NDPers should look before they Leap
As the New Democrat Party’s most faithful streamed through the convention doors Friday, many were greeted with a four-page, stapled pamphlet filled front and back with black-and-white text: “Make the NDP the climate justice party now!”
“The party is being surpassed by the Liberals and the Greens!” it reads.
It adds the party needs to make a dramatic move now — it’s time to embrace the Leap Manifesto.
A laundry list of progressive reforms, most of t he manifesto would be uncontroversial among most NDPers — except for a clause that would kill all new energy infrastructure projects and end fossil fuel production within a generation.
Even Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, who maintains the halo of success after her provincial electoral win last May, has grown increasingly wary of the federal party in recent days. Thursday, she gave a televised address from her kitchen in which she demanded pipelines.
To the embarrassment and chagrin of the provincial NDP, resolutions to be debated at the federal convention are stuffed with references to the manifesto, put forward by constituencies across the country.
Additionally, several resolutions endorse plans for sustainable economies, electric cars — there is even one that would place a moratorium on all pipelines and calls for the nationalization of the oil and gas industry.
Meanwhile, leader Tom Mulcair is fighting to keep his job as the convention prepares for what is expected to be a contentious leadership review.
He’s shown himself willing to pander to the party’s activist base in order to win — even saying, during a CBC interview, that he would advocate for the Leap Manifesto, if the party voted in favour of it.
It’s no coincidence then that Notley appeared in her televised appeal insisting Canada support Alberta: “We must get to ‘ yes’ on a pipeline.”
Then, on Friday, Mulcair seemed to moderate his earlier position in an interview with The Canadian Press:
“I think it is ... dangerous to caricature the Leap document as being something about shutting things down,” he said.
“We’ve got to stop fooling ourselves in Canada. It is not true that we are doing our share on climate change. We’ve never reduced our greenhouse gas emissions. That’s why the Leap document is so important.”
Tensions were evident even as t he convention opened. During a motion to accept the agenda, several party activists protested the fact that Mulcair would speak at 10 a. m. on Sunday — right before leadership review vote was set to begin.
“We want to amend the agenda to avoid this kind of unfair scheduling,” one delegate said, adding the tactic was a form of strong arming intended to push people to vote before they could consider the leader’s remarks.
Another objected to Mulcair’s ubiquity on the convention literature; his name is plastered across lanyards and orange buttons read, “Beard a part of it.”
The procedural wrangling led to a loss for the anti- Mulcair crowd: his speech schedule remained unaltered.
The c o nvention also opened with a firebrand speech by Hassan Yussuff, the Canadian Labour Congress president, who has publicly opposed Mulcair.
“We need to face up to some hard truths. When the campaign started, we had more resources, more activists and more support than ever before,” he said. “Rather than celebrate our victories, we instead find ourselves at a crossroads at this convention.”
More than 1,700 delegates registered to attend the convention by Friday — more than were anticipated to make the trek to Edmonton.
In addition to the numerous resolutions on the Leap Manifesto, the policy proposals include the usual quirky fare, common to the convention process — such as creat- ing public banks based in the post office, a national dental program, pre-emptively ending genetic discrimination and creating a guaranteed annual income.
Proposals included withdrawing Canada from NATO and supporting the Boycott Divest and Sanction ( BDS) Israel movement. Most resolutions of this type tend to be filtered out during committee before they can ever be debated by the floor.
The fate of the Leap Manifesto, however, remained uncertain.