https://socialistaction.org/2017/04/20/is-ontario-ndp-ready-for-2018-election/
Is Ontario NDP ready for 2018 election?
/ 2 days ago
OWZ_byelection_horwath3___Gallery
WHITBY — Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath spoke to media before touring
the Abilities Centre with Niki Lundquist, the NDP candidate in the
Whitby-Oshawa byelection. January 14, 2016
By BARRY WEISLEDER
The Ontario New Democratic Party is heading toward the June 2018
provincial election, stuck in third place behind the discredited Liberal
government at Queen’s Park and the chameleon-like official opposition
Conservatives, according to most opinion polls.
Hydro electricity rates, which have doubled in 10 years, command public
attention. Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne’s last ditch plan to cut rates
by 25 per cent has NDP Leader Andrea Horwath saying, “me too.” But
Horwath’s proposals to tinker with delivery costs, time-of-use rules,
private profit margins, and her plan to buy back, at top dollar, the 30
per cent of Hydro One that the Liberals sold off, leave many Ontario
consumers cold.
Instead of a bold policy—immediate nationalization of all energy
generation and transmission, with minimal, long-term compensation to
rich stock holders—the ONDP offers only short fixes. Typically, it calls
for another study, rather than a phase-out of the dangerous and
uber-costly nuclear power plants.
After the June 2014 electoral debacle, Horwath hired Manitoba NDP
government guru Michael Balagus. His speeches to ONDP provincial council
meetings have been larded with selective poll data he uses to
rationalize opposition to free post-secondary education. He proposes
commendable, but milquetoast, policies to ease union organizing and
modestly raise the minimum wage.
Balagus and Horwath say the party should champion “bold policies.”
Agreed. But where are they? Is the platform now being cultivated in
party back rooms, with the usual dearth of membership input, enough to
warrant a vote of confidence in the Leader at the ONDP convention in
Toronto, April 21-23, 2017?
Recall the Ontario NDP convention in November 2014. After months of
intense campaigning, drawing on all the party’s resources, Horwath
managed to hang onto her position. But she did so only after promising
to atone, and by pledging to turn left.
In the mandatory leadership review, Horwath received 76.9 per cent
support from the 1055 district association and union delegates, only
slightly more than the 76.4 per cent she got two years earlier. The move
to remove Horwath sprang from the discontent of NDPers with the June
2014 provincial election campaign she led.
Like Tom Mulcair, whose subsequent “balanced budget no-matter-what”
mantra that sank the ship in the 2015 federal election, Horwath embraced
moderate, populist themes and discarded social justice issues. Moreover,
the turn to the centre was not mandated by the party ranks, and it
strained relations with large segments of the labour movement.
The shift mostly helped the Liberals. Kathleen Wynne campaigned for
pension improvements and a wage increase for low-paid workers, while
Horwath promoted a Ministry of Cost Savings that seemed to target jobs
in the public service. She also pledged to hold the line on wealth taxes.
Once the Liberals emerged with a majority government, costing the NDP
three key seats in downtown Toronto, Horwath purged her senior staff and
apologized to delegates at the party’s Provincial Council. She later
told the Convention that she would “keep talking about our ultimate
values and goals and not just our first steps.” While this was pretty
thin, it persuaded many members to give her another chance—especially as
there was no heir apparent to the Leader.
Still, the mood of the convention was angry, and quite critical of the
party tops.
Although the establishment dominated elections to the provincial
executive with an official slate, the organized party left wing, the
Socialist Caucus, and independent candidates did remarkably well.
Debates on convention procedures and resolutions produced a number of
upsets. In the opening minutes of the convention, delegates voted to
amend the agenda, forcing the vote on Leader to occur late Saturday
afternoon, rather than immediately following the Leader’s rah-rah speech
set for the morning. This meant that hundreds of delegates summoned by
conservative riding and union leaders to vote to sustain Horwath had to
hang around an extra seven hours.
Motions of referral, with instructions to integrate tougher language
into resolutions from the official vetting committee, succeeded in a
number of cases. This radicalized the policy on Social Assistance,
Post-Secondary tuition, the bitumen pipeline known as Line 9, the
Ontario Municipal Board, and nearly did so on Minimum Wage. The
rebellious feeling also produced a win for more time to debate Labour
issues. It led over 30 per cent to vote against acceptance of the
Provincial Secretary’s Report, a report that was clearly identified with
the failed election campaign.
By far the biggest upset to the establishment was the victory for Free
Post-Secondary Education, Abolish Student Debt—a long-standing Socialist
Caucus cause celebre. Sadly, the adopted free tuition policy was buried
by Horwath, and remains interred. In 2014, NDPers were looking for
change. But as Toronto Star columnist Martin Regg Cohn then wryly
observed, “New Democrats are sticking with their leader largely because
they are stuck with her.”
That was cold comfort for the Leader who pledged to change her ways. The
question is: What have we seen since then? Clearly, not enough to
justify a vote of confidence.
In the wake of mass sentiment for the ideas of Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie
Sanders, and the march of 4 million women against Donald Trump’s agenda
in January, there are plenty of reasons for the party and union left to
continue to press for a Workers’ Agenda.
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