By Shawn Whitney (with John Bell and Paul Kellogg)
This convention of the federal New Democratic Party couldn't come at a more important moment.
There are real opportunities for the NDP to make breakthroughs across the country.
Amongst working people there is a rising anger. Sick of only the rich getting richer in the present economic boom, workers are demanding their share.
Strike levels in Canada are the highest in the industrialized world.
From nurses to municipal workers to auto workers, there is a growing militancy just waiting to be tapped into and organized.
And the anger isn't only around strictly economic issues. Across the country there is a growing movement demanding that federal, provincial and municipal governments invest in housing for the homeless.
There is a National Day of Action Against Homelessness scheduled for October 2.
Students too are preparing to fight for decent education with a national strike called by the Canadian Federation of Students for February 2, 2000 as part of their Access 2000 campaign.
If there is one theme which runs through all of these struggles it is this: people have had enough of the market. They have had enough of a world driven by greed while those in need facing worsening conditions.
But if there are incredible opportunities for a party not based on corporations but on the aspirations of working people and the oppressed, there are also dangers.
The leadership of the federal NDP have spent over a year trying to shift the party "to the centre." They are looking to and praising the market just as others are being repulsed by its effects.
Last summer Alexa McDonough toured Europe to talk to social democratic parties there about their strategies. She was enamoured by Tony Blair's New Labour Party and by the Dutch party's "flexicurity" model of job creation.
Shortly after her tour she and Nelson Riis held press conferences to announce that the NDP was now "business-friendly."
The party planned to appoint a Critic for Business to show that they recognized that it was the private sector that creates jobs, not government.
The dangers of this strategy were immediately apparent.
Riis, asked at the press conference how he felt about the fact that Pratt & Whitney -- the largest corporate recipient of federal money -- had just announced the layoff of 900 workers, refused to comment. According to Riis, he "didn't want to be negative" while announcing new ties to business.
Many in the workers' movement were appalled at this, and the leadership has retreated from such open pronouncements.
But the drift towards pro-market policies continues nonetheless.
McDonough, in a year-end interview in the National Post , pointed to the NDP government in Saskatchewan as the model.
"Our long serving NDP governments in Saskatchewan have really demonstrated that, yes, we can be both fiscally responsible and economically creative, and at the same time we can be socially progressive."
The truth is, this is just Blairism by another name.
The NDP government in Saskatchewan has imposed public sector wage controls and legislated public sector workers back-to-work.
As Barbara Abele, president of local 75 of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses stated after they were legislated back and faced heavy fines and injunctions: "This is a sad day for collective bargaining in the province. As far as we're concerned, collective bargaining is dead."
Roy Romanow's government has closed more hospitals per capita than either Mike Harris or Ralph Klein. And he reneged on promises for a hike in the minimum wage and pay equity. Saskatchewan also has the lowest social assistance payments in the country.
Is this the model of government that the founders of the NDP fought for in Regina in 1933? Is this a model which can win today?
The recent election results in Ontario, New Brunswick and most recently Nova Scotia make it clear that the answer is decisively, no.
The Nova Scotia NDP should have had the election in the bag. The Liberals were hated. The Tories mistrusted. Yet the NDP lost seats and votes.
It was not, as the leadership would have us believe, because Nova Scotia workers were afraid of a too-radical NDP getting elected and recoiled from the previous groundswell.
The NDP tried to out-Tory the Tories. Nova Scotia NDP leader Robert Chisholm even compared himself to New Brunswick Tory leader Bernard Lord.
The result was sadly predictable. As former NDP premier of Manitoba Howard Pawley stated in the wake of the Nova Scotia election: "If you run on conservative issues, they'll vote Conservative."
NDPers at this convention have to decide where to stand. Will the party stand with the righteous anger of working people, students and the poor and oppressed in this country, an anger directed against the market.
Or will the party go the way of Tony Blair's "New Labour" and side with the market, a market which is destroying the lives of billions internationally and of tens of thousands here at home.
The NDP is truly at a crossroads.