NDP leader Tom Mulcair on a tightrope as he ponders Canada-EU free trade
Vancouver Sun, Canada
NDP leader Tom Mulcair on a tightrope as he ponders Canada-EU free trade
Moderate tone important for NDP leader, who risks alienating strident members of his party if he backs deal
By Peter O’Neil, Vancouver Sun
11 February 2013
OTTAWA — New Democratic Party leader Tom Mulcair faces a risky balancing act as he weighs the possibility of supporting the proposed Canada-Europe free trade agreement.
Just mentioning such a move, unthinkable in the party’s history, stunned many on Canada’s left who have been historically allied with the NDP in emotional battles against trade agreements that are typically driven by the demands of the corporate sector.
It would also put him at odds with B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix, one of the most high-profile Canadian opponents of the deal on the political stage.
Dix has focused on concerns that enhanced drug patent protection would lead to higher consumer prices if negotiators, said to be close to a final deal, are successful.
Mulcair’s musings have also evoked ridicule on government benches, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper — who typically only replies to questions from other leaders — taking the rare step of leaping to his feet last week to take a question from Don Davies, a B.C. MP, former union negotiator and a caucus moderate assigned by Mulcair to study the deal and consider whether to support it.
“I know the NDP members are trying to shift all over the spectrum these days, but they are not fooling anyone with that one. The fact of the matter is this is a party that is … ideologically opposed to trade,” Harper said.
The official Opposition “has opposed every single trade initiative … because of its socialist ideology,” Harper later added, overlooking the NDP’s recent decision to endorse the Canada-Jordan trade agreement.
Harper’s comment followed Mulcair’s recent statement to The Vancouver Sun that he is “very open” to endorsing a Canada-EU deal, as long as concerns in areas like prescription drugs are satisfied.
Mulcair elaborated further in a major foreign policy address last week in Quebec, the NDP’s new power base after the 2011 election breakthrough and historically one of Canada’s most pro-free trade provinces.
“The NDP is enthusiastic about deepening and broadening our commercial links with Europe,” he said, citing the EU’s high standards for labour, environmental and human rights.
Mulcair’s comments raised eyebrows in a Canadian union movement that, only last week, joined other Canadian and European labour and environmental groups to denounce expected Canada-EU concessions to major multinational corporations.
But Mulcair’s statements are part of a long-term strategy, evident under the late Jack Layton, to gradually moderate the NDP’s position.
Mulcair is attempting to position himself as a credible candidate in 2015 to be Canada’s next prime minister, noted University of B.C. political scientist Philip Resnick.
“If you are aiming for national power, you do have to position yourself a little closer to the centre and do things that aren’t going to frighten Bay Street out of its wits,” he said.
If Mulcair is serious about embracing free trade — and several insiders say privately that he is — he’ll have to keep onside several key caucus members who come from groups that have fought tooth and nail, without success, to defeat trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Among those MPs most likely to object are high-profile B.C. MPs Libby Davies, usually considered the leader of the party’s left wing in caucus, and Peter Julian, former executive director of a strongly anti-trade-deal organization, the Council of Canadians. Finance critic Peggy Nash, meanwhile, is a former senior official with the Canadian Auto Workers, which is bitterly critical of some of the elements expected to be included in the Canada-EU trade agreement.
Mulcair, a former Quebec Liberal who was portrayed in last year’s leadership race as a threat to NDP traditions, could also alienate prominent members of the Canadian left outside his caucus.
“I’m very disappointed and I think it’s disturbing and a mistake,” said Council of Canadians national director Maude Barlow, a key figure in the emotional 1988 election that was fought over free trade.
Canadian Auto Workers President Ken Lewenza, whose union is no longer affiliated with the NDP, said he wants to speak to Mulcair about a trade deal that the CAW believes will be bad for Canada, particularly the auto sector.
Europe and especially Germany already enjoy a huge trade surplus with Canada, and removing the six-per-cent tariff on cars and auto parks will only exacerbate the difference, the union argues.
Canada shouldn’t strike a deal unless Europe promises to start assembling cars in Canada, Lewenza said.
“Put it this way, if he endorses a deal that is bargained by Stephen Harper, without the conditions of reciprocal and balanced approach, then that would create a problem for us, and opposition from us,” Lewenza said.
But both Lewenza and Barlow acknowledged that Mulcair is challenged by Harper’s portrayal of the party as a band of untrustworthy, anti-business, anti-trade socialists.
“We want a progressive government in power too,” Barlow said.
“But we have to weigh what they’re losing in terms of their moral compass, if you will, to what they might gain from some votes.”
The UBC’s Resnick and retired political scientist Alan Whitehorn, an author of numerous books on the NDP, say Mulcair could survive supporting a Canada-EU deal because those most hostile to free trade deals are unlikely to support the Liberals or Harper’s Tories.
The gambit would be similar to Harper successfully staring down caucus social conservatives who would like the Conservatives to take a harder line on issues like abortion and gay marriage.
When Harper stood his ground before winning power in 2006, those more militant social conservatives recognized they had no other options. With the Conservatives poised to take power, they could at least be in a position to make incremental gains in other areas, like the dismantling of the Liberals’ planned national day-care strategy.
“If Mulcair pursues the mushy middle, where do the left-nationalists go? There’s not a lot of choice,” Whitehorn said.
He noted that Mulcair, unlike Dix, doesn’t deal with a party that’s partly dependent on union donations, due to the federal ban on union and corporate contributions. And Mulcair won the leadership last year without the support of many of the biggest unions.
“Can he afford to alienate the hard left? That’s a good question, because the basis of the party has changed in many ways,” Whitehorn said.
“The party funding is different, the basis of party leadership selection has changed, and with this breakthrough in Quebec, his basis of support is in a province where historically the labour movement hasn’t been as strongly attached to the NDP.
“So you could make a case that the ties to the labour movement are there but they may not be as organically essential.”
Barlow acknowledged that the Canadian left, even if it was frustrated by a major trade reversal, wouldn’t abandon the party if it was seen to have a chance of forming government.
The Mulcair family replacing the Harpers in 24 Sussex Drive “would be infinitely better,” Barlow said.
“This is the worst government we’ve ever had in this country — the most right-wing, anti-democratic, anti-environment, anti-human rights government ever — and we need to get rid of them.”
But she argued that the NDP could still succeed while at the same time convincing Canadians that trade deals giving foreign businesses a “Corporate Bill of Rights” is contrary to Canada’s interests.
