Advertisement

News

I’m for the populist unafraid of taking on NDP elites

The often-reviled Ford Nation gets at least one thing right: the downtown elites do exist, and I suppose I am one of them.

I didn’t start out that way. Raised in Flemingdon Park by a struggling single mother, I watched her fumble in her purse for money to finance school field trips “everyone is going on.” And watched her embarrassed face when she came to Cub Scouts and realized I was the only kid without a uniform.

Bread-and-butter issues matter when you don’t have much of either, and it can be easy for people without these challenges to forget.

We downtown elites helped create Ford Nation in the heady, often excellent days of David Miller’s mayoralty, with what felt to them to be esoteric talk of tree canopies and bike lanes while many worried about feeding their families, getting to work or having a job.

While a $65 vehicle tax, supported by downtowners with jobs, seemed a small price to pay for inspired city-building, Ford Nation saw it as one more move by out-of-touch snobs, adding to their bills while downtowners biked or walked to nearby employment.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath isn’t afraid to speak about pocketbook issues to people whose pocketbooks aren’t full or who are feeling economically overwhelmed.

Her talk of respect for tax dollars, promises to run a government that won’t blow people’s money, and her denunciations of corruption and spending scandals speak to a legitimate suspicion of government in general.

Just because big business parties serving the 1 per cent – the Tories and the U.S. Republicans – have expertly tapped these themes to serve banks and their buddies doesn’t mean progressives need to abandon turf that speaks so directly to the population’s frustrations and anxieties.

Now the NDP’s own downtown elites, the Gang of 34, are attacking Horwath for daring to offer straightforward talk.

In a preachy and patronizing shame-afesto, these party poohbahs take on a working-class kid who wants to be premier for sounding too much like, well, the people who get elected.

Federal NDP leader Jack Layton, who was on his way to becoming one of Canada’s greatest prime ministers, was similarly attacked by uneasy, defeatist leftists.

Layton wanted to win, and so does Horwath, knowing that in power real change is possible.

But the Gang of 34 want Horwath to speak Brita-filtered progressive purity.

Will they also come after Toronto mayoralty frontrunner Olivia Chow, who is wisely attempting to reclaim that ground with a campaign that appears, hopefully, on its way to a win?

These curmudgeonly critics play into the hands of our corruption-drenched premier, suggesting that the Liberal campaign-left, always-govern-right party is this time finally and really going to remain progressive while actually in power.

They are helping convince those who have the luxury of pondering progressive perfection that the chronically conservative Liberals have changed their spots and have now bought into a red-swabbed nirvana.

Horwath is attacked for not backing Wynne’s fantasy budget the same way Layton was criticized for not swallowing another Liberal come-to-Jesus moment, when then PM Paul Martin tabled a progressive Liberal budget back in 2005 – just before the door hit him in the ass as his scandal-soaked federal party was on its way out.

Why, oh why, can Liberals never come up with a progressive budget when they have, say, a majority government?

The NDP is actually running against Harris apostle Tim Hudak. There were shrieks when the NDP recently launched a front-page ad takeover of the Toronto Sun. Critics sniffed: why the hell would she want to talk to those people?

Because she wants them to vote for the NDP. They will need to for the party to actually win.

Horwath is reaching outside the NDP’s traditional base, and listening, too. When small business owners, mom-and-pop shops, told Horwath they couldn’t afford a jump in the minimum wage in one go, she listened, proposing a compromise, but is attacked for not being progressive enough.

The NDP leader doesn’t want moral victories she wants a win that is moral. And to wrench working people free from parties that will never serve them.

And I think she can do it. The Steeltown Scrapper remains the most popular party leader in Ontario, in part for being least like a pol.

Ontarians are sick of being lied to and sick of plug-and-play politicos talking down to them. I’ll take a populist progressive any day who isn’t afraid to challenge the orthodoxies, even among her party’s elites.

Are we really ready to say a party that blew over a billion bucks covering its ass while the current premier, Kathleen Wynne, was in cabinet deserves another try? She sounds like Rob Ford, repeating her empty apologies and calling for people to just move on.

The Liberals couldn’t find the bucks for transit, but coughed up a quick $1 billion when they needed it to buy votes with our money. Why didn’t she just say no?

Horwath is running to beat back the Tories, and she successfully bashed them in recent head-to-head by-elections – despite the fact that in the 2011 elections the NDP ran third in those ridings. So much for strategic voting.

She can do that in battlegrounds all over Ontario. And in Toronto she is largely facing off against Liberals, so for most of us the vote-splitting bugaboo isn’t even an issue.

So vote for the party that isn’t conning you, that promises to raise corporate taxes – the lowest in the Great Lakes area – and will give tax credits to companies that hire and invest in infrastructure instead of skipping town with their profits. There’s still plenty that’s social in the NDP plan, which promises nutrition programs and dental care for kids, shortened emergency room wait times, increased home care and schools kept open as community centres.

The chameleon Libs are the party of Ornge, eHealth and gas plant cancellations. And remember, it wasn’t just the Tories who sparked a war with the public sector when they were in power. It was Dalton McGuinty, while Wynne was minister of education, who went after the educators and attacked their wages. That’s another thing the non-elites hate: teacher strikes and lockouts that mean they have to scramble to get their kids taken care of, maybe even miss a day’s work.

Like Layton in his last debate before his final federal election, Horwath made a breakthrough Tuesday night. Her look-you-in-the-eye honesty contrasted with the old-style parties as Wynne squirmed and dodged and Hudak made promises that are impossible to believe.

Don’t be hustled into believing a little scruff and a little tough from a Steeltown tornado can’t take it all.

michaelh@nowtoronto.com | @m_hollett

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.

Recently Posted