Post NDP leadership, here are the five issues to watch
The Honeymoon of a politician’s career is nearly always the worst time to talk about getting down to business. But, as newly-elected NDP leader Jagmeet Singh meets with the federal caucus of MPs today in Ottawa, there’s not much time to waste. And he clearly knows that. He’s just named Guy Caron to hold down the House of Commons fort until he arrives.
The leadership race was a progressive breath of fresh air, in many ways. It was a clear reaction to the Mulcair Years and to some of the policy mistakes made by the party during 2015. Singh’s vision might become the vision of the party, but no man alone is ever the party’s entire machine. Singh’s victory demonstrates support for his policy promises, but the pressure will mount on him, on other MPs and on the party’s membership to drift towards the right and modify promises to fit what the mainstream political class deems to be acceptable.
The big lesson I took from the race is that NDP members want policy that is audaciously left. Most of the people I saw online expressed their support for Ashton and Singh, in various orders. Both candidates represented something new. Establishment parties are falling apart around the world: the NDP isn’t immune to that, and what policy priorities the party adopts next will be critical to whether or not they can oust the Liberals.
Here are my top five policy areas that the NDP needs to take very seriously between now and 2019 to plant itself firmly on the left.
Reconciliation
As I’ve written elsewhere, progressives need to be clear about what they mean when they express ideals of “reconciliation” as they relate to the Government of Canada. In absence of clarity, we risk using hollow buzzwords with no intention or action behind them. This is especially true for the NDP, who is both in a campaign to become government and therefore, also become the agent of the Crown.
Charlie Angus and Niki Ashton had the most fleshed out ideas of what reconciliation could look like: from eliminating INAC entirely to doing the necessary work of building relationships with Indigenous communities to establish real nation-to-nation links. The NDP needs to wrap its head around this, and what it means for the future of the Canadian federation. Singh has expressed his support both for a strong federation, but also for self-determination. Without further detail, those concepts are actually directly at odds.
Tax policy
From Netflix to incorporated doctors, tax policy has dominated public policy discussions this fall. The Liberals chose to close three tax loopholes that don’t go nearly far enough to stop Canada’s richest from hording their wealth. The Conservatives and their friends, like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the CFIB, have seized on the changes and effectively mobilized. At the same time, the Liberals have given Netflix a shocking break on GST.
During the race, Jagmeet Singh’s campaign promised new tax measures that should find their way into the party’s policy. But, there’s no question that even among NDP MPs, there’s a lot of confusion: three Windsor-area MPs effectively took the Conservative’s talking points and called on Moreau to reverse his decision.
The NDP needs to look to organizations that are doing tax research (like the CCPA), use their research, develop the best arguments and mobilize its members to be able to resist the Conservative-led attacks. If progressives cede ground to anti-tax rhetoric, and refuse to do the painful work of explaining and defending tax reform, there will be no money available to do anything the NDP espouses. And in the House, Guy Caron has to make the clearest and best arguments that expose how the Liberals are actually helping their corporate friends.
Nationalization
Niki Ashton talked a lot about nationalization in her campaign. She was often criticized for a lack of details on how to put this into action. Jagmeet Singh counts among his successes the 2014 ONDP promise to reduce private auto insurance rates, a promise that chose to work with private insurers over doing the necessary work to make public auto insurance an option in Ontario. Both of these scenarios point to the need for the NDP to seriously contend with nationalization in a fundamental way.
Nationalization needs to be made part of national public policy discussions. When she talked about nationalization, Ashton would most often point to two examples: the Port of Churchill and a national, public postal bank. Singh repeatedly condemned the Liberal’s Infrastructure Bank plan, also referencing how it would near certainly be privatization by stealth.
The inner circle within the NDP needs to make nationalization a priority: we need research and examples to show what the NDP means when they talk about nationalization or defending public delivery. And, we need to go further: we need cost-benefit analyses of a nationalized air industry, new rail infrastructure and other large-scale projects that can be delivered more efficiently if administered by the public. This research needs to reach the grassroots. NDP members need to become advocates for nationalization, win arguments in their communities and force a conversation on the benefits of nationalized industries among the other parties.
Foreign policy
The NDP leadership race was woefully thin when it came to foreign policy. I’m not even sure I could say with certainty how the NDP would vote if a motion arose to engage with the United States in a military pact.
The NDP isn’t alone in this. The Conservative leadership race also failed to elaborate a Conservative line about foreign policy that was more sophisticated than “protecting freedom.” The lack of discussion is directly tied to a trough of movement activity that target war or imperialism.
The world might be closer to nuclear war than we have been in two generations. The NDP needs to boldly express progressive foreign policy positions, defend them and hold the Trudeau Liberals’ feet to the fire in how they respond to the erratic and possibility apocalyptic Donald Trump.
Internal party democracy
Charlie Angus argued that one of the reasons the NDP lost in 2015 was because the campaign was too centralized. Many people took this criticism to be a shot at the people organizing Singh’s campaign. Angus is correct, at least from my vantage point in Quebec. The campaign here didn’t seem to have any local control or local ideas, and it’s fundamental to how it flopped, at least in Quebec.
Mulcair’s victory and subsequent dethroning exposed a party deeply divided, and part of the division is connected to how robust internal democracy is. Encouraging debate and creating ways for MPs to speak out against the party line is absolutely critical if the NDP is interested in doing politics differently. Singh ran on a campaign of doing things differently, reaching new members and voters who have not traditionally voted for the NDP. It’s the perfect time to also change how internal democracy fosters the participation of new members.
