Pundits are asking if the New Democratic Party is a labour party? Frankly folks, if you do not know the answer, nobody in the party is ready to answer it either. Even an authority such as left-wing writer Thomas Walkom of the Toronto Star is wondering where the party is headed.
In a recent op-ed for the Star, Walkom puts forward the thesis that the NDP should become a labour party. He suggests that the provincial wings concentrate on provincial labour laws and minimum wage laws in protection of the working persons and that the federal wing could do important work in understanding free trade agreements.
What Walkom misses in his thesis is a logical reason for the New Democrats to want to head in that direction. The recent LEAP Manifesto of Toronto’s elitist lefties really did nothing for labour. Neither have any of the provincial wings in recent elections. And that hardly leaves us with any excuse for Thomas Mulcair madly swinging from left to right in the recent federal fiasco.
And, to be frank about it, what have unions done for the NDP in recent years? It has been a time of back-stabbing, confusion and indecision. Our largest national union opted for strategic voting in the last federal election and that hardly saved the NDP from a Liberal win.
The NDP might have blamed Leader Thomas Mulcair for taking the wrong road but nobody knew of a better one.
And before blaming the party, we need to take a hard look at modern labour unions. From anaesthetists to brick layers and school teachers to stationary engineers, they all seem to be out for getting the most they can for themselves. It is perceived as the ‘I’m all right Jack’ attitude and they try to stay away from politics because they know it is also self serving and they are going to make a muck of it.
This is not to say that there are not some effective and intelligently run labor unions in Canada. They are just not the ones trying to dictate to the NDP. Some of the smartest unions in Ontario made deals with the Liberals and have helped keep them in power for the past decade. The only problem is that they destroyed the provincial NDP in the process and left the poorly led Conservatives as the only alternative to a now faltering Liberal regime.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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