Monday, August 20, 2001
What’s left? - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- The Conservatives and the Reform Alliance have inched one step closer to a marriage or merger of sorts. This past weekend in Mont Tremblant, Quebec, Tory MPs and those disgruntled Alliance MPs who call themselves the Democratic Representative Caucus came up with some sort of pact. However it seems a little too late. Frankly, the right-wing alternative to the Liberals is in so much disarray it’d make one weep. Jean Chrétien can govern well into eternity.
The left, or at least it’s leading voice, the New Democratic Party fares no better either. Clicking in at an abyssal 8% of the popular vote in last November’s election, the NDP fights hard to maintain party status in the House of Commons. The party’s fortunes provincially are trying at best. Even in socialist Saskatchewan -- the birth place of mainstream socialism -- Premier Lorne Calvert clings to power. And one need not go into the party’s unbelievable showing in last May’s election here in fair BC. Then begs the question as to whether there need be a party of the left. Really, as it asks itself, is that party the NDP or need it make itself over.
In last November’s federal election, the Liberals were re-elected partly out of the nation’s massive unease and fear of Stockwell Day and the Canadian Alliance. East of Manitoba, the Alliance fared poorly because of that PR stain, as perpetuated by the Liberals and the mainstream media. What would be ideological votes for the NDP, ended up going to the Liberals to allow status quo Canadians to block any Alliance insurgence east of the Lakehead. Strategic voting, as they call it in political science circles, is where and how the NDP suffered most. Those inclined to NDP policies end up selecting the lesser of the two evils: the Liberals or the Alliance, and to the Liberals went the spoils of power.
There is a strong leftist voice in Canada (as in the rest of the world), however that voice comes from all sides. Young people fair into that discussion as we see the great number of rabble rousers who bitch and bellyache over the expansion of NAFTA, the FTAA, WTO and anything that gets in their collective craws. They need a home, but the NDP appears to them as elitist or too pro-union; or both. Many of those youths who espouse the hard-left were those that flocked to the Green party in May. It was their disenchantment with the establishment that buttressed the Green’s historic showing here in BC.
Many have said that the NDP -- should greater electability be desired -- take a page from Tony Blair’s Labour and work to divorcing from organised labour and pursue an agenda closer to the centre and far from the left. That strategy certainly worked in their favour as per their victories in 1997 and this past spring.
If they remain at their status quo or pursue a stronger left agenda so as to appease the environmentalists or youth, they’ll keep at their pace of fighting for party status at every election. If they go the route of New Labour and Tony Blair, they will alienate the new and hard left and be left abandoning fundamental principles thought of as being truly left wing.
The best electoral showing the NDP had federally, was in 1988. The Tories pushed free trade, (and won) while the Liberals dithered. It was left for the NDP to oppose free trade, thus electing in the neighbourhood of 40 seats. Now, in the midst of the dot-com wired world and globalisation, the NDP is seen as largely irrelevant. Where can that delicate balance between the unions and the environmentalists be struck? Or should the grand umbrella known as the NDP ditch one for the other and cross their fingers for electoral luck?
We dare not want the polarisation of the United States, but it seems more ideal being either a Democrat or a Republican. Sure, Ralph Nader’s Green’s upset the Democratic cart, but isn’t that democracy?
The NDP could well evaporate and a new party be in the running come next election. Then again look what happened when Reform morphed into the Canadian Alliance. Perhaps what best could happen is that everyone up and vote come next election.
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I was once a member of the socialist NDP, only to leave it to join the conservative Canadian Alliance. Considering myself to the right on some issues, the prime reservation I have with the left in general is that there is an innate jealousy and holding back of those that can and do succeed. Equality is good, but the confinement of the human spirit to flourish is utterly absurd.
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Then again when I think of the stuff that’s gone on here in BC with transit, nurses and the lot; and I think of Seattle, Quebec City, Washington, APEC, Genoa and the G-8, I’m more and more anxious to seeing a party (or parties) emerge to challenge the body politic. Opposition must come from within our Houses of Parliament and between those that we duly elect. Anarchy in the streets is certainly of no virtue.
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