Featur e Canada’s NDP:
UNOFFICIAL OPPOSITION NO MORE
By Kim Wright
breaths. Much had been made of the possible outcomes of that night, but the questions remained the same every where I went. Could the most recent polling research be true? Were the Bloc really about to be decimated in Quebec? Were the Liberals really going to drop to record lows and their Leader possibly lose his seat? Would the NDP finally beat their previ- ous high of 43 seats reached under Ed Broadbent or would the bottom fall out before Election Day? Could the “Orange Crush” really elevate Jack Layton into Stornoway or even 24 Sussex? For New Democrats in particular this was the watershed moment. In the weeks, months and – frankly - the past 50 years, there has been a debate raging within the New Demo- crats: do we want to be the social conscience or the govern- ment? It was the choice that Jack Layton’s team put to members
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during the 2003 NDP leadership campaign. Upon his elec- tion, Mr. Layton and his team did as they campaigned on, and unabashedly focused all energies on rebuilding the Party with a view to forming government. His goal did not require abandoning Party principles, but rather changing the way that the NDP was viewed by the general public and, more impor- tantly, changing how New Democrats felt about themselves. Layton challenged those that were no longer content to be spectators in the political arena to move beyond the com- fort of their placards and chants and work towards something more. He reached out to those for whom moral victories were not enough and reinforced the ideas of Tommy Doug- las: that governing should be what New Democrats strive for if real change for working families was the ultimate goal. Lay- ton’s team were keenly aware that if the NDP were to survive,
Picture courtesy of
www.ndp.ca 42 Campaigns & Elections | Canadian Edition
n Federal election night as New Democratic Par- ty of Canada (NDP) supporters, opponents and members of the media gathered across the country to watch the results come in, we held our collective
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