PM and Ignatieff 'saved the NDP from itself'

"This kind of thinking shows why Canadians are loath to trust the federal NDP with the nation's finances."

To be fair "ghoris" Josh is American so the NDP doesn't have to take any responsibility for his views on this and I don't see ANYONE in the federal NDP or any of the provincial parties advocating deficits in perpetuity. That "thinking" has been dead in the NDP for many many years.

The recession of the early 90s didn't seem so mild to me and it was enough to defeat Bush Sr. after just one term.

In some ways, even saying that there is a surplus is a bit of smoke and mirrors. In reality there is never a surplus because the government invariably does SOMTHING with the money. Even if they put a billion dollars into paying down the debt - that is a budget item so if you spend a billion dollars on that then you no longer have a surplus.

YOu're also wrong about stagflation being singularly caused by the oil shock. It started before that - largely as a result of the economy "overheating" in the late 60s as a results of billions being spent on the Vietnam War etc... You seem to forget that inflation was becoming such a problem long before the oil embargo of 1973 that in 1971 Nixon had to bring in wage and price controls and take the US off the gold standard!

Michelle and others, please don't take this the wrong way. I'm not trying to say that criticism of the NDP is invalid. I have lots of criticisms of the party: some from the "Left", some from the "Right", some on simple matters of image and presentation. For example: I don't hide the fact that I am more Pro-Palestinian than the current leadership; nor do I hide the fact that on fiscal matters I believe the federal party needs to move away from a laundry list of spending commitments and instead highlight fiscal discipline.

But anyone who thinks the NDP shies away from such criticism is just dreaming. I'm a life-long New Dem. I've been going to conventions and AGMs and open houses and "renewal committees" for years. If anything, I'd say New Dems are TOO willing to air dirty laundry - but I'd rather it that way than the opposite. Anyone who wants to come to Halifax will see a LOT of open debate and criticism about the direction of the party. It's what we do best. It's why we don't die off, no matter how often the Globe and Mail or the Hard Left write us off.

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You can't have someone who is a current insider because then all you are going to get are partisan talking points. If you had Brad Lavigne, then you would need the others to be Korey Teneycke and whoever is Iggy's latest mouthpiece.

Scott Reid WAS an insider under Martin, now he works independently can is willing to provide constructive criticism of the Liberals and the same goes for Greg Lyle. If the Globe wanted someone with an NDP background who was involved at the highest levels in the relatively recent past and who is no longer on the party payroll - maybe get someone like Jamey Heath - or someone who was an insider during the MacDonough years.

Maybe the reason the Globe keeps going back to Caplan is because he is the only person they can find who has an NDP pedigree who is willing to do the Globe's bidding by posting a column that is just a bunch of gratuitous cheap shots and nothing of any substance. Brian Topp was dead-on when he conjured up the image of Caplan as a dancing monkey for the rightwing organgrinders who own the Globe.

A couple of random points after joining the conversation late:

 * You can't blame the Globe for going to Gerry Caplan.  There's basically him, Les Campbell, Doug McArthur and Joy MacPhail who have that level of experience and are able to write partisan things they can sign their names to publicly.  It's a big problem for our party that a lot of our best thinkers are not in that same position.  Brian Topp could, but then it's maybe not all that advisable that he publicize his thinking on these matters either, is it?  [ETA: written, obviously, before I was able to read Stock's comments in the meanwhile.]

 * I hope the party IS talking to Gerry Caplan, or if they're not, they ought to be.  He's done a lot of great work in Africa, for example, on the CBC, and probably lots of other stuff I don't know about.  He ran the 1984 "ordinary Canadians" campaign which saved our bacon as a party, at a time when we were in danger of being swept away after Jim Laxer's rather public defection hurt us badly.  Since then, however, and I mean particularly since Ignatieff walked away from the coalition, Laxer has been pretty kind to Layton and what he tried to achieve with that.  We ought to maintain a dialogue with Laxer as well (and in spite of some of my earlier frustrations with him, which may have been similar to what Scott articulated above).

 * On the other hand, I do think it was a cheap shot to write, in response to being asked "WHAT SHOULD THE PARTIES BE DOING?' to say "they ain't doin' nuthin' and I have nuthin' to add about that".  In that sense I do believe Gerry copped out.

 * Meanwhile, though, Gerry wouldn't be the first person to say that policy is an area that still needs work.  I was encouraged to see some of the postings for senior Research and Policy positions that came out of the caucus in the post-election period.  Remember that back when Gerry was Federal Secretary (now National Director), we had a pretty large NDP Research Group, which attracted some pretty bright lights, and who maintained on-going relationships with academics, policy groups, and activists.  ALL that was lost in 1993 when we lost official party status, and we did not have a large enough caucus after either 1997 or 2000 to bring that back up to full strength.

 * The parties also operate in a VERY different environment now from what Gerry remembers in the 1980s ... a 24-hour news cycle, 5 parties rather than 3, tiny news bureaus on the Hill who don't have policy experts to cover stories (and papers who wouldn't carry the stories anyway), and a TON more lobbyists.  A Commons committee that would once meet for 3 hours, with many rounds of questioning from fewer parties' MPs, now runs for an hour or hour and a half tops, with 5 minute rounds of questioning and multiple competing agendas from the 4 parties represented.  The Canadian Press used to have a huge Ottawa bureau, with many specialized beat reporters who each regularly covered their respective committees and beats.  Those days are long gone, and anyways half the news outlets don't even take CP anymore.

I don't have strong feelings either away on the name thing, and I can see the arguments for both sides.  I'm pretty sure Layton is ambitious enough not to have an entire convention built around that one thing though, for goodness sakes.  However, it will be an issue to get some of the national media out east to cover it if we don't drum up some pretty big news, because they simply don't have the budgets anymore.

If Gerry is not participating in the party so much these days, then his main source of information on what we're doing is through his contacts and what he reads in the Toronto papers and sees on the CBC.  Thus, he's getting what we've been able to get through those filters, and perhaps that's the message that's arriving at the other end.  Which, if so, is problematic and we have to work with what exists to do better.

Certainly, as I said elsewhere, my own riding met last week and considered 15++ resolutions on topics ranging from mentorship programs for foreign trained professionals, decriminalizing recreational drug production and use, preservation of fresh water, stopping the bargain basement sale of Crown assets, the Middle East, corporate social responsibility, etc., etc.  The name change was one of them (we approved a process and deadline for changing it, rather than a specific name).  Everyone agreed it was one of the best and wide-ranging policy discussions in a long time.

So, I'm upbeat, but not a Pollyanna.  My glass is half full, in other words.

It's hard to take seriously the criticisms of someone whose claims are demonstrably factually inaccurate, as some of Caplan's are.  Is the NDP in trouble?  Well, its vote share is higher now than it has been at any time since Ed Broadbent was the party's leader, and it's stayed at roughly the level of support that both David Lewis and Tommy Douglas were able to achieve.  So if the party is in trouble now, then the party has [i]always[/i] been in trouble. 

As for the idea that "social democrats everywhere" are in trouble, that's plainly not true.  In Sweden they have more seats than any other party, as they do in Norway and Germany.  They're only one seat behind the main party in Denmark, and they're the official opposition in France.  While the political systems in South Africa and India are obviously quite different than the ones in the industrialised West, the parties leading both of those countries also have socialist leanings.  "Social democrats everywhere" are not even close to being in trouble.

Shows how much you know about the workings of the NDP - Jamey Heath hasn't been involved since the immediate aftermath of the 2004 election and Pierre Ducasse's role was heavily downgraded after the arrival of Mulcair two years ago.

I'm not sure what exactly Caplan wrote that you agree with since I don't recall Caplan (for all his faults) ever counselling the NDP to read Quebec the "riot act" and position itself as the party of Trudeauite centralism.

Kloch wrote:

Aside from reminding us on how old Gerald Caplan is, does anyone want to actually refute his argument? 

I mean, are there any riding association insiders that have insight on any innovative, left-wing policies that will brought to convention floor, and actually be followed by our party in parliament (unlike say, the Afghanistan resolution)?

You seemed to have missed Jan's post - where she points out that the policy agenda is not set yet.  I know of a couple of resolutions that are pretty good at setting a policy discussion in certain sectors.  I hate to berate the elderly, but Caplan just seems to be making shit up - how do you refute that beyond pointing it out.

By the way - what the hell is wrong with just having a party?  Shouldn't you celebrate yourself once in awhile.  Since some New Dems seem to be constantly pissing and moaning about things not being utopian that might not be such a bad thing.

I haven't heard anything about a name change, but I have always thought including the word new was stupid.  That doesn't mean though becoming the Democratic party is such a good idea either- but then what's in a name.  I would be happy with anything that doesn't get shortened to N D Pee-er.  Sound like the party needs to be toilet trained.

You must have read a completely different book than Heath wrote - as I expect he would be rather unpleasently surprised by your incorrect characterization

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

You must have read a completely different book than Heath wrote - as I expect he would be rather unpleasently surprised by your incorrect characterization

Actually Heath's book was so badly written that I would have a hard time characterizing it at all.

Bootsa wrote:

We need more 1978 NDP thinking, because today's "US left-flavour of the day" NDP (kind of a Svend Robinsonisation of the party, even though the lacrimonious Svend is obviously not involved anymore) is directly responsible for why Canadians no longer take the party seriously.

Presumably then you believe that the NDP has never been taken seriously, since their election results in the past couple of elections have been pretty much where the party has always been electorally.  It's dangerous to start projecting your own feelings about an issue onto the public at large.

josh, the US government has been able to run deficits for 30 and 40 years in a row because of the US dollar's role as the world accounting currency. The Canadian dollar is valued against the USD (as is every other currency and all commodities), and thus Canada does not have the luxury that the US does.

You can't compare the US to any other country for this reason. As the world economy grows, demand for US currency and other USD denominated assets (such as US T-bills) will rise, financing US government spending beyond the means of the US taxpayer.

Even now, with the US money supply increasing from $800 billion to $2 trillion because of recent Fed actions, a run to the US dollar is still considered a "flight to quality". Go figure.

The debate was never as one-sided over Quebec as it is now, since there were always formerly those within the party who correctly viewed Quebec nationalism as a regressive force, and in case you didn't know it, the two nations theory of Canada had several permutations, and in its original formulation did not speak of Quebec as one of the two nations, but of French Canadians as one of two nations, which is a whole other matter.  No-one can fairly oppose the existence of a Quebec nation, but saying that Quebec is a nation (which is what Layton agreed with the Bloc Québécois), without the consent of the native populations who live on two thirds of the province's territory, is simply unjust.  More important, playing up the nationalist/decentralist point of view merely contributes to justifying the very policies -- i.e. all the cuts to national social infrastructure -- which have harmed the poor and middle classes.  It says to Canadians in each province: just send MPs to Ottawa to get the "butin", one-off payments such as the faux deal on the supposed fiscal disequilibrium, while turning attention away from more important evils such as "sound finance", poor monetary policy, and the decline in national social programs and approaches.

I think that the NDP is taken less seriously by more of the population, but now benefits from temporary rises in its stature because of the kind of shallow, electoralist politics it engages in.  There is no doubt that these have a certain short-term effectiveness, but only in encouraging short-term protest voting.  That kind of voting is unstable and will never be enough to put the NDP over the top.  And in any case, the party that results is one that no longer speaks to the actual issues or needs of Canadians. In these recessionary times, the national NDP has to show itself to be more radical and less centrist -- it has to be proudly socialist. 

If you want a party that is rigidly centralist and opposed to any autonomy at all for Quebec, then I suggest you forget about the NDP and give Justin Trudeau a call and see about staging a hostile (or maybe not so hostile) takeover of the Liberal Party.

"The accomplishment (for the Liberals) is avoiding an election until such time that they can defeat the Conservatives - i.e. when party fundraising and poll numbers improve."

I'd like to see your reaction if the NDP announced that its definition of a great accomplishment was to avoid an election until such time that they can make major gains - i.e. when party fundraising and poll numbers improve.

Its not exactly an "accomplishment" for the Liberals to avoid an election - all they have to do is to keep on systematically supporting Harper on every single confidence vote and they can avoid an election until 2013!!

Let's face it. The Liberals would like NOTHING BETTER than for the NDP to start playing footsie with Harper so that they could then switch places with the NDP and start voting non-confidence on everything and accusing the NDP of being in bed with the Tories etc... instead they are stuck with a bad case of penis envy like children pressing their little faces against the glass window of the candy shop watching the NDP do what the Liberal sonly WISH they could do - vote against the Tories. If your so sure that the NDP is afraid of an election then all the Liberals have to do is call the NDP's bluff and say they will vote down the government and sit back and let the NDP save their bacon by not showing up at the vote - but of course the Liberals have never done that because in the final analysis they know that they (the Liberals) are more averse to an election than the NDP is - and so this dance continues.

I have said it before and I will say it again. If some (very few) people think the NDP is making itself "irrelevant" because it keeps voting against Conservative bills - then it begs the question - what would make the NDP "relevant". The obvious answer to these people is that the NDP should start mindlessly voting for all Conservative bills to free up the Liberals to start voting against the government instead of enduring the daily humiliation of propping them up as they do now.

I'm sorry but its not the NDP's responsibility to save the Liberals from being embarrassed.

And I suggest that, if you want to help Canadians, you go back and read Les cheminements du politique, which Pierre Trudeau wrote back when he was still a social democrat (and which owes a great debt to Harold Laski's Authority of the State).  Unfortunately, Trudeau's legacy was not hard centrism, but exactly the opposite -- Canada was damaged by his ending of established program financing in 1979 which was, effectively, the beginning of the end of our shared-cost national social infrastructure.  And yet he was right that provinces, especially the Province of Quebec via the Quebec Act and the Act of Proclamation, have all the power they need to defend their autonomy.  The Province of Quebec should continue to do so, but the nation of Quebec, failing a yes-vote in a referendum, remains a noxious concept designed to let national and provincial elites appeal to ethnic nationalism to facilitate favouritism for plutocrats.

While your vision guarantees that the poor will remain poor and that we will do nothing about climate change.

Stockholm wrote:

. . . children pressing their little faces against the glass window of the candy shop watching the NDP do what the Liberal sonly WISH they could do - vote against the Tories.

Bizarrely put, but somewhat apt.  It's all a game for both parties - neither is really interested in voting no confidence, but they sure like to look like they are.  The NDP will vote against the government so long as its safe, and the Liberals would too if it were also safe for them to do so.  But I'm no sure how envious the Liberals are of the NDP's position though - the NDP is able to do what it does largely because the party is small enough to be inconsequential.

Stockholm wrote:

If your so sure that the NDP is afraid of an election then all the Liberals have to do is call the NDP's bluff and say they will vote down the government and sit back and let the NDP save their bacon by not showing up at the vote - but of course the Liberals have never done that because in the final analysis they know that they (the Liberals) are more averse to an election than the NDP is - and so this dance continues.

Like I said above, I think we were starting to see a bit of that a few weeks ago.  The Liberals came the closet they have yet to voting no confidence, and the NDP immediately reacted by dialing-back its rhetoric, if only for a few days.  Complicating everything was the belief that voters didn't want an election, so it was soon pretty obvious that they wouldn't go all of the way with it, and the NDP were quickly back to their old ways ("we're not even going to read the update!").

It is a good question though who is more adverse to an election.  On one hand, the Liberals have more to gain (government) and more to lose (renewed Conservative government and missing a chance to topple them for several years, since the voters aren't going to want another election soon after the next) . . . though if the polling is to be believed, it's quite possible that the NDP could lose as many as half their seats and I don't see them moving up much at the momeny, unless they start polling above their election results, which they're currently two or three points below.

--

NorthReport wrote:

Right on sister/brother!

Since the beginning of time there has been a war on the working class by the right wing Liberals and Conservatives, or whatever they were called before that. But many folks here, and elsewhere, like to change the subject by trying all these diversionary tactics, like talking about the environment, human rights, Israel, etc. It's all a smokescreen to avoid talking about redistributing the wealth.  

 

With an adequate redistribution of the wealth, 99.9% of these other hot-button issues will vanish.

 

N.Beltov wrote:

There's a social group in Canada called the working class. The struggles of this social group led to the establishment of social programs in Canada like EI, formerly known as "Unemployment Insurance", and many others. It's my understanding this group is still around and, given the current economic crisis, is suffering gigantic job losses and impoverishment. In fact, the working class has been the subject of class warfare by neoliberal governments and corporate Canada for, let's see, maybe 25 years or so. The well being of this social group should be the priority of the NDP.

If the party doesn't have the spine to be genuinely socialist, or even utter that dreaded word, despite the fact that socialism is nothing but working class power/government, then it could at least try restoring some social partisanship to its approach.

I know it's an extremist, left-wing, wing nut idea ... but what the hell? Every right wing idea has been tried.

Bootsa wrote:

 as the results from the last election attest, there is no chance of the NDP replacing the Liberals as the natural governing party in Qc

I think you may be right that the last election may have been the NDP's best chance to replace the Liberals in Quebec.  The Liberals were badly organized, badly financed and had an unpopular leader.  But the failure of the NDP to make a major breakthrough in Quebec when the Liberals were most vulnerable may mean that it will be a long time before there is a chance to do so again.

I thought Chantal Hebert did the best job of any commentator on election night of summing up the results in Quebec - I can almost remember her words exactly:

"This is not a bad night for the Liberals in Quebec tonight.  What's happened to them is that they have turned the page on the Sponsorship Scandal.  They're up in the popular vote and they're taking seats off the Bloc.  They have also stopped the NDP from emerging in the province as an alternative to them."

The NDP'rs seem to have no shortage of advice to give the left on this board.

josh wrote:

"No new public policy ideas will be introduced."

Caplan can't possibly say that with any knowledge. The seven resolution panels at the convention will decide what resolutions will get priority.

janfromthebruce wrote:

the NDP's resolution deadline was just last week. Thus Gerry doesn't know what the hell is being discussed or not since it's not complete yet.

Quite so.

ottawaobserver wrote:

my own riding met last week and considered 15++ resolutions on topics ranging from mentorship programs for foreign trained professionals, decriminalizing recreational drug production and use, preservation of fresh water, stopping the bargain basement sale of Crown assets, the Middle East, corporate social responsibility, etc., etc. The name change was one of them (we approved a process and deadline for changing it, rather than a specific name). Everyone agreed it was one of the best and wide-ranging policy discussions in a long time.

Well done.  

I still haven't had my original question answered which was for some one to constructively address Caplan's argument without mentioning how old he is.  I still wait.

As for the glorious resolutions at the party convention, what is the point of passing resolutions that will end up getting ignored during the period of governance.  I refer to the 2006 Afghanistan resolutions.

On a general note, I don't see how anyone can have a serious discussion about what the NDP positions on any given issue are, since, at least in provincially in Ontario, we are the only political party that doesn't have our policies online.  Federally, we have some policies online, but the Liberal women's caucus alone seems to have a more comprehensive platform.  If I am mistaken, some one please correct me.