Storming the Pink Palace: The NDP in Power: A Cautionary Tale

Rebecca Murdock is a lawyer with the Toronto firm Ryder Wright Blair &
Doyle.

Storming the Pink Palace is both political commentary and campy satire,
an entertaining read for Liberals and Conservatives who share
Monahan’s view that the NDP’s tenure at Queen’s Park (1990–95)
was an all-round debacle. Ontarians of all political stripes would
likely agree with many of Monahan’s observations; however, the
author’s clear condescension for the Rae administration turns what
might otherwise be serious political analysis into a tabloid sideshow.
For instance, Monahan titles his first chapter “Preem-yer Bob” and
then proceeds to draw parallels between the NDP government and the
Clampetts, the hillbilly family of television fame. Indeed, Chapter 2 is
called “The Clampetts Come to Town.” Monahan consistently depicts
the NDP cabinet as “suspicious” and “conspiracy-ridden,” more
adept at melodrama than at good government. In a rare moment of
generosity, he concedes that at least “Bob Rae had no shortage of
spunkiness”—high praise for the man who held Ontario’s top post
for five years.

Monahan successfully isolates the controversies that plagued the Rae
government throughout its tenure: the inauguration of public auto
insurance; the short-lived Bill 40, aimed at labor reform and known best
for its ban on replacement workers; the NDP’s surprising shift to
fiscal conservatism; and the Social Contract. According to Monahan, the
NDP failed because it took on “the role of the advocate for interest
groups rather than acting in the long term interests of all citizens of
the province as a whole.”

As a former adviser to the Liberal government of David Peterson,
Rae’s predecessor as Ont-ario’s premier, Monahan’s real beef is
with social democratic principles and the fact that, though strongly
ahead in the polls, Peterson lost the 1990 election to Rae. At all
points, Monahan is a classic liberal, deriding the propriety of “group
rights” such as employment equity and pay equity. For him, legislated
rights are individual and remedial; they are neither collective nor
proactive. More docudrama than serious debate, Storming the Pink Palace
is replete with hearsay anecdotes about how the NDP fumbled its way
through five years of government. Rarely does the author actually
articulate either the philosophic differences that distinguish Liberal
policies from those of the NDP, or the difficulties facing a socialist
government that is elected on the eve of an economic recession.