Seven Oaks Magazine.

Late enough on election night for NDP supporters to know that they ought to feel disappointed rather than enthused, the CBC’s handsome Ian Hanomansing -- always just a little too cute -- got too cute by half with his multi-party panel of guests. Working from well-worn (and easily-refuted) cliches about the nature of the Green party and its half-real poaching of NDP votes, Hanomansing smirked and asked the NDP panelist coyly whether it was time to “unite the Left.” The panelist dealt with the question deftly, almost too well; it was clear that he, like his party, relishes tearing apart the Green straw man. Even given the crassly conservative thrust of the new Green platform (apparently, they let the patchouli incense burn out as they shifted to vanilla) and their inability to prove themselves a real enough party to garner even a single seat in parliament, I’m not surprised that the NDP and its supporters have spent as much energy “dealing” with the Greens as they have. It is a distracting and largely meaningless debate, as well as being one to which the NDP response is strong. Most importantly, it diverts attention from the real, significant split of the social-democratic vote in federal politics between the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois.

For NDP leaders, members and supporters to wring their hands in panic over the fate of a few Green-leaning polls on the Gulf Islands is a handy little spectacle that draws attention away from one of the biggest blind spots of the Canadian left: The vote-rich province with the strongest leftist traditions and most radical trade union and student movements in the country has never elected an NDP MP and never will. On the NDP’s website, one can download the party’s French-language campaign ads by clicking links titled “Pourquoi 1” and “Pourquoi 2”. Translated literally, “pourquoi” breaks down into “for what” -- a good question indeed for anyone thinking of voting NDP in Quebec.

The official NDP line on la belle province vacillates between naïve confusion and indignant hostility, typified by Jack Layton and Bill Blaikie respectively. Layton smiles and rolls his R’s while he speaks French, opposes the Clarity Bill for 5 minutes on the campaign trail and makes frequent mention of his Quebecois birthplace (because really, who has been more consistently sympathetic to the political movements of French Canada than English people in Quebec?). Blaikie, on the other hand, has tough love for the frog pond. The Bearded One never misses an opportunity to chastise the left in Quebec for having been “in favour of free trade.” Funny – if the NDP is so opposed to big trade deals that erase tariffs and infringe upon the self-determination of colonized peoples, then why can’t they get their heads around Confederation?

The fact is that the BQ and the NDP espouse largely identical programs: they both vociferously oppose the war in Iraq and Canadian participation in Star Wars; they both call for larger transfer payments from the feds to the provinces; they both support Kyoto and the use of wind turbine technology; they’re both inexcusably silent on issues of Native rights (although Duceppe’s principled handling of Ghislain Lebel’s racist outburst surrounding the Innu in 2001 was cause for optimism).

Given these similarities between the two parties, it is inconceivable that any significant numbers of Quebecois voters would ever abandon the BQ (which won Quebec overwhelmingly) for the invisible NDP. This is especially true given the key difference between the two parties: that one is an imported political entity inextricably associated with a hated federal system, while the other is rooted in a sovereigntist political culture which has emboldened labour, women’s and students’ movements in the province by acknowledging the legitimacy of the resentment borne out by a colonial legacy that has routinely humiliated a cohesive national minority. Though policy wonks may disagree, the tale of the tape is clear: for all intents and purposes, the Bloc has become the NDP plus Quebecois nationalism. Why any Francophone would give up her vote for that party to favour one that supports the Clarity Bill is wholly beyond the realm of reasonable conjecture.

Mostly, English Canada’s inability to understand the social-democratic role of the Bloc lies in a long-standing paternalism that refuses to grant the people of Quebec the political sophistication necessary to deal with multiple issues simultaneously. During the first half of the 20 th century, the English-language labour movement looked with confusion upon the Catholic union movement of Quebec, a passive alternative based on the contemporary Papal social theories of the age. For many, that the sheep-like workers of Duplessis’ Quebec would be part of such a backward religious movement was evidence of their obscurant stasis. When those same Catholic unionists took on the American asbestos interests in 1949 – fighting the cops and defying Duplessis, blowing up company rail lines and energizing intellectual figures such as Pierre Trudeau – they simultaneously set the context for the most radical major labour movement in post-war North America. Quebec labour historians have made clear that for these workers, it was not simply an issue of having a union that would fight the bosses; that fight had to be carried out in language and cultural forms that were meaningful for (and familiar) to the rank and file.

The question facing those of us supporting the NDP in Canada is not “How can we convince the people of Quebec to take a (frustrated, second-string) role in our party?” The question ought to be “How, through respect for the principles of self-determination, can we co-operate to effect a progressive agenda in this country?” The first step comes from recognizing that the Greens are not ‘the other party of the left’ in Ottawa.