There is an old saying that if you start out with a sow’s ear, you are not likely to be able to make a silk purse of it. The current attempts to remake Canada’s New Democratic Party are somewhat similar. You can put your bets on the socialists if you wish but make sure you get the right odds. The forecasted odds of six-to-one should get you a payout of $7 (less track and government cuts) for every dollar you bet.
But in the long-run, that bet would cost you far more. Imagine first if a New Democratic government tried to keep all its promises—especially the one about balancing the budget this year.
Mind you, the promised day-care is the least costly of all. It is like the training programs promised by the Conservatives several years ago. These training programs were promoted incessantly with taxpayer-paid advertising without a single person being trained for over a year. The training programs could only work if the provinces agreed to support them. As no province was that gullible, it took a lot of negotiating for the program to get off the ground. It is estimated by experts in Ottawa that the NDP day-care program would take at least eight years to produce the first new day-care spot.
The most serious problem a New Democrat government would have is where they would find any talent at all with which to form a cabinet. Finding more than ten warm bodies capable of serving at the cabinet table would be an interesting challenge for NDP Leader Tom Mulcair.
What will be the biggest problem for the NDP is getting anywhere near a plurality of members elected. A majority in the next House of Commons will be 170 seats. Looking across the country, the NDP is still counting on the Orange Wave to repeat itself. The sad news for the NDP is that Jack Layton is dead and so is the Orange Wave.
There are many older voters in Ontario who remember the fiasco of the time that Ontario had a NDP government in the 1990s. These older voters are very reliable. They consider it their duty as citizens to vote. They are hardly likely to vote NDP.
There might be a few NDPers elected in Manitoba and Saskatchewan but you would be wise not to bet on a repeat of the last Alberta provincial election. The provincial NDP won because the Wildrose and the Conservatives fought each other to a draw and the provincial Liberals stepped back. That will not happen federally in Alberta.
And that leaves British Columbia. Canadian elections always end in British Columbia. That province does not make silk purses either.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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