The NDP Grows Up

And so, the New Democratic Party of Canada has finally come into its own. It was only a matter of time and it appears that time is now.

The party that once billed itself as “Canada’s conscience” and considered every election loss a “moral victory” has embraced the concept of being a mainstream player with all of the enthusiasm and cynicism of Liberals and Conservatives.

Former NDP leader
Jack Layton

Their former leader, Jack Layton who was well-liked and respected by many Canadians including many who didn’t agree with his politics, died tragically from cancer immediately following the last election campaign.  Jack Layton was feisty, well-informed on the issues, an outstanding debater and had a great sense of humour. So well-liked was Mr. Layton that the evil Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada and  the leader of the Dark Side (in the eyes of many on the left), did a very decent thing and offered the Layton family a state funeral which is highly unusual and a sign of great respect.

Mr. Layton’s body wasn’t laid to rest before the highly moral NDP were using his death as a fund raising gimmick, running ads inviting Canadians to contribute to a think tank that hadn’t actually yet been formed, as it turns out. To sweeten the pot, the NDP even offered a tax credit from the party which was in violation of the use of a political party’s tax status according to The Canada Revenue Agency. Much chagrined, the party had to return the money or rescind the donor's tax receipt at the donor's discretion.

At Mr. Layton’s funeral…..a state funeral….Stephen Lewis, a former leader of the Ontario NDP and Canada’s representative to the UN, took the opportunity during his eulogy to castigate the Prime Minister (who was in attendance) and the Conservative Party. It seems to me that it goes beyond partisanship and crosses over into bad taste and just plain rude to use a man’s funeral as an opportunity to push your personal politics. It’s sort of like trying to sell life insurance at your grandmother’s funeral.

Nicole Turmel (left) former NDP interim leader and
Thomas Mulcair current leader

Mr. Layton was replaced by an interim leader, Nicole Turmel, who when she was head of a federal public sector union, actually threw her union’s support behind a Quebec separatist party, encouraging federal government employees to vote separatist. 

Fortunately, Ms Turmel proved quite ineffective and did little damage during her tenure as interim leader. She was eventually replaced by Thomas Mulcair, a former Quebec Liberal turned Federal NDP and a citizen of both Canada and France.

Mr. Mulcair hit the ground running, almost immediately attacking western provinces for their successful energy-resource driven economies. He blamed the success of western economies for the mess of central Canada’s economies, turning a blind eye to the fiasco that the Liberal Premiers of Ontario and Quebec have created during their time in office. When it became clear that Mr. Mulcair had never actually visited the oil sands he so roundly condemned, he was somewhat shamed into a western tour where he discovered that much of what he had been saying about the oil sands was.....well.....wrong and so he simply stopped talking about it.

Now, the NDP have released their first real attack ad against the Prime Minister. I find it interesting that a political party that has consistently criticized the use of attack ads should suddenly embrace them but clearly the NDP no longer believes that attack ads are bad which must mean that they no longer have an issue with other parties using them as well.

Personally, I think that if you have so little confidence in your own policy platform that the best you can do is attack the other guys, you don’t have much to offer and that goes for all political parties. I don’t like the Liberal or the Conservative attack ads either. I find them trite, petty and not in the least helpful in providing Canadians with the information they need to make informed decisions about who to support or what policies are best for the country. I'm not really interested in knowing what one party thinks of another. I would like to know what each party stands for and what it proposes to do. I'm quite capable of deciding for myself whether someone is an idiot or not.

I will say this, however, both the Liberals and the Conservatives are much better at attack ads than the NDP. The new NDP ad sounds like it was voiced by a teenage girl having a hissy-fit. The inflection has the same sing-song rhythm of young girls at the mall, ending sentences as if they were questions. My first thought after seeing the ad was that the only thing missing from the ad was “Whateverrrrrrr!”

I am not a supporter of the policies or ideology of the New Democratic Party. I think they’re policies are naïve, their understanding of how an economy works is adolescent and their politics are divisive. Having said that, I respected the fact that they took a higher road than the other political parties and were more inclusive which resulted in their surprising result in the last election. They tended to voice more their policies than attacks on the other parties and Canadians like that. I particularly respected Jack Layton even though I didn’t agree with him on very much politically. 

Now, the party has come of age and has shown that under Mr. Mulcair it too can be no better than what it opposes and isn’t that just what we needed in this country? Just another political party where once again, principles take a back seat to expediency and politics reigns supreme.

I can't hardly wait for the first attack ad from Elizabeth May and the Green Party. No doubt it will feature David Suzuki running around in a chicken suit screaming, "The sky is falling and it's Stephen Harper's fault!" Come to think of it, I might actually pay money to see either David Suzuki or Elizabeth May running around screaming in a chicken suit.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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