The ND in Power: Illusion and Reality

Abstract

What about us Canadians, eh? Just as an unbridled capitalist spirit once more stalks the globe, just as the final collapse of authoritarian Communism quickly is followed by the rejection of social democracy even in its Swedish heartland, the Canadian electorate takes it upon itself to provide the international Left with at least a momentary respite, a tonic against too deep a bout of depression. When Ontario (with a population larger than Sweden's) elected a majority NDP government in September 1990, this marked the first significant electoral breakthrough by the Left internationally for almost a decade. Scarcely a year later, as the hallowed counter-revolutionary cemeteries of Upper Canada still heaved and groaned above the United Empire Loyalists wheeling in their graves, the ghosts of the old revolutionary spirit of the western hinterland awakened to overwhelming NDP victories in British Columbia and Saskatchewan.