Progressive Policy Canada

Only radical structural change, including more internal democracy, can save the NDP, argued Les Campbell in this article which appeared in the National Post two days after the 2000 federal election.

With yet another dismal showing in the federal polls the punditocracy's calls for the dismantling of the federal NDP will soon reach a fever pitch. Unfortunately, it may be that nothing short of absolute humiliation can shake the party out of a torpor bred by more than 60 years of moral victories and electoral losses.

Somewhat astonishingly, the NDP's stubborn adherence to a confused leftist agenda that not even the party's staunchest supporters can divine has led to an ignominious state of affairs where the relentlessly opportunist Liberal party is laying a credible claim to being the social conscience of the nation.

How can any party be so inured to its failures and oblivious to its shortcomings? A short analysis of NDP structure will help answer that question. The federal NDP is a federation of provincial parties, with a national council and executive drawn largely from provincial party branches and trade unions. Other than the leader, the only key party official elected at a national convention is the party president, a largely ceremonial role. The national party's finances come almost exclusively from provincial party coffers and the largesse of national unions, leaving it curiously without a grassroots funding base. Senior party strategists, are, likewise, largely drawn from provincial centres and union HQ's.

While hobbled by its structure, the federal NDP's real Achilles heel is a strange unwillingness to adopt a modern policy discourse. Faced with growing evidence that private sector led economic growth is the most efficient tool for increasing living standards, social democratic parties around the world have turned their attention to more fairly distributing economic proceeds. The NDP's instinctive resistance to tax cuts leaves the impression that it believes that taxes are inherently good rather than a means to create more opportunity and equality.

Here are four ideas that could allow the party to become a challenger for national power and once again an influential political force:

1) Dump the unions before they dump the NDP.

This idea is not as sacrilegious or suicidal as it sounds. Union financial contributions to the NDP are a relatively small percentage of the party budget and the votes of many unionized workers have long since migrated to the Liberals and the Alliance; a reflection of the fact that union workers' wages often place them in a socioeconomic strata where they don't share the same values and priorities that the NDP trumpets. Union and NDP leaders, freed to pursue their respective political interests separately, may well choose pragmatic partnerships and coalitions that are not simply an expectation but rather a strategic choice. In any case, as the AFL/CIO's exuberant support for the U.S. Democratic Party shows, formal affiliation is not a precondition for robust political and financial support.

2) Tame the provincial lions.

It is unacceptable that provincial party insiders exert so much control over the federal party. Jealous of their own turf and infatuated with their own importance, operatives from the more powerful provincial sections often conspire to hobble their federal cousin. The national NDP must develop an independent source of financial support and leadership, even, if in the short run, times are worse. If the Canadian federal government has a reason for existence independent of that of the provinces, that is, to speak for Canada's values, then surely Canada's national political parties should resist the provincialization of their agendas.

3) Put a new premium on ideas.

As much as NDP partisans like to blame big media for the party's lack of national visibility, the federal NDP has actually run out of interesting things to say. Rather than attacking the global forces that are inexorably changing our destiny, the NDP would be more relevant talking about how to shape those forces for the good of the country.

Less heralded in the accounts of the rise of the "New Democrats" in the U.S. and "New Labour" in the U.K., was the role of political think tanks. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair borrowed heavily from new left ideas generated by the Progressive Policy Institute in the U.S. and Demos in the U.K..

4) Learn from failure.

Margaret McDonagh, Secretary General of Tony Blair's New Labour Party, recently enumerated the impetus behind the internal reforms that Labour undertook in the early 1990's. The first lesson according to McDonagh, "if it goes wrong, don't keep doing it". The second, "be prepared to change because if a party can't change itself it can't change the country".

A federal NDP, embracing the realities of global change but still a proud carrier of the social democratic tradition in Canada, freed of servitude to provincial scions and national unions, could become the national voice of the left that so many Canadians crave. NDP supporters everywhere hope that the results of this election will be the catalyst for the necessary changes.