What's Left?: The New Democratic Party in Renewal

Penny E. Bryden is head of the Department of History at Mount Allison
University. She is the author of Planners and Politicians: Liberal
Politics and social policy, 1957–1968 and the co-author of The Welfare
State in Canada: Past, Present and Future.

This is a collection of essays that finds its provenance with a McGill
Institute for the Study of Canada conference on social democracy in
Canada. Separate, but still closely associated with the New Democratic
Party, the conference sought to illuminate the past and future of social
democracy in Canada by soliciting input from a wide array of speakers
representing both the left and right of the Canadian political spectrum.
That this collection is the result of such an endeavor perhaps says more
about the future of social democracy in Canada than it intends.

Essays are provided by a long list of NDP luminaries and stalwarts.
Divided into three sections, the book first examines the broad issues of
social democracy, including lessons from Brazil and Denmark, and the
role of spirituality and the media in shifting the political spectrum to
the left. Former NDP leader Ed Broadbent offers his thoughts on social
democracy in theory and in practice. The next section addresses, in
part, the debates that have been threatening to derail the party for the
last several years. With contributions from the likes of Alexa
McDonough, Svend Robinson, Gerald Caplan, and Chris Watson, these essays
deal with the fundamental question of whether the party should be
striving for power or merely influence. Although the essays provide
perspectives from different sides of the debate, there is a certain
politeness about them that attempts to obscure the vitriol
characterizing the recent schism between, for example, McDonough and
Buzz Hargrove over the future of the party. The final section of the
book examines possible NDP policy directions in areas such as the
national economy, health care, and urban renewal. These essays are far
less concerned with “what’s left” than they are with “what’s
next,” perhaps a more appropriate question to ask.

The title of the book was presumably chosen for its dual meaning,
asking not only what is meant by the political left in Canada, but also
what remains of the NDP. In answering the latter of the two questions,
this collection points to a core of committed NDP loyalists and
long-standing left-wing principles. The result is a more
backward-looking book than was likely intended. Asking instead what the
future holds, rather than what remains of the past, might have solved
the problem.