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The win of neo-liberal, turn-coat Bob Rae
in Toronto Centre constituency was not the saddest news for the labour-based New Democratic Party on March 17. It was
the fact that the pro-business Green Party did as well or better than the
NDP in three of the four ridings where by-elections were held.
“They [the Greens] didn’t steal votes from
us. They took votes from the Liberals and Conservatives,” an NDP
spokesperson insisted.
But that didn’t seem to be the case in
Toronto Centre, which is sandwiched between constituencies held by the
NDP — Leader Jack Layton’s Toronto Danforth,
and his wife MP Olivia Chow’s Trinity-Spadina.
In Toronto Centre, the Green Party climbed from 5 per cent of the vote in
2006 to 13 per cent in 2008. The Liberals got 52 per cent in 2006 and 60
per cent in 2008. By contrast, the NDP vote plummeted a full 10 per cent
from 23 per cent support in the riding in 2006. The Conservatives dropped
6 percentage points.
In Willowdale
riding the NDP dropped 11 per cent, to fall one point behind the Green
Party which received 5 per cent of the votes. The NDP lost ground in
Vancouver Quadra, where its vote share declined by 2 points and put it in
a virtual tie with the Greens which gained 8 points. Only in the Saskatchewan
riding of Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River,
where Conservative Rob Clarke won, did the NDP vote rise — by 2 per cent
— from 2006, and stay well ahead of the Greens.
While the turnout in by-elections is less
than half that in general elections, it seems clear that voters looking
for an alternative to the major big business parties, the Tories and
Liberals, are looking increasingly to a small party that masquerades as
‘environmentalist’ and which seeks to saddle working people with more
regressive taxes. So we continue to argue: to survive the NDP must
advance anti-capitalist solutions to problems of the economy and the
environment. In short, the NDP must turn left to avoid creeping
irrelevance and eclipse by the Greens.
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