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Hopes for Horwath

My voting day started in nostalgia at the Metropolitan Church on Simpson, where, after casting my ballot, I looked up to see the stage where Jack Layton made his nomination speech the night he was named federal NDP candidate in this riding, so many years ago.

Eleven hours later, in a mood of mellowed and contained excitement, I headed to Peter Tabuns’ party at the Sidewalk Café on the Danforth where Tabuns had just given thanks for all Layton’s gifts, and people confusedly contemplated the meaning of the Liberals’ one short of a majority status. Tabuns, in an obviously relieved state, told me the election was a wild ride, full of the unpredictable. Considering the strength of the Tories at the outset, and all the foreboding and talk of the apocalypse, I guess he was right.

Seven more NDP caucus members – and the possibility of bargaining in a balance of power situation. It stretches the imagination. Will Andrea Horwath get to trade over transit funding or a nuke refusal? Too soon to know and too many variables for much pre-figuring.

What’s for sure is a stronger social democratic tone in the legislature and more NDP research, more issues contested, more pressure on Liberals from a direction not Hudak’s.

There will be a lot said about Andrea Horwath’s campaign in the days to come.

Her strategy has deepened the fault lines in the progressive community – though, to be frank, most NDP campaigns tend to do this, expectations being so terribly high when it comes to the country’s only significant non-corporate party. This time around we witnessed a priority re-adjustment where some lefties followed the Green Energy Act into the Liberal camp.

On top of this, there were accusations that Horwath fanned anti-taxism, indulged in retail appeals and lacked socialist charisma. Some said she ought to have promoted a massive program of public and service works to ease the scary evaporation of good jobs, the 7.5% unemployment, (22% for youth), burgeoning poverty rates and the general misery many people now have raising children and still keeping a roof over their heads.

And yes, I would have preferred a more maximalist approach. I’m also quite sure Horwath was aware that the $135 a year families would receive from phasing out the HST on fuel and home heating (after four years of the plan, that is) wouldn’t make a fig of difference, particularly if the global crisis worsen the current economic contraction.

But, let’s be clear: the NDP was the only major party to run an equity campaign and to remind voters that the object of the game was re-distribution in a top-heavy power structure. The proposal to kill the corporate tax cuts wasn’t just a detail – it was the key to the NDP’s whole electoral project. It should give pause to those who were willing to desert the party over a few good moves made by Liberals. Steelworker economist Erin Weir, called it the most fiscally significant of all election promises. He pointed out that the difference between the Lib and Tory 10 percent tax cut rate and the NDP’s 14%, is nearly $2 billion a year in revenue

We don’t know whether any of Horwath’s social-friendly policies – a housing benefit for low-income tenants, 50,000 affordable housing units over the decade, emergency dental care for the working poor, a mimimum wage of $11 indexed to inflation — will be in play in the new legislative configuration, but a glance back at what NDP MPP’s have been doing over the last few years gladdens the progressive heart.

It’s quiet stuff, and unless you follow the daily drama at Queens Park, you may not know that they have been fighting the shipping of nuke waste on the Great Lakes, the Canada/EU trade pact (to forestall privatized water systems) and the exporting of electricity from coal-fired plants, and promoting the special diet allowance, a strengthened Toxic Reduction Act, a G20 inquiry, an Ontario Pension Plan, producers pay strategies for hazardous goods and a great deal more.

A less lonely caucus will now turn up the volume we can only await the sound and fury.

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