LEFT GAINS IN CANADA

...The Waffle had no desire to take over the party but saw the vote as a test, and an impressive one, of the acceptance of Waffle ideas within the NDP...

...It is increasing its vote in the big metropolitan centers, Toronto, Vancouver, and even Montreal...

...Trudeau has now confessed that this slogan was a mistake...

...The rest opted to stay in the NDP and to form a Left caucus, advocating a more socialist emphasis but abiding by the rules of the party...

...There was also a backlash against the federal government's welfare and unemployment insurance program, which appeared to many middle-class voters as handouts to the lazy, the hippies, and scheming housewives...

...Its leader was COMMENTS AND OPINIONS Mel Watkins, a brilliant young economist who had done special assignments for the Liberal government and become convinced, while on these assignments, that the government's policies were a betrayal of Canadian independence...

...They even had been completely frozen out of their onetime "solid South"— Toronto...

...The NDP, according to Taylor, must become an agency of polarization rather than another force promoting consensus...

...There also was dissatisfaction with the government's economic policies, which had failed to check mounting inflation and unemployment...

...The Conservatives attacked explicitly on some problems, and on riskier issues, such as the French question, they resorted to innuendo...

...Some Tory candidates insinuated that Trudeau's program of bilingualism in the civil service was an attempt to force everyone in Canada to learn and speak French...

...relations, now that he has rid the party of the troublesome "Waffle," a unique and once powerful caucus within the NDP, dedicated to merging socialism with Canadian nationalism, and to making the NDP more socialist and more nationalist...

...They presented an ultimatum to the Waffle: either dissolve all formal organizational activities, accept the existing rules for caucuses within the party, or be thrown out...

...The uncertain atmosphere on Parliament Hill reflects a long-term process, described some time ago by one .of the leading NDP intellectuals, Professor Charles Taylor, as the breakdown of consensus politics, long acclaimed as the genius of the Canadian political party system...

...David Lewis, it is true, may feel freer than before to compromise on important issues of Canadian-U.S...

...Despite Lewis's playing down the independence issue, opposi tion to U.S...

...Weak in Quebec, it may never succeed in that province as an NDP, but could work with whatever becomes the radical equivalent there...

...Al thought it lost 4 percentage points in this vote, it kept 56 seats out of a possible 74...

...domination is more likely to ex press itself through the NDP than through any other party, and this must bring the NDP into sharp conflict with the Liberals who are widely and correctly regarded as the party of continentalism...

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...It also supported the right of Quebec to self-determination, and established links with nationalist and socialist groups in Quebec...

...What is new about this minority government is that its continued existence depends on the NDP, which, for the first time, holds the balance of power...

...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS broadest compromises to be reached between the contending forces...

...There is no mention of ending the corporate tax rip-off which Lewis had made his main campaign issue, nor of reducing the tax burden on the low-wage and salary earner...

...One is that of being made to look like a wing of the Liberal party, which would surely undermine the raison d'être of the NDP as a radical, if not socialist, alternative...

...THIS IS NOT the first time Canada has had a minority government...

...On the other hand, one hopes that the left in the NDP will not repeat the mistakes of the Waffle and of many Marxists in the past—an impatience with history and a sectarian insistence on sacred dogmas—and that they will see the NDP, with all its weaknesses, as the authentic political expression of Canadian radicalism...

...But its union vote is going up, calculated at about 30 percent...

...In the volatile political climate of Canada, this is the challenge facing the NDP...

...But they had no positive platform of their own...

...A majority of the Waffle decided to leave the NDP and to form a group called the Waffle Movement For An Independent Socialist Canada...

...So far it appears that the Liberals are relying on NDP support...

...That did not work in 1972...

...imperialism, it stated that the main body of the Canadian bourgeoisie was actively engaged in integrating the Canadian into the American economy...

...Another Waffler, Jim Laxer, ran against David Lewis for the leadership of the NDP and got more than two-thirds of the vote Lewis received...

...Taylor shows how this "brokerage" system swept under the rug important issues, neglected large sections of the population—the politically inarticulate—and never involved the poor, the native Indians and Eskimos, and similar groups in the political process...

...There is no indication of what fiscal measures, if any, the government will take to reverse its past policies that increased both unemployment and inflation...

...The issues of welfare, Canadian independence, French-English relations, can no longer be handled by little compromises...

...There is no mention of any steps to limit or check the take-over of Canadian companies by U.S...

...By now minority government has become the norm and majority rule the exception in Canadian federal politics...

...The heaviest Liberal defeats were suffered in the four western provinces where the Liberals lost 75 percent of their seats and dropped an average of 10 percentage points in the popular vote...

...There is no possibility, even under a minority government, for the Liberals to substantially change direction on this question...

...He thus missed an opportunity of presenting some of the clear proposals the NDP did have in its platform...

...The Liberal party maintained its strength in Quebec, since the beginning of the century the key to its dominance in federal politics...

...The exact legislation comes later, if it comes at all...

...The Con servatives, on the other hand, by electing only two members in Quebec, one of them English, have demonstrated again that they are an in significant factor among French-Canadian voters...

...The danger now is two-fold...

...While not a party, it clearly has the intention of becoming one...

...The other danger is that the Liberals, instead of relying on the NDP to keep it in power, could move to the right and form a government with the Conservatives...

...While it momentarily frees David Lewis in his negotiations with the Liberal party, the re moval of Waffle from the NDP does not mean he can go too far...

...All this presents the NDP with a challenge and a danger...

...The Waffle also carried on widespread educational activities both in and beyond the NDP...

...It has a big role to play in articulating forthright solutions to problems that weigh on low- and middle-income Canadians...

...Outside the NDP, however, Waffle looks a lot different than inside...

...Even within the NDP caucus in Parliament there is already some restiveness over the idea of helping the Liberals stay in power for an indefinite period...

...The NDP and its predecessor, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), have sent a small but highly effective group to Parliament since 1935...

...The Waffle (a designation humourously given by a reporter) came into being in 1969 with a manifesto signed by 144 party activists including MPs, academics, unionists, and party organizers...

...The Conservatives registered their biggest and most important gains in Ontario...

...Though it won ten additional seats, the NDP did not increase its percentage of the popular vote, which remains around 18 percent...

...David Lewis, his son Stephen who is the leader of the Ontario NDP, and several important trade union leaders decided to call a halt to these activities...

...On October 31, 1972, the Canadian elec torate surveyed what it had just done at the polls and found itself with a hangover—literally...

...2 But now the NDP could not easily modify the trenchant criticism it had leveled at the time against the proposed act as ineffectual...

...In the three prairie provinces this confirmed a long-term trend that has reduced the Liberal party to an almost negligible factor among western farmers...

...Inside it was part of a viable anticapitalist force that has reached a new level of effectiveness in Canadian politics...

...When this isue was first raised, it got so much publicity that NDP leader David Lewis dropped everything else...

...The NDP unites large sections of the labor movement with important segments of the western farm movement...

...It did influence national policies in the past, but either the Liberals or the Conservatives, whichever was in power, got the credit for measures it initiated...

...In fact the speech contained so many goodies that a number of commentators have remarked that if Trudeau had made the same proposals during the elections, he probably could have won a majority...

...There was in this manifesto a strong current of implied Marxism, which seemed to revive, under contemporary conditions, the Marxism that had been one of the elements in the original CCF program but had been gradually dropped in the Cold War years...

...Still, even this catalogue, seen in the best possible light, has conspicuous omissions that ought to bother a socialist...

...They could conceivably bring in again their weak foreign take-over bill...

...According to the theory of consensus politics, parties arrived through a process of bargaining at a consensus that represented the 2 The bill stipulates that before a Canadian firm can be taken over by a foreign-owned corporation, the prospective buyer must satisfy a government screening agency that the take-over is in the best interests of Canada...

...monopolies, or to slow down the drift to "continentalism," which Liberal policies have promoted for many years...

...During the past four elections, Tory fortunes had slipped badly in what was once their main base in Canada...

...Now in 1972 they went from 17 seats to 41 in Ontario, with six seats in Toronto...

...The NDP (New Democratic Party) cam paigned on the issue of tax concessions and dodges, which allow the big corporations to get away with paying far too small a share of the national revenues...

...As politicians became brokers, all parties sought to occupy not the Left or the Right of the political spectrum, but the Center...

...It then concluded that the Canadian capitalist class had abdicated whatever claim it ever had to being the leader of the nation, and therefore any genuine movement to rescue the nation must be anticapitalist...

...It can best undertake this role, not by suppressing the Left within its ranks, but by listening to criticism that comes from that quarter...

...Surveying the growing domination of Canada by U.S...

...During the campaign he refused to discuss anything else, trying simply to repeat his 1968 performance, when he merchandised the sole advantage of his charisma...

...The Liberals campaigned under the slogan "The Land is Strong" which became ever more ludicrous as figure$ from the government itself showed a rapid increase in unemployment and the cost of living...

...His speeches as Waffle leader were front-page news for three years...

...The Waffle was an instant hit...

...But while it is now the government in three of the four western provinces the NDP never before has had an opportunity to visibly influence national policies in the federal House...

...Outside the NDP, the Waffle is just one more of a dozen or so small revolutionary sects, each claiming to be the sole upholder of Marxist truth...

...The Throne speech, announcing government intentions at the first session of Parliament, presented a comprehensive program of reforms greeted by Lewis as indicating that "the existing Government is prepared to introduce laws which could be of con 146 siderable benefit to the people of Canada...

...The voters were obviously dissatisfied over a whole range of questions, but the indecisive result shows that none of the alternatives was attractive enough...

...During elections NDP candidates who were Waffle adherents conducted enthusiastic campaigns, attracting hundreds of young people...

...Many Conservative votes in Ontario and the West came from an anti-French backlash...

...But so far the Throne speech is just a catalogue of intentions...

...In the last seven elections since 1957, five have resulted in no single party having a majority...

...What is also new is that the Conservatives have almost as many seats as the Liberals and therefore could conceivably form a government in the event of a Liberal defeat in the House...

...The election showed deep divisions in the country...

...There is a real opportunity to expand its influence beyond the plateau it has now reached...

...The Conservatives and the NDP now dominate the West, and future political contours of that huge region will be 1 The results showed a substantial loss for the Liberals under Pierre Trudeau, who had first led them to a solid victory in 1968: 1968 1972 SEATS SEATS Liberals 155 109 Conservatives 72 107 New Democrats (NDP) 21 31 Social Credit 14 15 Others 2 2 264 264 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS determined for a long time to come by the con test between these two parties...

...With the threat of another election hanging over the new parliament, the results ushered in a period of political uncertainty.' All opposition parties gained at the expense of the Liberals, yet it took only a small shift in the popular vote to bring about this change...