While I'm still not over my disappointment with the ONDP's decision not to campaign on supporting a fair electoral system (one that is truly democratic)and eliminating discrimination in Ontario's school system (by supporting a unified, secular public system), I did get one pleasant surprise from the party today. While at a labour day rally in Niagara Falls, the next federal NDP candidate for the Welland area riding handed me a leaflet urging me to give McGuinty a pink slip this October. Trust me, there is nothing that would make me happier than seeing McGuinty booted from office.
To my surprise, upon flipping the leaflet over, I noticed that the ONDP is campaigning on banning scab labour in the province and implementing card-check certification in all industries. Now, I suspect that this leaflet is one that is the labour focused leaflet and likely won't be the main leaflet the party uses. Nor will banning scabs and instituting card-check certification be the main issues of the campaign. This was definitely the labour day leaflet! That being said, after discarding two of the most important issues of this campaign, at least the party has come through on labour rights.
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Just a note - no political parties can support MMP. It's written into the Act that established the vote. Individual candidates can express an opinion, until the writ is dropped, on MMP, but are advised not to do so in any literature that might still be kicking around after September 10th.
That's not true. Parties can support whatever they wish; however, they are unable to campaign in support of MMP. That being said, the NDP is hiding behind these regulations to avoid taking a stance, a stance which of course they legally can take. UncorrectedProofs does a great job of examining the 'can't campaign on MMP myth' in the following links. He notes that with a bit of creativity, the NDP can effectively support MMP without actually campaigning on it. For example, they can state something to the effect of "the NDP has always supported electoral reform and, if elected, will work to implement the recommendations of the Citizens Assembly in the event that a majority of Ontarians express the desire to change their electoral system." This would be perfectly acceptable. They have indeed always supported electoral reform, and are simply expressing that they would institute the changes suggested by the assembly should the referendum pass.
http://uncorrectedproofs.blogspot.com/2007/08/more-thoughts-on-ndp-and-mmp.html
http://uncorrectedproofs.blogspot.com/2007/08/ndp-wont-campaign-on-mmp.html
You know, I normally agree with you on most issues. The schools issue is one of them.
But as far as the ONDP supporting electoral reform, I think your asking for the ONDP to do something which may very well hinder the chances of electoral reform even more.
The ONDY had a serious discussion on what we can do to support electoral reform, and we decided that all of our support for electoral reform will be done by emphasizing the non-partisan aspect of the new electoral system.
We were afraid that if we campaigned on the electoral reform issue from a partisan perspective that we would alienate supporters of other parties. Believe me, the ONDY is VERY MUCH in favour of electoral reform, and some of the youth have even opted to focus on campaigning ONLY for the electoral reform issue.
The bottom line is that we don't want electoral reform to become an NDP issue. We want it to be popular with every party's supporter.
I think we made the right decision in not engaging in partisan support of it, and I strongly stand by that decision.
By the way, I've been working hard to get some MMP literature at our office so that we can pass it out when volunteers go out canvassing. Obviously, it's up to the individual person as to whether or not they want to bring the MMP literature with them, but at the end of the day, I'm trying really hard to make sure that my riding association and the campaign team make some overatures to the voters on the issue and at least attempt to educate the residents of the riding on the issue.
By the way, I like the idea of having Howard Hampton say that he would implement the new system if a majority of voters agreed with it.
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