With the next Parliament looking like a mirror image of the last one, pundits and politicians from across the partisan spectrum have taken to calling the recent federal election a waste of money. But if you think the $600 million taxpayers spent on it was bad, wait until you find out how much it cost the NDP to end up back where it started.
After spending upwards of $10 million in 2019 to win 24 seats and 16 per cent of the national vote, Jagmeet Singh’s party more than doubled its campaign budget this time around to a reported $24 million. As NDP national director Anne McGrath told the Toronto Star, “We are spending more on advertising in this campaign than we spent on the entire campaign last time — so that’s pretty significant.”
But those extra millions only resulted in one additional seat and an extra 1.7 per cent of the national vote, with both totals coming in well short of what Thomas Mulcair managed in 2015. TikTok ads aren’t cheap, apparently.
This was the second straight campaign where Singh rated as the most popular leader in Canada, only to wind up leading his party to a fourth-place finish. But despite this underwhelming track record and his predecessor getting the boot after just one (vastly more successful) election, Singh’s position at the top of the federal NDP’s pecking order seems safe for now.
That doesn’t add up for David Herle, a former Liberal strategist and the host of The Herle Burly. “If this party had a winning instinct in it,” he said on his Curse of Politics podcast, “they would be crushed by this result, because this should have been a realignment election for them — or at least the possibility of it. They have a super popular leader, they’ve got a fully funded campaign, and their progressive opposition is vulnerable.”
It’s not just Liberals who are critical of Singh’s performance, either. As political analyst (and NDP supporter) Evan Scrimshaw wrote in his recap of the election, “My real ire is for Jagmeet Singh, who has run a deeply unserious campaign and blew a genuinely good chance at making advances. The party’s seat haul is deeply disappointing, and even if it improves slightly, to be as low as they are, after being told the NDP were a serious party, is pathetic. Jagmeet should resign for the good of the party, because it is clear he cannot run a campaign good enough to convert good vibes into seats.”
And for all the money spent on the leader’s tour, which saw the party charter a plane and send Singh to 51 ridings, it doesn’t seem to have delivered much in the way of ROI. As former NDP candidate for York-Simcoe Jessa McLean tweeted, “NDP federal council took the rebates from the local ridings and poured it all into @theJagmeetSingh’s image and campaign… We’re not a movement. We’re an ad campaign.”
The question the federal NDP faces now is the same one it has struggled to answer ever since the passing of Jack Layton: What, exactly, does it want to accomplish? Is it a movement that seeks to move the Overton window on key public policy issues, or does it want to win elections, form a national government and implement change? If it’s the latter, it needs to lean far more heavily on the experience of its provincial wings in Alberta and British Columbia, where the combination of a personable leader and more pragmatic policies has proven a winning combination. If it’s the former, it needs to do better on defining issues like climate change, where its plan was widely panned by both economists and climate scientists as being aggressively unserious.
It also needs to decide whether it’s going to start heeding its former leader’s call to be “loving, hopeful and optimistic.”
In the recent election, Singh campaigned far more like Stephen Harper than Layton, attacking Justin Trudeau at every available opportunity and trading in misinformation about everything from student loan interest payments to the eight child-care deals with the provinces and territories that had already been struck. Avi Lewis, his star candidate in West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, launched a personal attack on University of Calgary professor Jennifer Winter — one that was reminiscent of his 2018 broadside against then-premier Rachel Notley when he described her as “the new patron saint of the corporate welfare bums.”
Based on his first post-election press conference, where he effectively blamed the prime minister for low voter turnout, that seems unlikely to change any time soon. “I think there’s a lot of cynicism,” Singh told reporters. “And I think that cynicism has been fed by people like Mr. Trudeau.”
At some point, the NDP faithful are going to have to decide if this approach deserves a third kick at the electoral can, or whether it’s time for a new leader who can actually give voice to Layton’s spirit of optimism and hope. At the very least, they might want to find one who can deliver a better return on their investment.
Comments
A very good opinion piece, but here is another option: given the similarities in their respective platforms, why not merge with the Liberals to form a new Progressive Party? That way, they would stop the annoying and potentially dangerous trend of splitting the vote amongst centre-left parties. The Greens can along, too, just for laughs.
I am loathe to call a government that pushed through strikebreaking legislation against at least two major labour actions "centre-left".
Depends what your objective is. If the objective is for a few top NDP personalities to get a chance at cabinet seats, then sure, why not? If the objective is a better Canada, then terrible idea. Such a merger wouldn't be something in between the Liberals and the NDP, it would be the Liberals. But fairly soon it would be to the right of the current Liberals, because the only thing that stops the Liberals from betraying everyone even harder than they do is the fear that if they go too totally obviously corporate and don't deliver anything to their voters, the NDP could finally break through.
The existence of the NDP is the main thing that stops Canadian politics from being identical to US politics. That would be worth the whole thing even if they never form government, even if they never again have a chance to influence policy in a minority government. Which, while we're on the subject, they have been doing and will now get the opportunity to do again. Lest we forget (or never heard about it because the media doesn't say such things very much), the CERB as we know it was an NDP demand pushed on the reluctant Liberals, as were most of the good policies that helped real people during the pandemic. Under a majority government of (Liberal party that absorbed the NDP) masses of people who managed to get through would instead have been homeless.
. . . Similarities in their respective platforms, you say? Well, no doubt. For the Liberals, election platforms are always an exercise in "Let's pretend for the voters, once again, that we're the NDP, and once again marvel that they buy it when we never actually do any of that stuff because if we did, our corporate sponsors would cut us off".
Well said, Rufus. When I was out and about, all I heard was how nice Jagmeet was but how bad the NDP party was. What really amazes me is how many, through the last 6 years, have said how much they dislike the Liberal party and Justin's doings, how they did not really know O'Toole but were bitter at the parties policies flip flops, yet the problem I saw over all..Canadians wearing blinders who only saw the 2 parties and cast the 3rd under the table. They never realized how much work the NDP did behind the scenes, pushing and kicking the Liberal party to do what was right during the past 2 years. CERB was just 1 instance. The Conservatives basically just sat there, calling for investigations etc into Liberal doings. You DO NOT do that type of garbage when the country needs help, in this case from the ravages of the pandemic.
The BQ did well in Quebec, so it saw it's seat count increase slightly. The NDP may have only spent $24M to campaign across the country, but I'm betting BQ, Liberals and Conservatives made that figure look like pennies in a bank compared to their campaigns..yet here we are paying $600M+ for an election and getting no where fast.
Congratulations Justin..more taxpayer money well spent..NOT!
This is similar to my belief that a minority government is our best option because both parties sing in harmony or they both fall.
Germany has coalition governments, not merged parties, the difference being that all parties holding cabinet positions keep their identities and core policy platforms but take advantage of the overlap. They are also on better behaviour than in minority parliaments because they share governorship roles and the same cabinet room coffee machine and washrooms rather than the far simpler function of a few policy agreements by independent parties occupying different buildings.
A minority government is as strong or as weak as its energy and motivation level to enact really good ideas rather than just play strategic games. It is plain to see that this piece is all about gamesmanship, not ideals and principles. Jagmeet Singh holds the balance of power. Let's hope he uses it wisely and boldly and doesn't cave to the fear of failure and weak performance, or worse -- paralysis.
Well argued. And while I too was disappointed in Singh's stump speeches.......(less 'we'll fight for you' bellicose talk and more policy substance please.) and repetitious platitudes, I know that a great deal of our current progressive wins have been pushed through by the presence of the ndp.
To some extent, I blame Canadians for wanting it all, but only having the courage or foresight to vote Progressive lite.........which inevitably leads to Liberal governments. Still, this author is right when he calls for a bolder, more substantive approach. Less advertisements; more policy discussions might actually educate voters into what we need to vote for.
I was just wondering when the Liberals moved from centre-right to centre-left?
Liberal Inc., is there to serve the corporations, not the people. The natural merger is with the Conservative Party, not with the (sometimes not so) progressive parties.
I would like to know how much the Liberals and Conservatives spent on their election campaigns. I suspect they spent far more and got little for their money either.
Exactly. This crass ROI (return on investment) approach targeting the NDP but NOT targeting the Liberal and Conservatives is unfair, and part of a tired "the left will spend too much" stereotype. If applied across the board, this money-centred attitude should at least put the main blame on the sitting gov't for wasting the better part of a billion $ on the election itself. Campaign spending comes from people interesting in their party's success. Elections are funded by the people, whether they want an election or not. As for Mr. Fawcett's attitude to Mr. Singh, well, it seems he wants him out. For what? Not being enough like Layton? Not being enough like Mulcair? Being too well liked? Feels more like a centrist hit piece, this "opinion."
And not even a mention at how the lack of polling stations at college and university campuses this election might have affected turnout with a key NDP demographic? Seems like a curious oversight.
Good point! But to go there the author would have to be actually hoping for NDP success and alert to the real obstacles in their way, instead of suggesting they’re “just done.”
Queen's had one polling station on campus. But while we're on the subject of a key NDP demographic. How fair is it to allow university students to vote in their university 'communities' like Kingston when the 22,000 students can adversely affect the outcome of an election and force permanent residents to live with a candidate they didn't elect for 4 years, long after the students have gone back 'home'? Students should vote in the ridings where their provincial health cards are domiciled and not as 'blocks' to be used by the NDP, especially, when, as in the case of Queen's students, their total irresponsibility both pre-pandemic and during the pandemic in hosting massive street/house parties shows absolute disrespect for the permanent residents who have to suffer the consequences of their behaviour? Breakwater Beach has been fenced off because students won't obey health regulations and police are constantly at risk trying to keep the peace. Elections Canada needs to change this dynamic. Let students vote and party where they live!
You make a good point, but students have the option of voting on campus for either the local candidate or the candidate in their home riding (i.e. where their parents live). First- and second-year students would likely vote for candidates in their home ridings. Moreover, while the NDP and Greens are preferred by younger people, some also vote Lib and Con.
And you are painting all students across the country with the same brush based on Queens.
If I am not mistaken, campus votes are reflective of their home ridings, not the school's riding. When your ID is presented at the voting station, a "candidate response list" is given to each person based on where they consider actual home "Voting is by special ballot, and you cast your ballot for wherever you consider your home riding to be. So, if your home is in Alberta's Red Deer-Lacombe riding but you are going to school at Holland College in Charlottetown, you would write in the first and last name of your preferred candidate for your riding back home in Alberta."
As for those little vacuum heads partying like there is nothing wrong, it isn't just at Queen's and not just during the elections. They all need a swift kick in the backside, a slap upside the head and if it continues, perhaps a toe out the door for spell.
Instead of all this arguing about where to vote, lets have proportional representation (PR). That way every vote would count, no matter where it was cast. Under PR, Parliament would look like this: CONS, 114 seats; LIBS, 110 seats; NDP, 60; BQ, 26; PPC, 17; GRN 8). No more less than 40% of the vote giving someone a 'majority" government. See how the system skews reality?
Yeah, I was wondering about that. I hate pieces that leave out the most relevant context. On a quick google, I'm surprised that I'm not seeing anything at all about Liberal or Conservative campaign spending in 2021.
The tactical error the NDP made was assuming that increasing its advertising budget would produce more votes. "As NDP national director Anne McGrath told the Toronto Star, 'We are spending more on advertising in this campaign than we spent on the entire campaign last time — so that’s pretty significant.'"
Increasing advertising--e.g. the 'air war'--comes with exponentially diminishing returns. It's the messaging darling because it's so easy to do, and it's pitched to them by advertising and PR agencies that take a cut of the buy.
The proven way to increase the vote is to increase the 'ground war:' knocking on doors, meeting voters face-to-face. Usually, ceteris paribus, the politician who meets the most voters face-to-face wins.
Sometimes the shiny new 'thing' (in politics today, it's social media) is not an improvement on proven methods.
Political parties that put too many of their campaign eggs in social and earned media are always disappointed. They're easily bamboozled by the hype fed to them by agencies, social media acolytes, and journalists.
In politics, the most effective campaign medium is still directly talking to a voter, as inconvenient, difficult, and unflashy as that might be.
In the next election, the NDP should consider using its money to materially reward as many of its supporters as it can to canvas the electoral districts where polling suggests it has a reasonable probability of winning.
In my riding, as it sounds like it was in others, there appears to have been no ground game.
I've voiced my opinion to the party that a leadership cult approach doesn't translate into votes. Especially if, as it seems, all the funding oxygen went straight to the top.
I couldn't agree more. When those of us on the left actually want the government we've been imagining, we'll all be out there, talking to our neighbours, putting up signs, delivering leaflets, attending town hall meetings. Turning things over to the big money, whether through advertising or relying on central party apparatchiks is not the road to victory..........it's an easy down hill ride however, and in recent years, most of us have been on it.
In this riding, often held by the NDP, I didn't see a single election sign for them. Their candidate had not thought much beyond how Ottawa could make her own job easier for those still in it. She had not even worked with a good photographer.
The Conservatives are so slick at PR that it does not arouse much suspicion. Where the NDP seems really slick is when certain parties don't like a membership vote, and it vanishes.
The NDP doesn't need a new leader. As you've pointed out in this article, Singh is the most popular of the party leaders. (It's worth pointing out that Jack Layton was leader for 8 years before he succeeded in making the NDP the official opposition. Singh has only been leader 4 years.)
For the NDP's popularity to translate into more seats, what is needed is voting reform. The same applies to the Greens.
As a Green voter (who decided to support the NDP's Avi Lewis in this election) I talk to people during campaigns. Time and again, people in my community tell me they "cannot" vote NDP or Green in case they "split the vote and the Conservative gets in". Strategic voting CANNOT be left out of any analysis of election results.
Without voting reform, we'll never see how much support the smaller parties truly have. Even tweaking our current system to include ranked ballots would be better than the system that we have now. At least then ballots would show the real levels of support. But personally, I'd like to see us move to proportional representation. (According to fairvote.ca, "Over 90 countries use a proportional voting system, including over 80 per cent of OECD countries, such as Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, and Denmark. The US, the UK and Canada are the main outliers.")
However, I do agree that the NDP "needs to do better on defining issues like climate change".
Exactly. I'm more in favour of a ranked ballot or an STV, but hey, anything to discourage wedge politics and force folks to work together more than they currently do would be an improvement. And having an effective vote while voting for the best candidate instead of against the worst one would guarantee, if there is such a thing in life, more good ones get elected and we are governed better as a result. Better politicians? Incented to work together instead of to drive political wedges? No more regional parties like the Bloc Quebecois, punching well above they're weight? I could go on and on because the flaws of FPTP are so well known and so well discussed amongst the readership here.
I'm sure that by ditching FPTP we'd be trading a basket of issues we know for a new basket ones that may surprise, but something has to give, because we're not getting the governance we need to properly look out for the common good; tackling the climate catastrophe instead of denying, delaying or betting on ineffective strategies: future technologies, which may one day provide magic, for instance, instead of doing the hard work now. If anything doing the hard work now will give resources to and motivate those who work on the magic.
We're all collectively bobbing out on the ocean in a dinghy that's filling up with water. We need politicians who will frantically start to bail out that water, even by cupped hand, instead of just sitting, arms folded, some denying that there's even a problem (a full-half is dinghy is the new normal don'tcha know?) while others just focus on corralling their floating (and sinking) toys while they wait for someone or something to drop out of the sky with a bigger bucket.
Well, we do need proportional representation. But Layton showed breakthroughs can be done without it. And on the other hand, even with proportional representation, plenty of barriers against left-of-centre parties would remain, with the media being the biggest. Most Canadian media is concentrated in the ownership of a few very rich people and dependent on ads from very rich corporations. Any political party or movement backing interests other than the moneyed few is going to get portrayed poorly (or simply given as little coverage as they can get away with) in such a media environment.
Agreed, there are layers of problems. But our current Rome wasn't built in a day. :) Get more of the best candidates elected (candidates that people vote for). Work together. Ask better questions. Make better decisions. Fix policy.
I'd just add...........get off these devices next time around and talk your values and principles to the street. Door knocking isn't as hard as we imagine, nor as boring. If we want a better Canada many more of us need to show up. That is also the answer to educating the central party operatives who think they know what people want and how little people have to contribute. It's called Activism, and its the best learning curve I know of.
I'd just add...........get off these devices next time around and talk your values and principles to the street. Door knocking isn't as hard as we imagine, nor as boring. If we want a better Canada many more of us need to show up. That is also the answer to educating the central party operatives who think they know what people want and how little people have to contribute. It's called Activism, and its the best learning curve I know of.
Who made the decisions as to funding to the leader's photo ops as opposed to funding to the ridings?
I'm still not sure my donation went to the candidate, as it had to be made through the Ottawa office.
Agreed on voting reform. But the NDP still rang in a little less than 20% in the final count. Way back when the party spiked to 42% for a week or two under Ed Broadbent. Jack Layton also had a temporary bump which he quickly used to collapse the government he was the minority partner in, dreaming that he could be PM. Well, Stephen Harper came waltzing up the aisle and remained on the stage for a very dark decade.
This is to say that the NDP are as certain to place political strategizing, reading daily polls and stupid sports analogies above principles as any other party. At this point in time they really need to regroup, embrace their powerful role as a minority partner in a genuine, legit government, and enjoy the fact that they got to be part of it with less than 1/5th of the popular vote. And drive home their best and most accountable policies with more force this time.
Waiting for the NDP to form a majority government is like waiting for the second coming. It's always around the next corner. Instead, the NDP needs to be comfortable as the social conscience of the nation and as a party with negotiating power with a Liberal Party and leader that are one term away from being spent out.
Trudeau seems to be more open now to ranked ballots, which he differentiated from proportional voting. Well, what's the difference when anything is better than majoritarian systems that allow false majority governments to seize the reins of power? Is he blustering or serious this time, knowing that dropping PR was one of the first Big Promises he broke?
Hi Alison,
Don't buy the ranked ballot system, that's what Trudeau wanted. Proportional Representation (PR) is the only way to go. But as many veterans of the PR campaigns in BC will tell you, you have a huge fight on your hands.
Hard not to agree. I was an early supporter of Singh but have to agree he comes across as lightweight in ads. And call me sexist if you like, but I don't find a pink turban a good look for a national leader. None of their criticisms of the Liberals stuck. I was also disappointed to see the NDP "punching down" at the Greens last week. A pretty desperate move when the Greens are already so low in the polls.
Ad hominem comments are the refuge of people without ideas. It seemed as if the only issue Singh really cared about has discrimination against minorities. The party needs to be about much more than that. It may be time to let him go.
got to love giving a liberal hack the lion's share of analysis of how sing and NDP did. As a long time supporter, that is sort of par for the pursed lip mainstream sour lemon reporting. I am amazed ANYBODY votes NDP given the relentless dismissive and sneering reporting on them.
I would like to see behind the curtain of why the party brass idd not pour resources in to star candidates like Levis--re Green New Deal being "too far left" for old guard in NDP.
I agree that no campus voting was terrible for getting out youth vote. How about questions on why? didn't look too safe at UBC with thousands waiting indoors for hours to vote.
the cons lots seats for how many millions in their campaign??
Libs same
go away max
Ha! Thanks. And you’re so right about the “relentlessly dismissive” reporting. The CBC is no exception, eg Barton’s questions in their one on one, framing NDP housing policy as an either/or taking equity away from the boomers, a question Singh handled well.
While there is certainly room for criticism of this campaign, and what the Party needs to do next, every article by Max appears to be written by the PMO
Jack Layton won big on his fourth election as leader!
Unfortunately, he lost big when he yanked the chain after only a year as a minority government partner who had a very temporary, rare spike in the polls. Layton could've done great things just as other NDP minority leaders supporting Liberal governments have done. Collapsing the government was a huge mistake that the NDP have never owned up to because, well ... it was Jack who had and still has a lot of deserved respect, but who evidently played with simple run-of-the-mill political strategy once too many times.
We got Stephen Harper out that mistake.
Fawcett: "If it’s the latter, it needs to lean far more heavily on the experience of its provincial wings in Alberta and British Columbia, where the combination of a personable leader and more pragmatic policies has proven a winning combination. If it’s the former, it needs to do better on defining issues like climate change, where its plan was widely panned by both economists and climate scientists as being aggressively unserious."
Under pipeline queen Rachel Notley, the Alberta NDP's climate policy was also "aggressively unserious". Likewise with the B.C. NDP's promotion of LNG.
Under Notley's climate plan, oilsands production and emissions would go up, not down. Alberta's total emissions would barely shift. Notley's oil-soaked "pragmatism" foundered on delusion and denial. "The most aggressive climate plan in the country" (Notley) would boost AB's emissions with no end in sight. Notley's policies exclude the only rational sane responses to our global emergency — reduce emissions and stop expanding fossil fuel infrastructure.
In Ottawa, meanwhile, Trudeau's Liberals still push fossil fuel expansion, heedless of IEA advisories and IPCC reports. An aggressively serious plan to fail on climate.
Fawcett's claim that "a personable leader and more pragmatic policies has proven a winning combination" does not withstand scrutiny in Alberta.
In Alberta, Notley won the 2015 election because the "conservative" vote was split between two parties — not by virtue of "more pragmatic" policies. Notley was tossed after one term after the right united under Kenney's UCP. If Notley's NDP return to power in 2023, it will be because of Kenney's disastrous leadership, not Notley's policies. A scarecrow could manage the pandemic more competently than Jason Kenney.
What is Fawcett suggesting? In order to win, the NDP need to move right and become more like Liberals? We already have one Liberal party. No room for two.
Many progressives did not support neoliberal Notley's turn to the right:
"The talk around our table is that the NDP government is just another platform of the previous Conservative government with a different logo. Nothing has changed." (Chief Allan Adam)
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Dr John O'Connor: "Pre-election, the NDP/Rachel Notley were vocally supportive of bringing accountability and responsibility to bear on the environmental and health impacts,especially downstream, of the tarsands. After the AB Cancer Board report on Fort Chipewyan, she was notably outspoken on the need to comply with the recommendation for a comprehensive health study of Fort Chip, which was never even started.
"Now—it’s buried and forgotten. Such hypocrisy."
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Former AB Liberal leader Kevin Taft: "Through her whole career and her whole party, up until they became government, [Notley and the NDP] were very effective critics, counterbalances to the oil industry. As soon as she stepped into office, as soon as she and her party became government, they've simply became instruments of the oil industry."
Taft: "The world is working hard to end its dependence on oil, so hitching the country’s economy to an industry that must be phased out is recklessly short-sighted."
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Reakash Walters, federal NDP candidate in Edmonton Centre 2015: "As one of two people who nominated Rachel in 2015, I am truly disappointed in the direction the provincial party has taken and that they have chosen to prioritize oil extraction in the middle of a climate crisis."
"What was Rachel Notley suggesting when she said she’s not committed to voting for Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrats?" (Alberta Politics, 2019)
• https://albertapolitics.ca/2019/10/what-was-rachel-notley-suggesting-wh…
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Greg Fingas: "Notley's enabling of oil and gas sector poor political strategy"
https://leaderpost.com/opinion/columnists/notleys-enabling-of-oil-and-g…
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Naomi Klein (06-Feb-18): "Alberta has a left-wing political party in power, one that has somehow convinced itself it can beat the right by being a better suck up to Big Oil."
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Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour lashed out at the NDP govt on its failure to raise royalties:
"At the heart of Mr. McGowan’s critique of the government’s announcement and the panel report that recommended it is the view it is both bad economics and bad politics. 'Some people say the NDP have come face to face with reality. I say what happened can best be described as the government being captured by industry.'
'I honestly think the government has made a profound political mistake. We don’t believe progressive governments have to become conservative to deal effectively with economic issues or to succeed politically. That’s a fallacy.
'Virtually none of our concerns or suggestions are reflected in the royalty report. Those ideas were passed over in favour of a plan that could have been introduced by a PC or Wildrose government.'"
"Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan assails Notley Government’s royalty ‘mistake’"
• https://albertapolitics.ca/2016/01/alberta-federation-of-labour-preside…
Notley's "pragmatic policies" actually helped turf the NDP from office. The more Notley fought for pipelines, the more she fanned the flames of anger among Albertans. Underlining her own failure on the file. All Albertans seemed to get out of the deal was a detested carbon tax. The blame for all our ills, real and imagined, fell upon Notley and Trudeau. A pipeline project became the rallying flag for Albertans, whose sense of grievance against Ottawa burns eternal. Fuelling the right-wing rage machine.
Some praise Notley's "pragmatism". Our house is on fire. "Pragmatic" is putting the fire out. Oilsands expansion and new pipelines are not "pragmatic" politics — just plain lunacy. Doesn't matter what your policies are on farm labor, GSAs, childcare, etc. If you're not progressive on climate, you're not progressive.
Political parties who ignore scientific reality do not deserve the votes of responsible citizens. Rapid man-made global warming is a disaster. So are govts that fail to address it.
So Mr Fawcett's advice for winning elections is to lean on the experience of NDP provincial governments in Alberta (push that pipeline) and BC (cut down the last remaining old growth; frack for LNG)? Why not just tell them to merge with the Conservatives?
The substantive issues identified in the article that had me voting Liberal after a lifetime of voting NDP are two. First, the CPC-lite approach to campaigning and opposition. I want an NDP that will engage with a minority Liberal government to achieve progressive public policy goals - not one that is obsessed with scoring points in the media. The NDP I used to vote for knew how to do this and helped deliver fundamental change in Canada. Changing the conversation and advocating powerfully for real and achievable change is what we need. Not making demands that ignore the realities of our current system of government.
Second, the focus on achieving power has not served the NDP well. I left when they chose Mulcair - who confirmed my opinion of him by running to the right of the Liberals. Get back to shaping the national conversation around public policy and leveraging minority governments to make real progress for Canadians. If your predecessors could help deliver publicly funded healthcare and EI this way, surely the NDP can help to address the enormous problems we face today.
Amen to all that!
I'm in the same frame of mind, especially after Glen Clark and Mr. LNG Fairy Creek Horgan (BC), Rachel Notley AB), and Layton (feds), a nice guy who cancelled an excellent chance to actually govern and replaced it with a failed act of political expediency. The modern NDP is not the party of Tommy Douglas, David Lewis or Ed Broadbent.
After 45 years of waiting for the social democratic messiah, my family has lost faith in a party that plays the strategy game too much. We opted to play it back since 2015 with a half million other strategic voters across the land. It has worked marvellously three times in a row in my riding, first to get rid of Harper, and second + third to diminish Trudeau and his lofty rhetoric and inaction.
I believe strategic voters now play a big role in keeping the Conservatives out of power, and the NDP in a place where they hold the balance of power. The NDP needs to embrace that role and dump their strategists and scheming gamers.
It is a reasonable suggestion that any kind of standard proportional voting system will give Canadians the parliament they voted for, and will lessen the need for strategic voting to keep the barbarians out of power.
I'm with Kerry on the obvious solution to ALL our problems on the left, which are most accurately summed up as classic examples of the narcissism of small differences. Talk about missing the forest for the trees, about veering solidly and consistently into the weeds. The right wing has demonstrably lost its mind, period, such as it was, and we can ALL see where that can lead as it unfolds in the States. The seed has been planted here obviously; the proliferation of "proud boys" tells the tale-- no more feminization of society by these pussy men like Singh and Turdeau! There's simply no excuse for continuing to indulge our narcissisms OR our tribal tendencies under the dire circumstances now before us. Talk of uniting the left HAS been around for some time but for some reason was completely absent this time around when we need it most. WTF? And we're supposed to be the smart ones. It's like climate change; we're running out of time here; our love of the bloody game may well do us in.
There's a book called "Amusing Ourselves to Death."
Don't be silly. This is not the United States. We just had an election. What was the result? A Liberal minority which can, if it wishes, work with the NDP and in some cases the Bloc to do left wing things. That does not represent the sky falling. It's a disappointing result for the NDP (which would have preferred, well, the exact same result but with a higher seat count for the NDP), but as excuses for a merger between the kind-of-left party and the corporate-neoliberal-but-not-racist party go it's pretty dashed thin.
If anything, the crazy fascist right had so much to work with in the US precisely because of the two party system you appear to want to emulate. Lacking any challengers to their left, the Democrats were free to drift further and further to the right and become more and more worthless and corrupt. It was the Democrats as much as the Republicans who shifted the "Overton Window" rightwards. This resulted in so much failure of governance that society there has started to break down. Merge the Liberals with the NDP and we'll get that here.
FPTP are the current rules of the road, and we ignore them at our peril. Merging would bring stability.
But that said, as to minority governments, they have become more "stable" in recent years because no losing party can afford to wage constant elections. As a citizen, if you really think about that, it's nuts. If I recall, this is in part the result of a Harper-era "innovation" that should now be revisited. It's amazing how quickly, easily and quietly election funding laws can get messed with for political advantage while real electoral reform still seems somehow out of reach.
And yes the bloody game (and that's all it is in a lot of cases unless we're talking about something real like about climate change or covid) is doing us in.
Agreed. The bloody game is doing us in. Like in the squirrel in the movie "Up."
I didn't like this article much, I thought it was lousy analysis done basically from a Liberal perspective. But it did point to one thing I agree with: The NDP campaign and platform were not very good. However, that doesn't mean we need a new leader. It means we need new NDP backroom types.
Singh's basic personality seems to be very engaging, and people seem to like him a lot. And he seems to be a genuinely nice, good guy, who wants to do good things for people, something the other political parties rarely have in a leader. Those are important assets.
But that likeability was undermined by poor political strategy, a weak campaign platform, and bad talking points. So, does that mean the NDP needs a new leader? Uh, could we get real for a moment--leaders don't do that stuff in modern political parties. Sure, the leader has some impact on policy, but on a campaign usually the messaging, strategy, ad buys . . . all that is the domain of a group of quiet electioneering wonks who busily decide on the angles to take, write up speeches and talking points and so forth.
Some party leaders do take the reins on this stuff, for better or worse. From what I've heard Harper did, for better and, eventually, worse. Jack Layton did to a fair extent although not entirely. But most don't, and I don't get the impression Singh has, except maybe for being in charge of his Tik Tok stuff, which by all accounts was quite successful. So the flaws that Mr. Fawcett points out are flaws with the NDP electioneering team more than with the leader himself.
NDP electioneering teams in general seem to be overly timid and centrist in their approach. In times when both the zeitgeist and the polls suggest people want bold policies, they pull in their horns and go moderate, craving respectability. The problem seems to be that they're scared, plus a bit out of touch. They've seen too many cases of an NDP leader saying a strong thing and getting tons of headlines about what an out-of-touch commie he is, so now they don't dare let a leader say anything that might be controversial.
Much of the NDP's failure to be the strong party it could be, both in campaigns and in government, actually seems to come from fear of the media. They don't want to be portrayed as "extreme", so they shy away from strong, left-populist policies. This is misplaced in my opinion--the media will never treat a left-ish party well until they go full Blair and become "New Labor"/Liberals/Democrats. And the NDP have never quite been willing to do that. So they might as well go for it and push policies that give people some real stuff and make some real difference.
And if they do it, they should take this one leaf from the right: Never apologize, never back down. If anything, double down when challenged. Whenever the NDP is caught out actually backing policies that would be good for people in a sizable way, they end up backing out and apologizing for it. It just makes them look weak and wishy-washy. And frankly, that's because they ARE weak and wishy-washy. If they get some guts the media might hate them, but the media hates them anyway, and everyone else will respect them more.
Note that such a focus on strong messages does NOT imply constant carping on the failures of the Liberals and Liberal leaders. The NDP campaign went with that BECAUSE their own message wasn't very strong. If you're offering REAL hope and REAL change, you can campaign on that.