Published June 3, 2009

WASHINGTON—The fact that former presidents Clinton and Bush didn’t know about the June 1 requirement for passports at U.S.-Canada land crossings came as little surprise to those who have followed the progress of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) over the past three years.

While the comments made at a May 29 joint speaking appearance in Toronto generated news, the border security discussion has long resembled two ships passing in the night—both sides firmly ensconced in their own world, blissfully unaware of the other.

The ex-presidents would probably be even more surprised to find out that many Canadians are now subject to the US-VISIT requirements of fingerprints and photos (so-called “biometric” data) when they enter the U.S. Those same Canadians, if they leave the U.S. via Detroit or Atlanta, will soon be subject to exit scrutiny using the aforementioned biometrics.

In a little known change to procedures implemented in January 2009, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began fingerprinting and photographing some Canadians entering the U.S. While normal short-term Canadian visitors are exempt, “for now”, according to a January 2009 press release from Homeland Security, Canadians who are permanent residents (green card holders) of the U.S. or that require visas for work, school or other reasons will have biometrics collected.

While a relatively minor inconvenience for those affected, the gathering of biometrics from Canadian citizens is a significant change that has evaded the radar in the wider discussion of borders—likely because those subjected to the additional procedures have already been screened by U.S. authorities as part of their visa or green card processing

The inconvenience won’t be so minor soon, though. In another little-publicized initiative, Homeland Security announced at the end of May exit screening pilot programs at the Detroit and Atlanta airports. International travellers departing the U.S. from these locations will be required to submit to fingerprinting and other formalities as they leave the country. The new rule states that all travellers that are subject to US-VISIT—including Canadian citizens with green cards or visas—will be subject to the exit check.

Exit checks for Canadians have never before been implemented and are yet another sign of border thickening. Exit screening erupted in controversy the last time it was suggested as part of an immigration reform bill in 2000. Canada joined an advocacy campaign led by U.S. business and fought the so-called “section 110″ until it was modified by Congress to drop the exit check provision.

WHTI, and now the resurrection of exit controls, has laid bare the fact that Canadians and Americans have entirely different perceptions of their border. Americans view it as just another entry point for potentially threatening foreigners while Canadians cling to sentimental memories of document-free crossings and mutual trust.

There is a strong feeling at the middle bureaucratic level that all borders must be treated the same. Some at the top agree. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, for whom there was once brief hope that she would see border issues Canada’s way, has become a security hawk parroting her department’s long-held stances.

At an April 21 Washington meeting of the Border Trade Alliance, a business lobby group, Napolitano, in response to a question about WHTI, said, “There are real borders and we intend to implement WHTI.” Napolitano also informed the Trade Alliance crowd that “Canada allows people into their country that we don’t into ours”, meaning, one supposes, that we can’t be trusted as border guards.

While Canada believes it has made a strong case that the world’s longest secure border is a model of civility and co-operation requiring no change, U.S. officials relentlessly add rules and complications in the name of security. While Canada claims exemptions and a special relationship, the U.S. offers no special treatment.

In the Toronto discussion with former president Clinton, George Bush said he thought the countries had agreed on an “easy pass” card, making one wonder how much of the border discussion made it to the Oval Office.

With the benefit of hindsight it is apparent that there should have been a discussion—head of state to head of state—about the kind of border regime that the two countries wanted. Although Prime Minister Harper and president Bush did discuss WHTI on at least two occasions, security and bureaucracy seem to have trumped whatever understandings about a freer border may have existed.

It’s easy to poke fun at W., but perhaps Canada is at fault for the confusion and ambiguity. While no Canadian official or politician would say it post-9/11 because of the risk of sounding soft on security, Canada’s preferred border option was really no change. No change was not an option in the U.S.

We wished and hoped that WHTI would go away, but it didn’t. We’re about to get exit controls which represent yet another impediment to movement of people and goods. This time let’s make sure that President Obama has no excuse to say he didn’t know.

Regular features on the site will include Les Campbell’s “Canada in Washington” column which appears every two weeks in Embassy magazine, and Les’s regular contributions to the Globe and Mail’s politics section.

PPC will also feature articles and comment about the efforts to the unite the left in Canada and we welcome articles, posts and policy papers that will appeal to the broad group of Canadians looking for bold, fresh ideas from a progressive perspective.

See Les’s latest contribution to the Globe and Mail’s strategist’s panel here

 It was perfectly understandable that Obama chose not to hold parallel meetings with Prime Minister Harper or other heads of state during the Washington G20 summit on November 15, but the poor reception for Federal Industry Minister Tony Clement and Ontario Minister of Economic Development, Michael Bryant a week later was bewildering.

 When Clement and Bryant came to town to confer about help for the auto industry, they found mostly closed doors. Originally hoping to see Michigan Senators Levin and Stabenow, Senate Banking Committee Chairman, Chris Dodd, House Financial Services Committee Chairman, Barney Frank and Commerce Secretary Gutierrez, the Ministers had to make do with Missouri Senator Kit Bond, Nancy Pelosi’s staff and the Deputy Commerce Secretary.

 In town at the same time was Saif al Islam al Gaddafi, the 36 year old son of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. Although the younger Gaddafi holds no official government position, he managed to meet with a total of 20 Senators and Members of Congress and, for good measure, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

 Of course, meeting with the son of the infamous Libyan leader has a certain cache, and perhaps it was the novelty factor that accounted for the attention, but Libya has no significant trade relationship with the U.S and is of negligible strategic importance. The difference in the U.S. treatment of the visitors is very difficult to explain in except as a jarring illustration of Canada’s lack of prestige in the U.S. capital.

 The gossip is that the senior congressional players, faced with intense domestic policy pressures, didn’t want to meet with Canadians who had no auto industry ideas to bring to the table. It is astounding that Canadian Ministers would visit Washington with nothing to discuss, but the apparent hubris demonstrated during the visit belies the Harper government’s entire response to the economic crisis – it is all someone else’s problem and they are just disinterested observers.

 The Canadian government hasn’t been scoring any points in Washington of late but the Obama era should be a good one for Canada. If the President-elect’s latest cabinet picks are any indication of what’s to come, Canada may be in for a very good four years.

 The nominees for national security posts — particularly Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano and Susan Rice – are good news for Canada.  Obama’s reported Commerce pick, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, would also be a positive cabinet addition on cross border issues.

 Soon-to-be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has visited Canada many times, and, as a border state senator, voiced views favorable to Canada on most trade and travel issues. Her apparent opposition to some aspects of NAFTA and her occasional allusions to northern border security concerns are unlikely to be of serious consequence.

 The Homeland Security post is more relevant to Canada’s day to day concerns and Janet Napolitano, Obama’s choice for Homeland Security, could almost be described as a Canada-phile. Napolitano, governor of Arizona since 2003, has promoted high tech trade with Canada and supports the so-called CANAMEX transportation corridor which runs from Alberta to Mexico.

 Napolitano vocally opposed the aspects of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative which would impede border traffic and has been a critic of the southern border “fence”, expressing a preference for high tech border surveillance instead.

 Arizona welcomed half a million Canadian visitors in 2007, and in the same year trade with Canada was worth about half a billion dollars – with an exchange of aircraft parts leading the way. Napolitano visited Canada twice as governor – the first Arizona governor to make official visits — making stops in Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Churchill, Edmonton and Vancouver.

 In Winnipeg, she participated in a dialogue on climate change with Premier Gary Doer and has signed on to the Western Climate Change Initiative and the Climate Registry – two environmental initiatives involving U.S. states and Canadian provinces.

 While the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations has less impact on Canada than the other posts, nominee Susan Rice has interesting Canadian connections. Married to Canadian Ian Cameron, a former CBC and now ABC journalist, Rice authored a 2004 paper entitled, “Canada’s Relationship with the U.S.: Turning Proximity into Power – An American Perspective”, for the Brookings Institution. Rice has long been an Obama insider and will be very influential on foreign policy.

 Bill Richardson should also be a boon for Canada. A long-time free trader who strongly supported NAFTA when he was a member of the House of Representatives, Richardson still supports the pact but has some reservations about the labour provisions – very much in step with Obama’s overall thinking. If confirmed in Commerce, he will oversee the office of the U.S. Trade Representative – a key post for Canada.

 Under Richardson, trade between New Mexico and Canada increased 7% per year with construction materials to fuel New Mexico’s building boom and Bombardier rolling stock for a new commuter rail service topping imports. Richardson is an environmentalist who supports Kyoto-style carbon reductions and his state also participates in the climate change initiative with western provinces.

 While Obama and his top cabinet picks will provide the best opportunity Canada has had in almost two decades to remake the relationship with the U.S., it remains to be seen if Harper’s Cabinet, or a new coalition government, has the personnel and the savvy to start a productive dialogue with Obama’s A team.

Backroom veterans Brian Topp and Leslie Campbell discuss the state of their party, whether it’s time to unite the left and where it should stand on Afghanistan

Globe and Mail Update

November 7, 2008 at 11:00 AM EST

Leslie Campbell, a former chief of staff to federal NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin and assistant to Manitoba NDP leader Gary Doer, is now a Senior Associate at the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Washington. He believes that “the federal NDP, in its current incarnation, has run its course.”

Brian Topp, a former deputy chief of staff to Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow, was national campaign director for the NDP during the 2006 and 2008 federal elections and is co-chair of the NDP’s Election Planning Committee. He believes that the NDP, having undergone a “basic cultural change,” has a chance to compete for government.

In an e-mail exchange this week, the two shared their views on the state of their party.

From: Les Campbell
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2008 12:58 PM
To: Brian Topp
Subject: The NDP

Dear Brian,

First, congratulations on a great campaign. Jack did pretty much everything a party leader could be expected to do and the national NDP campaign, uninspired in past contests, looked great. Jack is smart, energetic, articulate and committed and has placed the federal NDP — a marginal group of true believers only a few years ago — emphatically back on the map. For the first time since Broadbent, the NDP looked and sounded the part of a contender and the media bought into the possibilities. While Jack’s “application” for Prime Minister was a little silly, he seemed to believe it and his enthusiasm was contagious.

Unfortunately, for all his skills, Jack was stuck leading one of the last unreconstructed ’60s-style socialist parties in the Western world and all he managed to do was bang his head on the NDP’s electoral glass ceiling - about 18 per cent, it seems.

I’m sorry I wasn’t there for the post-election celebrations but I hope no one is genuinely satisfied with this result. If the NDP’s best is only 18 per cent against the weakest Liberal leader this century, a Green Party leader who gave an early signal of her proclivity for self-destruction by running in the unwinnable Central Nova and a Conservative leader regarded as akin to Attila the Hun by a sizable group of Canadians, then we’ve got to face the cold truth.

Being a veteran of many NDP meetings, I’m afraid the post-election dialogue sounds something like this: “We had the right policies and a good message but it just wasn’t getting through to enough people so we have to communicate better.” Wrong — people got the message and the 18 per cent of voters that agree with the NDP responded positively. The rest don’t like the message.

Unfortunately, losing is never enough to cause any real soul searching within the NDP. For one, we’re used to losing, and, as an NDP colleague recently wrote, “when you think your party already embodies virtue, you don’t have to do any work to improve yourself.” Being satisfied with virtue alone will always lead to Phyrric victories in the current Canadian political context — satisfying to the faithful but devastating to those hoping for a centre-left government. The virtuous New Democratic and Green parties guarantee a Tory victory by splitting the centre-left vote with the Liberals.

The federal NDP, in its current incarnation, has run its course. Unless you are content to continue the honourable tradition of being the marginal, ineffective conscience of the nation - and I don’t think you are - there are two interconnected alternatives:

1) Enter a period of intense policy renewal to modernize the party and aggressively stake out centre-left political ground to capture disaffected Liberals in Ontario and the Atlantic provinces and potential Conservative/NDP switchers in the Western provinces

2) Spearhead a “unite-the-centre-left” movement, thereby capturing the momentum and setting the terms for a coalition of the Liberals, NDP and Green Party.

The policy renewal should have started long ago, but here are my two cents on where NDP policy should be heading:

- Careful stewardship of public resources to support a thoughtful array of social programs without higher taxes;

- Strong on environmental protection, but not so radically that key resource industries are threatened without alternative jobs being available;

- No undue regard to special interests, including organized labour;

- A caring country with national standards and priorities but with local control and respect for provincial jurisdiction;

- Support for Canada’s military - because unless we meet, or preferably exceed, our self-defence and international commitments, we’ll never have the prestige and clout we want on the international stage;

- An increased military commitment to Afghanistan that will respond to President Obama’s inevitable requests for assistance while emphasizing development and reconstruction over fighting.

As unlikely as it sounds, I believe the NDP can lead a unite-the-centre-left movement. The Liberal Party, still not willing to acknowledge the end of its incredible run, seems to be headed for another tribal gathering where its members will choose a leader that satisfies their internal impulses without responding to Canada as a whole or to their radically diminished capabilities.

While it might make you unpopular within our ranks, I’d suggest that you quietly meet with Preston Manning, Rick Anderson and the others who helped unite the right — there are lessons to be learned.

The NDP, in pursuing internal renewal, should invite all interested citizens to take part in the discussion. Give young people a reason to get involved in politics. Start a debate about a united left. Sponsor town hall meetings. Develop a method for public input in the policy renewal process. Commission papers. Launch a cross-country “listening” tour. Enlist NDP MPs and ask them to reach out to supporters of the other parties. Capture the agenda, downplay partisanship and emphasize hope. Try to recreate the Obama feeling in Canada by asking everyone to get involved.

Do it now — don’t wait for the Liberals to regain their footing.

In Solidarity,

Les

From: Brian Topp
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 11:31 AM
To: Les Campbell
Subject: RE: The NDP

Dear Les,

I was up way too late last night in a bar crammed with the Toronto chapter of “Democrats abroad.” What a beautifully moving moment it was when Barack Obama took to that stage with his family. What a remarkably happy bunch to be with! Congratulations to your colleagues at the NDI and its mothership. I’m looking forward to being at a similarly transformative moment here in Canada - when our own country casts off its own old shell and steps forward to a better place. Yes we can (too).

Here is my take on things north of the border, in this new atmosphere of hope and possibility.

I think that the best thing about our results in the Canadian federal election was that our party was NOT satisfied with them.

Yes we did:

- elect the second-largest caucus in our history;

- field the leader Canadians saw as the best alternative to the current Prime Minister;

- come first or second in 107 ridings;

- come second in a majority of Canada’s provinces;

- among national parties, push the Liberals to third place outside the GTA; and

- run a national campaign that Canadians heard, seemed to like, and repeated back to our candidates at the doorstep (a bit of a novelty, some of our experienced candidates tell me).

But my sense of it is that many in our party wanted to do much better. More and more, our party wants to win… and is coming to believe that we CAN win.

This basic cultural change is the most important contribution Jack Layton has so far made to our party.

In the past three federal elections we have more than doubled our vote. To win, we need to double our vote again. And we need to double our vote among Canadians who have never voted for federal New Democrats before - a taller order than what we have accomplished in the 2004, 2006 and 2008 elections.

As you know, we have plenty of research to prove that Canadians strongly share the values our party represents - and that Canadians overwhelmingly reject much of the common agenda of the “old shell” parties that have alternated in office since confederation.

The fundamental barrier to doubling our vote and winning office is trust.

It is generally agreed that our hearts are in the right place. Now we need to persuade that our heads are, too.

There is always room for improvement in every aspect of our work. But to my mind we are now essentially competitive in the campaign “air war.” We can match the Tory-Liberals dollar for dollar nationally. We can break through their monopoly of public dialogue on television, where elections are decided. We can run rings around them on the Internet. And we can even get the occasional article into globeandMail.com, praise the Lord.

Where we have some daunting work to do is on the ground. There is a lot to say about this, but the bottom line is that a prerequisite to victory is taking a winning campaign into our opponents’ fortresses and cracking them there - riding by riding, on the ground. We need our version of the 50-state strategy, without foolishly dissipating resources.

So to persuade a winning plurality of voters that we merit their support, we have some work to do on what we have to say:

- Libertarian economics as practiced by the former head of the U.S. Fed are, literally, bankrupt. The whole world can see that a more balanced market economy - with an appropriate role for the public interest, implemented and where necessary enforced through our democratic institutions - is the future. We can lead the discussion of what that needs to look like in Canada.

- Public services will prove their worth during the harder times coming. EI, public health care, child care & child benefits; public pensions, accessible training and education, smart public engagement in economic development. These are not going to look like frills in these times. We can lead the discussion about how to strengthen and modernize these services, and manage them fearlessly and effectively, so that they really work.

- The joke is that American elections are too important to leave to Americans. Certainly the world-wide audience for yesterday’s crucial change in Washington is a reminder of what a big agenda there is requiring common action across borders. We need to think much more carefully about that.

I think you have some useful advice in your note. I like your concluding paragraph on inviting all Canadians into a big discussion about these issues. That big discussion can help build us out, and thus help equip us for what we need to do in a winning election.

I don’t think I’ll surprise you to say that (speaking strictly personally) I don’t favour dispatching more Canadian combat troops to Afghanistan - and I don’t think President Obama should, either.

I’m not a pacifist. That debate was settled in our party in 1939 when our parliamentary caucus parted company with Woodsworth on the issue of World War II. But I agree with many thoughtful participants and observers of the conflict in Afghanistan that incrementally escalating it won’t settle it.

Are you proposing the conquest and permanent occupation of the Pashtun lands in both Afghanistan and Pakistan? Are you then proposing the necessary follow-on conquest and occupation of the rest of Pakistan? Are you prepared for the permanent deployment of the necessary troops (no doubt dwarfing the U.S. commitment in Iraq) required for this enterprise?

If you aren’t, then you are proposing to reproduce the strategic mistakes the United States committed in Vietnam - permitting an undefeated enemy to operate out of safe havens; incrementally escalating to a new stalemate, at a higher level of violence, without victory. I’m not sure Canada can bring peace to Afghanistan. But as a first step, we can choose not to make tragic mistakes like that.

I also don’t think I’ll surprise you in saying I like the approach Barack Obama and the American Democratic Party seem to be taking to working people and their organizations.

I had the opportunity to attend the United Steelworkers’ most recent international congress this summer, and listened to an inspiring speech by Obama on the subject of workers’ rights in today’s economy. He noted that his Republican opponents not only don’t want to help working people, but want to make sure working people can’t help themselves. He committed to making it easier for working people to organize into unions - a commitment I trust President Obama and the Democratic Congress will keep. In return, unionized workers across the United States threw themselves into his campaign. Yes, we can do that here, too.

You are thinking about what to do about the Liberals and the Greens. We should add the Bloc Quebecois, another chess piece, currently occupying almost 50 crucial seats.

In my view there are two roads forward with regard to these parties.

We can work to collectively defeat them in an election, or we can try to find some way to build a common front with some or all of them.

I think of this as the “west of the Lakehead solution” and the “east of the Lakehead solution”.

West of the Lakehead, as you know well, New Democrats have succeeded in limiting the role of Liberals and Greens in provincial politics, and (outside Alberta) we alternate regularly in office.

East of the Lakehead - with the sterling current exception of Nova Scotia — we have done more of our work in implicit or explicit coalitions, or soldiered on within our own “limited role”.

The fundamental flaw with the “East of the Lakehead” solution is that I don’t see a willing partner in the Liberal Party of Canada, at least for the time being.

I have tried to listen carefully to them on these issues; so far what I think I hear is no change in their approach.

Not only do they believe they are entitled to office. They believe they are entitled to have the leaders of other political parties endorse the Liberal Party in elections in lieu of their own parties; support Liberal election promises in place of their own proposals; and commend Liberal candidates to the electorate in lieu of their own party’s candidates. Opposing leaders who do not do this, so our friends in the Liberal party seem to believe, have committed some sort of trick, and are culpable for the fact that voters failed to elect Liberals.

Our friends in the Green Party elected a leader who naively tried to play along with this approach (she fought, it bears saying, an honourable and interesting campaign other than on this issue, and contributed some important points to the debates she took part in). Her reward was a frontal assault on all of her candidates in the closing days of the campaign by her allies in the Liberal Party, with herself as the most compelling spokesperson for why her own candidates should be defeated in the election - as they all were. She then turned on us and abused us of failing to follow her lead or to reproduce her results.

No thanks.

We need to do a much better job than we have in recent years in opening and pursuing channels of communications with all of the other parties in Parliament.

In a minority Parliament, anything can happen.

If a real opportunity develops to work up an East-of-the-Lakehead solution that allows us to move forward, we should investigate it.

Otherwise the west-of-the-Lakehead solution lies before us.

Either way: yes we can.

All the best,

Brian

From: Les Campbell
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 4:49 PM
To: Brian Topp
Subject: RE: The NDP

Thanks for your note, Brian, and your observations about Obama’s election. While I often pine for Canada and feel like a stranger in a strange land here in the U.S., last night there couldn’t have been a better place in the world than Washington. Who wasn’t moved by the election of an African-American, the death of Obama’s grandmother a day prior to his victory, the emotion of the tens of thousands in Grant Park in Chicago and the graciousness and sincerity of John McCain’s losing address? (I do have one Republican friend who managed to maintain his poker face)

Canada was on my mind at 3:00 a.m. on election night, when I wrote this paragraph for a piece on the election for Embassy Magazine: “Perhaps most importantly, Obama’s election will cause a yearning for something greater, more uplifting, in Canadian politics. By supporting Obama, a new generation got involved and discovered, for the first time, that their efforts, their votes, can lead to change and to hope. It won’t be long before Canadian youth demand from their politicians a movement that is uplifting and hopeful — unlike the current state of Canadian politics.”

Young, idealistic people don’t understand or care about the rivalries between the Liberals and NDP, the jealousies about turf, the relatively minute differences between the Liberal view of the country and the social democratic view. Coming from the Manitoba NDP and having spent years strategizing about vanquishing the resurgent Carstairs Liberals in the ’80s, I’m a veteran of the NDP/Liberal internecine wars. But with the perspective that comes from distance and with the mellowness that comes with age, I no longer understand what we’re fighting about.

There is broad consensus among progressive voters in Canada although we differ on some details. Five parties — with four hugging the centre-left - is a recipe for the semi-permanent marginalization of the agenda attractive to most Canadian voters. If we want to change the country for the better we have to start a dialogue about ideas, not parties. A united party — composed of like-minded people from the NDP, Liberals, Green Party, Bloc and former Progressive Conservatives — may well arise from that dialogue. I would argue that the NDP can lead the transformation, but it could be the Liberal Party if the next leader has the vision and the skills.

The only alternative to a united left for the NDP, in my opinion, is to import the “west of the Lakehead” NDP model to Toronto. The Ontario NDP has always seemed to me to be an unruly collection of special interests rather than a disciplined, cohesive unit like the Manitoba or Saskatchewan NDP. If we want to break out of northern Ontario, we’ll have to be modern and more realistic in our policies. We need to build trust, as you rightly say, but it’s a tall order.

Given that this renewal discussion has been active in the federal NDP for more than a decade and that nothing of consequence has occurred, I’m not holding my breath. Jack will be running in place unless fundamental change is in the offing.

I’ll take your bait on Afghanistan. You seem to want to abandon the place to rule by a retrograde minority determined to subjugate the whole country to their narrow and violent interpretation of Islam. We already know where that path leads. Why would we get out now? Because it’s tough to stay there? Because it’s too costly? Because Canadians don’t like getting their hands dirty with other people’s problems?

We should stay until the job is done because we believe that all human beings should enjoy the same rights, should be able to live a fruitful life free from repression and should be able to have input into the decisions that affect their lives. We should stay because a majority of Afghans want our help. We should stay because we have a commitment to Afghan women, ethnic minorities and Afghan youth; only international engagement will lead to a better future.

Barack Obama will want and appreciate Canada’s help. The U.S. will draw down in Iraq and ramp up in Afghanistan. I think Canada should redouble its efforts in development, reconstruction and political reform, but who will carry out those efforts without a secure environment? How can we help Afghans if we’re not willing to build the type of peace they need to prosper?

I find the NDP stance on Afghanistan curiously isolationist. Should we care about Darfur and Somalia? Should we be concerned about Zimbabwe? Should we continue to assist Haiti? I’d hope we’d say yes to all four. Military presence should be a last alternative, but unless we’re willing to cede the underdeveloped world to every thug with a gun, we have to be willing to engage our military when absolutely necessary — if only to make sure that help gets where it needs to go.

Unite the left may seem like a hopeless dream. The Liberals aren’t ready — they think that with the right leader they’ll unseat the Conservative usurpers and regain their traditional throne. The NDP is content to lose endlessly as long as there is sufficient silver lining in the bad news to motivate the troops for the next political battle. The Green Party, despite zero seats, feels it is on the ascent. The Bloc is content with its comfortable niche. The only problem is that the Canadian public yearns for more and may, just may, reward the party with the guts to break the mold.

Is Jack up to the task?

From: Brian Topp
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 6:16 PM
To: Les Campbell
Subject: RE: The NDP

I’m not sure the differences between New Democrats, Liberals, Greens and former Progressive Conservatives are “minute.” We don’t need to trivialize Canadian politics to rethink them.

I do think some of those differences are at least potentially bridgeable, and that some sort of common agenda is conceivable.

The issue is the practicalities. Are there willing partners?

New Democrats might have open minds about looking for the best way forward to succeed with our values and our agenda at the federal level. What I hope we won’t do is play a suicidal game, as our friends in the Green Party did.

Defeat and age doesn’t seem to be “mellowing” the Liberals - it seems to be making them angrier and less inclined to work with others (witness some of the strategizing going on between Liberals on The Globe’s website in recent weeks).

Perhaps I am misreading them. We’ll see shortly. The existence of a minority Parliament calls on all parties in the House to talk to each other and to look for common ground. We’ll see if they do.

One thing that seems clear from the Reform-PC experience is that building common fronts doesn’t come from an open-ended policy debate.

Several of the principals involved in that enterprise have been writing about it lately.

Their roadmap was (a) a clear decision by all the leaders involved to explore the issues; (b) straightforward negotiations by mid-level people authorized to explore ideas but also to speak for their party authoritatively; (c) a clear draft proposal widely supported by all sides; (d) a step-by-step, democratic process that ultimately let to a united party.

Is this the way forward for the constellation of parties you’re talking about? Perhaps.

Or perhaps the way forward is (ultimately) along the lines of some of the other working arrangements standard in Europe and other countries, like New Zealand.

Or perhaps the way forward is another test of strength in an election. We should be open-minded about the former possibilities, and diligently preparing for the latter one.

OnAfghanistan, I’m the one who took the bait, since your original proposal on this issue was the most provocative part of your first note.

Respectfully, what you offer on this issue are post-facto rationalizations.

TheUnited States invaded Afghanistan because that country sponsored the terrorist organization that carried out the 9/11 attacks - not for any of the reasons you set out.

TheU.S. invaded with the support of the Northern Alliance; installed a friendly government based on thatAlliance; and is now trying to defend it from an insurgency well-rooted in the Pashtun Lands in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Before committing troops to help continue this conflict, we have a duty - to those troops, and to our country - to ask precisely how further intervention would or could “finish the job.” I suggest (as do many others) that at the current level of intensity, it will not finish the job. And that any conceivable level of escalation will also likely not “finish the job” unless the U.S. is prepared to broaden the conflict into the neighbouring safe haven - with the consequences I outlined.

“Care,” “concern” and “assist” are not different words to describe “intervene with troops to participate in a shooting war.” They are potential alternatives to doing so.

Idealistic Wilsonian approaches to the issue of indefinite commitment to a war have not served the United States well in the past, and aren’t part of Canada’s tradition. I prefer the realist school that generally has guided our national strategy throughout our history, until the Martin government foolishly and fecklessly reversed our approach in this conflict.

Special to The Globe and Mail

Terry Glavin relates a tale of two Kabuls: A city terrorized by jihadist intimidation, a population fuelled by determination. The overwhelming message from Afghans to the West: Please stay!

Read the National Post Article

Les Campbell

While the impressive breadth and depth of Jack Layton’s victory at the New Democratic Party’s leadership convention in Toronto has temporarily silenced potential critics, Mr. Layton inherits a party establishment and a parliamentary caucus with a long-standing propensity to undermine even the most promising of new faces.

Mr. Layton is a man of undeniable political talent. Handsome, articulate, media savvy and gracious, Layton could well become a beacon for Canadians on the centre-left looking for an alternative to the Liberal party, but he faces two serious challenges, one from within and one from without. To face down challenges from within, he’ll need the confidence and vision to withstand the inevitable demands that will come from supporters looking for their “pound of flesh”. Led by NDP MP Svend Robinson, many of Layton’s internal boosters are associated with moves to pull the party leftward, into marginal protest movements and into policy stands — the Middle East conflict comes to mind — that will only damage the party in the long run.

Hurt feelings and bitterness will dominate Mr. Layton’s early interactions with his parliamentary caucus. Having been supported by only two of fourteen MPs and having run against three influential MPs, Layton’s first order of business will be fence mending. Retaining Bill Blaikie as House Leader and ensuring that Lorne Nystrom, an economic moderate, has the finance portfolio, will help to reassure western New Democrats that the leader from Toronto is open to prairie NDP experience.

From without, he has to counter the inevitable loss of momentum that follows the hype of a leadership contest. Audrey McLaughlin and Alexa McDonough both fell off the political screen in the first months after winning a party mandate. Once absent from the daily Ottawa media routine, it is difficult, if not impossible, to make up ground. Being in the major national story of the day can reassure party members and supporters that the leader is active and can help stave off caucus backbiters.

Keeping in mind that Audrey Mc Laughlin and Alexa Mc Donough emerged as party leaders in 1989 and 1995, respectively, with the same high expectations that have greeted Mr. Layton, but ultimately failed to broaden the NDP’s appeal, here are five suggestions that may help Mr. Layton avoid the fate of the last two NDP leaders:

1) Ottawa matters. Run in a by-election, whether offered through a deal with the Liberals or through the temporary retirement of an NDP MP. Failing that, move to Ottawa. Get an office in Parliament Hill’s Center Block and camp out in the press theater. Don’t be at a party event in Saskatchewan when the press gallery is looking for comments on Canada’s participation in an Iraq war.
2) Start building a big tent. The demands of your campaign supporters are almost guaranteed to send you straight to the margins of Canadian political discourse. Reach out to new constituencies quickly. Talk to business interests - they’ll be happy to get to know you. Find out what disaffected Liberals are thinking. Make it clear that the NDP can be their political home.
3) Stay away from the Middle East. First and foremost, make sure Svend Robinson does not reassume the Middle East (or Foreign Affairs) portfolio. Make Alexa McDonough or better yet, Winnipeg MP Pat Martin, your Middle East critic, and ask the new critic to spend time learning the issues before commenting. Drop the ill-fated strategy to turn blind support of the Palestinian cause into votes - you’ve got everything to lose and nothing to gain from alienating broad swaths of the Jewish left and other Canadians who have a more nuanced view of the conflict.
4) Convince Canadians that you don’t want more of their money. There is a centre-left political consensus in Canada but it doesn’t include higher taxes. Make a pilgrimage to Gary Doer’s Manitoba and Lorne Calvert’s Saskatchewan, and find out how NDP governments protect health care while balancing the budget. See how frugality and social democratic principles can mix.
5) Build a real federal political party. Canadians watching the NDP leadership convention on television may have been fooled into thinking that the federal NDP is stronger than it is. While 82,000 members is nothing to sneeze at, in reality all of those members belong to the provincial sections and their allegiances will shift to upcoming provincial elections in Ontario, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. The Federal NDP needs it own membership lists and nation-wide staff.

Jack Layton may well be the leader that can bring the NDP back to 44 seats or, better yet, 151 seats in the House of Commons. But, in addition to good looks and a nice turn of phrase, he’ll need uncommon backbone and clarity of vision to overcome a decade of NDP stagnation and marginalization.

Author’s note: A version of this article appeared in the National Post on January 28, 2003
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December 27, 2002
From the economy to the military to the environment, Lorne Nystrom articulates a set of policies that should be attractive to a wide swath of the Canadian public and should give NDP reformers heart. Nystrom has lead the way within the party in promoting democratic reform ideas, which a include a mixed (proportional and directly elected) electoral system, fixed election dates and radical improvements to Parliamentary rules. Nystrom is a long serving member of Parliament with impressive knowledge of Canadian economic and constitutional policy. On the personal side, Nystrom is a good speaker, in both official languages, and works a room with panache. He has a loyal following of young people, many of whom voted for him in 1995 when he was, for a time, the strongest candidate in the NDP leadership race.

Along with Pierre Ducasse, Nystrom is willing to press the party on difficult issues. He hints at a new relationship with organized labour, is willing (gasp) to support more military spending (arguing, rightly, that Canadians will be more credible in world affairs if we have a serious military force), and he puts forward economic policies that look very reasonable. If there is one policy flaw, it is his unfortunate tendency to use the usual, but worn, rhetoric about the “corporate agenda”, globalization and the evils of trade deals. Unlike the other leadership candidates, however, who seem to believe in global conspiracy theories, Nystrom uses the rhetoric to get the party faithful to listen to his rather sensible proposals.

Herein lies the mystery; why is this man, who, arguably, represents the most attractive personal and policy package in the race, only able to attract the support of one caucus colleague and relatively few party members? Why is Lorne Nystrom (likely) running a distant third and not leading the NDP leadership race? Why isn’t Lorne Nystrom considered one of the promising leaders of this Canadian political generation?

The answers to these questions aren’t obvious and lie within the realm of the minutiae of backroom party and parliamentary politics. Lorne Nystrom’s weak standing within the party arises from a combination of the following factors:

1) Weak regional base. Although Nystrom has “reconnected” with Saskatchewan in the last few years, for much of his political life he was a Saskatchewanite in name only. Bringing up his family in the Ottawa area, Nystrom became a consummate federal politician but didn’t develop the regional political base he needed to win a leadership campaign.

2) Compromised by constitutional politics. Nystrom’s role as the NDP’s chief constitutional critic during the latter stages of the Meech Lake Accord process and through the Charlottetown failure represent a net loss of political capital. Nystrom, although acting with all of the right motivation, is forever enshrined in the NDP collective consciousness as a person who defended, and worse, cooperated with Brian Mulroney on, constitutional compromises that are (wrongly) blamed by many in the Party for the NDP’s slide in the polls from 1992 on.

3) Not appreciated by his colleagues. Lorne Nystrom has never been a popular caucus or party figure. He is a very persistent politician who seldom gives up a policy fight - witness his success in getting the caucus to follow his constitutional lead. Although Nystrom’s persistence has helped him win a number of caucus battles, it has not helped him win caucus endorsement. Embarrassingly, even his fellow Saskatchewan MP, Dick Proctor, is working for Bill Blaikie. Although Proctor has not served on the House of Commons benches with Nystrom for long, Proctor did serve as both NDP federal and Saskatchewan party secretary — and presumably was not impressed by his interactions with Nystrom. Nystrom has a loyal youth following, but he has little support among the party stalwarts that he most needs to win a leadership race. The party “names” are split between Layton and Blaikie.

4) Little money and organization. A poor regional base and little caucus support has made it difficult to raise money during the leadership campaign. NDP candidates, and Nystrom is no exception, get few (read no) corporate donations,and, while Nystrom has some union support, he doesn’t command the respect of the deep labour pockets. Inexplicably, given these known weaknesses, he did not appear to be aggressively fundraising prior to the start of the 2002/2003 leadership campaign.

Unfortunately, for both NDP reformers and for Canadians, the prospects of a Lorne Nystrom victory in this NDP leadership race are very slim. Unless and until Nystrom addresses his weak political standing within the party and caucus and/or develops a solid regional or issue-based political following, he will represent wasted raw political talent.
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November 25, 2002

It’s hard to fault Bill Blaikie. For most of his political career he has personified the ideal NDP Member of Parliament - principled, consistent, passionate about the plight of the less fortunate, willing to buck trends and adopt unpopular causes. Bill has been a consistent performer in the House of Commons and is one of the few MPs who really believes in the democratic power of a debating chamber, a throwback to an earlier, perhaps more noble, era of Canadian politics where the great issues of the day were debated by the great political personalities in the Parliament of Canada.

Bill Blaikie tugs at the heartstrings of many New Democrats. He represents a direct line from the most famous of NDP personalities - his leadership campaign launch in Winnipeg’s Stella Mission evoked images of J.S. Woodsworth and Blaikie’s United Church credentials and oratorical skills remind New Democrats of Tommy Douglas. Blaikie’s success in garnering the support of many of his caucus colleagues is a tribute to the admiration he commands within the party’s parliamentary group. In Blaikie, other NDP MPs see a person who appreciates and supports the role of the MP and who believes that the political vocation is a noble calling. Blaikie is willing to defend the station of his fellow NDP MP’s and he has become somewhat of a champion of beleaguered politicians everywhere.

Bill’s spirited defence of parliament and the parliamentarian’s role in Canadian political life has the potential to become a weakness. He risks, and I’d argue that this has already happened, becoming the defender of the status quo. For NDP members yearning for change, at least within their own party, if not the country, Bill Blaikie sounds like an apologist for the same old same old. For Canadians at large, Bill must sound anachronistic, a defender of a quaint, but bygone, era where elected representatives were entrusted to speak on behalf constituents - in contrast to today’s hyper-energized information environment where constituents seek information from a variety of sources and then pick the advocacy vehicle of their choice, more often than not a special interest or pressure group, and not a political party.

For NDP members, Bill’s sometimes-cranky defence of the status quo is an impediment to his leadership aspirations. While trying to defend NDP performance Bill can come off as defensive and thin-skinned. There is a fine line between reminding NDP members of the good, but largely anonymous work the leader and caucus have done, and sounding like a dour professor scolding students for not paying attention. Blaikie’s impatience with those not sufficiently thankful for the work of their Ottawa representatives gives short shrift to committed members who just want to see the party in a more competitive position.

Bill Blaikie’s stated and written policies aren’t worth reviewing here. Suffice to say that Bill would be an effective articulator of the NDP status quo, policy-wise. Therein lies the rub. People hoping for party reform won’t get it under Bill Blaikie as leader. He may make modest changes to how the party is run but he has never been very engaged in the workings of the federal party, preferring instead to maintain and strengthen his Manitoba political base. To the extent that Gary Doer and the Manitoba NDP are on the cutting edge of the NDP in Canada, and they are, Bill may bring some new ideas to the federal scene, but, for all intents and purposes, Bill Blaikie is a “take no chances” candidate, a person that may have the ability to energize the traditional base and temporarily bring back a dozen or so lost seats.