I’m a Canadian social democrat. An environmental crisis looms and the authoritarian hard right is leading by 20 points. What to do?
I never want to be the guy who has opinions about what another person should do. After all, I won’t be the one carrying the can on the consequences of whatever decision they take.
That said, I offer the following for consideration by anyone committed to Canadian social democracy.
1) Identity politics is an endlessly interesting, and important, analysis but was never meant to add up to a political program which is why it doesn’t. What it does do is take our eye off the two looming threats that matter before anything else, and this according to Naomi Klein herself: the environmental catastrophe and the degrading of liberal democracy the world over, a degrading that may make it impossible to respond to that catastrophe. (See her recent book, “Doppelganger”.)
2) “For too long, left-wing political parties have abandoned working-class, materialist politics in the pursuit of a cross-class majority that unites along false culture wars.” (Jennifer Hassum, Executive Director, Broadbent Institute -- Ottawa Citizen, Jan 30, 2023)
After the debacle that was the June 2022 election in Ontario, a senior NDP insider told the Toronto Star that, “We gave up the working class to get the chattering class. And we do great with the chattering class.” (TO Star, June 8, 2022)
This has to stop. It has reduced support for left-wing parties here and in Europe to the urban professional class that everyone has come to hate.
3) As part of his argument in favour of rearmament in the UK, George Monbiot wrote the other day that, “we are faced throughout our lives with a choice of consistencies. Either our values or our positions can remain unchanged, but not both. Consistently defending our values – such as opposition to imperialism, fascism and wars of aggression – demands that we should be ready to alter our assessments as the nature of these threats changes. I never thought I’d argue for rearmament. But a looming Trump presidency changes everything”. (The Guardian, July 4, 2024)
In my view, the federal NDP might “alter its assessments” as well and recognize that Pierre Poilievre poses a clear and present danger to liberal democracy as we’ve known it in this country since well before 1867 and think seriously about what to do in the face of that. I mean beyond slagging him the same way they slag Justin Trudeau.
It doesn’t cut it, I don’t think, to concentrate only on peeling as many votes off the Liberals as they can in next year’s election. Instead, they should be putting country ahead of party—according to the late Jim Laxer, that’s exactly what Jack Layton did not do when he and the party participated in the no-confidence vote in November 2005 that brought down Paul Martin’s Liberals—stop kvetching about Trudeau and billionaires and instead start thinking about creating a democracy front with the Liberals, the Bloc, the Green Party, and with responsible conservatives.
4) To that end, people on the left might read books by conservatives like Anne Applebaum (“Twilight of Democracy”, 2020) or the late, great Canadian Hugh Segal (“Beyond Greed — A Traditional Conservative Confronts Neoconservative Excess”, 1998) or listen to a guy like Jean Charest. If they did, they’d find out that these folks are liberal democrats to the core and have plenty to teach the left about the threat posed by the so-called Conservative Party of Canada.
But to find their way to politicians and thinkers like that, lefties first have to be able to distinguish between totally responsible people whose politics are to the right of centre and con artists. Which makes an “anyone-but-Poilievre” democracy front in the next election tough to imagine.
5) Recently, Canadian conservative David Frum wrote this: “Against the threat of Trump, Americans must save themselves. This most recent debate has taught the danger of spectatorship. The job of saving democracy from Trump will be done not by an old man on a gaudy stage, but by those who care that their democracy be saved. Biden’s evident frailties have aggravated that job and made it more difficult, but they have also clarified whose job it is. Not his. Yours.” (The Atlantic, June 28, 2024)
So maybe it really is up to average Canadians.
Personally, I think we need the kind of non-partisan, pro-liberal democracy street demonstrations like we saw in Germany earlier this year. What are the chances of that happening?
Well, we have a bi-election coming up in Lasalle-Émard-Verdun (south-west Montreal) where I live. I’m reasonably well-connected politically. But I got no takers when it comes to organizing against Poilievre. None. Everyone I know either refuses to put their partisan commitments aside for two friggin’ minutes, or has turned their back on the system completely. And this in spite of the fact that Poilievre polls more poorly in Québec than in any other province.
Maybe it’ll be me leafletting the métro stations on my own. My Greta Thunberg moment. If you see me, take a flyer. ;-)
Democracy’s like love. You can’t quite put your finger on what it is but everyone knows it’s all we need.
“Democracy may not exist but we’ll miss it when it’s gone.” – Astra Taylor (2019)
Ok. Biden’s out. Now what? Your thoughts are anxiously anticipated. The Laughing Ironist.
Un texte très convaincant pour encourager la démocratie et montrer le chemin à prendre. Merci !