A Crisis of Social Democracy: Organized Labour and the NDP in an Era ofNeoliberalism by Tim Fowler Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Department of Political Science BROCK UNIVERSITY St. Catharines, Ontario June 2008 JAMEs A GIBSON UBRARY BROCK UNIVERSITY sr. C'.AT,HA.RlNES CN Abstract The NDP was founded out of the ashes of the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation to cooperate with the Canadian Labour Congress to become the 'political arm of organized labour' in Canada. The NDP has long claimed they are the party which represents the policy goals of organized labour in Canada: that the NDP alone will fight for trade union rights, and will fight for Canadian workers. Divergent Paths is an examination ofthe links between the labour movement and the ND P in an era ofneo-liberalism. Provincial NDP governments have become increasingly neoliberal in their ideological orientation, and have often proved to be no friend to the labour movement when they hold office. The Federal party has never held power, nor have they ever formed the Official Opposition. This thesis charts the progress of the federal NDP as they become more neoliberal from 1988 to 2006, and shows how this trend effects the links between the NDP and labour. Divergent Paths studies each federal election from 1988 to 2006, looking at the interactions between Labour and the NDP during these elections. Elections provide critical junctions to study discourse - party platforms, speeches, and other official documents can be used to examine discourse. Extensive newspaper searches were used to follow campaign events and policy speeches. Studying the party's discourse can be used to determine the ideological orientation ofthe party itself: the fact that the party's discourse has become neoliberal is a sure sign that the party itself is neoliberal. The NDP continues to drive towards the centre of the political spectrum in an attempt to gain multi-class support. The NDP seems more interested in gaining seats at any cost, rather then promoting the agenda of Labour. As the party attempts to open up to more multi-class support, Labour becomes increasingly marginalised in the party. A rift which arguably started well before the 1988 election was exacerbated during that election; labour encouraged the NDP to campaign solely on the issue of Free Trade, and the NDP did not. The 1993 election saw the rift between the two grow even further as the Federal NDP suffered major blowbacks from the actions of the Ontario NDP. The 1997 and 2000 elections saw the NDP make a deliberate move to the centre of the political spectrum which increasingly marginalised labour. In the 2004 election, Jack Layton made no attempt to move the party back to the left; and in 2006 the link between labour and the NDP was perhaps irreparably damaged when the CAW endorsed the Liberal party in a strategic voting strategy, and the CLC did not endorse the NDP. The NDP is no longer a reliable ally of organized labour. The Canadian labour movement must decide wether the NDP can be 'salvaged' or if the labour movement should end their alliance with the NDP and engage in a new political project. Contents Aclmowledgements 1 Abbreviations 2 Tables 3 Introduction 4 Chapter One: Historical Background 21 Chapter Two. The 1988 Election 31 Chapter Three: The 1993 Election 48 Chapter Four: The 1997 Election 70 Chapter Five: The 2000 Election 84 Chapter Six: The 2004 Election 101 Chapter Seven: The 2006 Election 118 Conclusions 136 Appendix I: NDP Election Results 145 Appendix II: Unemployment and NDP Support 146 Appendix III: Labour's Financial Contributions to the NDP 147 Appendix IV: Federal NDP Structure 148 Bibliography 149 Newspapers Cited 154 1 Acknowledgements This project is very much the culmination of my interest with the NDP and the labour movement. My interest in this topic was largely sparked by Dan Crow. I would like to extend my thanks to my advisor, Garth Stevenson, and second reader, Larry Savage, for helping this project come together. Without the consistent help of the two, especially in helping me create a theoretical framework, this thesis would never have been completed. Professor Alan Whitehorn went out of his way to provide me access to his personal archives on the NDP; and helped focus my research direction early on. Lastly, I would like to thank Colin Anderson, David Fowler and Doug Pirko, all of whom copy-edited chapters for me. Any factual errors in this thesis are mine and mine alone. 2 Abbreviations ACN The Action Canada Network ACTRA Alliance of Canadian, Cinema, Television, and Radio Artists AFL Alberta Federation of Labour AUPE Alberta Union of Provincial Employees BC British Columbia BCFL British Columbia Federation of Labour BCGEU British Columbia Government Employees Union CAW The Canadian Autoworkers. (More formally National the Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation and General Workers Union of Canada) CCF Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (Farmer-Labour-Socialist) CEIU Canadian Employment and Immigration Union CEP Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union of Canada CLC Canadian Labour Congress CUPE Canadian Union of Public Employees CUPW Canadian Union of Postal Workers EI Employment Insurance EPC Election Planning Committee GCIU Graphic Communications International Union GST Goods and Services Tax IBEW International Brotherhood of Electric Workers ILWU International Longshore and Warehouse Union IAMAW International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers IWA Industrial, Wood and Allied Workers of Canada MP Member of Parliament NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NUPGE National Union of Public and General Employees NDP New Democratic Party NPI New Politics Initiative OFL Ontario Federation of Labour OPSEU Ontario Public Service Employees Union PSAC Public Service Alliance of Canada QFL The Quebec Federation of Labour SEIU Service Employees International Union SFL Saskatchewan Federation of Labour UAW United Autoworkers. Predecessor to the CAW. UFCW United Food and Commercial Workers UI Unemployment Insurance USWA United Steelworkers of America 3 Tables Table 1: Unionization Rates and NDP Popular Support 140 Table 2: NDP Seats Held 145 Table 3: NDP Popular Support 145 Table 4: Unemployment Rate and NDP Popular Support 146 Table 5: Financial Contributions to the NDP by Organized Labour 147 4 Introduction While Canada has had independent labour MPs, labour parties and labour progressives, the most electorally viable force for the labour movement has been the New Democratic Party (NDP). The NDP was the successor to the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), Canada's first electorally viable socialist party. While the CCF was openly socialist, it was not a labour party per se. Instead the CCF, and the NDP which followed, was a party which attempted to appeal to a broader electoral base: all left -leaning Canadians. In 1961 the CCF joined with the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) to form the NDP. The mandate ofthis new party was to act as the 'political arm of organized labour', and yet, the party was not an exclusive labour party. The NDP reached out to farmers, left wing academics, and others of the socialist stripe to form an electoral coalition on the left. The NDP has long claimed it is the party which represents the policy goals of organized labour in Canada: that the NDP alone will fight for trade union rights, and will fight for Canadian workers. While the institutional links between labour and the NDP were initially very strong, these links have weakened in an era of neoliberalism. This thesis examines the relationship between labour and the NDP in an era ofneoliberalism, particularly the federal wing of the party. Certain provincial wings of the party have been studied at length: there have been numerous books and articles written about the Ontario NDP1, and there lSee, for example, George Ehring & Wayne Roberts, Giving Away A Miracle: Lost Dreams, Broken Promises and the Ontario NDP; Stephen McBride, "If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up somewhere else" in William Carroll & R.S. Ratner, Challenges and Perils; chapter 8 in Leo Panitch & Donald Swartz, From Consent To Coercion, and Thomas Walkom, Rae Days: The Rise and Follies ofthe NDP. 5 has been some academic work published on the Manitoba NDP2, and there has been limited work done on the Federal party3. A general consensus found in recent works on the NDP suggests that the party has become increasingly neoliberal. In Rae Days: The Rise and Follies o/the NDP Thomas Walkom details the Rae regime in Ontario, and describes how the party shifted to the right almost immediately after being elected. While the Rae government introduced some limited reforms to the Ontario Labour Relations Act which benefitted labour, the Social Contract overshadowed these changes and managed to irrevocably damage the relations between the party and labour (See Chapter 3). Strains between organized labour and the NDP were not limited to Ontario. Perhaps the biggest indicator that Rae was taking the party in a rightward direction was his attempt to reach out to the business community in Ontario to assure them that the NDP would not be the heralds of socialism in Ontario.4 Under the leadership ofRomanow the Saskatchewan NDP made a strong move to the right, ignoring the SFL' s lobbying to remain attached to social democratic policies.5 The Saskatchewan NDP became increasingly neoliberal in both policy orientation and in practice. In Manitoba the NDP embraced policies and political priorities that were very similar to those of the Gary Filmon Conservatives.6 2See, for example, Joan Grace, "Challenges and Opportunities in Manitoba" in Carroll & Ratner; and Nelson Wiseman, Social Democracy in Manitoba: A History o/the CCFINDP. 3Desmond Morton, The New Democrats 1961 -1986: The Politics o/Change; Ian McLeod, Under Siege.