Category: NDP

By postponing the Ontario New Democratic Party Convention (for nearly a year) to occur just four months prior to the Ontario provincial election, party officials tipped the scales to minimize criticism of its policy and Leader.  And leaving nothing to chance, they ensured that dozens of submitted resolutions calling for democratic and socialist policies were ranked low on subject priority lists so as to never see the light of day.  Milquetoast motions that did get debated (February 4-6, 2022) mostly garnered over 95 per cent approval.  The 1,100-plus registered delegates endured a long parade of NDP and Labour bureaucrats who repeated arguments at the virtual PRO mic, ad nauseum.  But don't think that this was a convention of calm consensus.  Up to a quarter of the gathering, representing thousands of rank and file members of the only mass, labour-based, working class party in North America, frequently challenged bureaucratic rules and pro-capitalist policies.

After nearly four years of the most regressive, incompetent and corrupt Ontario government in decades, opinion polls show the Doug Ford Conservatives leading, and the New Democratic Party mired in third place, well behind the Liberals, on the eve of the June 2 provincial election.

How is this possible?  Only exceptionally weak NDP policy and leadership can account for this disturbing situation.  It’s certainly not a function of popular satisfaction with the status quo.