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Now that the Federal Election is Over…:
Lessons and Challenges

By Bryan Evans

In the immediate aftermath of June 28th, what has emerged is a widely held view, most directly stated on the editorial pages of Toronto’s ‘eye weekly’ magazine, that this election resulted in ‘a really strong vote for social democracy’. In essence this boils down to a view where the combined votes for the NDP, the BQ and the Greens is seen to represent a significant progressive bloc. The Liberals, in turn, have been pushed to retrieve their social progressive/social democratic values as a result. There is a qualitatively important lesson in this tactical shift to a progressive social liberalism. Martin and the Liberals, for their part, have emerged as the defenders of Canadian values – essentially code for diversity and social programs.

The Liberal deathbed retrieval of social liberalism was nothing more than vulgar opportunism but it was an opportunism in response to a measurable loss of support to the NDP. In the final days of the campaign Martin appealed, perhaps pleaded would be more accurate, to voters leaning toward the New Democrats, arguing that only the Liberals could defeat the Conservatives and thus protect social programs. By all accounts it seems to have worked. The Liberal success within this context and the Conservative failure to ‘unite the right’, defined as having failed to win a level of popular support equal to the combined votes of Alliance and PC’s, provides a rather stark contrast to the dynamic of the debate in the United States.

As for the NDP, BQ and the Greens we see simply various accommodations with the neoliberal orthodoxy. No one program suggested a rupture with capitalism. While the tactics employed by the Liberals in the final weeks of the campaign appealed, and were designed so, to those who were discomforted to some lesser or greater degree with the project of dismantling anything of a public nature, the actual policy prescriptions of all the parties displayed a consensus of the political establishment in accepting neoliberal hegemony.  

The New Democrats, as the official social democratic party, provide the clearest example of this. It was not simply the early attempts to attract progressive Liberals to run under the party label but the real or apparent abandonment of the most ‘radical’ propositions coming from that party. Such propositions as the abrogation of NAFTA and withdrawal from NATO, but in addition the shameless silence of Canada’s ‘labour party’ on fundamental workers’ issues such as the protection of pensions and collective bargaining. All this while the business pages of papers throughout the world speak of a pension crisis – which of course will be resolved on the backs of workers. Did anyone note how quickly the New Democrats abandoned their call for an inheritance tax? The NDP continues to move away from ‘labourism’ as it constructs a what it clearly wishes to be a new political alliance of urban social liberals advocating responsible business investment practices. Apart from Layton himself, the new alliance strategy failed.

What the NDP did benefit from was a resurgence of class-based voting in regional pockets of the country. NDP gains largely tended to be in seats and regions where there is a tradition of working class support for the ‘labour party’. In the north-end of Winnipeg, Windsor, Hamilton, and northern Ontario New Democrats won seats or were competitive for the first time in some years. With a bit more momentum and different political and organizational strategies and tactics it was entirely possible for this to have been a very dramatic night for the New Democrats.

The reality is that it must have been a very bitter night for the architects of the new alliance strategy. Why was this so? There is a lesson in wins in Timmins-James Bay and Sault Ste. Marie and losses in Trinity-Spadina and Beaches-Woodbine. The strategy of new alliances, it would appear, was not built on a very reliable political base. Sarah Polley may be very cool but her public endorsement of Olivia Chow did not result in much that is tangible. Perhaps with much less flash, Winnipeg’s north end delivered seats to the NDP. Downtown Toronto, save one, did not. Despite the post-modern make-over the NDP as a multi-class party, workers appear to have in some significant numbers returned to supporting the New Democrats. More may well have been possible but that would have meant a different strategy. In this respect the politics of the new alliance strategy requires more investigation. On the face it , the strategy was in part meant to include the social movements. Yet, beyond the health coalitions, neither presence nor support appear to have been generated.

Further notables stemming from election 2004 include a record low voter turnout of 60% speaks volumes. In comparative terms this puts Canadian voter turnout toward the bottom of the scale of ‘wealthy’ countries besting only the United States. That 40% choose not to participate even in the most minimal fashion reflects a deepening alienation with not just the political system but the political economy as a whole. While we must await the hard number crunching of who voted and who didn’t it doesn’t require a lot of data to know that the most marginalized are much less likely to vote. However, there is a growing pattern of non-participation among all income, occupational and social groups. It cannot go without noting that all political parties failed to mobilize the most disenchanted. Why? The simple answer is that three decades of neoliberal restructuring has built a lived reality for most where state intervention and provision of public goods is dramatically diminished and consequently less relevant in daily terms. It is a casual but still interesting observation to note that in those countries where there is a robust and legitimate public sector voter participations tends toward the higher end.

In this country region is a complex dimension of life which intersects with class, linguistic and broadly defined social and economic opportunities. This new parliament reflects rather dramatically the deepening of divisions and polarization along these lines. None of the parties offers an analysis and vision to ameliorate let alone roll back this troubling scenario of a sharply divided society. Instead, what a plurality of Canadian voters did was to opt to reinstate to government a party which in the final weeks of the election spoke of vague Canadian values (??) and deftly characterized the Conservatives as not being in tune with these mainstream values. Exactly how these values are applied in policy terms remains to be seen but their plastic quality provides much room to wiggle of which we will assuredly see much in the next months.

For the socialist Left the challenge is to find the means both organizationally and ideologically to build on the small beachheads resulting from election 2004. Three significant developments are worth exploring further. First, the revival, though modest, of working class support for the New Democrats speaks to the potential for deepening a class politics in this country. Second, a widely held, though uncertain and contradictory rejection of the worst neoliberalism can offer points to the possibility for building a movement which questions neoliberalism rather than seeks an accommodation with it. And third, the possibility that this parliament will place on the policy agenda some important issues such as rebuilding and reinvesting in public goods and services, urban infrastructure, sustainable economic development and a rejection of militarism. This will provide the socialist Left with greater credibility in advancing a vision of real transformation. However, to even test this hypothesis will require a great deal of work and creativity on our part. •

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