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Quebec NDP Convention Hears
a ‘Leftist’ Jack Layton
by Robbie Mahood
/ December 2006
MONTREAL—When Jack Layton addressed the Convention of
the Federal NDP-Quebec section on Nov. 12 his remarks on Afghanistan were
better than I expected.
He called for the withdrawal of Canadian
troops, not differentiating between Kandahar and the rest of the country,
nor between combat and other roles. He spoke of the suffering of the Afghan
people under bombardment, not just the loss of Canadian soldiers.
I was able to buttonhole him afterwards in
the corridor long enough to find out that by withdrawal he meant the 2700
troops in Kandahar, but he was prepared to make an exception for 50
soldiers in Kabul whose presence he claimed had been requested by Canadian
aid agencies to provide security for their personnel. He did not specify a
timetable for withdrawal in his speech, but favoured immediate, or
a.s.a.p., for the 2700 in his remarks to me.
There was nothing in the speech about an
on-going (non-military) Canadian role in reconstruction, development, and
humanitarian aid (presumably under continued NATO occupation), nor in terms
of "peace-building" in collaboration with "our NATO
allies", the Kharzai government, and other unnamed parties, as was
specified in the NDP leaflet distributed at the Oct. 28 antiwar
mobilizations.
The rest of the speech dealt mostly with
environmental issues, which have been front row center for the NDP as it
tries to shake down the Tories on this hot topic. The goal for the next
election is “an NDP-led government”. NDP Quebec deputy Pierre Ducasse had
earlier made explicit reference to NDP participation in a coalition
government.
The convention of the Quebec section of the
federal party was otherwise noteworthy for the defeat of a proposal to
re-establish a provincial NDP—which would have pitted it against the new
leftist party, Quebec Solidaire, in the provincial arena. Socialist Caucus
delegates opposed this initiative, as did the party brass (for different
reasons).
A resolution against the new federal Young
Offenders Act was also passed rather handily without mentioning Layton's
previous tilt toward the law-and-order Tories on this issue. We tried but
failed to get approval to introduce an emergency resolution holding Layton
to the party policy of immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan adopted at the
September federal NDP convention.
Much ballyhoo surrounded the adoption of
the Sherbrooke Declaration, a position paper on Quebec and federalism that
is touted as paving the way for an electoral breakthrough for the federal
party in Quebec.
(It re-cycles the idea of ‘asymmetrical
federalism’, in which Quebec would be able to opt out of federal government
programmes and receive financial compensation, thus enhancing Quebec’s
control of such spending. And in a partial reversal of NDP support for the
federal Clarity Act, the Declaration states that the NDP would respect a
future referendum vote for Quebec sovereignty if it attains a simple
majority on a question approved by the Quebec National Assembly. At the
same time, it acknowledges that the federal Parliament could take its own
course on such an outcome. — B.W.)
There were officially 134 delegates to this
convention, the largest in a long time. There were only about 60 at most
sessions, but that is still a substantial improvement over past
conventions. The NDP is running a Steelworkers Union rep in the Repentigny
bye-election, which is a Bloc Quebecois stronghold.
In my view, Layton succeeded in
refurbishing the NDP's antiwar credentials amongst the assembled delegates
for whom ending our combat mission sounds plausibly like the only
significant goal. He was silent on other violations of Afghani sovereignty,
and it would have been difficult to tackle the question of a non-military
or at least non-combatant intervention for Canada in Afghanistan in the
context of continued U.S.-NATO occupation and control.
The NDP ranks are still susceptible to
appeals to the mythic Canadian peacemaker role and to missionary impulses
as promoted by Ottawa with the able assistance of the business media.
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