The NDP is noted for its populist, agrarian and democratic socialist roots, its close affiliation with organized labour, and, while the party is secular and pluralistic, it has a longstanding relationship with the Christian left and the Social Gospel movement, particularly the United Church of Canada. The federal leader of the NDP is Jack Layton.
The NDP has never formed the federal government, but has wielded considerable influence during federal minority governments, such as in the recently dissolved 38th Parliament. In addition future Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau was a supporter of the party in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but entered politics as a Liberal.
Provincial New Democratic Parties, technically sections of the federal party, have governed several provinces and a territory. They currently govern the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, form the Official Opposition in British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Yukon, and have sitting members in every provincial legislature except those of Quebec and Prince Edward Island. In previous terms, they have formed governments in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia, and in Yukon territory.
New Democrats are also active municipally, and have been elected mayors, councillors, and school and service board members — Toronto mayor David Miller is a leading example. Like most municipal office-holders in Canada, they are usually elected as independents or with autonomous municipal parties.
History
The NDP was created in 1961 as a merger of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). Tommy Douglas, the long-time CCF Premier of Saskatchewan, was elected the party’s first leader. In 1960, before the NDP was officially registered, one candidate, Walter Pitman, won a by-election under the New Party banner.
The influence of organized labour on the party is still reflected in the party’s leadership elections as labour votes are scaled to 25% of the total number of ballots cast. Until 1983, the basic statement of principles of the party was embodied in the Winnipeg Declaration, which had been passed by the CCF in 1956.
Under the leadership of David Lewis (1971-1975), the NDP supported the minority government formed by Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals from 1972 to 1974, although the two parties never entered into a coalition. Together they succeeded in passing many left-wing initiatives into law, including pension indexing and the creation of a nationalized oil and gas company, Petro-Canada.
The party under Ed Broadbent
Under the leadership of Ed Broadbent (1975-1989), the NDP played a critical role during Joe Clark’s minority government of 1979-1980, moving the no-confidence motion on John Crosbie’s budget that brought down the Progressive Conservative government, and forced the election that brought Trudeau’s Liberal Party back to power.
In number of seats, the federal NDP reached its apogee with 43 Members of Parliament (MPs) in the election of 1988. The Conservatives, however, won a second majority. In 1989, Broadbent stepped down after 15 years as federal leader of the NDP, although he has recently returned from retirement, and won election to Parliament in the riding of Ottawa Centre in the 2004 election.
Declining popularity
Over three election cycles, under the leadership of Audrey McLaughlin (1989-1995) — the first woman to be leader of a national political party in Parliament — in the first, and Alexa McDonough (1995-2003) over the next two, the party underwent a marked decline in popularity, a modest resurgence, and a slight further decline. Among other factors, the unpopularity of Bob Rae’s provincial NDP government in Ontario hurt the federal party’s fortunes. In the 1993 election, in which it won only 9 seats, it lost official party status in the House of Commons. Twelve MPs are required by the rules of the House of Commons for official party status. This status was regained in the 1997 election, in which 21 New Democrats were elected.
The party embarked in a renewal process starting in 2000. A general convention in Winnipeg in November 2001 made significant alterations to certain party structures, and reaffirmed its commitment to the left. In the May 2002 by-elections, Brian Masse won the riding of Windsor West in Windsor, Ontario, previously held for decades by a Liberal, former Deputy Prime Minister Herb Gray.
Alexa McDonough announced her resignation as party leader for family reasons in June 2002, and was succeeded by Jack Layton. Layton, a former Toronto city councillor, was elected at the party’s leadership election in Toronto on January 25, 2003, defeating his nearest rival, longtime MP Bill Blaikie, on the first ballot with 53.5% of the vote. Layton did not seek a seat in the House of Commons until the 2004 election.
Recent developments
In the 2004 election, the NDP won the third largest number of votes, behind the Conservative Party of Canada and the Liberal Party of Canada. The party gained five seats in the election, for a total of 19. The NDP won fewer seats than the Bloc Québécois, though, whose smaller portion of the overall popular vote was concentrated in Quebec ridings. The party was also bitterly disappointed to see its two Saskatchewan incumbents defeated by the Conservatives, both in close races. Those losses caused the federal NDP to be shut out in Saskatchewan for the first time since the 1968 election, despite obtaining 23% of the vote in the province.
The Liberals were re-elected to the 38th Canadian parliament, though this time as a minority government. The number of seats needed to form a majority government in the 2004 election was 154, exactly one more than the total resulting Liberal and NDP count. The election of a Speaker, the fact that the Liberal caucus has lost three members since the election, and the decision of Bev Desjarlais to leave the NDP have further decreased this total. As has been the case with Liberal minority governments in the past, the NDP may be in a position to make gains on the party’s priorities, such as fighting health care privatization, fulfilling Canada’s obligation to the Kyoto Protocol, and electoral reform.
Despite the disappointing results, the party took maximum advantage of Prime Minister Paul Martin’s politically precarious position with the sponsorship scandal which prompted him to make a rare televised appeal to the electorate and the opposition to allow the Gomery Commission to make its full report on the affair before any election. The NDP reacted by offering their support for the Liberal Party, provided that some major concessions in the federal budget were ceded to in the NDP’s favor. The governing Liberals agreed to support the changes in exchange for NDP support on confidence votes. On May 19, 2005, by Speaker Peter Milliken’s tie-breaking vote, the House of Commons voted for second reading on major NDP amendments to the federal budget, preempting about $4.5 billion in corporate tax cuts and funding social, educational and environmental programs instead. Both supporters and opponents of the measures branded it Canada’s first “NDP budget.” In late June, the amendments passed the final reading vote and many political pundits concluded that the NDP has gained creditibilty as to their effective clout on the national scene.
On November 9, 2005, after rejecting the Liberal government’s plan to deal with health care privatization, Jack Layton announced that the NDP would introduce a confidence motion on November 24 that would call for a federal election in February, possibly signalling the end of the Liberals’ minority government. A similar motion was passed on November 28, 2005, and every NDP MP voted to topple the Liberal minority.
Structure
Unlike other Canadian parties, the NDP is integrated with its provincial and territorial parties, such that a member of a provincial or territorial NDP is automatically a member of the federal NDP.
There are three exceptions. In Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, whose territorial legislatures have no parties, the federal NDP is promoted by its riding associations, since each territory is composed of only one federal riding.
In Quebec, the Quebec New Democratic Party and the federal NDP agreed in 1989 to sever their structural ties after the Quebec party adopted a sovereigntist platform. Since then, the federal NDP is not integrated with a provincial party in that province; instead, it has a section, the Nouveau Parti démocratique-Section Québec, whose activities in the province are limited to the federal level, whereas on the provincial level its members are individually free to support or adhere to any party.
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