The Ontario NDP held its Provincial Council on September 25-26 to assess the Ontario election and review the recent elections in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Sadly, it seems to have drawn mostly wrong lessons from these events.
In party leader Hampton's speech he rightly condemned the strategic voting advocated by people like CAW president Buzz Hargrove.
But he missed the fact that strategic voting only made sense to people because the NDP didn't offer a significant enough alternative to the Liberals.
It was nonetheless fortunate that calls for the expulsion of Hargrove did not materialize and no disciplinary action was taken.
Expelling the leader of one of the most powerful private sector unions in the country would have been madness. It could easily have led to a massive split in the labour movement.
However what was most notable -- and most worrying -- about Hampton's speech and the spin coming out of the Council was the focus on law and order.
Hampton and the party leadership seem to think that Doer won the Manitoba election because he had an almost identical platform to the Ontario NDP plus he was "tough on crime."
"For women in Scarborough, crime is an issue. For all kinds of working people in this province, preventing crime, feeling safer and more secure in our own communities is an issue," Hampton said after mocking potential opposition to this obvious shift rightward.
For Hampton getting tough on crime is "not a shift right" it's about supporting more and better street lighting and by getting more police foot patrols in communities.
He contrasts this with the Tories war on squeegees.
"The trouble is, the Harris government isn't listening... They're going to focus on beating up on 400 kids who are trying to make a living out of squeegeeing."
Does Hampton think that his version of targetted policing will be any different than Mel Lastman's? Does he think that there are two sets of police officers -- the racist, homeless harassing ones and then the progressive pro-women ones?
Hampton's (and Doer's and Romanow's) war on crime will simply increase the harassment of the poor and give more confidence to the police that they can act with impunity.
The real issue is poverty and a lack of services such as women's shelters and daycare centres.
After all, most rapes and abuse of women take place in the family, especially when those families are under increasing financial and personal pressures.
The role of the police in dealing with rapes has been terrible; neglectful at best, contemptuous of the victim at worst. The case of Jane Doe demonstrated this contempt very clearly.
Even though Jane Doe matched the profile of the balcony rapist's victims neither she nor any women in her area were ever warned of this. As a result, Jane Doe was raped.
Hampton's newfound enthusiasm for law and order will only tell people that the Tories have been right along. It will not build the NDP.
At a time when the right-wing has had a field day with targetted policing, young offender boot camps, anti-gang hysteria, raids on gay clubs and a beligerant police association in Toronto which placed racist ads during the election, Hampton's anti-crime message is more than just bad strategy, it is irresponsible.