Welp, I'm back on the platform kick again. Today we're going to be talking about the platform of the New Democratic Party. Said platform is available (in PDF form) here, or here for the HTML version. In terms of the text, both are essentially identical.
Of the platforms so far, on a basic "read this without pain" level, the NDP platform is my favorite, and when I'm king of the future political platforms will have to be written according to its style. Each policy area the platform discusses is clearly laid out, with a bulleted list of specific promises, followed by one or two items in each category comparing their plans to the Liberals' performance. As a result, it's possible to quickly read and comprehend the whole thing without too much focus on buzzwords or mudslinging. Whether you like the statements in it or not, this is how this sort of document should be written. This is also one of the denser platforms I've read - the signal to noise ratio is extremely high, and as a result the sixty-six pages of this document have far more information than the similar-sized Liberal platform, or the smaller Conservative one. As a result, this look at the platform will just.. keep.. going. Skip to the bottom for my basic impressions if you value your eyes.
The first major section of the platform, "Building the Country we Want," talks about a general unified plan for improving the state of things. Making note of the resources currently available to the country - and, in a sense, implicitly saying the Liberals didn't do that poorly lately - the NDP talk about "embarking on the great project of building the country we want" (yadda yadda, you know the spiel), making comparisons with previous largescale tasks like the 19th century railroads and the 20th-century public health system. "Building" is divided in turn into six subsections: municipalities, public pensions, education, children and families, health care, and trust in the national institutions.
"In the 21st century, we can't disconnect problems," the platform begins at this point, before launching into a list of improvements to municipal Canada. These involve a number of projects and suggestions, from a national housing program to increase affordable housing to providing tax benefits to employers who provide public transit costs to their employees. Much of the focus is on affordable housing and environmental concerns, with a large focus on improving transit. From here, the platform blends into the pension and environmentalist sides of the platform more, by proposing a national retrofit program for buildings to promote energy efficiency (starting with low-income housing) and using broader representation to defend the Canada Pension Plan.
Education! As a student aiming for the teaching profession, this is obviously one of my Big Issues, although there's also the fact that I generally see it as the most important thing a government can promote anyway. For education plans, the NDP has a fairly long list of proposals, including a national tuition freeze to combat the skyrocketing university costs, crediting graduate students' loan interests against their income taxes, working to prevent the creation of for-profit universities, and improving research funding to "half the privatization of research on campus, allowing science to be examined on its merits, not vetted by the funding corporation." (I particularly like the first and last items here.) In a somewhat related topic, the platform discusses children and families, particularly the growing income gap (or poverty gap) among younger families in the country. Plans here include - much like the other parties - a large-scale national child care program in the next few years, eliminating income tax for Canadians with an income below $15,000/year, and trying to improve the aboriginal situation to something which doesn't make Third World nations look affluent.
The major issue this election - unless you're a hyperspecialized homophobe or gay-rights activist - is health care, which bounces between the NDP and Liberals to see who gets to have the most say about it most years. A great many things are proposed in this part of the platform. Some examples include a bulk-purchase program for drugs ("as Australia uses") to reduce costs, as well as outlawing several practices which delay the introduction of cheap generic medication. One interesting thing the party seems to be doing is de-emphasizing hospitals in favor of home or near-home-based care ("illnesses are treated through drugs, not hospitals") by improving coverage for outpatient or home-patient medications and implementing non-profit-based home care, citing Manitoba's model. The NDP oddly links up with the Conservatives in its support for a CDC-esque national health system in the wake of recent disease outbreaks, but shows itself as the only party to explicitly use the term "abortion" and be in favor of its legalization.
The next part of this first section discusses general damage control to the national reputation internally. There've been a lot of scandals, broken promises, and longstanding Issues with domestic goings-on for awhile, and each of the parties has their own take on these. The NDP discuss the Quebec situation by mentioning "flexible federalism," implying a devolution of powers to the provincial level and providing Quebec with an opt-out clause for federal programs. This form of federalism also talks of "respecting successful programs that may already exist in some provinces ... rather than imposing new one-size-fits-all federal programs," which strikes me as unredundant enough that it almost makes no sense in the Canadian system, but I like it. To improve the trustworthiness of the federal government, the NDP call for long-term predictable funding programs rather than situations which can come and go each fiscal year. Most interestingly, the NDP wish to recognize aboriginal right to self-governance as a primary component of modern federal politics.
A whole section of the platform - "Building the Planet we Want" - is devoted to - well, it should be obvious. Talking about major global and environmental commitments, this section is a combination of environmental and global-justice concerns with the stated goal of creating a cleaner and more egalitarian world. This takes the vaguely risky step of saying there are federal responsibilities to the entire planet, although even the Conservatives have taken a few pieces of this plank. This area is divided into seven major sections: green energy and transportation, environmental sustainability, clean water, biodiversity, global egalitarianism and the AIDS battle.
The green plan is sweeping even by NDP standards: they pretty openly want to ditch oil, coal, and nuclear (bah!) power to segue into more renewable forms of energy. To this end, the NDP wish to establish a new Crown corporation devoted to renewable and alternative energies by establishing solar, tidal, wind and geothermal power centres across the country - when possible, located near fossil fuel centres to ease transitions. Such forms of energy would be generally subsidized, with heavy fines for polluters. Foreign ideas would be borrowed as well, particularly Alaska's growing success with alternative energy sources (the north, as the Liberals discovered, is wind-power-friendly), and so on. During such a transition, workers in the oil and coal industries would recieve assistance to help shift them into the new economy, rather than the implicit dropping-on-the-sidewalk many other renewable-energy advocates seem to like. In transportation, the aforementioned promotion of public transit shows up, as well as adopting California-style emissions standards and general tax credits on cleaner or alternative-energy vehicles. Kyoto would be heavily supported, and other air-cleaning measures would be established, particularly the idea of high-speed rail links between major urban centres like Quebec City and Windsor.
Some of the other environmental concerns are more commonsense, such as pouring money into the Sydney Tar Ponds like the other parties are promising, and proposing a ban on the export of fresh water in bulk. Funding for further cleanup efforts (and prevention of future ones) would be achieved through severely jacking up fines on polluters (ow) and requiring chemical manufacturers to "produce scientific evidence of a chemical's safety" before it can be used in the environment. On the biotech front, they support the usual initiatives such as labelling genetically-engineered food and placing a moratorium on gengineered wheat until biotech companies (Gee, I wonder who they have in mind there?) can demonstrate their safety. There's little new here to folks who know the memes.
In the area of global equality, things are once again fairly standard NDP fare. Improving international development aid to 0.7% of GDP, cancelling debts to some developing countries, promoting leapfrogging developing nations to sustainable energy and striking down NAFTA and the WTO are major planks. As well, funding to the Global Fund for AIDS relief would be tripled(!), and access to generic drugs would be improved. Strikingly, the platform pretty much already recognizes Palestinian independence.
Our next major chunka NDP platform, "Respecting Who We Are," is a general freedom-and-equality system, espousing the standard F&E values: women's equality, rights of aboriginal peoples, multiculturalism and equality, and so on, accompanied by a proposal for democratic reforms. The first four of these blur into one another, as well as into most of the first section of the platform. Pay equity laws and more stable maternity benefits are the main points for women, combined with much of the health platform. For aboriginals, an extensive list shows up, including supporting the training of thousands in the health and educational fields, settling land claims issues, prioritizing reservation land for housing improvements, and creating specifically-aboriginal seats in Parliament, citing the example of New Zealand. On the one hand, I like this idea since they deserve a voice; on the other hand, I don't like the precedent of specialized Commons seats, and it would only be a matter of time before they found themselves under the discipline of one party or another anyway.
The diversity section is primarily focused on immigration issues - "[w]ith communities in need of family doctors and our environment in need of solutions, physicians and engineers shouldn't be driving cabs. They should be helping to build the country we want." To improve the multicultural situation, the NDP would allow a rise in immigration levels to roughly 350,000/year to begin with. As well, a once-in-a-lifetime provision allowing citizens and permenant residents to sponsor one relative would be enacted, to help reuniting families. Foreign qualificiations would be more respected (this is strewn across each of the parties' views, thank goodness), and eliminating the de-facto head tax on immiogrants to Canada.
Equality is another major part of the NDP platform, and one which the NDP is actually fairly angry about for a change. Citing the increasing pressure against peaceful protests, growing anti-Semitism, and national homophobia, the NDP seem to be operating more on a backlash here than anywhere else. The main examples from this part of the platform include extending full marriage equality to same-sex couples, repealing the Anti-Terrorism Act (replacing it with legislation "that respects peaceful protest, freedom of the press and civil liberties"), and introducing legislation banning racial profiling.
The last two sections of this policy area have to do with democratic and cultural issues. The NDP's main plank here is a switch to proportional representation; I'm torn on this, because it is significantly more democratic, but it also dooms the country to minority governments. The NDP goes a step farther than the Conservatives(!) by actually wanting to abolish, rather than reform, the Senate, and also wishes - perhaps even more ambitiously - to lower the voting age to 16. On the cultural front, the NDP wish to increase funding to the CBC, provide tax credits and grants to artist and writers, and enacting strong anti-monopolist legislation by preventing media owners from having a greater than 20% market share in the national market. (I endorse this product and/or service.)
The next major section, "Protecting Who We Are," gets into some controversial territory as it discusses Canada's increasing integration with the United States. Sovereignty is the main focus of this section politically, culturally, and economically. The main sovereignty-focused planks include requiring Parliamentary consent before any troop deployments, keeping Canadian troops out of foreign command structures should Parliament not support a deployment, prioritizing the military for peacekeeping duties, and discarding agreements which permit American military to enter Canadian territory automatically during emergencies.
For economic sovereignty, the NDP wishes to renegotiate NAFTA in a way that prevents the constant US sanctions (such free trade that is) against Canadian industries, and flatly refusing to acknowledge any trade agreements which overturn democratic decisions, such as NAFTA's Chapter 11. A number of promises are given with regards to job protection too, mostly with the heavy industries such as steel and manufacturing. Most of this covers areas I don't understand well enough to comment on, although three things stuck out: regulating the amount of foreign ownership in major national industries, annual increases of the minimum wage tied to the economic growth rate, and protecting national film and television industries. Agricultural workers are going to get some protection under the NDP plan as well; a combination of protective economic laws and subsidizing of the agricultural industry will, it is hoped, maintain the current levels of agricultural workers for awhile. For those who are already unemployed for one reason or another, the EI system will get some backing up; one of the main significant suggestions here is allowing retraining to occur while recieving benefits, making it easier for people to find new work.
The last major sections in "Protecting" involve national security and the criminal justice system. The NDP theory on national security is that security is directly tied to world development; they see direct links between human rights, development and security, and much of the national policy is aimed at attacking the cause, rather than the effects, of global instability. As such, part of the security platform is aimed at development aid abroad, peacekeeping, and working towards arms reduction. The Forces are implied to get some funding increases as well, with pay raises for soldiers and acquisition of equipment which is actually younger than the country. Things like the Anti-Terrorist Act and national ID cards are vigorously opposed domestically.
On the crime front, the NDP comes right out and says that "job creation, investing in children and fighting poverty [are] the best anti-crime plan[s] available," which is pretty much right up my alley. Aside from this preventative measure and party-specific issues like marijuana decriminalization and banning assault weapons, the NDP's positions is fairly standard: a combination of preventative measures and restorative justice on one end, while coming down on serious or repeat offenders like a dynamited building on the other.
Finally, we trundle into the last section, "Clear Choices on How to Get There." The NDP are claiming that juggling fiscal freedom and national development is a zero-sum game, in which we cannot do both. This section covers consumers' rights, job creation, taxation and debt reduction.
The consumer side of this area involves creating a Consumers Bill of Rights to protect consumers - particularly those in impoverished areas - from abuse, mainly by banks and credit card companies. This involves regulating credit card rates, maintaining bank presence in poorer neighbourhoods and rural areas, a do-not-call list, and coming down on cheque-cashing companies which tend to get people trapped under 60% interest rates.
The job creation platform focuses on two main methods - supporting small business and promoting R&D to allow new fields of employment to come out. Small businesses get a hands up through a mix of tax credits or exemptions, mainly. Industry-specific assistance shows up in the platform as well - for example, a national shipbuilding policy for coastal communities. With regards to new technologies, renewable energy comes up a lot, as do plans to promote national development in general. In fact, the NDP wish to combine six infrastructure and development portfolios into a single Department of Canadian Development and Infrastructure. I'm not sure if this would be a good idea for the streamlining involved, or a bad idea for the overload on a single minister.
Next, we have taxes! Everyone who isn't voting NDP really hates their tax policies; I recently got a Conservative ad carefully designed to look like an NDP ad which crowed about taxation of the rich as though it were a horrible thing (whoops, did that slip out?). Either way, the NDP's tax platform is their most controverisal stance at any given time, so let's see what we've got. I'll make a change and look over this in a bit of detail, rather than brezing through the platform. These are by no means all the promises:
That's about half the list, but provides the general idea. I'm surprised myself, as it generally looks like a tax reduction for most things aside from corporations. Tax revenue will be increased through the increase of corporate tax, though it seems primarily through the closing of a number of tax loopholes and cancelling treaties with tax havens.
Finally, we have the NDP stance on debt reduction. This one's kinda ambivalent; they support balanced budgets and claim a passable record at same, but at the same time oppose "debt reduction for debt reduction's sake." I understand the reasoning for this; the NDP mainly wish to try to avoid increasing the thing, but at the same time don't seem in favor of making feelgood statements about reducing the debt while student loans are flying through the stratosphere. I happen to like reduced debt, but I'll live for a lack of increase, unlike the Conservatives' implicit promise to increase the debt through deficit spending. This is in fact the main plank of the debt platform - avoiding these massive spikes in the debt through large, arbitrary tax deductions, citing Ontario, British Columbia and the United States as examples. Fiscal handling would involve prioritizing infrastructure, implementing balanced budgets (barring disasters) and holding debates over what to do with unexpected surpluses, which have traditionally been dropped on the national debt.
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So, what are my overall impressions?
First of all, I have to admire the fact that this thing was put together so well. There's very little digging involved to figure out exactly what the NDP wish to do on any given issue; that's something I can respect, even for the aspects of the platform I don't necessarily agree with. The overall tone is something I approve of as well; there's an air of optimism about the whole thing, implying things are good and can be improved rather than broken and in need of repair. It's a constructive attitude which shows up even more than in the Liberal platform and vastly more than the Conservatives' pessimistic platform. There were some tactless bits to it, however, particularly the implicit refusal to recognize Bush as president of the United States throughout. However, there were some tactless bits I liked, too; I've not seen the word "abortion" show up in any other party statements in the US or Canada lately, always hiding behind euphemisms instead. As far as saying what they mean, either way, the NDP seem better at that than the other two parties. This marks them as more honest, but it also marks them as more fringe, so it will both help and harm them.
As to the substance itself, the NDP's platform is extremely ambitious. A lot of the promises - for instance, not using a national ID card or trying to strike down the Anti-Terrorism Act - are acts of legislation rather than huge fiscal concerns. Others, however, like the health and education platforms, are going to Cost. One of the main faults with the platform itself is that dollar figures rarely come up (you can view the cost-analysis document here [PDF], though I haven't had the time to look at it in detail), so we're left deciding whether to take Layton's word on it whether or not budgets can be balanced amidst these goals. These are areas where money needs to be spent, for certain, as some of the most important parts of the national structure, but I'm uncertain about the ability of the NDP to perform all this while maintaining a surplus or a balanced budget. Perhaps they can do it; the NDP have never had a chance in Ottawa, so their record is clean on that level.
I found the foreign policy section of the platform wanting in a few ways. I'm generally concerned about the state of the Forces, and while the NDP made two specific statements - replacing the Sea Kings and improving pay for enlisted personnel - there was fairly little said about other equipment, the manpower situation, and force readiness. This has become more of an issue in the past few years, and it was perhaps a bad choice to neglect this. Some other things slipped under the radar here and there, but I found specific foreign policy and national defense plans to be the main things wanting.
Overall, however, I'm impressed with the platform. It's ambitious, progressive, and optimistic, without too much in the line of attacks (one, sometimes two, per list of promises generally) and shows a grasp of some issues I'm interested in, particularly world development and new technologies - which surprised me coming from the NDP, since the left has become increasingly technophobic these days. Who'm I voting for? "Not the Conservatives" is the obvious answer, but I'm finding enough in the Liberal and NDP platforms right now that I can't quite decide which way to go.
That's my impression on this, the third of the major party platforms. I might try to get some sypnoses of the minor ones out tomorrow, but don't hold your breath as I'll be busy. Stand by for news on what actually happens on Monday's election by Tuesday, though!
Posted by zibblsnrt at June 26, 2004 11:43 PM