The Crisis of Social Democracy in Canada

Abstract

IN THE MONTHS PRIOR to the September 1984 federal election, the polls indicated a sharp fall in the New Democratic Party's popular support, even in its western bastion. Media commentators, even staunch party supporters, pre dicted the imminent collapse of the NDP to levels near the Co-operative Com monwealth Federation's prostration after the 1958 Diefenbaker sweep. The NDP was out of touch, it was claimed. The NDP's answers were old hat. Such views seemed dramatically confirmed by the controversial report by James Laxer, former researcher for the federal NDP caucus, claiming that the party's economic analysis and programme were woefully inadequate and outdated. The NDP's response to the crisis was not surprising. The party made a sharp right turn and focused its campaign on ''ordinary Canadians, modestly defending the social security net and some government intervention in the economy. Indeed, the party simply took the ground vacated by the Liberals as Turner moved right to meet the Tory challenge. Another first had been achieved by social democracy in Canada: the Commission for Social Affairs of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops sounded markedly to the left of Canada's socialist party. The results, which saw the NDP salvage its posi tion in the House of Commons, were heralded by the strategists of moderation as a triumph. It had worked. And that is what matters above all else in the hurly-burly of the electoral dance. These four books, all in various and uneven ways, chronicle aspects of the continuing crisis of social democracy in Canada. Each adds usefully to the