[R-G] Canadian elections: NDP serves up thin gruel at Toronto kick-off rally

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/ndp-s18.shtml

WSWS : News & Analysis : North America : Canada
Canadian elections: NDP serves up thin gruel at Toronto kick-off rally
By Carl Bronski
18 September 2008


Jack Layton, the leader of Canada’s social-democratic party, the New  
Democrats or NDP, addressed a rally at Toronto’s cavernous Direct  
Energy Centre this past Saturday. Billed as a kick-off event for the  
NDP’s 28 odd candidates in the Greater Toronto area, the rally was  
attended by less than 500 people. But even this sparse crowd would  
have been sorely disappointed had they shown up with hopes of hearing  
a substantive discussion of the issues facing working people in the  
October 14 federal election.

The event was a splashy made-for-TV affair. Just prior to Layton’s  
entry, party organizers, thrusting “Strong Leadership” placards into  
the hands of all and sundry, herded the small crowd to the front of  
the podium, all the better to give the appearance of a well-attended  
political “happening”—an Obama-like “Rally for Change” as the  
political advance team had dubbed the event.

Surprisingly, none of the assembled candidates were ever invited to  
speak and they seemed quite content cheerleading and waving castanets  
in the air as Layton made his way to and from the stage. A comedienne,  
however, was deemed important enough to be allotted time to deliver  
jokes about Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s new sweater  
wardrobe and other tame wisecracks.

When Layton, whose political career has very much been propelled  
forward by his “television smarts,” took the podium, he provided a  
textbook demonstration of how to stick to a script, no matter how  
stale or vapid. He hit all the required pep rally notes, while  
scrupulously avoiding any serious engagement with the social and  
political realities facing the population. During Layton’s 30-minute  
presentation, there was not a word about the war in Afghanistan; not a  
word about the issues of torture, rendition and the erosion of  
democratic rights in Canada; and not even a mention of the massive  
convulsions in the world economic system that threaten deep global  
recession.

Instead, Layton sought to differentiate himself from Harper by  
highlighting the issue of “trust.” The prime minister, Layton argued,  
would go “behind your back” whilst the NDP leader would “watch your  
back.” Harper was interested in solving the problems discussed around  
the “boardroom table” while Layton was concerned not “just about the  
boardroom table but the kitchen table as well.”

Taking a populist tact, Layton railed against the “50 billion dollars  
in corporate tax cuts” that he accused Harper of providing for the  
most profitable companies doing business in Canada and called the  
prime minister to task for his abysmal record on environmental issues.  
But Layton’s prescriptions for those working people sitting around  
their kitchen tables were thin gruel—to say the least. After all, like  
Harper, Layton and the NDP have, in deference to the “boardroom,”  
eschewed deficit spending and promised to “responsibly” manage the  
economy within the parameters of a balanced budget. And in those  
provinces where the NDP has formed the government over the past two  
decades, it has meekly followed the dictates of big business, slashing  
social spending, imposing wage and job-cutting “social contracts,” and  
promoting workfare.

The NDP having long ago abandoned any advocacy of serious social  
reform. In this campaign Layton is elevating certain consumer gripes— 
gripes that sometimes crop up in the pages of tabloid newspapers or  
around workplace water coolers—into central planks in his election  
pitch. Thusly, unfair bank charges at Automated Teller Machines,  
hidden charges by cell phone companies and exorbitant “Pay Day Loan”  
interest rates would be firmly dealt with by a crusading, “consumer- 
friendly” NDP. Similarly, spikes in gasoline prices that have become  
the scourge of the everyday driver would be “monitored” by a watchdog  
agency, on whose powers of actual intervention Layton diplomatically  
declined elaboration.

No NDP stump speech would be complete without the obligatory playing  
of the Canadian nationalist card. Companies that “packed up” jobs and  
shipped them out of the country would be penalized with an outsourcing  
tax. On this matter Layton was perhaps hoping that the assembled crowd  
would not be so impolite as to remember that, only days before, in  
Canada’s auto producing centre of Oshawa, Layton offered massive  
subsidies to major global manufacturers, many of whom place  
outsourcing strategies at the centre of their own business models.

Such nationalism is the stock and trade of the trade union bureaucracy  
and goes hand in hand with the unions’ subservience to, and support  
for, the profit system and connivance in the imposition of layoffs,  
plant closures and contract concessions.

Layton next briefly expounded on a laundry list of other “kitchen  
table” issues. Child poverty, affordable day care, and access to  
health care were all mentioned in a single breath with no discussion  
of what the NDP propose to do about these important concerns.

Because two decades of government budget cuts have resulted in chronic  
hospital overcrowding and lengthy medical-procedure waiting lists, the  
fate of Medicare was a major popular concern in recent federal  
elections. Moreover, since the 2006 election, Canada’s corporate elite  
has pushed forward with health care privatization exploiting a  
reactionary Supreme Court decision. Yet at Saturday’s set piece rally,  
Layton made only a cursory reference to the assault on public health  
care.

Layton also barely made mention of the Liberal Party, which governed  
Canada from 1993 to 2006 and is the traditional governing party of  
Canadian big business. Commentators in the mainstream press have noted  
that Layton is preening himself in the image of the next Leader of Her  
Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and, as a result, is taking pains to ignore  
the campaign of Liberal leader Stéphane Dion. But there is more to it  
than that. To take on the Liberals, Layton would have to highlight  
just how similar are the policies of the two traditional parties of  
Canada’s ruling elite and indict them as the twin representatives of  
big business. To do this, however, would require that Layton introduce  
the question of social class into the election campaign—a tactic that  
social democracy around the world has fled from for almost a generation.

The crowd at the NDP gathering was largely middle aged or older.  
Although Layton went out of his way to welcome by name a small  
contingent of trade union leaders—the Ontario Federation of Labour’s  
Wayne Samuelson, Wayne Fraser of the United Steelworkers District Six,  
Bob Huget of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union—as well  
as a smattering of local union officers, rank-and-file workers from  
their organizations were conspicuous by their total absence. The  
lion’s share of the crowd, such as it was, consisted of party workers  
from the various Toronto constituencies, some pensioners, and a layer  
of professional community organizers, teachers, artists and health  
care advocates.

Several people that the WSWS spoke to at the rally had taken note of  
some of the “oversights” in Layton’s speech. A woman wearing a “Stop  
the War” button said that it was “disgusting” that Layton failed to  
even mention Canada’s leading role in the Afghan war. The issue, after  
all, had made its way onto Harper’s campaign agenda, and that of the  
mainstream media, only a few days prior to Layton’s appearance. But  
when asked why on this basis she was waving a Jack Layton placard, she  
glumly responded that Layton was “the lesser of four evils.”

Her companion, who sported an NDP button, pointed out that this  
particular date had been set aside by various antiwar groups as  
“Support the War Resisters Day.” (“War resisters” are US military  
personnel who have fled to Canada rather than participate in  
Washington’s wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan.) She  
chastised Layton for failing to mention that fact and failing to  
condemning the Canadian state’s policy of returning them to the US  
military for punishment as “deserters.” Nevertheless, she too would be  
voting for the NDP.

This “lesser evilism” outlook was also espoused by a nurse who related  
that although the NDP positions on health care were not very different  
from those of the big business Liberal party, the NDP nonetheless is  
at least more progressive on “women’s issues.” A community organizer  
from the impoverished inner-city neighbourhood of Flemingdon Park was  
engaged in a conversation with a man wearing an Obama T-shirt. While  
she had preferred Hilary Clinton in the American Democratic primary,  
she asserted that at least Obama was better than McCain.

There was a marked reluctance from party workers and organizers to  
speak in depth about any of the issues. Party functionaries from the  
Jack Layton National Tour, distinguished by their crisp business  
attire, responded with shrugs to a question from a WSWS reporter about  
the NDP’s position on the war. When pressed, one organizer responded  
that “our positions on Afghanistan are well known. We don’t have to  
talk about them.”