The NDP’s next, great crusade
Only, the objects of his ministration are not the traditional fringe-dwellers; it’s we, poor slobs and former members of the middle-class.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Long were the nights I spent, in the early 1980s, in the company of my own bourgeois pals – parlour room lefties, every one – debating the merits and shortcomings of Tommy Douglas, Pierre Trudeau, Ralph Nader, and Jimmy Carter. But short were the fuses when the discussion turned to a well-off, well-born Halifax woman of politically correct temperament.
Alexa McDonough was, we imagined, “one of us”, though she bore only a passing resemblance to “us”, a cabal of over-educated, self-satisfied, neo-liberals with more money than empathy for the truly poor and hungry among us: those who clipped our lawns and shined our double-wide brogues.
Still, on the subject of the New Democratic Party’s Golden Girl, nothing critical could be said, for she was our ticket to everlasting peace, our repository for all the sins our affluence had bred in us. And so she played us like a master con, taking our dollars and doing marvellous things with them for the needy in Nova Scotia and across Canada.
But, that was a different time.
Today, New Brunswick NDP Leader Dugauy would face a much tougher job executing the same gambit in this province, if only because the middle class his political predecessor once artfully manipulated to populist effect no longer exists as it once did. What was the comfortable income-earner is now quite often the working poor, and what was the working poor is now the poverty stricken. Meanwhile, the upper 10 per cent of New Brunswickers generate more money for themselves than ever before.
Not long ago a study conducted in the United States concluded that over the past decade or so, the gulf between the rich and the poor has widened more rapidly than at any point since The New Deal. And into this chasm have fallen teachers, nurses and skilled factory workers, all victims of government policy and globalization’s consequences: union-busting, offshoring, and the rise of part-time contract labour, among others.
The trend has been less pronounced here, but according to a recent Statistics Canada study, “Canada lost nearly 322,000 manufacturing jobs from 2004 to 2008, with more than one in seven [positions] disappearing over the period. More than 1.5 million jobs were created in the rest of the economy. In 2004, manufacturing represented 14.4 per cent of total employment; in 2008, the proportion was 11.5 per cent.”
All of which explains why the New Democratic Party has embraced a far more mainstream set of messages of late – not just in New Brunswick, but across Canada. The government of Nova Scotia’s Darrell Dexter is NDP in name only, as is the federal opposition of Jack Layton. These two now preach a variety of pragmatism once reserved for traditional Liberals and Progressive Conservatives.
Indeed, Duguay’s platform seems both incongruous and familiar. According to his official website, “We are a party of. . .New Brunswick families. We are not afraid to confront our province’s problems. We are optimistic about our future but we know we have to be realistic. We are. . .committed to giving everyone an equal chance to do well in life. We will reward hard work and persistence, and make sure New Brunswick families have the tools they need to succeed. That means good schools, good healthcare, safe communities and roads and other public infrastructure that work for you, the people who pay for them.”
It’s a far cry from the appeals to liberal guilt and middle-class munificence that were so prevalent during the McDonough era.
But, as Duguay must surely know, it’s hard to count on moral suasion and chequebook charity, when the objects of your attacks are also the beneficiaries of your crusade.
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