NDP Seeking Permanent Second-Party Position

NDP juggling demands of federalists, separatists

Speaking in Ottawa recently, NDP National Director Brad Lavigne has made the party's goal clear: they want to render their 2011 gains in Quebec permanent.

It may be even more than that. Lavigne seems to think those gains may already be permanent, having been hard-earned.

“It wasn’t a mistake, it wasn’t a fluke, it was eight years in the making,” he insisted.

Some things Lavigne said weren't especially surprising. He indicated that the NDP's strategy was to essentially build a Jack Layton personality cult, and they did precisely that.

“We made sure the brand of the party was Jack Layton,” he said. But this is not news to Canadians, after years of listening to NDP operatives refer to the party as "Jack Layton and the NDP".

Moving forward, the NDP's plan is to keep the Liberal Party and Bloc Quebecois down.

“Now that their traditional voting base has left them and many of them have come to us, we have to make sure that we kind of entrench their new home with us,” Lavigne declared. “we have to occupy the space that they traditionally occupy.”

“The four-and-a-half million voters, it’s the new voter coalition,” he added. “It’s the new voting base, we need to cement that in for the long term and make sure there’s not reason for them to go back to their previous home.”

This confronts the NDP with a serious challenge to juggle. They have to juggle the demands of federalist Liberal voters and separatist Bloc Quebecois voters on virtually every policy point: lingual policy, referendum law, even separatism itself.

This has already led to the NDP's position as a federalist party being shaken by a disturbing lack of commitment to federalism.

This is a strategy that is bound to fail. Pander too much to separatists, and the federalist vote will flee from the party -- as it should. Pay the proper attention to federalist demands, and separatists will flee back to the Bloc Quebecois.

The only way to have a chance at keeping all these balls in the air may be to simply declare that the NDP shall have no policy on separatism; that the party shall be neither separatist nor federalist.

Not that this is likely to work either. Those committed to winning sovereignty for Quebec, as those committed to keeping Canada together, are not prepared to accept anything less than a commitment.

The NDP so often brags that they aren't the party of the "squishy middle". They're a flat-out party of polarization, and they're proud of it.

Simply put, Brad Lavigne and the NDP have a choice to make: they can commit themselves to federalism and risk their separatist votes, or they can commit themselves to separatism and risk their federalist votes.

To do anything less is to not be the NDP. To do anything less is to risk having supplanted the Liberals only to ultimately become them.

If the NDP wants to permanently remain Canada's second party, they have a choice to make. Will they make the right choice for Canada? That has yet to be seen.

But Will They Answer the Door?

Opportunity -- in form of Liberal weakness -- knocking for NDP

If hiring Peter Donolo to serve as Chief of Stafff of the Office of the Leader of the Opposition represents Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal party pressing the panic button, they may have pressed it just in time.

A recent poll has the NDP holding the support of 19% of Canadians, compared to 24% for the Liberals.

Meanwhile, the Conservative party has maintained the support of 37% of Canadians.

If the Liberals and NDP each continue following this momentum, the NDP could, in time, eclipse the Liberals to, for the first time in history, become the Official Opposition.

Of course this isn't the first time in Canadian history that the NDP have flirted with such heights. Once, briefly before the 1988 election, Ed Broadbent was believed to be in a position to lead his party to a minority government. Even when Broadbent led the party short of that mark, he still led it to its best federal results in history: 43 seats.

Now, under the leadership of Jack Layton -- who has succeeded Broadbent in way that neither Audrey McLaughlin or Alexa McDonough ever could -- the NDP is back on the cusp of some serious federal success.

Opportunity is knocking for the NDP. But will they answer the door?

"If the NDP come forth as a reasonable party with a platform that resonates, I think they could overcome their traditional shackles and go above what they did with Broadbent," explains former Liberal Party President Stephen LeDrew. "There's no question, given the current state of disarray with the Liberals, and the fact that the Liberals have yet to explain why Canadians should vote for the Liberals, that the NDP can see the vacuum in there and if they fill it the right way I think they'll be rewarded."

As LeDrew notes, Liberal weakness alone isn't enough for the NDP.

In order to truly capitalize on the current weakness of the Liberal Party, the NDP has to truly deliver moderate policies and convince broad cores of voters that they have the lunatic fringe in their party under control -- an effort that is invariably foiled at each NDP convention.

"The opportunity that we have is to go to traditional Liberal voters and Progressive Conservative voters and say, politics is changing in this country," agrees NDP national director Brad Lavigne. "The things that you loved about your party for years, progressive values, can now be found in a bigger, modern New Democratic Party under Jack Layton's leadership."

Of course there are risks that come with this kind of approach. In order to court Liberal or progressive conservative voters, the NDP will have to demonstrate that it can not only be progressive, but also conservative. It has to be able to show that it can temper its progressive impulses with fiscal and social responsibility.

Some provincial NDP governments have, in the past, shown that they can accomplish this goal, even if in a flawed manner.

However, some members of the NDP don't seem prepared to accomplish this task. Janice MacKinnon, a former NDP Finance Minister of Saskatchewan, chaulks Tory regional strength up to the NDP's inability to promote its stance on regional issues. Her example is the long-gun registry.

Yet 61% of Canadians outside Quebec believe getting rid of the long-gun registry is a good idea. Only in Quebec did a slim majority support the registry.

Of course with the nature of Canadian politics, "regional issues" is often just another code for "wedge issues". If the NDP wants to campaign across Canada with a wedge issue that will only appeal to Quebeckers, they'll likely find themselves disappointed with the results.

The NDP recently opposed the abolition of the long-gun registry. So this begs an even more important question of whether or not the NDP will answer the door upon which opportuniy is knocking.

The more important question is: can they answer the door?


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Dan Shields - "NDP Soaring in Public Opinion Polls, Tory Party Fading"

ThreeHundredEight - "New AR Poll - 15-point Conservative Lead"

Narrowing the Debate on Public Health Care

With Barack Obama's efforts to reform the American health care system getting set to kick into high gear, vested interests on both sides of the health care debate are making moves to try to ensure that nothing resembles a full and open debate on the topic ever takes place.

In the united states, Rick Ross and Conservatives for Patients Rights have been distributing videos warning about the alleged horrors of Canadian universal health care, in which patients outline horror stories about lack of accessibility to Canadian health care.

The Real News Network has responded with a video interviewing random passers-by on Toronto's hospital row, attempting to guage Canadian's level of satisfaction with public health care.

Both provide a calculatingly incomplete image of Canada's universal health care system, each one tailored to the needs of one particular set of advocates -- those advocating in favour of publicly-funded universal health care in the United States, and thsoe advocating against it.

No one should confuse the stories peddled by Rick Scott to be absolutely representative of Canadian health care. By the same token, however, neither should anyone make the same error in regards to the stories being peddled by Geraldine Cahill insisting that Canadian health care is A-OK and everyone is entirely satisfied with it.

Not only are there existing problems with Canadian health care, but many Canadians have found it to be far less than satisfactory.

Perhaps the most telling statistic in Canada is that of the amount of after-tax income Canadians are spending on health care. One should immediately recall that universal health care in Canada is paid for out of tax revenues and, as such, the expenditure of after-tax income on health care actually amounts to a sort of double spending on said health care.

Moreover, recent studies have suggested that Canadian public health care, as it currently exists, is unsustainable. Increasing funding demands on Canada's public health care system have been increasing on an ongoing basis, as the system continually requires funding hikes of an ever-increasing percentage.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information has admitted that Canadian health care spending is growing faster than Canada's economy -- a very basic blueprint for an unsustainable system.

Another key statistic is that of wait times for medical care. In 2007 wait times for elective surgery had reached an all-time high, despite government action to reduce wait times for surgery.

So not only is the Canadian government increasingly spending more and more money to keep Canada's public health care system afloat, Canadians are also seeing diminishing returns on their tax dollar investment.

Certainly, Geraldine Cahill isn't going to get this story from conversing with passers-by on Toronto's Hospital Row, and considering the Real News' particular ideological bent a real question remains about whether or not she'd broadcast it if she did.

Just like Rick Scott clearly has a vested interest in overlooking some very key facts about the American health care system.

Many of these facts are universally well known. 15% of American citizens do not have any health insurance or health care coverage. Moreover, the American government actually spends more money per capita on health care, and provides Americans with less coverage.

If the Canadian health care system is a basic blueprint for an unsustainable system, the American system, in which the federal government pays 35% of health care costs, state and local governemnts pay 11%, private health insurance -- often provided by employers -- pays 36% and the remaining 15% is paid out-of-pocket, is a very complex blueprint for an unsustainable system.

Yet in relying on alternately nightmarish and sparkling anecdotal evidence, both Rick Scott and Geraldine Cahill are acting in a manner that fundamentally narrows the scope of debate on public health care. It obscures the reality of a health care system that, over all, is of tremendous benefit to the people it services but still has key structural problems it has to overcome.

For example, one doesn't expect Cahill to say anything about the disproportioante amount of money Canada's public health system spends on the administration of that system. Entrenched management and bureaucracy has burdened Canadian health care with a high overhead.

Any efforts made by government to try to cull off excess bureaucracy within the system is immediately siezed upon by reactionary proponents of the status quo as "an attack on health care". Health care in Canada, it seems, is constantly under attack. And so must be defended on a permanent basis.

Those most willing to harness the rehtorical strength of these reactionaries -- "Jack Layton and the NDP" -- have even set off to the United States in order to help Barack Obama steer the public discourse in favour of public health care.

"We would go down there to not only defend Canada's health-care system -- but encourage them to adopt similar features," explained NDP national director Brad Lavigne. "[Medicare] is one of the greatest connections we have to each other."

While many Canadians would rush to disagree with Lavigne's implicit argument that universal health care is a central tenet of the Canadian identity, many would agree with him that the United States would be wise indeed to implement a system of publicly-funded health care. However, many of thsoe Canadians should also be honest enough to admit that recommending a complete emulation of Canada's health care system would actually be doing our neighbours a disservice.

But for those who want to reform Canada's public health care system advising Barack Obama on the construction of an American system is a golden opportunity.

Advising Obama on methods by which he could keep administrative and bureancratic glut under control -- thus allowing more funds to be devoted to front-end service -- would allow Canadians to help build a more efficient and effective system after which Canadians could model reforms to our own system.

Unfortunately, the only Canadian groups currently engaging in the American debate are the very parties that rely on the afotrementioned reactionaries for their political strength. Consider them to be something like a socialist equivalent of Rick Scott, opposing reform at all costs.

Those interesting in preserving Canada's public health care system before it becomes too bloated and unaffordable to preserve clearly have a vested interest in the current debate in the United States.

As Canada's system gets sucked deeper and deeper into the microscope of the American debate, the time for Canadian health care reformers to seize the role of Canada's voice in this debate away from the reacitonaries is now.

Liberal Excitement Over Mulroney/Schreiber Affair Due to Drop Off in 5... 4...

Liberal involvement with Karlheinz Schreiber comes to forefront

Karma, as they say, is a bitch.

With the Liberal party bending over backwards to dig dirt on the governing Conservatives via the Schreiber-Mulroney affair, today's huge development in the story just might make this story worthwhile for Conservative partisans.

Those paying attention to the early goings of this emerging non-scandal may have noticed various NDP commentators such as Brad Lavigne, referring to mutual Conservative and Liberal connections to Karlheinz Schreiber. Surely, they must have also noticed various Liberal commentators warning those NDP commentators to "be careful" about what they said.

It turns out that these Liberals had every reason to be vaguely threatening, considering the recent developments in the story today.

According to the Globe and Mail, powerful Liberal cabinet minister Andre Ouellet lobbied fiercely in favour of building the Thyssen AG armaments plant in Nova Scotia.

In various letters marked "secret", Ouellet and then-Industry Minister John Manley clearly disagreed about the project. Manley clearly shared Brian Mulroney's view on the project, which at one point was expected to have potentially cost Canadian taxpayers $100 million.

It was also discovered that Schreiber's company donated $10,000 to the Liberals after they won the 1993 federal election.

Not only, however, did Ouellet lobby the government in favour of the Bear Head project, but it seems he may have lobbied Schreiber himself to change the planned location of the factory to Quebec.

Ouellet expected the project to create 500 jobs in a poor Montreal neighbourhood.

"This is in line with the federal government's policy that all investment proposals should fully take into account the net economic advantages to Canada," Ouellet wrote. "That is why I suggest that you consider very seriously this request from a foreign company that is willing to invest in Canada and to export a military vehicle that could be in increasing demand in the context of peace missions that are more and more numerous around the world."

Manley eventually relented to accepting an economic analysis of the project's benefits from Thyssen.

Now, before Conservative partisans get too excited, one needs to remember that Ouellet, like Mulroney did nothing wrong in his dealings with Schreiber and Thyssen.

In each case, each individual merely acted in what they felt may be the best interests of depressed areas of the country -- Nova Scotia in Mulroney's case, and East Montreal in Ouellet's.

There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that was their job at the time.


When the project was found to stand to cost Canada $100 million, Mulroney declared it dead.

When the government began preparations to purchase new armoured vehicles for the Canadian Forces, Ouellet declined to push Thyssen's product, instead urging the importance of an open competition. Purchasing the vehciles from Thyssen, or any other company, he noted, "without a tendering process would go against the rules of equity."

Neither man acted improperly, in any sense of the word.

That being said, if the Liberals want to use the Mulroney-Schreiber affair to portray the Conservative party as corrupt, they now need to realize that they'll be tarred with the same brush vis a vis the Ouellet-Schreiber affair.

Perhaps given the recent revelatins regarding Schreiber and his dealings, there will be significantly less will to waste Canadian time and money trying to get to the bottom of a matter in which no wrongdoings have transpired.

Or, the Liberals can keep trying to invent a scandal, and inevitably play into the hands of a hungry NDP.

Karma works quite well like that.