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Vancouver
One big anti-NPA Party was already tried, and it failed
A coalition is fine, but it needs to be built around more than merely opposition
By Anne Roberts
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As a former COPE councillor who wants to see COPE back in city hall, I read with interest Kevin Potvin’s advice on “How to Exterminate the NPA” (issue 158). I agree with Potvin that the left has to build a broad coalition to win at the polls in 2008. But to recommend a Big Anti-NPA party based on nothing more than being anti-NPA is doomed to failure.
Potvin seems to accept the NPA’s mythology that the NPA was created not as a party but a broad spectrum of people and interests. That propaganda served the NPA well. It disguised the fact that the NPA represented a very narrow range of interests—developers, real estate interests, banks, downtown businesses, and other business elites. There were no doubt differences among the NPA who got elected, and they may have even debated each other in the council chambers, but it was—and remains today—a fabrication that the NPA was a loose collection of well-intentioned and civic-minded individuals who floated above ideological differences and concentrated on what was good for the city overall.
Even the Vancouver Sun recognized that the NPA was the political arm of the city’s establishment. In an article published in 1970, The Sun wrote about the origins of the NPA: “Five of the city’s wealthiest men were on the first executive of the NPA in 1937 and even today business-men and lawyers connected to some of the city’s most prominent families hold key roles. Six of the members of this year’s executive are members of the Vancouver Club, the tiny self-chosen elite of the business community. . . . Such concerns as the BC Telephone Company, the CPR’s Marathon Realty, McGavin Toastmaster, the downtown department stores, and a number of auto dealers are among those who helped to finance the last (NPA) campaign.”
Still all about business
Some of the names have since changed, but the NPA still represents, and is financed and controlled by, the city’s business establishment. Developers still play a key role. And the NPA still does the bidding of people who want to make money here, not the vast majority of people who live and work here.
When COPE was created in 1968, it introduced a new feature into civic politics, “a clear platform on all major issues.” The reason COPE prided itself on this new innovation—a platform—was because then citizens could know specific things that the person would do once elected, and then hold those elected officials accountable. Instead of choosing councillors based on looks, character, or charm, voters could decide based on specific policies, and then hold the politicians’ feet to the fire to do what they promised.
We tried, we failed
If you analyze what happened in the 2002 election, you could conclude that we’ve already tried Potvin’s experiment. Although the city elected what was ostensibly a COPE majority, in fact it elected a Big Anti-NPA majority. The COPE-Lite councillors felt free to abandon adherence to any one party line or platform in between elections. The consequence was that the four COPE-Lite (now Vision) councillors joined the two NPA councillors to win a majority vote in favour of the Olympics, to put money into the construction of RAV/Canada Line instead of more buses, to approve RAV being built as a P3, and to expand gambling, all policies that were suspiciously similar to what the NPA would have passed if it had held the majority.
The debate is not whether the left should run in a coalition, but who should be in the coalition and what are the principles that hold them together? It’s a debate that doesn’t have a definitive answer for all times and all places, and that’s what makes it so tricky.
In the upcoming federal election, should the NDP join a coalition with the Liberals in order to ensure that Stephen Harper’s Conservatives don’t win a majority? Even though a good case can be made that a Harper majority is a terrifying prospect, I’d argue against forming a one Big Anti-Conservative coalition. I think it’s important that the NDP stick to its principles and work toward a more just and sustainable Canada. Even if it never wins a majority on the federal level, it moves our politics in a more progressive direction.
I’d also argue that COPE should stick to its principles. Of course, COPE needs to work with others in common causes. But we have to hammer out a platform before running in the next election, so voters will know who they are voting for. It’s not enough to be anti-NPA. Politicians have to have the integrity to let voters know exactly where they stand.
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