Horwath walks fine line at convention

When Andrea Horwath speaks, New Democrats listen. They also talk back.

That’s the tradition for any NDP leader at party conventions, and this weekend in Hamilton was no exception. As Horwath talked about tax incentives for corporations, a delegate shouted out: “They don’t have hearts!” As the crowd roared, Horwath could have gone along with the conventional anti-business sentiment on the convention floor. Instead, she looked away from her teleprompter and ad-libbed with a jibe of her own:

“We need to work with business — the ones with hearts — to create jobs,” she said pointedly.

It was a telling moment in her weekend-long struggle for the hearts and minds of party delegates. Behind the scenes, Horwath and her team have been working hard to change the party’s traditional mindset.

It’s not easy departing from the script at an NDP convention. The lines are laid out long in advance — by all sides.

Before she spoke, labour leaders exhorted delegates to take a harder line against any wage freezes. After her speech, a call went out for the Socialist Caucus to convene.

Three years after capturing the leadership, and winning another leadership review vote with barely three-quarters of the vote this weekend, Horwath is walking a fine line between party factions. Wielding the balance of power is also a tough balancing act, as she publicly threatens to defeat the latest Liberal budget and trigger fresh elections.

The Liberals are eagerly exploiting those divisions by framing Horwath as a captive of labour. They point to the antics of Sid Ryan, maverick head of the Ontario Federation of Labour, who publicly upbraided the party estab- lishment on the convention floor for not taking a hard line against wage freezes. Against that backdrop, the Liberals are pre-positioning themselves for a possible election — baiting the teachers’ unions and berating the doctors while casting themselves as valiant defenders of both parents and patients. And they mocked the NDP for being in labour’s pocket, noting the debtridden New Democrats would need union backing to get bank loans if they triggered a campaign. For her part, Horwath is doing everything she can to resist a tight embrace from her union brothers. Keen to avoid the trap being set by the Liberals, she omitted any reference to fighting a wage freeze in her keynote speech, and also from her laundry list of budget demands. If the Liberals are proffering a poison pill, Horwath isn’t biting. While paying lip service to collec- tive bargaining rights, the New Democrats have quietly aligned themselves with the Liberals’ deficit-reduction timetable. The unavoidable implication is that if the NDP were in power, they too would have to budget for a pay freeze — or Rae Days redux. Horwath is trying hard to change the public face of the NDP. Her team backed the candidacy of Tamil-canadian Neethan Shan as party president against union stalwart Andrew Mackenzie. Shan’s victory signalled a shift in the dynamic of NDP conventions, traditionally choreographed by union leaders, in favour of ethnic diversity. In her convention speech, Horwath said the party must change with the times to position itself for power. And it must draw on the tradition of fiscal prudence by prairie New Democrats who delivered balanced budgets in office. “New Democrats have shown the world they can tackle deficits,” she lectured delegates, who responded with lukewarm applause.

And she restated her campaign pledge to make minority government work, rather than reflexively oppose the Liberal line as the OFL’S Ryan had insisted.

“The path of easy, simple opposition to everything can be very tempting — it frees you from having new ideas,” she argued. If the NDP aspires to power, “we won’t get there with the same old ideas and status quo solutions, but by embracing change.”

A revolutionary idea for a New Democrat.

Before Horwath can successfully woo voters, she must first win over her own NDP delegates. An interesting weekend to be a New Democrat in Hamilton. Martin Regg Cohn’s provincial affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca, twitter.com/reggcohn.