Light In The Tunnel

No one should be writing obituaries for the NDP. Michael Harris writes that, even though Justin Trudeau's personal popularity remains high, his party's brand is slipping:

Small wonder, with so many of his ministers stepping in cowflops. Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr told worried businesspeople in Calgary that the police and the military would deal with any civil disobedience by anti-pipeline protesters. This was not music to the ears of First Nations chiefs, or environmentalists, or anyone who has been watching the debacle of Standing Rock. The Liberals apparently have forgotten that it was the Harperites who saw these people as terrorists. Carr’s subsequent backflip was unconvincing.

And with the PM presenting himself as a champion of youth, Finance Minister Bill Morneau invited young Canadians to prepare for a future of short-term contract positions and “job churn” — otherwise known as living hand-to-mouth. Remarkably, Trudeau picked up on this hopeless, defeatist message when he told a youth labour forum that precarious work is now a fact of life.

No wonder they booed him. Youth unemployment is double the national average; after a year of Trudeau, and despite his promise to create 125,000 new jobs for young people annually, that number remains stubbornly high.

Moreover, some of Trudeau's recent moves have angered some of his strongest supporters:

The plundering and blundering of the cash-for-access fundraisers has up to now been restricted to rhetorical volleys against the government in QP. But now Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson has decided she’s heard enough: She plans to personally interview the PM to see if he put himself in a conflict of interest by mingling with corporate aquarium-suckers seeking influence with ministers at political fundraisers for $1,500 a pop. (I hope he has better sense than to tell her that he attended these mating rituals for lobbyists to “champion” the middle class.)

And his decision to green light Kinder Morgan certainly looks to the past, not the future:

While Trudeau is expanding tar sands projects, others are dropping out, in part to go green. Statoil, the Norwegian oil giant, is dumping its Canadian assets. The company spent US $2.2 billion for its tar sands lease in 2007; it is selling it for $832 million Canadian.

So, light is appearing at what has been a dark tunnel for the NDP. But who the party chooses as leader will make all the difference. 

Image:Like Success

An Opportunity For Those Who See It

The NDP is in the wilderness. Tom Mulcair has been given his retirement date. But no one in the party seems to be interested in the job. Perhaps that's because no one is quite sure who or what the party stands for. Tom Walkom suggests that now is the time for the party to renew its marriage vows with labour:

We live in a time when labour needs a political party willing to work for it. And the NDP needs a reason to exist.

Labour needs a political party because unions, on their own, are a declining force. Only 29 per cent of the Canadian workforce is unionized. The number continues to fall.

This has happened because the economy, once characterized by large manufacturing plants, is now dominated by smaller service firms that, under current labour laws, are more difficult to unionize.

The decline of well-paying union jobs is one of the key factors behind the rise in income inequality that politicians routinely fret about.

Yet to reverse this trend would require a total rethinking of employment and labour laws, most of which were designed in the 1940s and ‘50s.

That in turn requires a political party willing to do the rethinking.

Just as the NDP brought medicare to Canada, it could bring labour reform to Canada:

Among other things, the laws must be amended to eliminate the loophole that allows so many employers to pretend their workers are independent contractors who do not qualify for benefits or statutory protection.

As well, labour relations laws would have to be changed to allow unions organizing, say, fast-food franchise outlets, to take on the ultimate employer.

These are just a couple of examples. The point is that, if unions are to survive, labour laws must be rethought.

The Dippers are in crisis. But a crisis is also an opportunity -- for those who see it. 

Image: notable.ca

Not Good Days

Jack Layton was a perpetual optimist. But Chantal Hebert believes he'd find it hard to be optimistic about his party's current state of affairs. Perhaps that's because the party under Layton made the Harper government possible:

At the last national convention Layton presided over, less than two months after the party’s historic breakthrough in Quebec, he was rightly celebrated for his election performance. But it was not all rainbows and roses. Among NDP members, elation over the party’s accession to the rank of official Opposition was often tempered by dismay at the advent of a Harper majority.

Just as the Conservatives are having a hard time living down the stain of the Harper years, the Dippers have to contend with a public which holds the NDP responsible -- at least partially -- for Harper's ascension.

But there is a bigger problem. Unlike the Liberals, the next generation in the party is in no mood to take the reins:

The reluctance of the next generation of New Democrats to step up to the leadership plate would trouble him. He would not be particularly thrilled by speculation that Green Party Leader Elizabeth May could or should jump ship to come lead the NDP. She always seemed to click more with her Liberal counterparts (and vice-versa).

And the enthusiasm Layton generated in Quebec isn't there any more:

I live in Laurier-Ste-Marie, a riding the NDP twice won against no less than then-Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe. This week something that looked like an in-store raffle ticket was slipped into my mail slot. It was MP Hélène Laverdière’s latest correspondence.

It would be an exaggeration to call it a householder for it gave no sense of the NDP’s plans for the next sitting of Parliament. Instead it was a straw poll designed to produce a list of priorities for the party to tackle. One can only wonder what Layton would make of the NDP turning itself into a blank slate.

These are not good days for the New Democrats. 

Image: torontoist.com

Why Not Try Socialism?

The NDP is having a really hard time these days. They don't seem to know who they are -- and Canadians don't know who they are either. Rick Salutin  writes that perhaps its time for the party to return to its roots -- not because returning to the past is a good idea, but because socialism is making a comeback:

Maybe it’s time to go back to Coke Classic, by which I mean socialism. I don’t say this out of nostalgia, it’s sheer opportunism based on empirical evidence. Because, consider the recent, shocking revival of the term:

Bernie. He says he’s a democratic socialist and always was. It should’ve sunk him when he ran for mayor in Vermont in 1981, but he went on to Congress, the Senate, then hijacked this year’s Democratic presidential race and exacted a partly “socialist” platform in return for supporting Hillary.

Corbyn. Very old-fashioned leftist, without Bernie’s personal appeal. (God, I miss him.) Corbyn’s a postwar Atlee or Nye Bevan British socialist. But he’s moved his party and many beyond it. Even for a clear relic, “socialism” has been a plus.

Hillary. Hold the guffaws. Her sole contribution to political jargon has been, “It takes a village.” It’s not her coinage but she adopted it. That sounds to me like another way to say socialism.

 But the really persuasive evidence can be found in the young:

The young today know the economy may never let them own a detached home, or even a car, and they’re making peace with that. When you turn 16 now, you don’t immediately run to get your learner’s permit. That’s a sea change from earlier times.

What do they care passionately about? Connectivity. If they had to choose between a house (and car) or the Internet, there’d be no hesitation. I’m not restating the messianic claims made 25 years ago about some revolutionary transformation of human nature due to the Internet. But I do think there’s been an anthropological shift in the baseline of what counts as normal, day-to-day human experience.

Till now – since forever – one of the ongoing, always underlying human states of being was aloneness, out of which you stepped often into social contact and then back again. Society was never absent but you weren’t surprised to slide in and out of solitude. I don’t mean anything romantic; just nobody around at the moment and that’s fine.

Now the default state is connectivity. People don’t disconnect as they move from home to work or just dart out to the store. They, especially the young, are always connected. They wake in the middle of the night and check where their friends are. They don’t panic if they go offline (adults more so than youth, I’ve found) but what’s normal is connectedness.

Perhaps Mr. Salutin has a point.

Image: noebie.net

Dipper Drift?

                                                       http://news.nationalpost.com/

In yesterday's Toronto Star, Chantal Hebert suggested that, if recent events in Ontario are an indication of the party's future, the NDP may be drifting back to third party status. In the recent provincial election, traditional Dippers voted Liberal to stop Tim Hudak:

In the provincial campaign, the platform put forward by Tory leader Tim Hudak went a long way to convince many progressive voters to stick with the Liberals rather than risk facilitating a Conservative victory by giving their vote to the third-place NDP.

And in the race for mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow has slipped to third place:

It should come as no surprise that a Forum Research poll that suggested Mayor Rob Ford (Open Rob Ford’s policard) was still in the running for re-election — with Olivia Chow running third — was followed by a Nanos poll that showed that John Tory had consolidated his lead on his main rivals.

For scores of Toronto voters, ousting Ford from office this fall comes before loyalty to a political brand.

Could the same thing happen into the 2015 federal election?

To many, the first-place Liberals come across as a safer haven than the third-place NDP, regardless of the comparative skills of their leaders or even their respective policies.

With every passing month, NDP hopes that a barrage of Conservative attack ads will chip away at Trudeau’s credibility are fading. After more than a year, they have yet to make a dent in the Liberal lead in voting intentions

The New Democrats’ own efforts at portraying the Liberals as Conservatives in disguise are also falling short.

It's quite possible that Justin could stumble. And he is still policy lite. But, faced with the devil they know, many Dippers might hold their noses and vote Liberal.

At The Mercy Of Vengeful Gods?

Gerald Caplan wonders, in today's Globe and Mail, why the NDP has such a hard time establishing itself outside the prairies. Darrell Dexter's defeat on Tuesday follows a pattern:

It’s not entirely easy to explain, but there are clues. For the four provinces besides Nova Scotia that have ever elected NDP governments, two completely opposite electoral patterns emerged over the decades. In the agreeable tradition, in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the NDP wins repeatedly. In the lamentable tradition – BC and Ontario – either the NDP premier or the entire government is gone after a single term. Nova Scotians chose the wrong tradition.

And, though the pattern is clear, the reasons behind it aren't so clear:

All Darrell Dexter needed to do was to discover the Manitoba/ Saskatchewan secret and B.C. and Ontario’s Achilles heel. But here’s the rub. No one knows what works and what doesn’t. Each leader (even Bob Rae, back then) was fully committed to the party’s ideals of social justice and equality, although implementation depended on circumstances. Saskatchewan’s political culture has as many differences from Manitoba as it has commonalities. Nova Scotia, like every province, has its own distinct political traditions. And it’s not clear that the Saskatchewan NDP’s secret even works for Saskatchewan any more.

Certainly part of the explanation has to do with circumstances. Both Bob Rae and Darrell Dexter came to power at the beginning of deep recessions. Perhaps like the Greeks, the Dippers are at the mercy of cruel and petty gods.

It's a conundrum for Tom Mulcair. Will his party follow the prairie tradition or the other tradition? Certainly, Stephen Harper would like to see Mulcair succeed. The bane of his existence is the Liberal Party of Canada.

 But where the New Democrats go from here is anybody's guess.