Concessions to imperialism
By Murray Cooke
The New Democratic Party (NDP) has never seen the Canadian state as an imperial project. Being social democratic, the NDP naively views the state as a neutral instrument that can easily be wielded for progressive purposes. This ultimately makes it incapable of consistent support and follow-through when it does “get it right.”
A clear recent example is the NDP’s position on the involvement of the Canadian state in the events of the February 2004 coup in Haiti that overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Days before the coup, Alexa McDonough, the NDP’s foreign affairs critic, had warned that: “The democratically elected president appears powerless to defend against their march to the capital … Rumours swirl about American backing of armed insurgents … If President Aristide is removed unconstitutionally, that would amount to Haiti’s 33rd coup d’état.” In the days after the coup, however, NDP leader Jack Layton supported sending Canadian troops to Haiti under a UN flag, although he did call for an investigation into how Aristide left office.
On March 10, 2004, the House of Commons had a special debate on Haiti and New Democrats raised important questions about the Canadian role. The NDP questioned the government about an international meeting held in Ottawa the previous year that discussed removing Aristide, the fact that Aristide himself had stated that he had been forced to resign and the perception by many countries that Canada was acting as an “occupying force” in Haiti. After that one debate, however, the NDP did not mention the issue in the House again nor did Layton raise it during the federal election. McDonough has subsequently pointed to the continuing violence in Haiti without any reference to Canada’s role in the coup.
The history of the NDP abounds with examples of the problems of a social democratic reformist approach to issues around imperialism. While the NDP has attempted, in a limited and contradictory fashion, to address the demands of Aboriginal groups and Quebec nationalists, it has never truly recognized the colonial nature of the Canadian state. Generally, the NDP has been too preoccupied with Canada’s “dependent” relationship with the United States and too enamoured of the myth of Canada as a peacekeeping middle power to question Canada’s place in the world.
The NDP and First Nations
In 1969, Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien introduced their assimilationist “White Paper on Indian Policy” that proposed the removal of any special status for Aboriginal Peoples. Initially, the NDP supported the proposal. It wasn’t until after the angry reaction from Aboriginal groups that the NDP joined the opposition. The fact that the NDP did not anticipate the Aboriginal reaction is not surprising. Up to that point, Aboriginal issues had never been a priority for the NDP or its predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF).
The record on Aboriginal issues of Tommy Douglas’ CCF government’s in Saskatchewan was not particularly impressive. The CCF’s paternalism and liberal integrationist approach did little to foster Aboriginal self-determination. Subsequent NDP governments in Saskatchewan and Manitoba have maintained colonial relations with their northern resource hinterlands. An example is the current controversy over Manitoba Hydro’s Wuskwatim Dam project which threatens to destroy sacred Indigenous sites and wreak havoc on bioregions near Manitoba First Nations.
The rise of Aboriginal militancy in the 1970s did have an influence on the NDP. As a result, the NDP played an important role in entrenching Aboriginal treaty rights in the constitution that was “repatriated” in 1982. However, the new Charter of Rights had been established without written agreement from Quebec and this led to two subsequent efforts to amend it. The first was the 1987 Meech Lake Accord which NDP federal leader Ed Broadbent embraced despite its silence on Aboriginal issues. Later, in 1992, the NDP did push to get Aboriginal self-government recognized in the ill-fated Charlottetown Accord.
During the 1990s, there were two major stand-offs in which the Canadian army was called in to crush small numbers of Aboriginal protesters. In 1990, NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin went to Oka in a show of support for the Mohawks of Kanesatake. However, in 1995, Mike Harcourt’s NDP government in BC called in the army to confront a small group of Secwepemc Nation members at Gustafsen Lake. The political success of this hard-line approach against Aboriginal sovereignty gave the NDP Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh a boost toward eventually becoming BC Premier.
The BC NDP government’s greatest achievement in Aboriginal rights was the ratification of the Nisga’a Agreement. And while it was a landmark treaty that frightened the right-wing opposition, Nisga’a also has serious limitations – a reduced land base and restrictions on Aboriginal self-government.
The NDP and Quebec
Since its formation in 1961, the NDP has struggled to come to grips with Quebec nationalism, swinging repeatedly between recognizing Quebec as a nation in theory and ignoring this fact in practice. At its founding convention, the NDP recognized that the Canadian state was formed on the basis of an agreement between two nations. By the late 1960s, the NDP supported a form of special status for Quebec within Canada.
In 1970, during the so-called October Crisis, members of the NDP caucus took a bold stand against Trudeau’s imposition of the War Measures Act – in essence an excuse to smash a growing radical independence movement in Quebec. In 1971, the NDP rejected a proposal to recognize Quebec’s right to self-determination that had been put forward by the Waffle, a left grouping within the party. However, at that time, it did at least allow that the country should not be held together by force. By the late 1970s, the NDP recognized that the people of Quebec have the right to determine their future without coercion from the rest of Canada.
Unfortunately the NDP often ignores its own official positions on Quebec. Not only did the NDP embrace the Constitution Act of 1982 that was entrenched without the consent of Quebec, but then Saskatchewan MPP Roy Romanow was one of the chief architects of the “night-of-the-long-knives” when agreement to pass the Act was secured by excluding Quebec and leaving it isolated. Since 1982, the NDP has continuously fudged its position, occasionally reaching out to Quebec through its support for a distinct society clause and asymmetrical federalism – both of which give at least token recognition to Quebec’s special status within the Canadian state — but never really promoting these positions in the rest of Canada.
Despite the party’s policy of recognizing Quebec’s right to self-determination, the majority of the NDP caucus supported Chrétien’s Clarity Act in 2000 – an attempt to define the terms and thereby undermine any act of secession by Quebec. During the 2004 federal election, after voicing his opposition to the Clarity Act, NDP federal leader Jack Layton backed down in the face of an immediate firestorm from within his own party. Earlier this year, Layton showed that he was not above demagoguery, when he criticized the Conservatives for “getting into bed with the separatists” in their opposition to the federal budget
Canadian Foreign Policy
In terms of Canada’s place in the world, English-Canadian social democrats have focused on the relationship between the Canadian state and the major imperialist powers. The founders of the CCF favoured Canadian autonomy within the British Commonwealth. They sought to develop a sense of pan-Canadian identity and build the institutions and symbols of nationhood. As the leadership of the capitalist world shifted from Britain to the US, New Democrats grew obsessed with Canada-US relations.
CCFers hotly debated Canada’s participation in the Second World War, with many members opposed to the war effort for isolationist, pacifist or anti-imperialist reasons. The party rejected the opposition of its leader, J.S. Woodsworth, and supported Canada’s entry in the war. The war years saw Canada become closely aligned with US foreign policy, while the Canadian economy, including defence industries, was increasingly integrated into a continental framework. In the postwar period, under the leadership of M.J. Coldwell, the CCF embraced Cold War anti-Communism, membership in NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense) and participation in the Korean War. A particular low point was the party’s acquiescence in the face of the US-backed military coup in Guatemala in 1954.
The late 1950s saw the slow emergence of concerns about the degree of American influence upon Canada. When the NDP was formed in 1961, it reflected this emergent Canadian nationalism. The NDP opposed Canada’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, opposed NORAD and questioned NATO, but it stressed that it remained firmly on the side of capitalist freedom against Communist totalitarianism.
As nationalism grew within the party and the country, the NDP took a more critical approach to American cold war foreign policy. In 1965, the NDP criticized the Vietnam War and the US invasion of the Dominican Republic. Finally, in 1969, pushed by the left-nationalist Waffle, the NDP called for Canada to withdraw from NATO. In 1973, the NDP condemned the US-backed coup in Chile while the Trudeau government accepted the US line.
Through the 1980s, the NDP attacked US president Reagan’s foreign policy, especially towards Central America. On the other hand, NDP leader Broadbent softened the party’s position on NATO. Riding high in the polls in 1988, the NDP declared that it would not withdraw from NATO in its first term as government.
To its credit, in the post-cold war period, the NDP has frequently resisted Canadian participation in US-led military interventions. Audrey McLaughlin and the NDP were alone in the Canadian Parliament in opposing the first Gulf War in 1991. Alexa McDonough opposed American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. When he became leader of the party in 2003, Layton actively supported the anti-war movement in opposition to the American invasion of Iraq.
However, the NDP’s perception of Canada as a benign middle-power and its acceptance of the myth of Canada as peacekeeper have led the party to support (or ignore) Canada’s role in a number of imperial campaigns.
The NDP initially supported Canadian participation in the NATO-led bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. When the so-called “humanitarian intervention” escalated the crisis, the NDP backtracked but, by that time, it was too late to have an impact on the public debate.
The NDP has insisted on maintaining a dubiously “balanced” approach to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. In 2002, after NPD MP Svend Robinson travelled to the Middle East, called Israel a “terrorist state,” and voiced his solidarity with the Palestinian people, he was condemned by his party and McDonough stripped him of his caucus responsibilities for Middle East issues.
As explained earlier, the NDP’s silence on Haiti is the most distressing aspect of the NDP’s foreign policy under Layton, but there are other problematic signs. Layton struck a deal with Paul Martin on the federal budget in exchange for NDP support. Yet, that so-called “NDP budget” contains provisions for a $12.8-billion increase over five years in defence spending. As Martin has bragged, this is the largest military spending increase in the last 20 years.
The NDP view of the state as a neutral force with progressive potential takes a particularly ludicrous form when extended to the military. This summer, as Canada announced it was sending 2000 troops to Afghanistan, Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier, commented on the military’s role: “We’re not the public service of Canada, we’re not just another department. We’re the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people.” Unfortunately, the NDP fails to recognize the blunt accuracy of the General’s comments and continues to promote the myth of Canada’s benign peacemaking.
