Dead Centre: Hope, possibility, and Unity for Canadian Progressives

Thank you, Brian, for the book notice. I just reserved my library copy.

Your blog entry follows another interesting NDP-related one. We'll see what comes of that.

By your account, it seems Heath is part of the NDP's questionable longer-term focus on displacing the Liberals as the preferential national centrist party.

As you put it, "many of us would disagree" that in absence of GPC option we'd revert to NDP. However much I have publicly & privately expressed lamentation at the difficulty to date in preparing some ground for co-operation between GPC & NDP, I have never been able to bring myself to actually vote NDP but once provincially, as a protest of sorts against the unfair tretment given to the Rae government. The culture of that party has kept me from getting closer, but I nonetheless think it a vital complement to Green parties'.

I think, alas, Ontario will be among the last with PR; but other provinces, non-partisan, should soon see some improvement. Thus if ever there was argument to support NDP for PR, it is now irrelevant.

It is something of a tragedy, the demise of the old PC party. It would be the same for the Liberals. When Eliz. May "endorsed" Dion, I do not know why everyone makes of that a general Liberal endorsement. With improved national consistency to NDP numbers, and with GPC fairly nationally consistent numbers, ie both mostly not showing all that much regional variation as the others, they might be recognized as the only two truer national parties, to pick up after the "tragic" losses of the more "industrial age" parties.

On topic, the following is something I contributed to our provincial Greens' forum, responding to other contributors' comments:

...............................
On 14-Oct-07, at 5:25 PM, D. Vernon wrote:

> re [B. & J.'s] comments below:
>
> In Canada, if there is to be continuity of national political
> culture (itself in serious doubt), significant new policy shift
> would follow the patterns of the recent past, where dissenting
> parties led the way, fairly successfully pressuring from the ever
> enlarging periphery, with CCF/NDP on the Liberals, then Reform from
> their, shall we say, complementary angle. Greens have been driving
> the agenda already in an important way, even before May's by-
> election campaign followed immediately by its influence on the
> Liberal leadership result (Liberals having historically acute
> antennae for sniffing political winds). NDP responded earlier
> still in a more serious policy way, feeling threatened by Greens
> surely but also with a significant constituency among themselves
> that has genuinely much in common with very many Greens.
>
> The larger question then regards this prospective "continuity".
> Were I, eg, a Québecois, I would likely be a "sovereignist", but
> largely on Green grounds. "Post-industrial" realities are apt to
> pull apart the attenuated empire, Canada. It would be an important
> & regrettable loss, however, to see jettisoned therewith the best
> of our culture, eg & maybe especially such as has developed in our
> legal institutions. "Integration" with the U.S. is seriously at
> issue here, and for the most part it is in our & their own Green
> interests to pull away from such integration as is surreptitiously
> creeping up just now, to have a different sort of integration
> arise. So these kinds of things would pull Canadian Greens in both
> directions. To maintain enough of the "attenuated empire" born of
> the "industrial age", a likely semblance of old political
> institutions, including the Liberals, would have to resume taking
> their cues from the periphery, now us ([J]: "steal our
> ideas"). But I fear (or not so much) that Liberals are done for
> for having truly lastingly insulted a significant proportion of
> Quebecois. This effectively leaves none of the parties able to lead
> in the old style, which is maybe an apt beginning for "post-
> industrial" politics (which should thus include electoral
> reform!). So Greens no longer would peripherally affect a
> (fictitious) "centre" but should be a strong player on their own
> terms in coalition of some sorts ([J]: "start to move towards
> us").
>
> I very much lament that NDPs & GPs cannot yet come to terms with
> each other publicly. They are the truest heirs of the deepest
> dissenters from the destructive industrial age Greens are also,
> from a different angle, trying to get away from. I cannot include
> heirs to Reform, because they have been swallowed up by a certain
> corporate-pandering juggernaut, for their original own cultural
> propensity to misunderstand the best of historical Canada. (This is
> to the apparent chagrin of some of them, one hopes many more soon
> enough, but on process grounds, like not grassoots enough.) So I
> have tried already to put out some feelers to NDPers I know, I
> share [B's] concerns as far as I can tell from his short
> comments. Did anyone notice a recent poll, 14 plus 17 = 31 =
> minority government territory? That was, GPC plus NDP! Now that is
> to play fancifully with numbers, but there is very much a lesson there
> along the lines leading to co-operation.
>
> Provincially there could be some parallel attempt at rapprochement,
> but the "continuity" things apply less. It is, however, precisely
> here at the provincial level, that Green influence & actions are of
> greatest on-the-ground import.
> Success at GPO influence could come from seeing GPC succeed at
> national influence, by peripheral or collaborative means, just as
> GPO's recent election numbers come largely from association with
> federal Greens.
>
> Re[ I's & D's]: One should be cautious as well about wielding
> criticism of "growth" as a stick like "labour", "business". Scale
> & application, intelligently considered, bear on Green "growth", so
> great care should be taken with such a term that can be used
> (already is really) to bat at Greens of clumsier expression, or at
> least inexperienced at political self-defence.
>
> "Sustainability" should also be used now with caution, not that
> others use it as a stick, but rather have usurped the term to
> (seemingly) smooth out their own agenda. If an electorate is
> lulled to sleep by such usage, Greens need to
> wake them up by other means.
>
> Daryl [Vernon, York Centre]