New Democrats Party Like It's 1995

The NDP's biggest challenge as the Official Opposition so far has nothing to do with the age of its MPs or the Tories.

NDP Leader Jack Layton's assertion that all Quebec needs to separate is “50 per cent plus one” of votes in a referendum, as per the party's 2005 Sherbrooke Accord, has opened up the sovereignty can of worms once again. Hassan Arif of the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal skewers Layton for essentially ignoring the Clarity Act's guidelines on how to secede, namely the need for a “clear majority” in support of separation. “While the NDP's commitment to progressive economic and social policy is admirable - and has made the party a positive presence in Canadian politics in the past - Jack Layton's waffling on fundamental questions of national unity are concerning for a party that is now supposed to be a 'government-in-waiting,'” says Arif. Few other issues in this country are as integral as keeping it together. It's a litmus test for governing that the NDP seems to be failing.

Layton's overtures to sovereignty aren't just bad for national unity, say The Halifax Chronicle Herald's editorialists; they threaten to undermine his party altogether. Fifty-plus-one “may fly well in Quebec. But it does a tremendous disservice to the rest of Canada, including federalists in la belle province,” they write. The NDP's traditional bases of unions and urban voters in Ontario and B.C. surely didn't cast ballots on May 2 to rehash the debates of the 1990s. Looking ahead to the next election, “the danger for the NDP now, however, is that their opponents will try to paint them as the party that would give away the store.”

Jeff Jedras, writing in the National Post, calls for, well, clarity on the NDP's interpretation of the Clarity Act, surmising that the party is trying to have it both ways. “They can’t tell Quebecers one thing and Canadians another. They can’t say Sherbrooke is their policy but claim support for the Supreme Court opinion and the Clarity Act, because the two aren’t compatible,” writes Jedras. “They need to pick a position, own it and stand by it in all of Canada.” One thing that is clear, though, is that how Layton handles the issue will determine whether the NDP's affair with Quebec will come at the expense of its relationship with the rest of the country, and in turn, its relevance in the House of Commons.