Fake Left, Go Right

n election night, January 23, 2006, New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton stood before a buoyant victory party crowd in downtown Toronto and announced that Canadians had voted for change and that more New Democrats in Parliament would mean better lives for working families and seniors. For Layton, winning twenty-nine seats and 17.5 percent of the popular vote represented an electoral triumph vindicating the ndp’s campaign strategy: an attack focused almost exclusively on the scandal-plagued Liberal government. With 460,000 new voters, ten more Members of Parliament than in 2004, better regional representation, and, judging by the jubilant crowd, more momentum, Layton had every reason to be pleased. There hadn’t been this much palpable optimism since the heady days of Ed Broadbent’s leadership.

But it was what Layton did not say that evening that was more interesting. He did not mention that the most ideologically right-wing prime minister in Canadian history was about to be sworn into office, and he did not mention that while the ndp’s 2006 election result was impressive, the party no longer held the same sway in Parliament.

Layton’s speech capped a campaign in which he had studiously avoided warning Canadians about any potential threat from Harper and the Conservatives. This odd fact was driven home to me a few days before election day when a newspaper reporter phoned to do an interview. Clearly frustrated, he told me he had been on the ndp campaign plane for three weeks and that despite repeated efforts, he couldn’t get Layton to say anything of significance about Harper, except a one-off shot at his proclivity for decentralization. The ndp leader was quick to attack Paul Martin and the Liberals, but all he would say about the front-running Conservatives was that they were “wrong on the issues.” Shortly after the election, arguing that Canadians wanted Parliament to function and for the sniping to end, Layton said that he could and would work with Harper. But based on ominous early warning signs from the Conservatives, he must now be wondering if Harper will work with him.

ollowing negotiations with the Liberals that seemed designed to fail, Layton broke with the Martin government in a letter to health minister Ujjal Dosanjh on November 7, 2005. He wrote that he was halting talks with the Liberals vis-à-vis stopping “the growing privatization of public health care in Canada” because “in our view, on this key test of whether the Government has a real desire to make the present Parliament work, we must regretfully conclude that there seems to be none.” Three weeks later, the ndp joined with the other two opposition parties to defeat the minority Liberal government in a vote of non-confidence.

Inside the ndp, the move was divisive. By voting day, it had created a veritable chasm within the broader left community. The federal election “badly tested the relationship” between social movements and the ndp, wrote Canadian Auto Workers economist Jim Stanford in the Globe and Mail a few days after Harper’s victory. “ndp strategists precipitated the election, sensing a moment of opportunity to win more seats. But their decision was made over the explicit objection of many progressive movements. They had used the Liberals’ fragile minority position to extract impressive, important gains (child care, new legal protections for workers, the aboriginal deal, and others); they wanted to solidify those victories, and win new ones.” Leaders from these progressive constituencies “all wanted the election later, not sooner.”

The most visible sign of division was Canadian Auto Workers president Buzz Hargrove’s campaign to stop the Conservatives by supporting New Democrats in ridings where they were likely to win and Liberals elsewhere. Three weeks after the election, the Ontario ndp executive suspended Hargrove from the party; its president, Sandra Clifford, explained that the sum of the union leader’s actions led to the suspension. “It was appearing with the prime minister”.”.”.”hugging him. Saying that he wanted a Liberal minority government,” Clifford said. In effect, the party had decided that it was an expellable offence for members to advocate strategic voting. While many insiders wanted Hargrove to “buzz off,” others were just as concerned about the decision to bring down the government; some also saw the entire ndp campaign as strategic and found Hargrove’s dismissal deeply parodixical.

Prime Minister Martin had promised to call the election within thirty days of the release of retired justice John Gomery’s final report on the Liberal sponsorship scandal, which was delivered as planned on February 1, 2006. Either way, therefore, a trip to the polls was imminent. But ndp strategists thought it dangerous to allow the government to set the terms of debate, and were concerned that on the key issue of political ethics the party would be caught in a squeeze between the Liberals and the Conservatives. They believed that the Liberals would accept virtually all of Justice Gomery’s recommendations and that a chastened Liberal Party could win a majority government.

Still smarting over Martin’s successful last-ditch appeal to ndp supporters to vote Liberal to stop Harper during the 2004 election campaign, Layton’s team was determined not to let history repeat itself. Polls indicated that ndp supporters were the most worried about a Conservative government and, the thinking went, many would vote strategically again in the event of a successful campaign to demonize Harper. So, as revealed by ndp press releases, campaign literature, and Layton’s speeches, to prevent erosion of ndp support the party concentrated its fire on the Liberals, only sporadically mentioning the Conservatives in its attacks. The most memorable ndp television advertisement depicted Canadians giving the corrupt Liberals the boot.

These messages set the tone. Maude Barlow, chairperson of the Council of Canadians, for one, told me that she felt pressure “not to critique Harper,” and that the top priority was “to win more seats for the ndp.” During the election, the Council was involved in the Think Twice coalition, made up of groups that came together to warn Canadians about Stephen Harper’s record. “If the ndp was not going to talk about Harper’s record,” Barlow said, “we felt we had to.”

The ndp and the wider progressive community are divided over whether it really matters if a Stephen Harper or a Paul Martin is in power. The standard party answer during the election campaign was a flat no, a position Maude Barlow couldn’t agree with.