In her July 15 speech to the B.C. Coalition of Businesses, New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Carole James has provided us with an unvarnished vision of what we can expect if the NDP takes government next May.

James proposes that governments in general, both Liberal and NDP, have failed to focus on the concerns of business in a useful manner. According to James, our business community has been sidelined and is merely one constituency in our province, rather than the overarching influence behind our economic and political lives as well as the chief architect of our present arrangement. She describes our problems as the result of “polarization” – a lack of willingness to work together. Perhaps someone should remind James that attempting to build consensus with those who do not share our interests has actually created our current situation, not “polarisation”. Working people must defend their wellbeing and do so in an environment fraught with perilous imbalance. The “conflict and confrontation” that she wags her finger about is not the result of two equally matched forces, but rather the expression of struggle for life itself in this corporate climate.

The NDP leader goes into hyper drive while describing the “profound economic revolution” we are living through. What we are really enduring is the tyranny of business that has become more mature and concentrated with each passing year. How is this a “profound economic revolution”? Further, she speaks of “reordering expectations,” which is code for urging workers to ramp down their legitimate hopes for their families so that those who run this province can comfortably carry on as usual.

James states that “social justice, equal opportunity and community” can inhabit the same universe as “entrepreneurism and risk taking”. If this were so than why would our province be upended, accommodating tax cuts with slashed public services, shredding contracts and implementing privatisation schemes that damage our critical needs? She is specifically suggesting that we can expect more of the same with a change of government, since she evidently has no problem with running our system along the lines that the powerful endorse.

James’ concern over our diminishing pay cheques would be touching if she were not obsessed with the effect that this has on business rather than the devastation it inflicts on ordinary people. The challenge, according to her hypothesis, is to allow for a limited prosperity for workers so they can endow companies with profit. At no time does she question the motives and tactics of the business people she is addressing. Ripping up contracts is only unfortunate, according to James, in that it creates a poor impression for potential investors. James does not suggest that this activity is unjust and anti-democratic. Just bad business.

The aspiring premier places herself and her party forward as the logical mediators to bring quiescence to the labour and political scene in B.C. It certainly played out that way for Hospital Employees Union members back in May of this year. What she envisions is a table with union executives, business tycoons and an NDP government administering our lives. Does this sound like democracy to you? She peddles her influence with unions to promote herself as the candidate who can pacify them into compromise positions that would allow business to “showcase a new, modern BC,” just in time for the Olympics. She repeats the fable that workers and the wealthy are being equally bloody-minded and that by suspending their logical enmity they can both benefit. This is an ideological hoax provided by a group of political thinkers who would have us turn away from our own hard won experience and reset our memories to zero.

After everything we have endured in this province, it is deeply disturbing that Carole James can maintain so forcefully that workers and the business sector “share the same goals.” James and the NDP may make the process of privatisation and impoverishment more palatable, or more gently paced. However, this province does not need another guardian for the ruling group. These people have enough cards in their hands already.

It is a scandal that James and the NDP promote themselves as our protectors while pandering so shamelessly to those who have been abusing us. Or it would be if there had been any reason to expect anything else. They have evidently figured out that if they want power, then they will have to get the powerful on side. Unfortunately, when the markers are called in, workers will pay dearly for this deal. They will most certainly continue to wait for real representation.

Carole James’ speech to the Coalition of B.C. Businesses can be read here.

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