Maybe the NDP will get its act together. Maybe it will become a real political party, a viable third option, a progressive voice in a political ecosystem where Prime Minister Mark Carney has so graciously yielded the floor.
Mr. Carney uttered the word “austerity” last week in describing what to expect from his upcoming budget. That term was verboten under his predecessor Justin Trudeau, who became prime minister a decade ago under a promise to run a series of deficits.
Mr. Carney has paused the planned electric vehicle mandate. He cancelled the carbon tax. His government invoked Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to order striking Air Canada flight attendants back to work. He appears to be walking away from the Liberals’ plan to implement a national pharmacare program.
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These are opportunities for a worker-focused party – one with a commitment to climate and the environment – to distinguish itself from the governing Liberals. It didn’t have that opportunity under former leader Jagmeet Singh, who gifted his policy ideas and support to Mr. Trudeau in exchange for promises to implement those policy ideas at some later date. But now that the Carney Liberals are largely taking their policy ideas from the Conservatives, there is an opening for the NDP. And indeed, the party is trying – though mostly with press releases you have to search for – to take it.
What it is also doing, however, is obscuring its own efforts at seriousness by indulging its more unserious impulses, and then acting surprised and outraged when that’s all people want to talk about.
Last week, the party released its rules for its upcoming leadership race. Among them is a requirement that at least half of the required nomination signatures come from “members who do not identify as a cis man.” When questioned about the policy in an interview with CTV News on Sunday, interim NDP leader Don Davies rejected the inference from the interviewer that the NDP remains preoccupied with identity politics, saying that “there’s a difference between identity politics and inclusion.” He noted that all major political parties have regional requirements when it comes to collecting signatures, and said that the NDP has simply “broadened that.”
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Other members of the party also pointed out that this requirement is nothing new; that the NDP has included gender requirements for signatures for past leadership races. That is true, though in 2017, the rules stipulated that at least 50 per cent of the required signatures come from “female-identified members.” That has now changed to “members who do not identify as a cis man,” ostensibly to include non-binary members and others who do not identify as female, but don’t identify as male either.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this; the NDP can do whatever it wants, and the policy doesn’t actually limit signatures from cis men since the rule is only about required signatures (500 total); candidates can continue to collect signatures from cis men beyond the required total. But it’s a trap set by the party, fallen into by the party, to the party’s enduring misfortune.
Of course the public is going to pay more attention to an ultimately irrelevant nomination requirement than the party’s statement about invoking Section 107, mostly because it’s a caricature of the NDP. In a podcast interview, Mr. Davies acknowledged that the party has veered too much into identity politics and away from its roots as a party made up of the working class, for the working class. “I don’t think we’re talking about the real issues that most working people are struggling with,” he said. And most working-class people aren’t talking about whether their election representatives have adequate support from people who don’t identify as cis males.
A serious NDP would recognize that marketing and communications is just as important as policy, especially if it wants to win back support from Canadians who abandoned it last election. If it must include a stipulation that 50 per cent of required signatures come from members “who do not identify as cis men,” it ought to frame it as a requirement that “250 signatures come from female, trans, or nonbinary members.” It means the same thing, but it sounds different. It ought to wade into any issues of identity politics with extreme caution, knowing that doing so will inevitably fuel the perception that it is more a campus club than a viable political entity. It ought to talk ad nauseam not simply about union workers, but about gig workers, under-employed workers, and would-be workers who cannot find meaningful employment.
Mr. Carney has provided an opening. Members of the NDP shouldn’t have to provide their pronouns before walking through it.
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