Tories routed in mixed vote
PERHAPS the only comfort for the former ruling Conservatives (or
Tories) is that they were not the only party to be humiliated in the recent federal election. The social democratic NDP saw its share of the vote fall from 20.4 to 6.9%. To whom then did the voters turn?
International Viewpoint #251 December 1993 electing a new leader, Kim Campbell. Her star rose only briefly. She told Canadians not to expect an improvement in employment till the end of the century and that a forty-seven day election campaign was not the right time to discuss major changes to social programmes. Using hopelessly opti-
HAROLD LAVENDER* — Vancouver, 14 November 1993
V
OTERS delivered a very mixed and contradictory message in Canada's 25 October federal election. On the one hand, they kicked out a much hated rightwing Conservative government who took only two seats out of a possible 295 — the worst setback for any government in Canadian history. At the same time, the New Democratic Party (NDP), a social democratic party with ties to the trade unions, suffered its worst result ever.
Instead, voters turned to the Liberal Party (which won a majority government by taking 177 of the 295 seats), the Bloc Québécois and the Reform Party. The Liberals, returning to office after nine years of Conservative rule, took 41% of the popular vote. They scored a major victory in Atlantic Canada and in Ontario, taking 98 of the 99 Ontario seats.
The bourgeois nationalist Bloc Québécois fielded candidates only in Québec, where they took 54 of the 75 seats. They took 49.5% of the popular vote in Québec (65% among Québec's francophone majority). In the rest of Canada, a campaign of fear and anger against the Bloc is well
The Reform Party, a populist party of the hard right with a very strong, if slightly coded, racist appeal, won 52 seats, scoring a breakthrough in its western regional base of Alberta and British Columbia. From fringe party status with 2% of the vote, the Reform Party has risen to be the third largest party in Parliament, winning 19% of the popular vote (25% of the vote outside Québec, where it ran no candidates).
The results show a trend towards the breakdown of "national" parties due to the rise of Québec nationalism and also strong regional differences and animosities.
Why were the Conservatives routed? The ongoing economic crisis was a major factor. The Conservatives failed to convince voters that the government deficit was the overriding issue. Public concern about jobs was even higher. The official unemployment rate has remained persistently high, over ten percent, while popular living standards have stagnated and the poor have been getting poorer. The Conservatives were the architects of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement. But the promised benefits have not materialised. Hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs (often unionised) have been lost as the Canadian economy has been massively restructured. There are widespread fears that this trend will continue if the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is put into effect.
### Deep insecurity
Statisticians tell us that Canada is now recovering from the recession which ravaged Ontario at the beginning of the 1990s. But the recovery has not seen an increase in employment. A deep climate of insecurity has settled over the working population. Fifty percent of workers express the fear that they could lose their jobs.
During their nine years in office, the Conservatives substantially raised taxes on individuals, topping it off with the enormously unpopular Goods and Services Tax. The corporate share of the tax burden continued its downward spiral. While taxes on working people were rising, social programmes and government services were slashed. The first steps were taken towards ending universal social benefits — a cornerstone of Canada's welfare state since the Second World War. Unemployment insurance was restricted. At the same time, the government found 5.8 billion Canadian dollars for state of the art EH-101 military helicopters.
The Conservatives hoped to make voters forget the hard times associated with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney by mistic economic forecasts the Conservatives said that they could eliminate the deficit by 1998 without slashing social services. Many voters turned to the Liberal Party in the vain hope that they would save the welfare state. Others turned to the rightwing Reform Party who were offering a more overtly ruthless plan to eliminate the deficit.
The last two Conservative majorities had rested on a kind of de facto alliance between pro-free trade Québec nationalists, who believed the Conservatives more open to constitutional reform than the Liberals, and voters in the west. However, Mulroney's plans for constitutional change were resoundingly defeated in the 1992 referendum? and Conservative support in Québec overwhelmingly defected to the Bloc Québécois, while in the west it rallied to the Reform Party.
The tidal wave of popular anger that swept away the Conservatives also hit the NDP as well. They now have nine seats, fewer than the number needed for official recognition as a party in the House of Commons (parliament). Their share of the popular vote fell from 20.4 to 6.9%.
Since its founding as a labour party in 1961, the NDP has had a fairly stable base within the working class outside Québec. In federal elections, its vote varied between thirteen and twenty percent. But it never made a lasting breakthrough in Québec due to its strong federalism and hostility to the national aspirations of the Québécois. This year it got under two percent of the vote in Québec, down from fourteen
While a number of factors contributed to the NDP collapse, perhaps the most
* The author is a member of the section of the Fourth International in the Canadian State, Socialist Challenge/Gauche Socialiste.
1. The North American Free Trade Agreement is the new trade alliance between Canada, Mexico and the United States of America.
2. The overall result in the 1992 referendum was 54.4% opposed to the proposed constitutional changes and 44.6% in favour. For a more detailed examination of these results, particularly in Québec itself, see R Krishnan, 'Referendum results prolong instability, International Viewpoint, no 238, 9 November 1992.
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Our correspondent explains. CANADA
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International Viewpoint #251 December 1993 important was the unpopularity of their provincial governments in Ontario and British Columbia (BC). Opposition from rightwing voters is to be expected, but the NDP has managed to create high levels of cynicism and disarray in its own social
The Ontario NDP government, capitulating to ruling class deficit hysteria, launched a frontal assault on workers in the broad public sector. They ripped up existing collective agreements to impose "social contract" legislation on 950 thousand public sector workers, including cutbacks in services, pay and working conditions valued at 9 billion dollars. Despite hot rhetoric, the unions failed to mount an effective fightback. Many workers continue to feel bitter and betrayed.
The BC provincial government has not attacked unions directly, although it legislated striking teachers back to work. However, it has raised taxes while cutting back on education and health care. Taking up the banner of the rightwing, it is now launching a crackdown on "welfare
Perhaps its most disgraceful capitulation was to the forest multi-nationals. It by-passed its own planning process to permit logging in Clayoquot Sound, one of the most important tracts of ancient temperate rainforest left in the world, and despite the fact that native peoples have an unsettled claim to this land. The net result was the arrest this summer of eight-hundred people who attempted to block logging roads into the forest and now face gaol sentences for criminal contempt of court. The conflict has torn apart the NDP's social base, greatly reducing support for both provincial and federal wings of the
The NDP's federal leadership failed to stave off looming disaster by repudiating the rightwing policies of NDP provincial governments. In a terribly misjudged response to Ontario's "social contract" legislation, it merely reaffirmed its support for collective bargaining and collective agreements. Ontario federal Member of Parliament, Steve Langdon, who did speak out in an open letter to the province's Premier, Bob Rae, won more votes than other NDP candidates in Ontario - but still lost his seat. In contrast, in BC, Svend Robinson, a gay man, outspoken advocate on issues of social justice, and who stood on the Clayoquot blockades, was re-elected, receiving more votes than any other NDP candidate.
Rather than suffering for being too outspoken and leftwing, the federal NDP suffered because it gave people virtually no reason to resist voting tactically to oust the hated Conservatives.
Liberal leader Jean Chretien ran a very clever campaign aimed at stealing working class votes from the NDP. The Liberal message of "Hope, Jobs and Economic Recovery" was writ large, while its plans for deficit reduction were not. They sounded progressive when they campaigned to scrap the helicopter deal, and by calling for re-negotiation of the NAFTA they appeased critics of the deal without raising business fears.
In congratulating Chretien for his victory, American President Bill Clinton commented on the "remarkable similarity" between Chretien's campaign and his own.
Last ditch lobby
The new Liberal government moved quickly to consolidate its support, in particular by beginning to halt the controversial helicopter deal, despite a furious last ditch lobby by defence contractors. The Conservatives' plans to transfer responsibility for immigration to a "super" Department of Public Security have also been reversed. Further, the new government has declared that it will not sign the NAFTA, already passed by the Conservatives, unless it is renegotiated.
Nonetheless, the Globe and Mail, the leading big business newspaper, welcomed the Liberal cabinet, hailing it as "The Right Stuff". Chretien has given the major economic portfolios to rightwing Liberals. An ardent free trader will be in charge of future trade negotiations.
The business community hopes to have a sympathetic ear for its demands for deep cuts in the deficit, no new taxes and cutbacks in social programmes. Indeed the Minister of Intergovernmental Services, Marcel Masse, has already indicated that the Liberals plan to make major cuts in public service jobs.
Despite enormous unpopularity, the Conservative government was able to impose its agenda. The Liberals have no intention of reversing history. Corporate profits have started to rise, while wage demands are falling. In a climate of immense economic insecurity, trade unionists are reluctant to strike. The government estimates that work days lost due to strikes will fall to the lowest level in fifty
The Mulroney government's project to take the Québec national question off the political agenda through a constitutional deal turned to ashes when voters in Québec and the rest of Canada voted "No" in the 1992 constitutional referendum. Québec's francophone majority massively rejected a deal which would have given
Québec a new symbolic status as a "distinct society" but little else, and fell far short of the demands of the Québec nationalists. The rest of Canada said "No" for a wide variety of reasons, some progressive but many reactionary, including the false but widespread perception that the deal gave too much to Québec.
The simultaneous rise of the Bloc Québécois and the Reform Party confirms that there is no possibility of a renewed federalism that could accommodate Québec. There are two political alternatives: the old federalism of the Trudeau Liberals (Chretien was part of the Trudeau government that moved toward a strong central government in Ottawa); or a rupture with the existing federal system and the creation of a new relationship between some form of sovereign Québec and Canada.
Radical forces, including the Québec labour federations, favour full independence, while the dominant bourgeois nationalist forces favour what is called "sovereignty-association", an arrangement that could look very much like the European Economic Community. The Bloc Québécois and it leader, Lucien Bouchard, emphasise the virtues of a common currency and customs unions, indicating that they are perhaps more inclined towards "association" than "sovereignty".
However, while deliberately misleading, the Bloc is portrayed particularly in the west, as hard-core separatist. Indeed, one leading western newspaper ran a front-page story about the Bloc Québécois leader Lucien Bouchard under the headline, "The man who would break up Cana-
The broad Québec nationalist bloc has come to favour a three-stage approach: Elect Bloc Québécois members to the federal parliament in Ottawa to represent the real interests of Québec until Québec democratically votes for sovereignty. Then, elect the Parti Québécois in a Québec provincial election next year. Third, follow through with the Parti Quebecois' current promise to hold a referendum on sovereignty within a year of taking office. Within Québec there are widespread hopes and illusions that sovereignty is fast
But there are some glaring contradictions. What will the Bloc do in Ottawa, given that it is now the official opposition in the federal parliament? Lucien Bouchard is promising to act very responsibly, and deal seriously with common issues like jobs. His non-confrontational approach is aimed at allaying fears in the rest of Canada and perhaps above all in Washington. Such an approach underestimates the fact that any bid for sovereignty will
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The shift to the right
THE election campaign demonstrated how far ruling class politics have moved to the right. Deficit reduction dominated media coverage. Only the issue of unemployment successfully broke through the rightwing agenda.
International Viewpoint #251 December 1993 the bourgeois nationalist leadership in Québec could quickly lead to setbacks and a temporary ebb of the national question), that within the next few years people in the rest of Canada could be faced with a fundamental choice. To accept a Czech solution — a peaceful "divorce" into two
Women's rights were ignored by the mainstream. The National Action Committee on the Status of Women ran an anti-Conservative campaign but was shunted off to the sidelines and had far less dramatic impact than its call for a progressive "No" in the
1992 referendum. Similarly, native people's rights, which were central in the 1992 constitutional talks, were virtually ignored (however, the Liberals quietly wooed native leaders on the sidelines, such as Elijah Harper, who detected from the NDP and was elected as a Liberal). The ever-increasing plight of Canada's poor was a non-starter.
Struggles against racism and for environmental issues were also largely confined to
The military helicopter contract certainly was an issue. But overall, there was little discussion about foreign policy, although the Liberals promised they would pursue a more independent line while continuing to maintain good relations with the United States of
America. Canada's overall role in United Nations peace-keeping missions in Somalia,
Bosnia and Haiti was neither debated nor challenged, despite an ongoing scandal about the involvement of the Canadian military in murder and cover-up in Somalia. * almost inevitably lead to a confrontation.
The election results show that the rest of
Canada is in no mood to respond favourably to Québec. Preston Manning of the
Reform Party favours what he calls a "new federalism". This, it is said, would mean absolute formal equality of individuals and provinces. It is however, a schema that is completely hostile to any form of special status for Québec or special rights for native peoples or minority groups. In short, it is a coded appeal to the worst anti-Québec chauvinism.
Racist fears
Similarly, Manning wants to eliminate official bi-lingualism and federal funding for multi-culturalism, taking away any
"special rights" and services for the francophone minority in the rest of Canada and Canada's many immigrant communities. He favours cutting immigration in half, pandering to racist fears that the country is being overrun with non-white immigrants.
Manning wants to supplant the
Conservatives as the main party of the rightwing - and be Prime Minister in waiting if the Liberals' economic promises turn to ruins. He believes that the current political climate will cultivate a favourable basis for more overtly rightwing solutions to the questions of deficit, law and order, immigration and Québec.
Supporters of self-determination for
Québec and native peoples face a daunting task. On paper, the situation does not appear so bad given that a number of organisations and movements are nominally in favour. The Canadian Labour Congress supports Québec's right to self-determina-
10 tion, as does the NDP and, indeed, the Conservatives.
However, support for the right of self-determination quickly evaporates when it is fully defined: the right of the people of Québec to freely choose their own destiny, up to and including independence, without any outside interference, economic blackmail or threats of force.
The reaction of Ontario's NDP provincial Premier, Bob Rae, to the rise of the Bloc Québécois, indicates the magnitude of the problem. On 29 October, Rae vowed to confront the policies of Lucien Bouchard at every level. Rae said: "If his vision is realised, he's going to hurt us. He's going to hurt all of Canada terribly... In my view, he's getting a free ride. Here's a guy who wants to break up the country. He's going to cost Québec tens of thousands of jobs. People are going to lose money and income." Rae added, "I think he (Bouchard) is deluding himself if he thinks that the rest of the country is going to sit back with some quiet resignation and accept the break up of the country. I don't
Similarly, during the campaign Mel Hurtig, the leader of the National Party, which appeals to some anti-free trade left-leaning Canadian nationalists, pledged to "get tough with the Bloc Québécois".
During the election, Socialist Challenge supporters emphasised that people in the rest of Canada should not be worried by the possibility of Québec independence, but rather that none of the major party leaders, Chretien, Campbell, McLaughlin3 nor Manning appear to have learned anything from the situation in Bosnia.
It is conceivable, although very far from certain (given that the limitations of nations; or run the risk of a Bosnian solution - in which military force is used either to prevent Québec becoming independent or to carve up the territory of an independent Québec.
The leadership of the Bloc and Parti Québécois hope to achieve some form of sovereignty and re-association in a cold businesslike manner. But they ignore the Liberals' history in office. In October 1970, Pierre Trudeau used political kidnappings by the Québec Liberation Front (FLQ) as a pretext to impose the War Measures Act suspending civil liberties. Canadian troops were sent on to the streets of Montreal and radical Québec nationalists were rounded up.
Is Canada's ruling class voluntarily willing to surrender a quarter of its population and resources and an integral part of its territory? Moves towards Quebec sovereignty certainly will be countered by economic blackmail, threats, intimidation and refusals to negotiate.
Only voice?
The fate of the NDP now hangs in the balance. Some believe, perhaps with naive optimism, that the situation can return to normal. They believe that traditional NDP voters will return as the Liberals show that they are no different from the Conservatives, and as NDP members stand up as the only voice for social justice in the federal parliament. But others believe that if the NDP does not change course, it will die.
Rethinking could lead in quite different directions. The rightwing of the party feels it is now time to dump the NDP's ties to the unions. Other voices call for the NDP to dump its rightwing leadership. Steve Langdon has publically called on Bob Rae to step down. Others talk about going back to the grass roots and rebuilding the NDP as a populist party involved in extra-parliamentary movements.
Rebuilding the NDP as a labour party will require an active commitment by Party and union leaderships. But when Canadian Labour Congress President, Bob White, hails the triumph of the Liberals as a victory for the working class one wonders how committed the labour bureaucracy is to the NDP. Is it preparing to make its peace with the Liberals?
3. Audrey McLaughlin is the leader of the NDP.
Ontario unions in rift with
Bob Rae
THE Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) Convention held in Toronto in November, and attended by 1600 delegates, resulted in unprecedented scenes.
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International Viewpoint #251 December 1993
Views are mixed among labour movement activists. Some believe it is still important to try to reform the NDP and reclaim it. Others, notably in Ontario, aspire to build a new labour party. Still others feel that the labour movement should concentrate on rebuilding itself, making alliances with other progressive
Public sector workers in the OPSEU, CUPE and PSAC, angry at social contract cutbacks, layoffs and contract stripping, decided in caucuses the night before forces, and that electoral politics should the Convention to demand a toughening-up of the OFL Document #1, "Labour's not have priority (tacitly leaving the field relationship with the New Democratic Party when the NDP is in government."
open to the Liberals).
Nothing good is likely to result
Just prior to the key debate the following afternoon Bob Rae loyalist union leawithout a mass-based fightback
— a fightders led delegates from the private sector's steelworkers, CEP, UFCW and back by the unions on the economic level,
SEIU from the hall. In a joint statement they declared, "We will not campaign a fightback against cutbacks in public seragainst MPPs (Members of Provincial Parliament)... We will work to re-elect vices and a fightback against the rising tide of racism and chauvinism. *
However, autoworkers, construction workers and other private sector delegates joined with the public sector workers in passing an amendment that the OFL will not support the NDP at the next provincial election unless the NDP government repeals Bill 48. The walk-out was staged because the Bob Rae loyalists knew
...and on the left that the amendment could not be defeated. Later that afternoon the OFL Secretary-Treasurer, Julie Davis, announced that she would resign as President of the
SOCIALIST Challenge/Gauche
Socialiste, the section of the Fourth
Immediately following the convention, an NDP union caucus was held, in prepa-
International in the Canadian State, ration for the following day's Ontario NDP Provincial Council meeting. The cauadvocated a vote for the NDP as a cus was dominated by private sector union delegates fresh from the convention.
labour party in English Canada, while
Most expressed opposition to any challenge to the Rae leadership or incumbent categorically rejecting any support for
NDP MPPs. At the Provincial Council a demand for an Ontario NDP convention the bourgeois parties. In Québec, earlier than that scheduled for October 1994 was defeated. As this is only six
Gauche Socialiste, which in previous months before when the Provincial election is expected, Bob Rae and his politifederal elections had supported the cal team are unlikely to be deposed then and therefore there is a real risk of
NDP, this time rejected such a call because of the federal Party's manifest hostility to the national aspirations
Will the OFL adhere to the amendment to Document #1 and "ensure that the of the Québécois. They also rejected sixty-six members of the NDP caucus that supported Bill 48 are challenged at any support for the Bloc Québécois, nomination meetings"? or "develop broad based coalitions", "shift (its) resources which despite its current overwhelto grass roots mobilisation" and "build a strong community based social moveming support within the Québécois ment linking users and providers of services"?
working class, remains very much a
What will unionists do, in the light of Bob Rae's re-stated intention to maintain Bill bourgeois party.
The Vancouver branch of Socialist
What if the view of the private sector delegates also prevails within the Party?
Challenge backed the candidacy of
Will Offley in Vancouver East. It was
For those who believe in a mass working class socialist alternative, there now an opportunity to promote socialist appears little choice but to begin to build a new labour party. Barry Weisleder * ideas at a time when they are almost invisible. Over twenty-thousand
* Bill 48 is a so-called social contract that involves public sector cuts in Ontario amounting to C$ 9 billion.
See B Weisleder, 'Contract is a "con-trick", International Viewpoint, no. 248, September 1993.
copies of an election platform were distributed, calling for a thirty-hour week with no loss of pay, jobs for all, cancellation of the national debt and defence of Québec's right to self- determination. While the campaign took place during a period of demobilisation it was able to solidarise with protests against the gaoling of the
Clayoquot Sound protesters. It also promoted left unity and organised a successful public meeting of the
Socialist Challenge, Communist
Party, Communist League* and
Green Party candidates, attended by over seventy-five people. *
* The Communist League is politically aligned with the American Socialist Workers' Party.
Ontario's NDP government."
Ontario NDP.
defeat in 1995.
1994
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