Types of cooperation

Neither a Merger Nor a War?

by ALVIN FINKEL

The media, as well as hyper-partisans in both the NDP and Liberal parties, lazily treat every suggestion regarding cooperation among political parties of the left and centre as a proposal for a merger. But federal NDP leadership candidate Nathan Cullen is burning a hole in that conflation of cooperation with merger. He has suggested that the NDP, Liberals, and Greens each choose a candidate in a constituency but that they then have a common nominating meeting in which one of the three is selected to be the only candidate of the centre-left in the constituency. That candidate would run under the banner of her or his party, but with the understanding that the three parties intend to form a coalition if between them they have a majority in the House of Commons.

This proposal has met with support from Green leader Elizabeth May, who does not necessarily endorse its details but feels that the parties need to pursue means of cooperating to insure the defeat of the Conservatives in 2016. She regards Cullen’s proposal as a refreshing effort to go beyond a destructive partisanship that insured that the three federalist centre-left parties, while together they enjoyed the votes of a majority of Canadians in the last three federal elections, did not get to form a government. Long-time federal New Democrat MP from Winnipeg, Patrick Martin, has also indicated his support.

Cullen’s parliamentary website boasts that “Nathan’s commitment to bipartisan work has helped him in negotiating a number of legislative initiatives through the House of Commons including a private member’s bill to restrict harmful phthalates in children’s products and a bill to set federal targets for greenhouse gas reductions.” That ability to get Liberals and New Democrats, along with the support of the Bloc Quebecois (the Greens were not in the last House) to support progressive legislation is meaningless now that the Conservatives have an absolute majority in the House. The war of Liberals and New Democrats during elections has made it largely irrelevant for the next four years whether or not they cooperate in the House. But it makes it that more crucial that they figure out ways of cooperating in the next election.

While Cullen is alone among the contenders for NDP leader to suggest a process for formal cooperation, the top two candidates, Thomas Mulcair and Brian Topp, have been involved in post-election efforts to form coalitions in the past. Topp, a shadowy fellow who has never been elected to office, was nonetheless key in negotiating the succesful coalition of the Roy Romanow NDP with the provincial Liberals in 1999 and both Topp and Mulcair were involved in the ultimately failed efforts to form a coalition of the two parties with Bloc support after the 2008 federal election. Mulcair remained vocal about the need for the NDP and Liberals to come to terms before the next election. But despite efforts by Ed Broadbent and Jean Chretien to produce a pre-election coalition, nothing came of the idea before the federal election. Afterwards, Broadbent and Mulcair both seemed to cool to the idea while Chretien appeared to support a merger.

The NDP now has a caucus of 59 members in Quebec. But, as Chantaal Hebert has commented in the Toronto Star, a newspaper that supported strategic voting on the centre-left in the 2011 federal election, the best-known New Democrat MPs in Quebec are Mulcair, a former provincial Liberal Cabinet minister, and Francoise Boivin, a former Liberal MP. Meanwhile, of course, the acting leader of the federal Liberals is Bob Rae, the former NDP premier of Ontario, while one of his key colleagues in his party’s caucus before the last federal election was Ujjal Dosanjh, the former NDP premier of British Columbia.

In Alberta, the centre-left, which won about 40 percent of the vote in the last two provincial elections, has weakened itself by finding no way at all to cooperate. The DRP is proposing to Albertans who want a progressive government that they vote strategically in the next provincial election, and when the election is called, will assess each seat to determine which party, if any, has the strength to defeat the Tories and Wild Rose if enough of the progressive vote moves over to that candidate. But Nathan Cullen has openly raised the possibility on the national level of a more effective way of insuring the defeat of Tory governments that represent only the famous “one percent.” His ideas deserve a close hearing from all progressives.

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