In a classic 19th century work, English journalist Walter Bagehot divided the Constitution into two parts. The “efficient” part — the executive (cabinet) and legislative — was responsible for the business of government. The “dignified” part, the Queen, was to put a human face on the capitalist state. Bagehot noted, however, that the Queen also had “a hundred” powers called Prerogatives, adding: “There is no authentic explicit information as to what the Queen can do….” [1]
On December 4 Canadians learned, many to their dismay, that those Prerogatives, borrowed from England in their Constitution, [2] included the power to shut down the elected Parliament. Using her discretionary authority, Governor General Michaëlle Jean, the Queen’s representative, allowed Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s request to “prorogue” or suspend the proceedings of Parliament until January 26.
This enabled the minority Conservative government to avoid certain defeat in the House of Commons in a vote scheduled for December 8. At the same time, the Governor General rejected a formal request by opposition MPs from two parties to form a new government which, with the promised support of a third party, would have a clear majority in the House.
As one wit commented, Canada has now become a “pro-rogue state”. It is no laughing matter, however.
No recession?
The Parliamentary hiatus means that Canadians enter a deepening financial and economic crisis without even the promise of early government assistance that might provide emergency relief from mounting unemployment, vanishing credit and evaporating private pensions. Employment statistics released December 5 revealed the loss of 70,600 jobs in November alone, the biggest monthly job loss since the 1982 recession.
The economic crisis is now a political crisis — and threatens to become a “national unity” crisis — as government and opposition parties fan out across the country to rally public opinion behind their respective agendas.
The crisis was touched off two and a half weeks earlier when Parliament met for the first time since the October 14 general election. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty presented an economic statement that incredibly predicted that Canada would avoid a recession, projected a budget surplus, promised to privatize and sell off government buildings and other assets and imposed significant cuts in government spending. The government also announced it would drop pay equity measures for women in the federal public service, reduce the overall wage bill for federal government employees and ban their right to strike. And to add insult to injury, state funding of political parties was to be cut back sharply.
The Harper government had already earmarked $75 billion to take mortgages off the books of the banks and is providing tens of billions in other forms of support and liquidity to the financial industry, with few conditions.
It seemed the right-wing Tories had forgotten they were a minority. Less than two months earlier, they had been elected in only 143 seats, 12 short of a majority.
NDP beds down with Liberals
Flaherty’s statement caught the Opposition off guard, as the government had been hinting for weeks that it would propose economic pump-priming measures even at the cost of a budget deficit. Normally, so soon after an election, a defeated Opposition would be expected not to try to overturn the government. But to the government’s surprise, the two major Opposition parties now moved to defeat the Tories in a parliamentary vote and form a coalition government to replace them.
Within days, Liberal leader Stéphane Dion had cobbled together a deal with the New Democratic Party, Canada’s traditional social-democratic party. Dion and NDP leader Jack Layton agreed to form a joint government “built on a foundation of fiscal responsibility” to rule for at least three years. Liberals would hold the key positions of Prime Minister and Minister of Finance as well as 18 of the 24 cabinet posts, the other 6 going to the NDP. It began to look as if the NDP had rescued the Liberals, who only six weeks earlier had emerged from the election with their lowest voter support since Confederation in 1867.
Since the Liberals, with 77 seats, and the NDP, with 37, could not muster a majority, they got the pro-sovereignty Bloc Québécois, which holds 49 of Quebec’s 75 seats, to pledge not to support motions of non-confidence in the Government for at least 18 months. Voilà, a government with a working majority of 163 seats, to be led by outgoing Liberal leader Dion until May, when he was to be replaced by whoever won the scheduled Liberal leadership race.
The political content of the Liberal-NDP coalition agreement [3] was, to say the least, rather modest. It featured vague promises of increased spending on infrastructure investments, housing and aid to troubled manufacturing industries; easier eligibility for unemployment benefits; improved child benefits; pursuit of a “North American cap-and-trade market with absolute emission targets” and unspecified “Immigration Reform”.
Perhaps more significant were the things it did not contain — most notably, no reference to Canada’s military intervention in Afghanistan. The NDP’s promise to end Canada’s “combat mission” in that country was one of the major planks that distinguished it from the Liberals and other parties in the recent election.
Nor was there any reference to the North American Free Trade Agreement or other trade and investment deals that the NDP had previously opposed or pledged to reform in workers’ interests. There was nothing in the agreement that would in any way mark a Canadian departure from its close alignment with U.S. economic or foreign policy and military strategy.
Best case scenario?
The coalition proposal struck a responsive chord, however, among many trade union and social movement activists. On-line pro-coalition petitions were swiftly organized, attracting tens of thousands of signatures in support. Media talk shows and email discussion lists buzzed with favourable commentary.
Prominent left critics of neoliberalism volunteered their support. Naomi Klein, setting aside her autonomism for the moment, envisaged a “best case scenario”: “one, you get the coalition, and two, the NDP uses this moment to really launch a national discussion about why we need PR [proportional representation]….” [4]
Socialist Register editor Leo Panitch, while expressing reservations about the anticapitalist potential of the coalition, hailed the “courage” of the coalition proponents and saw some promise in the NDP’s role: “In Canada, as the New Democrats prepare themselves for federal office for the first time in their history, the prospect of turning banking into a public utility might be seen as laying the groundwork for the democratization of the economy that the party was originally committed to when it was founded….” [5]
Even some Marxists saw merit in the Coalition. The International Socialists, in a special supplement to their newspaper Socialist Worker, opposed giving a “blank cheque” to the Coalition, but said “The key question now is what demands we make on the Liberal-NDP Coalition and how we mobilize to win them.”
There were a few lonely dissenting voices. One that attracted some controversy in left circles was that of John Riddell, a co-editor of the web journal Socialist Voice. [6] Writing in Rabble, a popular web journal of “progressive” opinion, Riddell asked “Have the advocates of coalition forgotten that it was the last Liberal government that originated most of the hated ‘Harper’ policies, including the gutting of social services, attacks on civil liberties dressed up as ‘anti-terrorism’ and Canada’s disastrous war in Afghanistan?” He went on:
“The aim of progressive policy must not be to enhance the power of capitalist governments but to increase that of working people….
“The only force we can depend on is the pressure of independent popular and labour movements. In a situation of social and economic crisis, these movements can become an irresistible force.
“And here is the fatal weakness of the coalition government scheme. Locked inside a Liberal-dominated coalition, the NDP would be unable to campaign against capitalist attacks. Accepting responsibility for the anti-labour measures of such a government could rapidly discredit the NDP and end its ability to continue as the bearer of popular hopes for social change.
“At the same time, labour leaders’ current pledges of unconditional support to a coalition will undermine the unions’ ability to act independently in defence of workers’ rights and needs.
“Tying ourselves down in this manner is particularly dangerous in the midst of an economic crisis that is unprecedented, and shifting rapidly in unpredictable ways.” [7]
This warning rang like an echo of a period — not so long ago, in fact — when there was a workers movement that would have no truck or trade with bourgeois parties like the Liberals. The seeming unanimity of support for the Liberal-led coalition voiced by what passes today as Canada’s “left” was a sobering reminder of just how deeply the neoliberal TINA mantra (There Is No Alternative) has penetrated popular consciousness.
Labour campaigns for coalition
Among the leading propagandists for the coalition were political commentators Murray Dobbin and prominent feminist Judy Rebick, who had long fought for closer collaboration between anti-Conservative forces and especially during the recent federal election campaign. They were overjoyed that the NDP, which had previously resisted their pleas, had now come on board.
The organizational clout behind the campaign for coalition government, however, was provided by the Canadian Labour Congress and its major affiliated unions. Overnight, the CLC poured money and staff into organizing mass “Coalition Yes” rallies in major cities across the country. “The Liberal-NDP Accord would get Canada working again by providing immediate money for infrastructure projects, transit, clean energy, water, housing and retrofits,” proclaimed CLC literature and web sites. [8]
For weeks the CLC brass had been labouring over successive versions of a draft “Plan to Deal with the Economic Crisis”. [9] The Coalition Accord offered somewhat less than the CLC’s plan, of course, since its bottom line was what the Liberals were prepared to accept. But now, it seemed, the formation of a Liberal-led coalition held out the prospect of sufficient reforms to relieve the mounting pressure within labour’s ranks for effective action by the union leadership in defence of beleaguered workers.
Few doubts were expressed in the ranks of organized labour. For example, a convention of the British Columbia Federation of Labour voted nearly unanimously on November 27 to support the formation of a coalition government.
The Quebec unions, too, were quick to sign up. The major centrals (FTQ, CSN and CSQ) issued a joint statement in support of what it called “the Liberal-NDP-Bloc Québécois coalition” and urged members to join the Montréal pro-Coalition rally. “Let’s let the coalition, which has committed to implement a genuine plan of support to the economy, do the work,” the statement said. [10]
Impact in Quebec
The governmental crisis in Ottawa virtually eclipsed the final week of campaigning in Quebec’s general election, scheduled for December 8. The sovereigntist Parti québécois came out in support of the Coalition. “We have a sovereigntist party in Ottawa [the BQ] which has acted responsibly when faced with a Harper who crushes Quebec and denies that Quebec has needs”, said PQ leader Pauline Marois, adding that the political crisis showed that Canada does not function and that it is necessary to leave it. Liberal premier Jean Charest, in contrast, argued that the instability in Ottawa was cause to turn his minority government into a majority. The top leaders of the left sovereigntist Québec solidaire (QS), Amir Khadir and Françoise David, issued a statement in support of the coalition. The only comment so far in the on-site journal Presse-toi-à-gauche, the nearest thing QS has to a media presence, has been an article by Pierre Beaudet and François Cyr along the same lines. [11]
Polls showed that the coalition proposal is very popular in Quebec, which voted heavily against Harper’s Tories in October. Despite hostility in the corporate media (the pro-sovereignty Le Devoir is the only newspaper to support it), the coalition attracted little criticism even in nationalist circles, although there was some grumbling about the fact that the coalition was led by Stéphane Dion, the chief architect of the Liberals’ Clarity Act of 2000 hamstringing Quebec’s right to determine its constitutional future.
Former labour leader Gérald Larose, now chair of the Conseil de la souveraineté du Québec, a non-partisan sovereigntist umbrella group, issued a statement entitled “A sovereigntist view on a coalition”. [12] It greeted the Liberal-NDP accord:
“In four pages, Quebec recovers the billion dollars that were to be cut in equalization payments (the Flaherty cuts), the millions that were cut to cultural funding (the Verner cuts), the cuts to regional economic development agencies (the Blackburn cuts), commitments for Quebec’s forestry industry, improved benefits for the unemployed, a program for elderly workers….
“Québec’s sovereignty is a political fight. Half of this politics is at Quebec City. The other is at Ottawa. The one in Québec is key. The one in Ottawa is strategic…. It is the Bloc that prevented the election of a dangerous majority Conservative government. It is the Bloc as well that allows the formation of an alternative coalition government, ensuring in the process that Quebec maximizes the achievement of a number of economic demands.”
Quebec support for the coalition was bolstered by Harper’s venomous attacks on the coalition as a capitulation to “separatists”, and Tory MPs’ characterization of the accord as a “deal with the devil” tantamount to “treason and sedition”. Harper even challenged the legitimacy of representation by the Bloc and Bloc voters (close to 40 percent of Quebec voters) in Canada’s parliament. The virulence of these attacks aroused some concern among leveller heads in the federalist camp, and led the editors of Canada’s leading newspaper The Globe & Mail, among others, to call for Harper’s resignation as Tory leader and prime minister: “Whether he contrives an exit from his immediate travails over the confidence vote, the Harper era appears to be approaching its end. But before that happens, there is danger Canadian unity will be harmed.” [13]
These concerns were reinforced by a surge in PQ support in the final days of the Quebec election, as “soft” nationalists rallied to the party. On election day the PQ won 51 seats with 35% of the vote, replacing the less nationalist right-wing party, the Action Démocratique du Québec (ADQ) as Official Opposition and coming within a few seats of the governing Liberals. (Another notable result was the election of Québec solidaire co-leader Amir Khadir as that party’s first member in the National Assembly.)
Real change?
The coalition accord is also attacked as “socialist”, and indeed the NDP (along with the Bloc) is widely perceived as the driving force behind it. This in part explains the enthusiasm for the coalition among many working people. They see the NDP as a fetter on the Liberals, a potential restraint on the latters’ predictable attempts to implement their own neoliberal program.
That is also a major reason why the corporate rulers on Toronto’s Bay Street oppose the coalition. They know the NDP poses no threat to their system, and they have had little difficulty accommodating to the provincial governments the NDP has administered from time to time. But they also understand that the NDP is the actually existing political expression of the trade union movement and thus, in that sense, it is a destabilizing influence in Canada’s politics. They prefer to keep it at one remove from the corridors of power. They don’t see the need at present to call on the NDP as a direct partner in preserving their system.
Above all, however, the popular support of the coalition is a manifestation of how low expectations are among working people after close to three decades of neoliberal assault during which real wages (adjusted for inflation) have stagnated overall and even declined for many. The pro-coalition enthusiasm has expressed a real craving for some kind of change, any change, at the top in government. For many, the modest improvements in the coalition platform over Harper’s agenda are sufficient to constitute change they can believe in.
Tories fan anti-Quebec hatred
This is not Canada’s “Obama moment”, however. The pro-coalition rallies in the immediate wake of Parliament’s prorogation mobilized only a few thousand in Canada’s largest cities, while counter-rallies called by Tory operatives were in some cases almost comparable in size. Public opinion surveys indicate a country deeply divided on the coalition proposal, with a majority of those outside Quebec registering opposition. Mass media opposition has no doubt played a role in this.
Some of the pro-Harper counter-rallies staged in major cities were remarkable for their overt Canadian nationalist hostility to the Québécois. Media talk shows featured rants against the coalition as an undemocratic power grab by a cabal of opportunist socialists and separatists. According to polls, support for the NDP and Liberals has declined.
The Tories are mobilizing their supporters in the streets and church basements in high hopes of breaking Liberal support for the coalition. And indeed, the coalition looks quite shaky. On December 8, only four days after Parliament was prorogued, Liberal leader Dion, the putative PM in the coalition arrangement, agreed under party pressure to resign as soon as the Liberals could choose a new leader.
Although one major Liberal leadership contender, Bob Rae (a former NDP premier of Ontario) began campaigning actively for it, the major contender, Michael Ignatieff, is reported to have serious reservations. Ignatieff, known internationally for his support of Washington’s foreign policy as “Empire Lite”, has indicated he would be prepared to support a Harper budget that contained similar measures, but says the coalition is “the only tool that’s got us anywhere” in trying to force concessions from Harper. Call his position “Coalition lite”.
Quebec a destabilizing factor
At bottom, the current political crisis is an expression of the deepening dilemma posed to the Canadian political system by the rise of Quebec nationalism and its independence movement since the 1960s.
Until the mid-1980s, the federalist strategy epitomized by Pierre Trudeau of promoting French and English official bilingualism, coupled with occasional shows of force (as in the War Measures crisis of 1970), kept the “separatist” monster at bay. However, Quebec’s alienation from the federal state increased when Trudeau moved in the wake of the 1980 referendum defeat to unilaterally impose constitutional changes featuring an amending formula that seemed to rule out a constitutional path to Quebec sovereignty while imposing a “charter of rights” consciously designed to override popular legislation in Quebec to protect and promote French language rights.
The Conservative party under Brian Mulroney replaced the Liberals for a period by forging a delicate coalition of “soft” Quebec nationalists with Western provincial rights militants around support of “free trade” agreements with the United States. Most Quebec sovereigntists saw such agreements as a means of lessening Quebec’s dependence on the pan-Canadian market and undermining the economic influence of the Canadian state. However, pro-sovereignty sentiment mushroomed when Mulroney failed to get the other provinces’ agreement to constitutional recognition of Quebec as a “distinct society”. Nationalist Quebec Liberals and Tories, in collaboration with the PQ, formed the Bloc Québécois in the early 1990s, and since then the BQ has taken a majority of Quebec seats in the federal Parliament in six consecutive elections.
Following the extremely narrow defeat of the 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty, the federal Liberals, back in office, moved to limit Quebec’s right to secede; Stéphane Dion was brought into the cabinet to pilot the “Clarity Act” through Parliament. The Bloc redefined itself; no longer an intermediary at the federal level to facilitate Quebec’s accession to independence, it now saw itself as simply a promoter of Quebec’s interests within the federal regime.
Although both the Bloc and the Parti québécois continue to enjoy mass support in Quebec, the sovereigntist project itself has languished since 1995, unable to win compelling majority support for Quebec independence.
The developing economic crisis has put an additional crimp on the neoliberal “sovereignty” promoted by both parties. “Québec Inc.”, the once-vaunted flourishing of Quebec firms and economic institutions owned and managed by Francophone entrepreneurs, has likewise suffered some hard blows in the financial crisis. For example, the Caisse de dépôt et de placement, a financial behemoth that manages Quebec’s public pension funds, is in difficulty today owing to heavy exposure to the meltdown in asset-backed commercial paper investments. With the federal state and its control of banking and money serving as the lender of last resort, it is no accident that the Bloc Québécois now proposes to become a surety for a Liberal-led government in Ottawa!
However, the national question continues to simmer, fueled above all by the weight of the language issue in a Francophone province that represents almost a quarter of Canada’s total population but only 2 percent of North America’s, as well as the constant tension with the centralizing dynamics of Canadian federalism.
Seemingly banal incidents can easily rekindle expressions of Québécois national sentiment. The federal Liberals discovered this in the 2006 election when their remaining support in Quebec was decimated by disclosures of massive illegal spending in the province through a program to “sponsor” federalism. Harper’s Conservatives now seem destined for a similar fate as they vent their anger at the Bloc (and their rejection by Quebec voters in the October election) in venomous attacks on the Québécois.
NDP shut out in Quebec
As for the NDP, it has historically proved incapable of relating positively to Quebec nationalism and as a result has never enjoyed mass support in Quebec. A social democratic party, the NDP favours a strong central state as the vehicle for income redistribution and the administration of social programs. It is uncomfortable with the regional dynamics of a robust, assertive Quebec nationalism, and the party has been reluctant even to accept special status for Quebec within federal programs.
Furthermore, the NDP has from the beginning been seen by its union sponsors as a vehicle for potential liberal-labour regroupment that would eventually replace the Liberals as the major federal alternative to the Conservatives. This orientation is not facilitated by any sympathy for Quebec self-determination; as the “natural governing party” in Canada for most of the 20th century, the Liberals are the party of centralist federalism par excellence.
Shunned by progressives in Quebec because of its identification with the federal regime, the NDP has been unable to build a base in that province, although its identification with social democracy has led some to favour it over the BQ. [14] The NDP’s only hope for federal office in Ottawa, then, lies in forging some alliance with the Liberals. Which it is now doing. Ironically, the present configuration of parliamentary seats means that the two parties cannot make a credible case for government without a pledge of neutrality from the Bloc Québécois! The BQ, for its part, could not join such a coalition without jeopardizing its role as a harbinger of Quebec independence.
The Bloc stands as Quebec’s continuing reproach to the rest of Canada for its failure to recognize the Quebec nation in reality — and not just in non-binding words, as did Harper’s motion two years ago to recognize the Québécois as a “nation within a united Canada”.
Coalition falters
It is likely that when Parliament resumes as scheduled, on January 26, the Liberals will be headed by Michael Ignatieff, and the coalition as a formal power-sharing agreement will be dead, at least for the time being.
Harper will likely bring in a budget that incorporates most of the proposals in the Coalition Accord, or at least enough to win Liberal support and ensure the survival of his government. But he will no doubt try to embarrass the Liberals and their Opposition allies with numerous “confidence” votes in the House. Unless the NDP or the Bloc vote with the Tories, the Liberals will be faced with a choice between voting down the government — almost certainly precipitating a general election, this time — and voting with the government or abstaining, a humiliating dilemma for the new Liberal leader. It is probably safe to predict another election in 2009.
Where does this leave the NDP — and, more importantly, the main body of its supporters in the unions and social movements?
The NDP clearly emerges much weakened from this episode. Just weeks ago, NDP leader Jack Layton claimed to be running to be “prime minister”, arguing that there was no fundamental difference between Liberals and Tories and that the NDP was the only party that offered real “change you can believe in”. Now that the NDP has demonstrated its willingness to cohabit in government under Liberal leadership, that claim looks pretty unconvincing. The party may even have trouble justifying a vote against a Harper budget based on the coalition proposals or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Since the NDP is the party of organized labour in English Canada, a weaker NDP lessens labour’s influence in the Parliament.
In any event, Harper’s budget, whatever its content, will not address the needs of working people in the economic crisis. Labour and its allies will have to go back to the drawing boards and hammer out a coherent and effective program of action, one that is not contingent on Liberal or Tory — or, for that matter, NDP — support but goes far beyond the extremely modest proposals in the coalition accord.
Critical balance-sheet needed
It is important, too, that militants press for a critical balance-sheet of the coalition episode. If the coalition were to hold together, labour would be mortgaging its ability to adopt an independent agenda and actions capable of advancing workers’ interests. The discussion within the mass movements needs to get outside the straitjacket of devising a parliamentary agenda acceptable to the Liberals.
Canadian labour has not been defeated in major industrial struggles. In a series of important confrontations in recent years, militants have demonstrated their willingness and capacity to resist attacks on their living standards and organizations. In British Columbia, a number of struggles have come close to turning into general strikes: health workers (2004), teachers and Telus workers (2005), forest workers in 2004 and 2007. In Quebec, workers fighting the Charest government’s antilabour legislation twice came to the verge of general strikes. Even the enthusiastic reception at pro-coalition rallies for speakers advocating more militant action is a promising sign of the mood in labour’s ranks.
Labour in English Canada will also have to find ways to construct a pan-Canadian alternative to the crisis that includes the Québécois. The solidarity expressed with BQ leader Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc at pro-coalition rallies may signal new openness in the labour movement to collaboration with the “separatists”. An anticapitalist coalition between grassroots activists in the two nations could pose a real challenge to Canada’s capitalists and their governments. A coalition with one of the traditional parties of big business points in the opposite direction.
Richard Fidler
Comments
Doug Nesbitt on 10 Dec 2008 at 9:19 am #
It is not true that the IS finds merit in the coalition. There is no praise of the coalition in the Socialist Worker supplement or the articles published by Paul Kellogg on rabble and SV. Quite the opposite.
In short, the IS supports ousting Harper but argues that the only way we will any demands in the here and now is a mass movement advancing its own demands independently of any coalition government. This is made quite clear in the last sections of the SW supplement.
Richard Fidler on 10 Dec 2008 at 10:16 am #
Doug, I see no statement in the SW supplement that the Coalition is a step backwards for workers. When you oppose a “blank cheque” for the Coalition, the question is left hanging, What additions would you propose to make the Coalition acceptable? And that is exactly what SW says: “… the key question now is what demands we make on the Liberal-NDP Coalition, and how we mobilize to win them.” How does that answer Ignatieff’s “Coalition if necessary but not necessarily a coalition”, let alone Layton’s promises of all the fine things the Coalition will bring if we just stick together and fight?
The whole tone of the SW supplement is to greet the appearance of the Coalition. Harper’s government, we are told, is “on the brink of collapse”. (But which party came near to collapse, by the way?) “The Tories are in complete panic.” Really? They seem to have managed the crisis quite well, thanks in part to the Governor General (appointed by the Liberals, BTW). And there’s more….
“The crisis shows that we don’t have to wait for elections to change governments. And it shows that workers have a central role to play in fighting back against the concessions and attacks….” What central role, in fact what role period, did the workers play in all this, other than to be rallied as cheer-leaders by the union bureaucracy in support of the coalition with the Liberals? And how big, how representative of the working class, were those rallies? SW says it was “a huge surge of support” for the Coalition. “From coast to coast, people are rallying around the call to support such a coalition government.”
Well, it may have looked like that for a brief moment, especially if our eyes were glued to our email lists and computer screens. But I think we need to acknowledge, if only in retrospect, that such statements exaggerate the real scope of the enthusiasm. And I suspect that many of those who were responsive to the Coalition may be doing some rethinking about the wisdom of that strategy in light of subsequent events.
I look forward to debating you on this at your Thursday IS meeting.
In solidarity,
Richard
Barry Weisleder on 11 Dec 2008 at 4:20 am #
Richard Fidler’s survey of the radical left in English Canada, which records the ambiguities of the I.S., is rather incomplete. He neglects to mention that the Communist Party enthusiastically favours the ill-fated Liberal-NDP parliamentary coalition supported by the Bloc Quebecois. Richard omits reference to the Socialist Project, to which he and SV co-writer John Riddell belong. The SP has taken no collective political position on the coalition question. Likewise, the New Socialist Group has abstained from taking a political stand for or against the bourgeois coalition.
Finally, Richard has overlooked, or has just not seen fit to report, that Socialist Action, which plays a leading role in the cross-country NDP Socialist Caucus, is campaigning publicly against the coalition. SA counterposes a defense of the NDP’s organizational independence from the parties of Capital, and a principled, time-limited, concrete ‘accord’ as the price for permitting a minority government to hold office.
Two other groups that have spoken out against the coalition are Fightback and the Socialist Equality Party. And there may be others.
Those interested in fostering unity in action for a Workers’ Agenda, in the present circumstances of economic crisis and bourgeois government instability, may wish to look for potential points of agreement amongst the existing forces of the left, particularly those who intervene in the actually existing workers’ movement.
But it is hard to imagine building any kind of substantial “anticapitalist coalition between grassroots activists in the two nations”, as Richard rightly proposes, without challenging NDP and Labour officials, and appealing directly to the NDP’s 100,000+ members, inside the party.
In solidarity,
Barry
Paul Kellogg on 11 Dec 2008 at 6:00 am #
Socialists need to learn that the key arena is activity, and the key to theory is how it plays out in the movements. There is a difference between a programmatic position (opposition to the coalition because it is a cross-class alliance — and of course the I.S. opposes the coalition on this basis — this is rather elementary) and the shaping of slogans to intervene into struggle. In this regard, the key issue is the war, and the key anti-war group is the Canadian Peace Alliance. The Canadian Peace Alliance took a wonderful position on the coalition, marching into the anti-Harper rally with the chant “Harper out of Ottawa, Canada out of Afghanistan”. The navigation of the discussion at the CPA towards this excellent conclusion was conducted by many fine activists and anti-war leaders, some of whom are in the the I.S.
The proof of all puddings is in the eating. To date the meal that has been served around this debate, is in the anti-war movement. To date, the anti-war movement has not only passed the test — the anti-war movement is showing the left how to respond to this crisis. For everyone’s information, the CPA voted to make ending the war in Afghanistan one of its two key planks for the next two years (the other being War Resisters), regardless of who is in office. The next mobilization will be in early April to coincide with the call for demonstrations on the 60th anniversary of the creation of NATO. The key test for all socialists will be putting their shoulders to the wheel of the movement, and making these demos as big as possible. I look forward to everyone’s enthusiastic and active participation in their local anti-war groups.
Richard Fidler on 11 Dec 2008 at 7:06 am #
I welcome Paul Kellogg’s statement that the IS “opposes the coalition”. Paul says this is “elementary”, but if so (and I agree) why did the IS comrades not make that point and then explain why and how they opposed the coalition? I look forward to future articles in SW that do this.
Barry Weisleder posted his comment above to an email discussion list and I have responded there with a couple of posts. In the first, I explained in part:
“I was not attempting to ’survey’ the radical left in that article. In that part of what was admittedly an awfully long article, I was deliberately citing a few sources to indicate a range of opinion on the coalition, not to comprehensively document all opinions.”
In my second post in response to Barry, I wrote, again in part:
Barry raises a good question. Narrowly put, I would phrase it this way, on this list: If you are in the NDP, what do you say to NDP members and supporters about the coalition tactic? Barry, his group Socialist Action, and the Socialist Caucus (and possibly others) say, it is wrong to participate in government with a capitalist party such as the Liberals. But it is not wrong for the NDP to lay out an agenda for action and to say that to the degree that the government (any government) acts to implement that agenda this party will not, at this point, vote to defeat it. That is normally what the NDP should do in Parliament, and if it chooses to put a clear working-class agenda in writing and sign to that effect — an Accord, if you wish — that is not only principled but could be an effective way of projecting an independent course for working people in this crisis.
I think Barry is right on this point. …
The parliamentary crisis gave the NDP an excellent opportunity to stake out an independent position, rather than opportunistically make a grab to join the ministerial ranks. (It was precisely the blatant opportunism in Layton’s manœuvre that played a role in mobilizing opposition to the coalition among many working people, I suspect.) The NDP could have told the Liberals and the Bloc: We won’t enter a government. We want to replace you. But we are not strong enough to do so at this point. And an immediate election will not likely produce a radical change in the present configuration of forces. But here is our proposed legislative program for the crisis, based on consultations with our supporters in the unions and social movements. (Then some key demands, including of course immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, massive social infrastructure spending, etc.) If you act now on those lines we will not vote to defeat your government and precipitate an election at this time. On the other hand, if you do not do this, or you legislate against the interests of the workers, we will not hesitate to vote against you.
Like Barry, I start with the understanding that the NDP is part of the workers movement. Yes, a bourgeois party in its overall program. But a bourgeois party of a special type that operates primarily in the workers movement as a political expression of the trade unions in English Canada. Keep in mind that the program of the unions, as they exist today, is itself “bourgeois”, not anticapitalist.
For us, the line of principle should not be whether or not to belong to the NDP, or whether or not to place demands on the NDP. The principled question in this instance is, For or against the coalition with the Liberals? Within the anti-coalition camp, there is every reason to try to formulate an appropriate tactical line of march for the NDP, as Barry and a few others are attempting to do.
This is not only a tactic for use within the NDP, moreover. It is a tactic addressed to the working class and its social movement allies more generally. The unions, for example, need to be challenged to formulate an action program and place those demands on the NDP, fight for them within the NDP.
The debate in the left provoked by the parliamentary crisis has highlighted a major problem for many of us, and I realize that I have been affected by it too. Some of us have been attempting to “regroup the left” for some years now. Socialist Project in Ontario is a part of that process. But we have, consciously or unconsciously, made NDP membership or support in itself a question of principle, excluding it from consideration in elaborating socialist strategy. This is a huge error.
And to some degree it lies at the root of the “regrouping the left” movement. A seminal document was Sam Gindin’s essay in 2000, “The Party’s Over”. Sam called for building “a structured movement” to build an anticapitalist alternative, and most of the subsequent discussion centered on that proposal. But it is often forgotten that the first half of Sam’s article was an attempt to prove that the NDP was no longer a workers party and was fundamentally irrelevant to socialist strategy. At the time Sam was on the CAW staff, and it did not escape some of us that his political line was not inconsistent with the right-wing direction the CAW was beginning to take at that time around such issues as “strategic voting” for Liberals, etc. Since then of course Sam, now retired from the CAW, has been a strong critic of the CAW’s slide to the right.
It is no accident that [in some circles] the recent debate on the coalition has focused on how one characterizes the NDP, and the fault-lines in the debate are basically between those who consider the NDP to be a relevant factor in labour politics and those who don’t. And it is revealing to see how those who dismiss the NDP can easily fall into the trap of thinking the coalition is of no importance, and that somehow an independent course of action by labour can be staked out without confronting the issue of the coalition.
Other groups too are not immune to this problematic. It seems to me that the problem is also reflected in the IS comrades’ emphasis on “bottom-up fight-back” while ignoring how that fight-back is expressed in and around the NDP itself. Inside the NDP, you cannot ignore the question of principle posed by the coalition tactic. The IS sidesteps it because it is not in the NDP — or, if some of its members are in the NDP, they are silent on the coalition or indirectly supporting it by simply placing “demands” on it while not challenging its existence.
Hans M on 11 Dec 2008 at 10:09 am #
A propos regroupment, it’s a step forward to see Richard and Barry agree on the formulation: Accord Yes - Coalition No. That constitutes an agreement on principle–in my opinion, anyway. Hallelujiah.
Now, that Rae has tossed the towel, the coalition seems moribund, and Broadbent’s “Happy Days” moment was short lived indeed. The evolution of Bob Rae is indeed the best illustration of the fallacy and pitfalls of the coalition road. Layton who sat on the fence in the social contract crisis obviously has not learned that lesson.
But Bay Sreet doesn’t trust the agile svengali of class collaborationism. Perhaps they are saving him for another day? Shudder to think of the scenario: Bob Rae PM cum Layton as Labour Minister!
PS: I’m intrigued by RF’s formulation of the NDP as a “bourgeois party of a special type” Did I get that right, and if so why not include the BQ in that category, or the SPD, PSF etc?
David Camfield on 12 Dec 2008 at 4:55 pm #
I’d like to comment on one issue raised by the analysis in Richard’s article (with which I generally agree).
Richard wrote “the popular support of the coalition is a manifestation of how low expectations are among working people after close to three decades of neoliberal assault during which real wages (adjusted for inflation) have stagnated overall and even declined for many.” This is certainly true, and we could add greater insecurity, lower coverage for benefits and pensions, longer hours of paid and unpaid work, the intensification of work, greater employer power over workers in the workplace, less access to EI, workfare and more to a list of what the employers’ offensive of the last three decades has wrought.
Richard also argues that “Canadian labour has not been defeated in major industrial struggles. In a series of important confrontations in recent years, militants have demonstrated their willingness and capacity to resist attacks on their living standards and organizations.” Both claims are true, but to leave it there fails to take into account the overall impact of the neoliberal assault. The overall picture is that the level of union struggle in the last few years has been extremely low, despite the fact that official unemployment had fallen.
The percentage of estimated working time “lost” to strikes is in some ways the most useful measure of the scale of workplace struggle:
Jan-June 2008: 0.02
2007: 0.05
2006: 0.02
Although the historical data are less than fully reliable and comparable, if we use it we find that 2006-2008 have seen the lowest percentage of work time “lost” to strikes since the period 1938-1942 — a level similar to the period 1926-1932. Obviously 2006-2008 is quite different, in many respects (the economic situation is not as bad as the years after 1929, the percentage of workers covered by collective agreements is much higher than it was 80 years ago, the working-class movement is enormously different, etc.).
But it is significant that strikes sank to such a low level across the Canadian state _before_ the economic crisis broke, when unemployment was generally lower (although some sectors — such as manufacturing workers — were beginning to be hit). The low level of strike action is definitely not the whole picture, but it does tell us something about the cumulative impact of the neoliberal assault on the labour movement. This is one reason why my sense of “the mood in labour’s ranks” is different than what Richard briefly implies.
With not only lowered expectations but also little collective action happening in the workplace or on the streets, it’s little wonder that so many people responded positively to the Liberal-NDP coalition call (and that so far there has been so little push for extra-parliamentary mobilization by unions and community groups in response to the economic crisis). We need to recognize this as we do whatever we can to push for the “critical balance-sheet of the coalition episode” that Richard rightly calls for, as part of beginning to build an entirely different kind of response to the crisis.