A Bit More Detail

Will the New Democratic Party follow up on its success in the 2011 federal election and manage to position itself as the alternative party of government, replacing the Liberals? Much depends on whether the New Democratic Party can come up with a leader who can live up to the late Jack Layton’s promise; still more depends on whether the party’s membership will grow sufficiently, especially in regions of the country where it has traditionally been sparse. Joan Bryden’s Canadian Press report puts an optimistic spin on trends.

A record number of card-carrying New Democrats are eligible to choose the federal party’s next leader, with British Columbia and Ontario holding the key to victory.

Final membership numbers released Tuesday by the party show membership has swelled to 128,351, an increase of just over 50 per cent since the start of the leadership contest last October.

All members are entitled to cast ballots, starting March 1 and culminating in a Toronto leadership convention on March 24.

British Columbia, with 38,735 members, and Ontario, with 36,760, will have the most influence over which of the seven contenders emerges victorious. The two provinces account for 30 per cent and 28.6 per cent of the membership respectively.

Ontario outstripped all other provinces in terms of membership growth, adding more than 14,000 members since October.

In Quebec, membership numbers have shot up to 12,266 from 1,695 last fall — a 600 per cent increase.

Still, Quebec accounts for only 9.5 per cent of the total membership, leaving the province with limited influence in choosing the party’s next leader even though it delivered more than half the 103 seats won by the NDP in the May 2 election.

[. . .]

Quebec’s clout is virtually identical to Manitoba’s 12,056 members (9.3 per cent), and only slightly better than Saskatchewan’s 11,264 (8.7 per cent), and Alberta’s 10,249 (7.9 per cent).

Nova Scotia is the most influential of the Atlantic provinces, with 3,844 members (2.9 per cent). The other three Atlantic provinces and the northern territories each account for less than 1 per cent of the national total.

By way of comparison, Québec’s population of eight million is ten times the size of Nova Scotia’s, eight times the populations of Saskatchewan’s and Manitoba’s, and a bit more than twice the size of Alberta’s. Québec is also the province that elected 59 NDP Members of Parliament out of a total of 75, providing a majority of the NDP’s caucus in Parliament.

Dan Arnold at the National Post‘s Full Comment blog is more skeptical of what this means.

First off, 45,000 new members isn’t “skyrocketing” when you consider both the Liberals and Conservatives exceeded that level in their most recent leadership contests. Heck, the B.C. Liberals and Alberta PCs posted similar or higher membership totals in their leadership races last year.

As for that “staggering” increase in Quebec – a little perspective people! Yes, that’s a big percentage increase, but it also means Quebec will have just a third the votes of B.C. Adding 12,000 Quebec members is well below Mulcair’s original target of 20,000, and it’s below the 14,000 who voted in the BQ leadership race. Keep in mind, those are actual BQ votes, not memberships, from a party most describe as “dead”. It’s also a total nearly every media outlet in Quebec ridiculed at the time.

In fairness, the NDP seems likely to surpass the 58,000 who voted in their 2003 leadership contest – though even that isn’t assured when you consider many of their current members are only members because of provincial leadership races last year. Still, we probably shouldn’t sneeze at 45,000 new members, especially when that includes the NDP’s first real Quebec membership base ever. There might very well be more votes in the NDP leadership race than the Liberal leadership race – especially if no one runs for Liberal leader.

Much depends on whether the NDP can deepen its base in Québec–increase its membership, especially–in time to keep its newly-acquired base and secure its position as a national party.

Thursday afternoon at 3 o’clock I ventured down to Toronto City Hall to take a look at the impromptu memorial to former Toronto city councillor and (until his death) federal New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton. Earlier rain had washed away the chalk that covered the plaza, but the northeastern quadrant was again filled.

These women spent a while looking at the different chalked messages.

Note the prevalence of orange, the NDP colour, and the opened cans of Orange Crush pop including the one in front of the portrait in the foreground.

• Bad Astronomy reports on the continuing frustrating lack of certainty as to whether or not the Hubble space telescope’s successor will survive budget cuts or not. (It should; overspending is all in the past, and cancelling it now would be pointless.)
• blogTO asks the inevitable question: What landmark should be renamed in memory of Jack Layton?
• blogTO also reports that the famed Green Room may, or may not, open up again (unless it doesn’t).
• Centauri Dreams reports on a recent astronomical research project’s discovery of super-Earths orbiting nearby Sol-like stars, including three orbiting the nearby 82 Eridani (the worlds are much too close to their primaries, sadly).
• Daniel Drezner ranks the winners and the losers from
• Mark Simpson is decidedly unimpressed with the techniques and technologies used by some scientists to identify the different strains of human sexuality. “All that has been proven is that measuring penile blood-flow in a laboratory is a highly reductive and highly abnormal measure of male sexuality.”
• Gideon Rachman wonders if Libya will need peacekeepers and where this peacekeepers will come from: NATO, the Arab League?
• Spike Japan visits Fukushima and reports–with extensive pictures–on the extensive drift racing scene there.
• Towleroad emphasizes the importance of Jack Layton as a long-standing GLBT ally in its coverage.
• Understanding Society poses the interesting question of what life is like in the small cities of the United States (and elsewhere, too), the ones neither big-city urban nor suburban or exurban.

The blogTO roundup of the reactions to the surprise death yesterday of Jack Layton, the Toronto politician who in a mere eight years of leadership made the social-democratic New Democratic Party a federal also-ran into the Official Opposition in the Canadian federal parliament this May, pretty much sums it up. Everyone in Canada, I think, was looking forward to Layton’s appearance in parliament when the fall session opened. Even when he made his last public appearance only a month ago, looking terribly wasted and with a horribly aged voice, no one really though that he’d die.

As the New APPS Blog’ Moham Matthen observed, his death weakens the NDP at a terribly vulnerable time: not only has it been left without a leader going into its first parliament as official opposition, but without the fluently bilingual and popular Layton the NDP might have trouble sustaining its new strength in Québec. Any number of failure scenarios are possible, ranging from the quotidan of a permanent collapse in the NDP’s share in Québec seats and a movement to another party–a revived Bloc Québécois?–to fates still more arcane.

Call me an optimist, but I don’t think that concluding the party’s imminent doom is warranted. Layton led the party, yes, but the party included people other than him, with different candidates appealing in different ridings, too. Thomas Mulcair, the bilingual parliamentarian who was the first NDP MP elected in Québec, is a strong contender for the leadership; Libby Davies, is another. The shift in the Québec electorate towards the NDP may well be permanent, inasmuch as the Liberals and the Conservatives are limited to their small strongholds in that province and the Bloc’s revival being very far from a sure thing. There may yet be failures, but the people involved have been trying to address them with a certain amount of success so far.

The NDP may well continue strengthened by the now-iconic image of Layton, with his cheeriness and his introduction of the rhetoric of hope back into the Canadian political sphere. He crafted his last letter to the Canadian public with that aim in mind.

All my life I have worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to change this country and this world. There are great challenges before you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the future.

And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.

Andrew Barton’s commentary–very much recommended, by the way–is accurate in pointing out that this hopefulness is quite unique, that Layton’s positive vision of how Canada could be better played well indeed to an electorate used to rhetorics concerning the dire fates Canada must evade. If the NDP is smart, and capable, it would do very well to continue using the rhetoric of hope. Certainly we saw how well it worked in the United States’ recent presidential election campaign.

And who knows? As terrible as it may sound, having a sainted leader who’s now dead and beyond reproach can be an asset for any community: the trope of the prophet who passes just before reaching the holy land is an ancient one, and in its pregnant pain has the potential to be an inspiring one. Will anyone in the New Democratic Party be willing to give up on the political party that Jack took so far when the goal of becoming a potential governing party is so close? Letting down Jack just isn’t an option, at least not right now.