Someday, they’ll hold an election and no one will come — and maybe it will be the current NDP leadership race.
As you will no doubt be aware, the starting gun was fired at the start of the month, with the finishing line scheduled for the end of March next year.
So far though, only one fringe candidate, the perennial gadfly Yves Engler, has declared. He may be vetoed by the party brass if they resolve that he does not comply with the “principles and core values of the party.”
Engler is campaigning on a platform to abolish capitalism, “de-grow” the economy and remove former justice minister Irwin Cotler’s Order of Canada over his support for Israel.
His modus operandi is to ambush public figures and ask if they support genocide in Gaza.
Former immigration minister
Marc Miller got Engler’s full measure
after being chased by Engler through the parliamentary precinct in Ottawa.
“This is all about you. There’s no substance. You’re a huckster and you know it,” Miller said.
An even more
took place with David Menzies (a.k.a. “The Menzoid”) of Rebel News during the election in April.
“Do you support killing Palestinian children?” Engler asked.
“Do you support the events of October 7th?” Menzies parried.
“I asked you a simple question,” said Engler.
“Who are you?” asked Menzies.
Engler’s conclusion was that the left-wing media needs to up its game to match the theatrical stunts pulled by its right-wing counterparts.
“How is someone like The Menzoid outdoing us?” he wrote, in wonder.
Engler is hoping that he can pull off the same kind of metamorphosis — from fringe performer to mainstream disruptor — that we saw with
Zohran Mamdani in New York’s mayoral race
. Engler noted that Mamdani’s victory to become the Democratic nominee was, in part, due to vocal criticism of Israel.
No one has been as engaged in this issue as Engler, to the point he was charged by Montreal police with intimidation, harassment, harassing communication and interference against an officer in February, in a case involving a pro-Israeli social media personality (the first two charges have since been dropped).
His X feed is a mix of Bolshevik-style propaganda posters, featuring slogans like: “Capitalism can’t be fixed,” and internet memes such as a headstone engraved with the legend: “Death, Death, to the IDF” (Israel Defense Forces).
Fortunately for the NDP, more substantive candidates look set to emerge.
Heather McPherson, the MP for Edmonton Strathcona, is said to be collecting signatures of support, as is Avi Lewis, the broadcaster and twice-failed parliamentary candidate.
McPherson, the NDP’s foreign affairs critic in the last parliament, is also a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, pushing a successful motion to stop sending weapons to Israel. She was reprimanded in the House last year for wearing a Palestinian lapel pin and likening it to a Remembrance Day poppy.
But, unlike Engler, she is not calling for the closure of the oilsands and even supported the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
Lewis, a former broadcaster for CBC and Al Jazeera, is the scion of NDP royalty. His father, Stephen, was former leader of the Ontario New Democrats, while grandfather, David, was once a federal leader. Lewis lost bids to win seats in the House in 2021 and in this year’s election. But his most memorable
intervention on the federal scene was the 2015 Leap Manifesto
that sought to shift the party leftward, introducing a moratorium on fossil fuel development, bringing in a universal basic income, cutting military spending and committing to 100 per cent clean energy by 2050.
Like the customers of Henry Ford’s Model T who could have any colour they liked as long as it was black, NDP members have a choice between very left, unelectably left and loonie left.
The inevitable rejoinder is: what is the NDP, if not left-wing?
But this is a strain of social democracy that is unrecognizable to many traditional New Democrats, particularly men.
At the party’s convention in 2023, the co-chair told delegates that there were priority rules for speaking. People facing “systemic barriers and discrimination” received yellow cards and were allowed to speak first. White men were at the back of the line.
Similarly,
the voting rules for the leadership have been skewed
in ludicrous fashion. Each candidate needs to pay an entry fee of $100,000 and secure 500 signatures from party members, at least half of which must be from “female-identified” members. Another 100 must be from other equity-seeking groups, including Indigenous Canadians, LGBTQIA2S+, people with disabilities and those from visible minority communities.
The United Steelworkers were one of the few unions that stuck with the NDP in the last election, but how many union members are onside with this nonsense?
This is a real problem for the New Democrats. As recently as 2021, 13 per cent of male voters supported the NDP. In this year’s election, polling by the Angus Reid Institute suggested this had fallen as low as four per cent.
This has important implications for the whole country. The NDP won 6.3 per cent of the vote; if it had won 10 per cent of the vote in April — an extra 700,000 votes — Pierre Poilievre would likely be the Conservative prime minister now.
With Prime Minister Mark Carney governing like a Conservative, there should be opportunities for an NDP revival among voters upset at the Liberal policy on ending the carbon tax and pausing the electric vehicle mandate.
But whoever wins will have a big job convincing blue-collar men that the NDP is still the party of the worker.
The New Democrats are at a crossroads. On current evidence, one path leads to further marginalization; the other, to electoral oblivion.
Let’s hope they choose wisely.
National Post
