The much-touted Canadian Labour Congress (CLC)-sponsored New Democratic Party leadership forum in Ottawa, on Wednesday, October 22, would have been a bland and predictable affair were it not for one candidate’s risky and bold policy proposals.
That candidate was Avi Lewis.
The Ottawa event was the second time the five candidates spoke from the same platform. The first occasion was far from the national spotlight: in Nanaimo, BC, earlier in October.
The CLC forum could have been an opportunity for a significant measure of national media coverage for the party.
But – bad luck for the NDP – Prime Minister Carney gave a major televised speech on the same night. It was part of Carney’s effort to manage public expectations in advance of the über-austerity budget his finance minister will table on November 4.
The Prime Minister’s TV show quite effectively upstaged the NDP aspirants’ performances.
One aspirant strayed from the this-is-who-I-am script
The CLC-sponsored forum was not, in any way, a debate.
In a room at Ottawa’s posh Westin Hotel, CLC president Bea Bruske did separate ten-minute question-and-answer sessions with each of the candidates.
There was no opportunity for the candidates to exchange with each other, nor to answer questions from the enthusiastic, if small, audience in the room.
For the most part, the candidates used the occasion to introduce themselves to Canadians, perhaps for the second or third time.
Their messages were overwhelmingly autobiographical, with a dash of the right kind of progressive rhetoric thrown in for good measure.
The only candidate who focused more on policy than on his own biography was BC-based activist and filmmaker Avi Lewis.
Lewis has successfully opened a national conversation about his proposal that the federal government create a “public option” in the wholesale food industry.
In the conversation with Bea Bruske he added that he is also proposing similar public options for mobile telephone services and for housing.
Lewis was the only candidate who spoke French, and, in that language, he blamed Canada’s high degree of corporate concentration for the cost of living which, he said “is exploding everywhere in Canada”.
He pointed out how five major grocery chains, five large national banks, and three telecommunications giants control much of this country’s market place. They take advantage of the current economic difficulties, he added, by setting prices that are punishingly high for the average Canadian.
Lewis will release more details of his policy proposals shortly and make them available online. For now, he explained to Bea Bruske that he would finance his proposed public sector initiatives through a wealth tax on the very richest of the rich.
McPherson does not back down on “purity tests”
As she did at her campaign launch, the only sitting MP in the race, Edmonton’s Heather McPherson talked about her inclusive and welcoming family.
She reminded the audience and online viewers that her father was a truck driver, a bona fide member of the blue-collar working class. Her mother was an old-school homemaker, and at their family dinner table “everyone was welcome.”
That’s the model, McPherson argued, the NDP should follow.
“We need to meet people where they are,” she said, “and talk to them about the issues that are important to them.”
At her campaign launch, the Edmonton MP offended a number of other NDPers, notably her fellow MP Leah Gazan, when she decried what she characterized as New Democratic “purity tests”.
Gazan and others have pointed out that the term “purity tests” is associated with the U.S. far right. Right-wingers use it as a dog-whistle term for diversity and inclusion efforts.
When reporters asked McPherson about her use of that possibly offensive terminology, she did not back down. Instead, she repeated her mantra about the NDP having to be more inclusive.
A longshore worker, a farmer and an Indigenous social worker
BC union leader Rob Ashton has engendered much interest and favourable press since declaring his candidacy. He openly says he is not yet ready to enunciate any policies he might champion. He wants those to emerge out of conversations with NDP supporters and members, and other Canadians.
He is selling himself as an actual worker, unlike the leaders of Canada’s two largest parties.
“Pierre Poilievre is not a worker,” he told Bruske. “Nor is Mark Carney not a politician.”
He adds: “We’re in a class war. It’s the ruling class versus the working class. We have to be loud about it, and we have to rally the troops.”
Organic farmer Tony McQuail, from Ontario’s Huronia region, has run for the New Democrats, federally and provincially, seven times. He wants to link together the fight for effective democracy, for the planet earth and for economic and social justice.
He denounces a consumer-focused economy and the high and the growing degree of inequality, and believes a proportional electoral system would produce a parliament more ready to deal with these challenges than the current one.
McQuail was the only candidate to talk about the challenges and threats of artificial intelligence (AI).
We have to worry, he said, both about the huge environmental footprint of AI and about who controls the AI – currently mega-corporations based outside of Canada.
Tanille Johnston, a social worker and city councillor for Campbell River in Vancouver Island, is the only Indigenous candidate. She talks about her experiences as a humanistic social worker, inspired by the writings of bell hooks, and of her background in student politics.
“As someone who grew up in student politics, as an Indigenous person, and as a woman,” she said, “I feel that I am in a position to build this party.”
Johnston’s one concrete policy proposal is for the party, not for the Canadian government. If she were to become leader, she said, on day one she would move to make NDP memberships free.
“If you want to grow the party, we need more people. We need to make it more accessible. We need to not have a paywall.”
Using Heather McPherson’s phrase, Johnston said: “If we want more people to come to the table, open the door!”
Policy was in short supply, except for Lewis
In the end, on this evening, it was Avi Lewis who had the boldest, most provocative and most interesting presentation.
He insistently said this race should not be about anyone’s biography or identity. It should be about tangible and meaningful policy ideas.
“I’m taking big swings,” he said, “and putting out some very clear solutions that are actually as big as the crises we face.”
He admitted not everyone agrees with the solutions he is proposing, but added:
“The NDP should be putting forward ideas, not just the right words, carefully chosen. It is a time of desperation when Fascism is rising – and not just in the authoritarian government south of the border.”
The current economic crisis, Lewis explained, creates fertile conditions for the far-right’s facile and hate-filled nostrums.
Progressives have to confront those false promises with straight talk and serious, workable alternatives – alternative policies that will give anxious and angry people real hope.
The next time the candidates meet it will be an actual debate, where the candidates will talk to each other and not only a moderator.
That will happen in Montreal on November 27 – unless of course we get an election call before them.
As the great jazz pianist and composer Fats Waller put it:
