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An Inconvenient Party: The Manitoba NDP, Neoliberalism and Poverty
This article appears in the latest edition of Socialist Project’s Relay
On November 5th, Manitoba’s new New Democratc Party (NDP) premier, Greg Selinger, heard the shouts of hundreds of students organized by the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) demonstrating outside the Manitoba Legislative Building demanding concrete action be taken against poverty. Had he graced the protestors with his presence he would have seen the energy of a diverse crowd tired of growing economic inequalities and band-aid solutions. Far from marking a new beginning, the Selinger response emphasized the desire to continue the legacy of the preceding NDP governments of Gary Doer (see incremental wage increases and lacklustre financing for social services). The NDP remains an inconvenient obstacle for those fighting to fill the gaps left by years of neoliberal restructuring and the present capitalist crisis. In a province under social-democratic control, those calling for progressive economic and social change need to carefully assess the nature of the provincial NDP and its new leadership.
The Manitoba economy, for example, has hardly been insulated from some of the main features of neoliberalism. Despite local economic forecasts proclaiming the strength of the provincial economy, employment rates are declining, child poverty rates remain high, and aboriginal poverty remains severe. Manitoba lost several thousand more jobs in October, pushing the unemployment rate from 5.3 to 5.8 per cent. Employers are on the offensive, demanding concessions from workers to maintain profitability. In the rural community of Pine Falls, to cite one of the more notable examples, 260 pulp and paper workers are currently locked out for refusing to accept drastic wage and benefit cuts. While GDP growth has remained steady, Manitoba isn’t immune to national and international economic fluctuations. The emphasis in the 2009 Provincial Budget on maintaining business stability translates as ensuring business profitability by demanding concessions from workers rather than the business community.
The Selinger Victory
In this economic climate, NDP members chose to elect to the party helm former Finance Minister Selinger. His ascendency speaks to the very nature of the provincial NDP. Selinger’s leadership is essentially the distillation of years of neo-liberal NDP policies. When we look at the neoliberal drift of the party under Gary Doer, in particular in economic policy, it is no surprise that a finance minister who oversaw a decade of ‘fiscal austerity’ should emerge as leader. In the leadership race, Selinger promised no change from the economic policies that have guided the party for the last decade. His support amongst NDP cabinet ministers and his unblemished image compared to the left-leaning Steve Ashton—branded a fiery socialist by the media—was an obvious choice for the party after the departure of Gary Doer, who now serves as Canadian Ambassador to the U.S. for the Conservative government of Stephen Harper.
During his time as Finance Minister, Selinger oversaw personal and business tax cuts that deprived the province of over $1billion. These cuts overwhelmingly benefitted high-income families and hurt already underfunded social services. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reports that the income levels of poor Manitobans could be brought up to the poverty line for a cost of under $516 million a year (or just 1.1 per cent of Manitoba’s annual GDP). Selinger will continue Doer’s legacy of leading the NDP down a centrist road by balancing business tax cuts with incremental investments in health and education, or what he calls “govern[ing] with warm hearts and cool minds.” His strategy follows on the heels of Doer’s wholesale adoption of this third-way social democracy: a middle ground between social democracy and neo-liberalism. It comes as no surprise that 2009 Manitoba budget reflects a decade long obedience to zero deficits, improved credit access for business, and lower taxes. This fiscal restraint has become mantra across the provincial political spectrum and reflects the ideological dominance of neoliberalism.
Selinger’s victory in the leadership race should be a clear indication to the Left that working for change within the NDP is a battle that continues to be lost, as the NDP follows other social democratic parties into a realignment of their policies, organization and demobilization of its working-class constituency. Labour leaders and community groups supported Selinger over the left-leaning Steve Ashton, who promised to reinstitute the tuition freeze and impose a ban on replacement workers during a strike. This is suggestive of how timid the Manitoba labour movement has become in challenging the NDP’s political direction on even the most elemental of principles and legislative reform. In his nomination speech, Ashton challenged party members to create an inclusive party that gets back to its social-justice roots: “There is no reason why we cannot achieve social and economic justice for our population.” The Doer government originally promised the business community not to bring in anti-scab legislation, and it is likely that neither will the Selinger one.
In the face of the economic crisis, the federal Conservative government has shaken some of their dogma and done an about-face on deficit spending. The Manitoba NDP, however, remains committed to tight fiscal spending through crippling anti-deficit laws. In addition, Manitoba’s tax limitation laws make it incredibly difficult for the province to seek new revenue areas. The law caps personal and corporate taxes unless Manitobans vote for increases through referendum (under present legislated limits that, of course, could be repealed). This unlikely to happen, and it makes the prospect of progressive taxation near impossible.
At a time when it is clear to many that the free-market has failed to deliver the goods, there is a need to rethink in more creative and profound alternatives not only to neo-liberalism but also to the simple re-adoption of Keynesian economic policies. An anti-poverty campaign that fails to offer a systematic critique of capitalism, which the Target Poverty campaign lacked, begins with false pretences and offers false promises. The Target Poverty campaign called for an increase in public housing, universal childcare, funding to post-secondary institutions, employment opportunities, services for immigrants, reforms to employment insurance, etc. A liberal reading of poverty targets these areas without considering their relation to the rest of economic and social life. In other words, this is treating the symptoms instead of the cause. While most would acknowledge that reforms are needed in most of these departments, instituting reforms that affects all these areas in real terms would be a direct challenge to the structure of capitalism. Herein lies the first mistake of the campaign: That capitalism will allow all these reforms. Unemployment and poverty, instability and glaring corporate corruption are elements of capitalism that cannot be undone by mere reforms. The logic of constant growth and profit accumulation will erect barriers to these reforms at every possible opportunity. This can be seen vividly in current economic policy in Canada and Manitoba: we are bailing out the banks and other financial institutions while cutting welfare and calling for austerity. Being realistic about an anti-poverty strategy means you need to be realistic about what class-forces shape government policy, and Manitoba NDP governments have done nothing to offset the power of capital as a dominant class force.
The CFS Student-Anti-Poverty Protests
The decision by CFS to go beyond its immediate constituency and embrace demands affecting millions of Canadians facing poverty is crucial. It comes at a time when governments are imposing the burden of the economic crisis of capitalism on workers and the poor. As Ontario Coalition Against Poverty organizer John Clarke warned:
“November 5 will fall sadly short if it appeals to the supposed conscience of the Government instead of calling for resistance to those in power. It will not meet its potential if it fails to identify the attacks that are coming down on us as an attempt to stabilize a system in crisis at our expense. More than anything, the day must be about building a movement of serious and effective resistance to these same attacks.”
The CFS-led Day of Action was a valuable step in mobilizing new constituencies to combat poverty in Manitoba. In considering issues of youth and class—and the intersections of racism, sexism, xenophobia, low wages and student debt—the campaign actively opposed the liberal consensus of removing poverty from its structural context. Young people make up a disproportionate percentage of workers in the low-skilled, low-paid service sector, and have born the brunt of flexible working practices and a decline in real wages. Promoting solidarity amongst youth, workers, immigrants and aboriginal people affected by government cutbacks and neoliberal policy is far more valuable in building a fighting political movement than promising government will take action. Building a genuine alliance outside NDP party parameters to both develop policy and demand changes should be an ongoing campaign by progressive groups in Manitoba. Building these linkages will further the goal of creating a progressive movement that offers an alternative to the impotency of the third-way social democracy represented by the NDP, and its failure to break from neoliberal policy orientation, not to speak of addressing any of the structural inequalities of capitalism.
An independent, progressive movement outside the NDP would be invaluable in confronting the continued assault on public services throughout Manitoba . The privatization of Winnipeg’s waste-water facility and the subsequent increase in water rates was confronted by labour and community groups without much public support or debate. The agenda at City Hall has been dominated by the pro-business cronyism of Mayor Sam Katz and his attempts to do away with the municipal business tax. This has entailed an increase in the number of public-private partnerships and lay-offs of municipal workers to make up for the budget shortfall. City hall continues to prioritize ventures like a new football stadium and downtown water park rather than confront grinding poverty amongst aboriginal and newcomer groups that demand action from multiple levels of government. Building a militant alliance of workers, students and activists ready to confront issues like these with solid class analysis and subsequent action will not only urge the NDP to action, it will demonstrate what their years of neglect has bred.
The decline in left-opposition in Manitoba, at both the city and provincial levels, and the continued assault on workers’ rights and poor people, must be considered in a wider global context. Despite the value of current socialist theory in analyzing the scope of capitalist crisis, there remains a gulf between this work and the work needed to build and imagine a better world. As much as anything else, the NDP in Manitoba has fostered a political climate of complacency, political retreat and a marginalization of participatory democracy. The narrowing of social vision and political ambitions has impacted the Manitoba labour movement and social movements.
This is the challenge for the Left to both re-imagine and re-invent anti-capitalist theory and organizing. It is time for those working for genuinely progressive change in Manitoba to shake off the false consciousness – to use an older but still valuable term – encouraged by the NDP government. The new leadership of Premier Selinger will only give more evidence of the drift of the NDP toward managing the worst features of neoliberal capitalism, while doing next to nothing to develop the democratic capacities and popular forces to oppose it. The November 5th demonstrations in Winnipeg did its part to help put the formation of an anti-capitalist movement on the social agenda.
Chris Webb is a journalist and activist living in Toronto. He is currently the Publishing Assistant at Canadian Dimension magazine and a Communications Officer with SEIU-Local 1 Canada. Read more by Chris Webb.
This is a disappointing story to hear from Manitoba, for many NDPers. Disillusioning.
#1. Posted by Madeline Bruce in Nanaimo, B. C. on November 27th 2009 at 10:33pm
If the NDP Party wants to adopt neo Liberal policies, and align themselves with big corporations, and swerve to the right, then they are going to lose their thousands of left wing followers. The Capitalist experiment has been a resounding failure, which has brought the world to the brink of economic and social disaster. Corporations don’t have a social conscience. They are monsters that are destroying humanity and this planet. Left wingers will be forced to create a new party of the left. Don’t think that people are stupid, and that you can just tell them what to do. It doesn’t work that way. At least here in Canada it doesn’t work that way. In the last B. C. Provincial election one in six voters who had voted in the previous election didn’t bother to vote at all. Canadians want decent, trustworthy, inspiring people in leadership positions. That is why the name Tommy Douglas still echoes down the decades. People value goodness when they see it. Terry Fox is another name that means somelthing to Canadians. What kind of people are we letting into leadership positions? Former NDP Premier Glen Clark now holds a posh position in billionaire Jim Pattison’s entourage. Think about what this says about what his real values are. A man of the people? Give me a break.
#2. Posted by Madeline Bruce in Nanaimo, B. C. on December 13th 2009 at 3:19am
The fact is that Manitoba has at best, a lackluster economy heavily dependent on agri-business and natural resources like hydro. I moved away from Manitoba because of the lack of opportunity in the province. It stands to reason that everything should be done to stimulate economic growth so people have access to good jobs, and a higher standard of living. The reality is that a paradigm shift has occurred in terms of economic policy, and that is fact. Manitoba will not be able to compete without moving with this paradigm shift. In terms of social investment, Manitoba has spent heavily on health, housing, and poverty, more so than Ontario where I live now. The interesting thing is that much of the social spending I’ve researched in Manitoba is often motivated by political interests and focussed in an ineffective manner. Manitoba is also victim to interests on the left just as interest on the right affect it’s economy. That is why you have Manitoba Housing on building sprees without focussing its effort on real solutions. That is why the WRHA makes huge capital investment on infrastructure and buildings, and yet cannot find the money to save people waiting at hospital emergency waiting rooms. The list goes on and on regarding misappropriation of funding that was intended to help poverty, health, crime, etc.
I would suggest to you that you not shock people with rants on political philosophy. The fact is that most people, with the exception of academics, activists, and 2nd/3rd year university students don’t function on that level. They understand hard, concrete facts based on real world examples. They understand what they see. They don’t care to understand left-wing/ or right-wing philosophical ramblings because most are right in the middle; apathetically unconcerned with politics and centred on their own lives and well being.
#3. Posted by Daniel Johnston in Toronto, Ontario on December 22nd 2009 at 4:31pm