New Democratic Party (Canada)
Canada’s election: NDP gains widen space for social struggles
By Roger Annis
May 23, 2011 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, an earlier version of this article also first appeared in Green Left Weekly -- The incumbent Conservative Party sailed to victory in Canada’s federal election on May 2 with the first majority government in the federal parliament since the 2000 election. There was celebration in the boardrooms of the country. The victory caps a decades-long drive by much of Canada’s business elite to fashion a strong national government on a hard-right agenda.
The result is a deep disappointment for progressive-minded people in Canada. The Conservatives led by Stephen Harper will form the most right-wing government in modern Canadian history, extending the regressive path of its two minority governments won in the 2006 and 2008 elections.
Canada: NDP breakthrough in Quebec -- a challenge for the Canadian left
New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton.
By Richard Fidler
May 8, 2011 -- Life on the Left -- If New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton’s election-night speech to his Toronto supporters is an indication of what lies ahead, the NDP is going to have a hard time coming to terms with a parliamentary caucus now composed of a majority of MPs from Quebec.
To a crowded room in which nearly everyone was waving Canadian flags, the NDP leader delivered two-thirds of his remarks in English without ever mentioning the expression “Quebec nation”. The scene, televised across Canada, did not go unremarked in Quebec, where most of the NDP’s sudden support had come from nationalist-minded voters, including many sympathisers of Quebec independence.
Canada: Political crisis exposes national, class divisions; left debates Liberal-NDP coalition
