with its ghost. Our enemy right now isn’t a dead, failed ideology that liberals don’t want to practice anymore, it is an ideology that is alive and well, the populist right, which seeks to destroy all we hold dear by coming up with the worst policy ideas in existence and implementing them as fast as possible.
These urban progressives whose views you think are not important? Guess what? They’re working-class people too. There are people who work in retail, in food services, in knowledge labour, in the gig economy. The fact that they don’t look like the stereotypical worker of the past doesn’t change that. Nobody is trying to appeal to these people with neoliberalism because a) neoliberalism is dead, and b) if that worked, the BC Liberals would still exist. Very few people are “socially liberal, fiscally conservative”, even among urban progressives (who are progressives, not conservatives). (And w.r.t. the BC NDP, they are the government that has made the most moves towards non-market housing and are objectively the best provincial government in the country right now).
Finally, there’s more to people than just who they work for and what their background is. If you actually talk with Lucy, she admits that she seems more outwardly centrist than she actually is. She chose OneCity over COPE for their approach towards housing. She supports the NDP over the Liberals. Back in Australia she supported the Greens. She has been endorsed by Avi Lewis (who also endorsed Orr), who campaigned for her, and she has done the same for him. She’s also been endorsed by Andrea Reimer (who again, also endorsed Orr), who spent the better part of her teenage years living on the streets. I think her values and the things she fights for speak more to her character than an employer.
I really hate this purity testing attitude. It’s been used against Sean Orr as well. I have had to defend Orr from people who think he’s an elitist just because his parents helped buy him a condo. Again, it’s more about the values that Orr fights for, values I agree with and respect.
OneCity is not your enemy. we are allies. We are different expressions of the left that take different approaches to rhetoric and strategy. That is OK. We have the same core supporters. We care far more about equality, social justice, and people having places to live than the other parties. We want to actually fight for working people, those who are underrepresented, those are marginalized. The clearest way this stands out to me is a particular vote the 2018-22 council did on allowing faster upzoning across the city for social housing developments. Christine Boyle, Kennedy Stewart, and Jean Swanson all voted for it, while the Greens and the NPA voted against. This made it clear to me who was actually in it to fight for people, and who was just there to protect the status quo.
I feel your criticisms would be much more salient if they were applied towards the Greens, who are the social liberals that don’t want to change things, or towards TEAMfaLV, who are even worse because they claim to be progressive when they aren’t.
In any case, do you want to know what I actually see the biggest problem with support for both COPE and OneCity? Both have not been able to reach out effectively to visible minority groups. I know that in OneCity we have a rather diverse crowd of volunteers, but it does not reflect our electorate, who are largely white. Both parties have notably not made much efforts to reach out to South Asians, which is deeply personal to me, as an Indian myself.
So, in short, we should really stop engaging in friendly fire or battling ghosts. We should stop purity testing people based on their prior professions. Instead, our focus should be on working together to defeat the forces of the right, and to broaden our coalition on the left so that we get support that is as diverse as us Canadians are, not just those that are white.
I appreciate your message! I'm glad that Lucy was elected over the other options, and I agree that the BC NDP is probably the best provincial government in office at the moment - but I think we also need to be honest about when "purity testing" is actually just valid critique and scepticism. I voted for the BC NDP but I still feel they are far too right leaning on certain policy, particularly with market housing and corporate landlords. They resemble the federal liberals to me much more than an actual leftist party. Something like 90% of the BC NDP caucus are property owners. They've been effectively silent on Palestine. There is essentially zero meaningful representation for poor, working class or even lower middle class people in Canada right now.
I'm not sure I agree that neoliberalism is dead considering the federal Liberals campaign was marginally different from the CPCs, the main differences mostly being in housing, where they are borrowing policy from leftists. And we'll see if there is any sort of meaningful action with building social housing (I'll note that co-op housing is a very available option to implement in BC and that the BC NDP has actively avoided it in favour of zoning regulations or purpose built rentals). At the core, the federal Liberals campaigned on smaller government and want to maintain the status quo for large corporations to exploit Canada and our tax system. They walked back the Capital Gains increase within the first few days of being in office.
There are a lot of people who self-identify as progressive who are afraid or actively against leftist economics and mostly support progressivism from a sense of social policy. I would classify those people as socially progressive and economically conservative. If any of the mainstream parties use rhetoric that sounds too economically left its perceived as being "radical" even by people who would say they are progressive. Sean Orr's campaign was refreshing because he explicitly uses socialist rhetoric.
I think there’s definitely room for critique of the BC NDP, and I definitely wish they were a bit more ambitious, but at the very least, they’re willing to work with those pushing for more ambitious policies, and they’re leaving the door open. They also aren’t facing capture from conservatives the way the Alberta NDP is. The party has also done a good job at getting rid of Selina Robinson for being anti-Palestine (the term I prefer to use because it makes someone’s opposition to the plight of the Palestinian people clear). Eby isn’t perfect but he’s someone who has defended the rights of those in the DTES in the past and a proud New Democrat. Naheed Nenshi, meanwhile, is someone who has tried to bust public sector unions and is okay with more private-sector involvement in healthcare, which I am completely against.
I consider myself a supporter of economic left-wing policy and a socialist (a social democrat in the Ed Broadbent sense), but I understand the kind of rhetoric that personally appeals to me doesn’t appeal to everyone else. Ed Broadbent, who was the most left-wing leader the federal NDP had, used to talk about “ordinary Canadians” rather than “working class” because he found more people could relate to it. He mastered the art of pushing left-wing policies in language that everyday people could understand. Jack Layton also found the same: as a communist on city council, he saw that the language that socialist academics used was unfamiliar to ordinary people, and he preferred the language of storytelling instead.
As for what I think the Liberals are now, I think they’re kind of neo-Keynesians who have recognized neoliberalism has failed, but are still figuring out what it needs to be replaced with. It’s certainly better than Starmerism, but it leaves much to be desired.
The labour market has been fractured and is changing more rapidly today than it ever has, and outside of the public sector unions are not able to organize and bargain effectively to change the picture.
The NDP should look east—to Europe—for inspiration. A Guaranteed Income program, and reduction in the standard work week from 5 days to 4, and to 32 hours from forty, would be a start. The problem for the NDP is that workplace issues are provincial for 90% of the labour force, and imposing federal standards on the provinces would be difficult to say the least, but a guaranteed income plan would win a lot of support (away from the Cons too among young underemployed workers who can’t find a good job).
The Liberals do need to be pushed on climate also, and a “jobs first” climate plan to move off of fossil fuels and harden infrastructure at the municipal level against what we know is going to be more frequent and severe weather “events” could be part of the plan.
Lost me at ‘less shitty leader’. I live in the North Island Riding. Lived in Cowichan. Lost both because the Liberals took votes. Campaigned hard to defeat the NDP. Corporations win under Libs or Cons.
Maybe do some real analysis? Venting your spleen on Jagmeet is just a lazy man's armchair burp. Your analysis on working people's approach to environmental legislation is also poorly thought out. I was the Environmental chair of our local. We fought hard for environmental protections. And we aren't idiots on oil and gas either. Or dams. Or logging to the creek. Or overfishing.
I would agree that we haven't checked in with folk enough. That the people at the center are too worried about the media and want to control the message. But to imply that Danielle Smith is the voice of working people discounts our commitment, our ethics, our analysis and our intelligence.
Socialism was dropped from the platform because of arguments like those given here. Let's not drop the environment too
I wrote a comment there where I suggest that there should be a conversation about two parties, not one.
But like we saw with the very different branches of conservatism within the Reform party and the Progressive Conservative party, we need to eradicate the concept of vote splitting (preferably with ranked ballots and STV) in order to allow these different-yet-related political movements to not be competing with each other and having an entirely different option "win" every election.
Not mentioned here is the question of whether to maintain the linkage between federal and provincial sections of the NDP.
When we look at the behaviour of actually-existing NDP provincial governments, they've pretty much occupied the political niche space of the Liberal party. (There may be a vestigial Liberal party left in some of those provinces, but it tends to be someone's personal hobby or nostalgia project.)
Almost any useful reformatting of the federal NDP will require creating and accentuating distance from the squishy centrism of provincial sections. Example: watching NDP MPs bite their tongues about fossil fuel extraction & pipeline projects while Notley was in office was certainly painful.
I certainly agree with the suggestions here for a wholesale purge of the party's encrustation of tried-and-failed staff and consultants. Some ruthlessness is needed. Not having any money will certainly force the issue.
Honest question (and no disrespect intended) - if the NDP were to "radically deemphasize the social progressivism and the foreign policy issues" which party would be willing to take on a principled approach to 'niche' (i.e. not 'bread and butter' issues) such as protecting the rights of trans people within Canada or including the protection of minority rights as a factor in Canadian foreign policy priorities? Or is it your view that those issues do not merit being part of the wider political discussion?
> which party would be willing to take on a principled approach to 'niche' (i.e. not 'bread and butter' issues) such as protecting the rights of trans people within Canada
The courts. Those rights are constitutionally-protected. They don't need to be part of the conversation, that's settled law.
To that, I would add, has the NDP had any actual accomplishments on those files? No? Then how would them moving them to the back burner hurt those files in any way?
> including the protection of minority rights as a factor in Canadian foreign policy priorities?
That's not the point of foreign policy. The point of foreign policy is advancing Canadian interests abroad. Sometimes those things intersect, but the first job is Canadian interests.
I think one of the NDPs biggest problems is their sheer economic illiteracy. Singh’s nonsensical solutions to the housing crisis didn’t cost them this election all on its own but it’s emblematic of how useless they are at actually solving problems plaguing the working class. It frustrates me to no end how leftist types treat economics with such contempt. If they understood the underlying rules and dynamics of our economy better they could craft better policy that would better achieve their goals (which are themselves very noble imo), but no instead let’s call economists “free market preachers” or whatever and keep proposing the same dumb policies that didn’t work the last 30 times they were tried.
There’s clearly a constituency for a pro-economics position on the left. OneCity Vancouver, unlike literally every other municipal party in Vancouver, recognizes that the supply side of policy is also important to solving the housing crisis, and does so while having progressive positions on basically everything. Those in housing activism spheres in Vancouver love them.
I think you missed one of the biggest issues with the NDP: the stock of brutally incompetent and out-of-touch staff and consultants running the party. Any good leader will be ground down to nothing by them so long as they're around. The Lucy Watsons, the Michael Balagus's, and so on and so forth.
The people who came up with a housing policy that can best be described as "the lacklustre Liberal housing policy but without the best bits". The people who advised Singh not to run on universal dental care, so when the opportunity for a CaSA came around, he couldn't even ask for it with a straight face.
Otherwise, yes, as a long-time dipper, agreed. The party needs to focus on pocketbook issues.
Agree 100%, but I'd lump Anne McGrath in with Watson and Balagus.
Oh 1000%, there's a lot more to point fingers at than just the two and she's near the top of the list of dummies.
They just seem to drift from one wing of the party to the next after their damage is done.
The party just has to stop being run by ineffectual staffers from Ontario. Get a leader from BC or Alberta for a change.
Yeah I love how the BC and Alberta NDP are the Liberal party in orange shirts, that's really what we need federally.
It's clear the party bosses and staff running the party don't want to change a thing - Randall Garrison on election night on CBC talking about how this was a fluke and how the party needs to guard against anyone trying to take over the party, and to keep the party in the "mainstream" - you know, the "mainstream" that scored 6% of the vote and 2% of the MPs; one of the party's marketing people stating that if it wasn't for Trump everyone would be talking about how "brilliant" the party's campaign was; a strategist for the party saying people were telling him how much they liked Jagmeet but they just had to vote Liberal this time, etc., etc.
Even Jagmeet could only bring himself to say how sorry he was candidates didn't get elected - at no point did he accept responsibility or apologize for deliberately sacrificing the party to stop the CPC from winning, when every leader from Tommy Douglas on has been saying the LPC and CPC are virtually the same, including Jagmeet himself (remember "Mr. Delay vs. Mr. Deny" from 2019?).
As you mentioned in a previous column, the premise of the NDP is that the CPC and LPC are two sides of the same coin, which is why a third party needs to exist. The question I have, as do many disaffected and pissed off New Democrats, is why should we continue to waste our time and donate money to a cause that will be sacrificed at any moment to keep the Conservatives out of power? If the main goal of the NDP is to keep the CPC out of power, since they're apparently so much worse than the Liberals, then why don't we just become the left wing of the Liberal Party and solve the problem of keeping the CPC out of power forever, since that's the main objective?
If the party's next Convention decides to keep electing the same people and doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result (that's the definition of insanity, right? Keep doing the same thing over and over again until it works out on the tenth try?), I'm going to stop wasting my time and my money, even at the local level. The party consultants and executive need to be replaced from top to bottom and the party needs to figure out a new path forward. If the worst result in the history of the party doesn't wake the NDP up, nothing will.
In 1970, I was a young impressionable 15 year old who heard Jim Laxer and Mel Watkins speak at a conference on youth and Canadian nationalism. My 15 year old brain absorbed what they said and I became a lifelong NDP supporter. They were both economics professors from Ontario and Quebec. Provincially I listened to Stephen Lewis, in the 70s and he furthered my belief in Social Democracy. He was born in Ottawa and raised and educated in Toronto. Another key influencer was Ed Broadbent a professor of political science from Oshawa. My long winded point here is that in my experience the NDP were never the workers' party. They were a party of socialist intelligencia that strongly believed in human rights, equality among sexes/genders, pacificism and the duty of society to take care of the less fortunate. Jack Layton and his unfortunate successor Thomas Mulcair tried to make the NDP more "voteable" by moving the party more towards the centre. If the NDP are to reinvent themselves, they must move further to the left and perhaps rename themselves as the Social Democratic Party.
So refreshing to see this perspective written so coherently. Everyone I know wants to vote NDP but feels the party has completely lost its way and doesn't represent the actual merits of leftist politics. We need a real workers party. The election of Sean Orr to Vancouver City Council and the campaign that COPE ran is a great example to look to for the future.
I don’t know how much of COPE’s win was on the merits of COPE as a party or on Sean Orr as a candidate. You run into the same “cult of personality” problem mentioned earlier. There’s also a degree of economic illiteracy, with COPE not wanting to take all the steps needed to genuinely solve the housing crisis in Vancouver. I do prefer them to the Greens, though.
I think a better example to follow would be OneCity Vancouver. OneCity clearly strives for equality and progress, with solid policy fundamentals backing it. The party brand is as strong as the candidates running for it, and it does attract a broader spectrum of support than COPE does.
OneCity is not really a true leftist party. The candidate that just won, Lucy Maloney, previously worked in the private sector for a mining company. OneCity reminds me of the provincial NDP here in BC - they are basically centre-left and trying to woo Neo-liberal "progressives", not working class people.
COPE seems to genuinely understand leftist economics and has been great on policy that isn't alienating - for example their analysis of the provincial and municipal plans for building housing and how it's more focused on market-rate housing rather than deeply affordable/social housing, which is what's actually needed. Sean Orr is popular because he's authentic and trustworthy.
The fact that the CPC and even the Republicans in the US are borrowing policy ideas from 80's/90's leftists and spinning them as conservative solutions shows that leftist economics has real merit and relevance. The major difference being the CPC/Republicans are campaigning on these issues disingenuously and actually working for the benefit of the capital-owning class. The federal NDP should be showing that leftists would actually be working on behalf of working class people with integrity.
If you actually took a moment to interact with the people involved in OneCity and look at what we stand for, you would think differently. COPE and OneCity policy are 90% the same, only differing on housing, where OneCity objectively has the better approach. We want vacancy controls. We want to build public housing, including social housing and co-ops, by giving the city the right of first refusal to buy land. However, we also want it to be easier for market housing to get developed and built, because having a supply of market housing is important to. It’s not a binary choice between one or the other.
Neoliberalism died in 2008 because the financial crisis showed the consequences of deregulation, and we’re still dealing with its effects. We need to stop fighting with its ghost. Our enemy right now isn’t a dead, failed ideology that liberals don’t want to practice anymore, it is an ideology that is alive and well, the populist right, which seeks to destroy all we hold dear by coming up with the worst policy ideas in existence and implementing them as fast as possible.
These urban progressives whose views you think are not important? Guess what? They’re working-class people too. There are people who work in retail, in food services, in knowledge labour, in the gig economy. The fact that they don’t look like the stereotypical worker of the past doesn’t change that. Nobody is trying to appeal to these people with neoliberalism because a) neoliberalism is dead, and b) if that worked, the BC Liberals would still exist. Very few people are “socially liberal, fiscally conservative”, even among urban progressives (who are progressives, not conservatives). (And w.r.t. the BC NDP, they are the government that has made the most moves towards non-market housing and are objectively the best provincial government in the country right now).
Finally, there’s more to people than just who they work for and what their background is. If you actually talk with Lucy, she admits that she seems more outwardly centrist than she actually is. She chose OneCity over COPE for their approach towards housing. She supports the NDP over the Liberals. Back in Australia she supported the Greens. She has been endorsed by Avi Lewis (who also endorsed Orr), who campaigned for her, and she has done the same for him. She’s also been endorsed by Andrea Reimer (who again, also endorsed Orr), who spent the better part of her teenage years living on the streets. I think her values and the things she fights for speak more to her character than an employer.
I really hate this purity testing attitude. It’s been used against Sean Orr as well. I have had to defend Orr from people who think he’s an elitist just because his parents helped buy him a condo. Again, it’s more about the values that Orr fights for, values I agree with and respect.
OneCity is not your enemy. we are allies. We are different expressions of the left that take different approaches to rhetoric and strategy. That is OK. We have the same core supporters. We care far more about equality, social justice, and people having places to live than the other parties. We want to actually fight for working people, those who are underrepresented, those are marginalized. The clearest way this stands out to me is a particular vote the 2018-22 council did on allowing faster upzoning across the city for social housing developments. Christine Boyle, Kennedy Stewart, and Jean Swanson all voted for it, while the Greens and the NPA voted against. This made it clear to me who was actually in it to fight for people, and who was just there to protect the status quo.
I feel your criticisms would be much more salient if they were applied towards the Greens, who are the social liberals that don’t want to change things, or towards TEAMfaLV, who are even worse because they claim to be progressive when they aren’t.
In any case, do you want to know what I actually see the biggest problem with support for both COPE and OneCity? Both have not been able to reach out effectively to visible minority groups. I know that in OneCity we have a rather diverse crowd of volunteers, but it does not reflect our electorate, who are largely white. Both parties have notably not made much efforts to reach out to South Asians, which is deeply personal to me, as an Indian myself.
So, in short, we should really stop engaging in friendly fire or battling ghosts. We should stop purity testing people based on their prior professions. Instead, our focus should be on working together to defeat the forces of the right, and to broaden our coalition on the left so that we get support that is as diverse as us Canadians are, not just those that are white.
I appreciate your message! I'm glad that Lucy was elected over the other options, and I agree that the BC NDP is probably the best provincial government in office at the moment - but I think we also need to be honest about when "purity testing" is actually just valid critique and scepticism. I voted for the BC NDP but I still feel they are far too right leaning on certain policy, particularly with market housing and corporate landlords. They resemble the federal liberals to me much more than an actual leftist party. Something like 90% of the BC NDP caucus are property owners. They've been effectively silent on Palestine. There is essentially zero meaningful representation for poor, working class or even lower middle class people in Canada right now.
I'm not sure I agree that neoliberalism is dead considering the federal Liberals campaign was marginally different from the CPCs, the main differences mostly being in housing, where they are borrowing policy from leftists. And we'll see if there is any sort of meaningful action with building social housing (I'll note that co-op housing is a very available option to implement in BC and that the BC NDP has actively avoided it in favour of zoning regulations or purpose built rentals). At the core, the federal Liberals campaigned on smaller government and want to maintain the status quo for large corporations to exploit Canada and our tax system. They walked back the Capital Gains increase within the first few days of being in office.
There are a lot of people who self-identify as progressive who are afraid or actively against leftist economics and mostly support progressivism from a sense of social policy. I would classify those people as socially progressive and economically conservative. If any of the mainstream parties use rhetoric that sounds too economically left its perceived as being "radical" even by people who would say they are progressive. Sean Orr's campaign was refreshing because he explicitly uses socialist rhetoric.
I think there’s definitely room for critique of the BC NDP, and I definitely wish they were a bit more ambitious, but at the very least, they’re willing to work with those pushing for more ambitious policies, and they’re leaving the door open. They also aren’t facing capture from conservatives the way the Alberta NDP is. The party has also done a good job at getting rid of Selina Robinson for being anti-Palestine (the term I prefer to use because it makes someone’s opposition to the plight of the Palestinian people clear). Eby isn’t perfect but he’s someone who has defended the rights of those in the DTES in the past and a proud New Democrat. Naheed Nenshi, meanwhile, is someone who has tried to bust public sector unions and is okay with more private-sector involvement in healthcare, which I am completely against.
I consider myself a supporter of economic left-wing policy and a socialist (a social democrat in the Ed Broadbent sense), but I understand the kind of rhetoric that personally appeals to me doesn’t appeal to everyone else. Ed Broadbent, who was the most left-wing leader the federal NDP had, used to talk about “ordinary Canadians” rather than “working class” because he found more people could relate to it. He mastered the art of pushing left-wing policies in language that everyday people could understand. Jack Layton also found the same: as a communist on city council, he saw that the language that socialist academics used was unfamiliar to ordinary people, and he preferred the language of storytelling instead.
As for what I think the Liberals are now, I think they’re kind of neo-Keynesians who have recognized neoliberalism has failed, but are still figuring out what it needs to be replaced with. It’s certainly better than Starmerism, but it leaves much to be desired.
The labour market has been fractured and is changing more rapidly today than it ever has, and outside of the public sector unions are not able to organize and bargain effectively to change the picture.
The NDP should look east—to Europe—for inspiration. A Guaranteed Income program, and reduction in the standard work week from 5 days to 4, and to 32 hours from forty, would be a start. The problem for the NDP is that workplace issues are provincial for 90% of the labour force, and imposing federal standards on the provinces would be difficult to say the least, but a guaranteed income plan would win a lot of support (away from the Cons too among young underemployed workers who can’t find a good job).
The Liberals do need to be pushed on climate also, and a “jobs first” climate plan to move off of fossil fuels and harden infrastructure at the municipal level against what we know is going to be more frequent and severe weather “events” could be part of the plan.
That is where I would go for an NDP vision.
Lost me at ‘less shitty leader’. I live in the North Island Riding. Lived in Cowichan. Lost both because the Liberals took votes. Campaigned hard to defeat the NDP. Corporations win under Libs or Cons.
Maybe do some real analysis? Venting your spleen on Jagmeet is just a lazy man's armchair burp. Your analysis on working people's approach to environmental legislation is also poorly thought out. I was the Environmental chair of our local. We fought hard for environmental protections. And we aren't idiots on oil and gas either. Or dams. Or logging to the creek. Or overfishing.
I would agree that we haven't checked in with folk enough. That the people at the center are too worried about the media and want to control the message. But to imply that Danielle Smith is the voice of working people discounts our commitment, our ethics, our analysis and our intelligence.
Socialism was dropped from the platform because of arguments like those given here. Let's not drop the environment too
It feels like these two articles should be in conversation:
https://metaviews.substack.com/p/169-the-death-of-the-ndp
I wrote a comment there where I suggest that there should be a conversation about two parties, not one.
But like we saw with the very different branches of conservatism within the Reform party and the Progressive Conservative party, we need to eradicate the concept of vote splitting (preferably with ranked ballots and STV) in order to allow these different-yet-related political movements to not be competing with each other and having an entirely different option "win" every election.
Not mentioned here is the question of whether to maintain the linkage between federal and provincial sections of the NDP.
When we look at the behaviour of actually-existing NDP provincial governments, they've pretty much occupied the political niche space of the Liberal party. (There may be a vestigial Liberal party left in some of those provinces, but it tends to be someone's personal hobby or nostalgia project.)
Almost any useful reformatting of the federal NDP will require creating and accentuating distance from the squishy centrism of provincial sections. Example: watching NDP MPs bite their tongues about fossil fuel extraction & pipeline projects while Notley was in office was certainly painful.
I certainly agree with the suggestions here for a wholesale purge of the party's encrustation of tried-and-failed staff and consultants. Some ruthlessness is needed. Not having any money will certainly force the issue.
Honest question (and no disrespect intended) - if the NDP were to "radically deemphasize the social progressivism and the foreign policy issues" which party would be willing to take on a principled approach to 'niche' (i.e. not 'bread and butter' issues) such as protecting the rights of trans people within Canada or including the protection of minority rights as a factor in Canadian foreign policy priorities? Or is it your view that those issues do not merit being part of the wider political discussion?
> which party would be willing to take on a principled approach to 'niche' (i.e. not 'bread and butter' issues) such as protecting the rights of trans people within Canada
The courts. Those rights are constitutionally-protected. They don't need to be part of the conversation, that's settled law.
To that, I would add, has the NDP had any actual accomplishments on those files? No? Then how would them moving them to the back burner hurt those files in any way?
> including the protection of minority rights as a factor in Canadian foreign policy priorities?
That's not the point of foreign policy. The point of foreign policy is advancing Canadian interests abroad. Sometimes those things intersect, but the first job is Canadian interests.