Canada's Elections - The Left and Right Claim Success

The Right and Left Claim Success in Canada: The
Conservatives Win Majority in Canadian Election As Left-
Leaning NDP Makes Historic Gains

Democracy Now!

May 3, 2011

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/3/the_right_and_left_claim_success

The Conservative party, led by Prime Minister Stephen
Harper, was elected to a majority in the Canadian
parliament, ending five years of minority government. Harper
has vowed to continue pro-corporate policies that have led
critics to label his government the most right-wing in
recent Canadian history. But the election also saw major
gains for the left-leaning New Democratic Party, which won
enough seats to become the official opposition party for the
first time. We speak to Stephen Lewis, former Canadian
diplomat and former leader of the NDP, and the Canadian
activist and writer Judy Rebick.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to Canada, which saw a significant
political shift after its national election Monday. The
Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper,
was elected to a majority in the Canadian parliament, ending
five years of minority government. Harper has vowed to
continue pro-corporate policies that have led critics to
label his government the most right-wing in recent Canadian
history.

But the election also saw major gains for the [New]
Democratic Party, which won enough seats to become the
official opposition party for the first time. The NDP nearly
tripled its parliamentary seats as both the Liberal Party
and the separatist Bloc Quebecois suffered major losses. It
was the first time the Liberal Party did not finish in
either first or second place in a national vote. While the
Liberals have long been seen as a centrist party, the NDP's
historic surge could herald a new era in which a progressive
alternative challenges the ruling government.

To discuss the Canadian elections, we're joined by Stephen
Lewis, longtime member of the NDP. He led the party in
Ontario during the 1970s. He later served as Canada's
ambassador to the United Nations in the '80s and later as
the U.N. special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, co-founder
and co-director of AIDS-Free World, an international
advocacy group based out of New York.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Stephen Lewis. Talk about these
elections, what they mean. What does it mean for Harper's
majority? And remember, you're talking to an audience, in
addition to a Canadian audience-and it was wonderful to be
in Canada this past weekend-people all over the world, who
are not very familiar with Canadian politics.

STEPHEN LEWIS: Right. Well, Stephen Harper is a classic
right-wing government, ideologically driven, and now has a
majority, and I suspect that four or five years from now,
Canada will be a somewhat different country because the
natural progressive instincts of so much of Canada will be
diminished by a very right-wing government. But on the other
hand, he was elected. It's a democratic society, albeit he
only got 40 percent of the vote, which means that 60 percent
of Canadians wanted an alternative.

The unprecedented surge of the New Democratic Party-and I
don't think I'm putting that inappropriately as though it
was intense partisanship-the surge of the New Democratic
Party took everyone aback. And the sweep in the province of
Quebec is perhaps one of the most extraordinary moments in
Canadian political history, over the last two or three
decades, because it means that Quebec has voted for a
federalist party to represent their views as part of Canada.
They have rejected the separatist, sovereignist instinct
which has prevailed over the last two to three decades. And
that is of great significance, because, as it were-and this
isn't metaphorical-it brings Quebec back into Canada.

So you have in Canada now a rather useful ideological fray,
with strong Conservatives in the government, with a deeply
committed left-wing opposition, led by a man without guile,
Jack Layton, who brought tremendous authority and admiration
to his campaign. And the Liberal Party, which always saw
itself as the natural government of Canada, may never rise
from the ashes. The separatists have been defeated in
Quebec; they probably won't be back at the federal level.
Though Liberals will be struggling for place.

AMY GOODMAN: Give us the history of the NDP. I mean, this
remarkable moment-it's as if, in the United States, you have
the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and, what, the
Green Party, and now the Green Party has become the second
party instead of the Democrats. So when the questions are
asked here, for example, you know, "Are you going to throw
away your vote, allow Republicans to win by voting for a
Green Party and the Democrats will lose?" in Canada, it
became, "Are you going to throw away your vote for voting
for the Liberals and not the NDP?" And so, the NDP became
number two, the main opposition party. What is the history
of your party, which you led in Ontario, for example, during
the '70s?

STEPHEN LEWIS: Yes, yes. The party was rooted in what was
called the CCF, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation,
which was a combination of agrarian support in western
Canada and a good deal of trade union and urban support in
eastern Canada, but we never really had a foothold in the
province of Quebec. In 1958, we suffered a terrible defeat
politically, were reduced to eight seats, and out of that
there emerged the New Democratic Party, which was a slightly
different formulation but with a new passion and instinct.
And the former premier of Saskatchewan, one of the most
popular of Canadians, Tommy Douglas, came out to lead the
party. And that began 50 years-this is our 50th anniversary,
Amy-50 years of a slow progression of social democracy in
Canada gradually winning more and more support.

We formed provincial governments in British Columbia, in
Saskatchewan, in Manitoba, in Ontario, now in Nova Scotia.
But we never had any impressive strength beyond a third-
place finish in Canada as a whole. Tommy Douglas was
followed by my father, who was the leader and, for a while,
held the balance of power in the 1970s, when Pierre Trudeau
was head of the Liberal Party. He was followed by Ed
Broadbent, who previously got our highest number of seats in
the '80s: 43. Now we have 102 and 30 percent of the vote,
and this incredible breakthrough in Quebec. Amy, two days
ago, we had one member of parliament in Quebec-one. This
morning, we have 59 or 60. It's really quite phenomenal. And
as a result, after Ed Broadbent, there came two women
leaders and now Jack Layton. It's been a slow, progressive
build of social democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: The NDP is responsible for ushering in Canada's
single-payer healthcare system. In 1962, as you mentioned,
the Saskatchewan premier, Tommy Douglas, who was also NDP's
first federal leader, won the passage of single payer in
Saskatchewan with every other province soon to follow. Now,
it's very interesting, especially for viewers and listeners
in the United States and in the rest of the world, because
Tommy Douglas is the grandfather of Kiefer Sutherland, the
actor, you know, the star of 24, for example, which is, by
the way, "trending" today, Kiefer Sutherland, because of the
action that took place that killed Osama bin Laden, you
know, in sort of 24 style. But in 1983, three years before
his death, Tommy Douglas talked about healthcare.

TOMMY DOUGLAS: If you want a two-tiered health program, then
just continue the way we're going. And I remind you that in
this movement we pledged ourselves 50 years ago that we
would provide healthcare for every man, woman and child,
irrespective of their color, their race or their financial
status. And by God, we're going to do it!

AMY GOODMAN: That was the first leader of the NDP. That was
Tommy Douglas, responsible for bringing in single-payer
healthcare, first in one province, which is interesting,
because it looks like Vermont in the United States is poised
to bring in single-payer healthcare just in Vermont. Stephen
Lewis, the significance of healthcare as part of the
progressive agenda of the New Democratic Party that has now
just become the second party of Canada.

STEPHEN LEWIS: Oh, it's visceral to the NDP, Amy. It's in
our molecular structure. It's holy writ. We will fight for
Medicare to the death, and the public healthcare, which is
provided in Canada to every single citizen, is something of
which we're immensely proud. The people of Canada consider
healthcare to be the dominant political issue in any
campaign, and there will now be a struggle in the House of
Commons, in parliament, because the Conservative government
would like to privatize dimensions of healthcare. I rather
doubt that the Canadian public will permit that, and the NDP
will fight a very, very hard to maintain the-what you call
the single-payer system. That is one of the things which
distinguishes us and identifies the democratic left.

AMY GOODMAN: We're also joined, in addition to Stephen
Lewis, by Canadian activist and writer Judy Rebick, founder
of rabble.ca, one of Canada's leading independent news
websites, and a professor of politics at Ryerson University
in Toronto. Judy Rebick, can you talk about the new
landscape in Canada now?

JUDY REBICK: Yeah, you know, I share a lot of Stephen's
analysis. I don't quite share his enthusiasm, not being
quite as strong a partisan as he is for the NDP. I've been a
supporter of the NDP, but a critic, as well. And I think
it's quite serious that we have this majority Conservative
government now. This is the most right-wing government we've
ever had. We used to-they used to call themselves the
Progressive Conservatives; now they call themselves the
Conservatives. And they're really very much like Bush
Republicans, in my view. And they've run even with a
minority government, which means they could be defeated at
any moment, for Americans who don't know what minority
governments are. They ran a very, very repressive
government, cutting funding to any group that they didn't
agree with, you know, spending a billion dollars on security
during the G-20, arresting 1,100 people. So, the extra-
parliamentary left, if you want, the social movements, can
expect a very tough time from this government.

I agree that the NDP win is phenomenal, and Jack Layton ran
an amazing campaign. He really won over the Canadian people,
particularly the Quebecois. You know, they went, as Stephen
said, from one seat in Quebec to beating the Bloc Quebecois,
which was the major party in Quebec. But where I differ with
Stephen is I don't think this is a rejection of sovereignty
at all, actually. I think what it is, is the Bloc Quebecois,
which is a sovereignist party, is also a social democratic
party, and I think that the sovereignist - a lot of the
sovereignists in Quebec switched to the NDP not as a
rejection to sovereignty, but as an attempt to get rid of
the Harper-make sure Harper didn't get a majority, which the
Bloc couldn't have done. But the NDP had this, what people
call the "orange crush," because orange is the color of the
NDP, had this surge continue across the rest of the country.

AMY GOODMAN: And I just want to explain to viewers and
listeners that Bloc Quebecois, when you talk about
sovereignty movement, the idea that Quebec would become
sovereign, a sovereign nation, is what they were pushing
for.

JUDY REBICK: That's right. That's right. So, you know, you
have in Quebec 40 percent of the population-which is, I
think, about what voted for the NDP there-supports
sovereignty still, to this day. And there's been two
referendums, both of which failed. But I think-I actually
think that it's very likely the Parti Quebecois, which is
the provincial sovereigntist party, could win the next
provincial election, because the current government, which
is a federalist government, is now popular, and could bring
in a referendum. And because the Quebecois hate Harper so
much, you know, he could-they could vote for sovereignty
this time. And so, I think the only-the real restriction on
Harper is not going to be the opposition in the House of
Commons; it's going to be the fear that if he goes too far
to the right, they'll lose Quebec, and they'll lose a
referendum. I think that's going to be the biggest
discipline on the Harper majority government.

So, I agree with Stephen, there's been a huge-basically
there's been a huge realignment of Canadian politics. The
Liberal Party has been called, up until very recently, the
natural governing party in Canada, and they are reduced to
very, very little. I mean, it's devastating for them, and
it's a complete shift in Canadian politics to basically an
extremely right-wing party and a somewhat-I think the NDP a
somewhat left-wing party. But the NDP has moved right in the
last little while, in my view.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Stephen Lewis, your response?

STEPHEN LEWIS: Amy, the reason that I'm in good spirits is
because I'm an ideologue. I'm a fundamentalist of the left.
I get great pleasure in the fact that in the Canadian
political system now, instead of having the Conservatives,
minority or majority, facing a wishy-washy centerpiece
called the Liberal Party, you're going to have an actual
ideological difference in Canada between people genuinely on
the left and people determinately on the right. If the
parliament can be demonstrably civil to each another, it
will be an extremely useful and serious debate.

And, I mean, I agree with Judy Rebick on most things in life
political. I don't agree on these speculative fantasies
about Quebec on the day after the election. I think we have
to see what Jack Layton and his 60 Quebec members do over
the course of the next four years. Because of that, of
course, that will have an immense influence on the way in
which people in Quebec respond to the separatist instinct.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly-

STEPHEN LEWIS: So I'm at odds on that, but I'm not at odds
on the fact that we've got a hell of a right-wing
government, which is going to make life very difficult for
Canadians over the next four years. That's why I said at the
outset that we may have a very different kind of Canada four
years from now.

AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly, 15 seconds, Judy Rebick, what
does this mean for Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal Party
leader?

JUDY REBICK: Oh, I think he's finished. I mean, he didn't
resign last night. Gilles Duceppe, the leader of Bloc
Quebecois, resigned. I think he's gone. The other thing I
want to say is Elizabeth May, the first Green Party
candidate in North America to win a seat, that's also very
significant.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to leave it there. And thank you so
much, Judy Rebick and Stephen Lewis, both speaking to us
from Toronto.

[Stephen Lewis, long-time member of the NDP. He led the
party in Ontario during the 1970s. He later served as
Canada's ambassador the United Nations in the 1980s and
later as the United Nations' special envoy for HIV/AIDS in
Africa. He is the co-founder and co-director of "AIDS-Free
World":http://www.aidsfreeworld.org, an international
advocacy organization.

Judy Rebick, Canadian activist and writer. She is the
founder of "Rabble.ca":http://rabble.ca, one of Canada's
leading independent news websites, and a professor of
politics at Ryerson University in Toronto.]

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