NDP AND THE LAYTON LEGACY.
Push on to win back several core ridings
TORONTO • At the doors in Toronto-danforth, NDP candidate Clare Hacksel pauses her pitch for a moment to let the roar of a passing GO train subside, but she continues as soon as the train passes, pitching the NDP’S track to a more affordable life for Canadians.
Hacksel talks to residents in a Toronto Community Housing complex about lowering cellphone bills, pharmacare and housing affordability. She argues the Liberals have made too many unfulfilled promises and encourages voters to pick her team this time.
“I think that in the six years (of the Liberals) some folks have been really disappointed and let down and are really looking for the kind of bold action that Justin Trudeau promised and hasn’t delivered,” she said.
Hacksel is trying to get Danforth back in the NDP column. Ten years ago this was Jack Layton’s riding and early in the campaign, current NDP leader Jagmeet Singh made the pitch for renaming the riding in his honour to Danforth Layton.
“Here in Toronto, people know the legacy of Jack Layton, how he touched the lives of so many people, how he fought so hard to make people’s lives better and it feels fitting,” Singh said at an event for the 10-year anniversary of Layton’s death. “It is a powerful way to remember the legacy.”
Layton’s memory has helped shape the party’s future and he is an outsized presence long after his death. Not only did he lead the party to its greatest electoral success, but in the months before his death he left the party with a mantra about the need for optimism and hope. The building that houses the party’s downtown Ottawa headquarters is named in his honour.
The party held onto Danforth in a byelection after Layton’s death, but lost it in 2015 when they were swept from Toronto.
Danforth is more than symbolic for the NDP, it is among a group of core Toronto ridings the party would like to get back for its electoral future; races the party won in 2011, such as Danforth, but also Davenport, Parkdale High Park and Beaches East York.
Davenport was the closest of those ridings, where Liberal Julie Dzerowicz won with a 1,472 vote margin in 2019. But no one is trying to rename Davenport. In 2019, voters in Danforth chose Liberal Julie Dabrusin by a nearly 15 percentage point margin, leaving Hacksel an uphill climb, but a potentially achievable one given the party’s strength in recent polls.
An NDP strategist, speaking on background, said the party wants at least some of the Toronto ridings back, because they help reinforce that the party could be competitive and strengthen the idea that progressive voters need not flee to the Liberals.
They argue that when the party is competitive in Toronto it is a signal to voters in Quebec and British Columbia that they could be competitive more broadly.
Hacksel said Layton, 10 years after his death, still resonates in the riding and she is aware of the shoes she is trying to fill.
“I hear, all the time, people saying I’ve voted for Jack. I miss Jack. I love Jack.”
But she also says any change in the riding name would need broad community support.
“If it ever came down to the time when there was a serious conversation about changing the name of the riding, then we would definitely engage in a community consultation.”
Hacksel said the idea is not something residents talk about on the doorsteps, with much more concern about affordability. Homes in the area sell for north of $1 million, often much north and some of the older homes from when the area was more of a working-class community often sit empty or are bulldozed for condominiums.
“A block from my house, there is a house that has sat empty since 2016 and its owned by a shell company overseas, never been rented. And the cost of that house has just gone up and up and up.”
Hacksel, currently the executive director of a Toronto abortion clinic, said health care is also a common theme on the campaign with concerns over the high price of prescription drugs and the fears about long-term care for the elderly.
Dabrusin, not surprisingly, rejects the idea the Liberal government hasn’t made real progress on the issues, but she says that progress is in jeopardy this election.
“I’m really excited now, we have eight provinces and territories that are signed up to actually roll out a childcare plan. That’s amazing,” she said. “If I had that when I had small kids that would have been a real game-changer.”
She said on issues such as climate change the government has done a lot, but it was also starting from a delayed position.
“When you talk about things like climate action where we started in 2015 and where we are now, we’ve moved a big ship around,” she said.
Many of the now Liberal-held ridings that were in NDP hands before have MPS who regularly speak out even against the Liberal government.
Dabrusin raised concerns about the Teck Mine in Northern Alberta, while the federal cabinet was still considering the project. Dzerowicz has pushed for a basic minimum income, which is not party policy, and Nate Erskine-smith in Beaches-east York has broken with the Liberals on several issues.
Dabrusin said people in her riding expect MPS to speak their mind and they’re engaged with the issues.
“You knock on doors here, you’ll always have a conversation and it’s amazing. That’s a really great thing to have people who are so engaged.”
She said the election is obviously important, but there is a lot more than voting every few years to make up an election.
“Sometimes we present politics — it’s just about the voting, and during an election, really that’s the focus, but a lot of really hard and amazing work happens between elections.”
I HEAR, ALL THE TIME, PEOPLE SAYING ... I MISS JACK.