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Election 2015

Progressives Must 'Catch up' to Win in 2015, Says Broadbent Chief

But other observers say NDP's fortunes rest on the Liberals.

Jeremy Nuttall 30 Mar 2015TheTyee.ca

Jeremy J. Nuttall is The Tyee's Parliament Hill reporter in Ottawa. Find his previous stories here.

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'Job number one is to criticize,' said Broadbent Institute executive director Rick Smith.

Canadian progressives have a plan to oust Stephen Harper in the 2015 federal election and it is starting to come together, said the executive director of the Broadbent Institute, a progressive think-tank named for former federal New Democrat leader Ed Broadbent.

Rick Smith spoke to The Tyee on Sunday after the institute's annual Progress Summit wrapped up in Ottawa. The three days of panels, speeches and mixers provided an opportunity for progressives to discuss politics and how to increase progressive power in Canada.

Though the institute doesn't officially endorse any party, its values and policies are often similar to the NDP's.

"Job number one is to criticize," Smith said, "to draw the curtain back on the craziness of the Conservative government's ideas, but also to formulate in a more coherent and positive way an exciting new progressive agenda."

The conservative movement's organizing efforts have consistently outdone those of the progressive side for the last 10 years, and progressives must "catch up" to gain power, he said.

The Progress Summit initially expected just 600 attendees and ended up drawing 900, which stretched the venue, a Delta hotel, to its limits, with people spilling out of conference room doors at some panels.

"Stephen Harper should take note of the fact that 900 highly skilled, highly motivated progressive activists got together in Ottawa and left today with a game plan," Smith said.

That game plan includes three themes: shared prosperity, a growing green energy sector and changes to Canada's democratic system, he said.

Wealth 'not being shared as it should be'

Many of the Progress Summit's panels and keynote speakers concentrated on issues like child poverty and the wealth gap in Canada.

That's because the country's wealth is "not being shared as it should be," Smith said, and Canada needs an income tax revamp to address the issue, including shifting the system to drop those at the bottom of the tax structure right off the tax rolls.

Smith said that Canadians need to stop allowing the interests of the economy and the interests of the environment to be pitted against each other in policy decisions.

The two can coexist and could be successful if the government makes moves to draw investor capital to help develop a clean-tech sector in the country that could provide steady manufacturing jobs, he said.

"This current government has devoted no brain power, no bandwidth, no political capital to that kind of thinking," he said.

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Ed Broadbent delivers opening remarks at the 2015 Progress Summit. Photo by Tristan Brand Photography and Multimedia.

Smith also accused the Conservative government of pushing to disenfranchise voters who are not likely to cast a ballot for them, such as young people and women.

The so-called Fair Elections Act has been roundly criticized for voter identification requirements that opponents say will prevent students or homeless people from voting.

Smith said that the government's targeting of charities or labour unions to "lock them out" of democratic discussion has to be rectified, naming recent audits of environmental charities as an example.

"They are quite happy to encourage the withering of democratic processes," he said. "A government that is allegedly in favour of cutting red tape is all in favour of creating crushing new red tape for organizations they perceive as opponents. We need to fix that."

Platform 'not enough' to win: prof

But it will take more than establishing a platform for progressives to win at the ballot box, said University of Toronto political science professor Nelson Wiseman, who pointed out that much of what Smith touched on isn't new for the agenda of the nation's largest progressive party, the NDP.

Wiseman said that many voters don't read platforms to begin with, and that unlike the United States, recent surveys suggest there isn't much of a difference in voter turnout between high and low income people in Canada. Going after low income voters may not make much of a difference for the NDP, he said.

The term "progressive" also creates an issue, because a number of parties and movements now use the term to describe anything that represents opposition to Stephen Harper, he said.

Wiseman said the NDP could pick up seats in the next election, but its biggest obstacle will be how well other political parties connect with voters.

"The fortunes of the NDP, in my opinion, have not much to do with what the NDP does or says now," Wiseman said. "It has to do with the fortunes of the other parties, and specifically the fortunes of the Liberal Party."

Wiseman said that getting young people to vote would improve the outcome for the New Democrats, but that it's hard to tell if more young voters would make enough of a difference to swing an election.  [Tyee]

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