NDP aiming to be Opposition

On a recent drive along Cambie Street on the way to downtown Vancouver, retired academic Graham Riches spotted a bunch of street people huddled and looking forlorn in front of a doorway.

The former director of UBC’s school of social work and family studies began thinking about whether or not anything will change for Canada’s poor with this federal election.

In an interview, Riches noted that perhaps Jack Layton was speaking to this issue when the NDP leader unveiled his platform, which sought to flesh out his slogan that he’d be a “prime minister who’ll put you and your family first”.

Indeed, Layton has promised to end poverty by 2020. He said he’ll also reverse corporate tax cuts, raise the hourly minimum wage to $10, and increase the child-benefit allowance, among other policies. He’ll also protect Canadians from getting ripped off by phone companies, banks, and credit-card firms. The same goes for gas consumers, who Layton claimed are being gouged at the pumps.

This all sounds good, except for one worry.

“The real dilemma is that the more votes are picked up by Layton and he doesn’t have a reasonable chance of actually making government, then it’s really giving the election to the Tories,” Riches told the Georgia Straight. “But maybe that’s what’s needed in Canada so that the people will really wake up. It’s going to be a cruel irony. We’re going to have probably [Barack] Obama in the States and [Stephen] Harper in the north.”

According to pollster Mario Canseco, more than a few people chuckled when Layton opened his 2008 campaign by stating that he’s running for prime minister. Layton has persisted with this line, and it seems voters are seeing him in a new light.

Almost six in 10 Canadians think the NDP would do a good job as the official Opposition, according to survey results released on September 29 by Angus Reid, where Canseco is director of global studies.

More than a third of Canadians went so far as to say that Layton’s NDP would do well as the next government.

Canseco asserted that Layton’s unveiling of a platform that Liberal leader Stéphane Dion dismissed as “old-fashioned socialist” thinking actually makes good political sense.

“It’s just like Harper comes out and says, ”˜We’re going to be tough on criminals,’ ” Canseco told the Straight. “The NDP base likes having those making the most money pay the most taxes, and trying to invest those taxes into helping ordinary families.

"This is perfect play for him as far as keeping the NDP voters happy and making them more aware of the situation in case they become scared by the possibility of a Harper majority government and they start trying to vote strategically. This is a way to say, ”˜We have a chance that we haven’t had in a long time: to become the official Opposition.’ ”

As far as consumers are concerned, Layton appears to be making the right noises.

“For 15 years, we have not had a ministry for consumer protection at the federal level,” Bruce Cran, president of the Consumers’ Association of Canada, told the Straight. “Mr. Layton has addressed that slightly.”

Cran also said that Layton has some recommendations in his platform that have merit. According to him, phone and petroleum companies are operating like “oligopolies, and we’re certainly getting gouged there”.

UVic political scientist Dennis Pilon pointed out that “blips” in polls suggesting NDP momentum may just mean that some voters are responding to policies like the childcare one that New Democrats are offering, which Liberals promised but didn’t deliver when they had the opportunity.

“What I think we are saying is that some of the contradictions of the old Liberal party are coming home to roost,” Pilon told the Straight. “The Liberal party wants to have it both ways. They want to be a party of fiscal conservatism when they’re in office. But they still want to appear to Canadians that they care, even if they introduce policies that make the programs not work.”

Pilon recalled that the first round of major funding cuts to social programs was made by then–Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau during the early 1980s.

According to Pilon, a lot of Canadians still identify themselves with a kind of social liberalism, in which wealth is transferred through social programs and the rich pay more. “It could be that the NDP is moving into that old Liberal space,” he said.