Editor's note: Originally published in the Globe and Mail, May 21, 2008.
Tommy Douglas would be turning over in his grave if he saw legislation introduced earlier this month by Manitoba’s NDP government.
Bill 37, which seeks to amend Manitoba’s election laws, seriously restricts the capacity of opposition parties to communicate with electors while allowing the government to expand its capacity. By restricting freedom of speech on political grounds it therefore strikes at the very exercise of democracy itself.
Why would Tommy Douglas, one of the founders of the federal New Democratic Party and its first Leader, be disturbed? Because Douglas valued the democratic dimension of being a social democrat as much as he valued the socialist dimension.
A distinguishing characteristic of all of Canada’s western-based third parties – the Progressives, Social Credit, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (which became the NDP), and the Reform Party – was their commitment to unrestricted, bottom-up, grassroots democracy and its essential prerequisites, namely, unimpeded freedom of conscience, speech, and association.
Despite their other ideological differences – spanning the entire political spectrum from left to right – these parties all believed in democratic values, processes, and institutions which created an informed citizenry with maximum opportunity to participate in the democratic process. All of the early western parties, including the Canadian Commonwealth Federation (CCF), believed in and practised grassroots political education, worked to extend the vote to women, and advocated such democracy-enhancing measures as referendums, citizens’ initiatives, and recall.
When the CCF transformed itself into the NDP it sacrificed much of its western agrarian heritage to gain the support of unionized workers in central Canada and BC. When the NDP abandoned its social gospel roots (both J. S. Woodsworth, founder of the CCF, and Tommy Douglas were Christian ministers) it abandoned much of its spiritual heritage ostensibly to gain greater support among secular voters. But when a provincial NDP party begins to abandon its democratic roots, what can it possibly gain in return, other than a few more uninspired years in office?
To witness Manitoba’s “New Democratic Party” proposing legislation restricting democratic discourse must be hard for the true democrats among its MLAs and supporters to bear. In fact, one wonders whether the NDP caucus actually saw, debated, and approved this legislation before it was introduced to the Manitoba Assembly.
While the feature of Bill 37 emphasized by the government in its press releases has been its provision for fixed election dates, it is the undemocratic features not emphasized that are the cause for concern. These include: restricting advertising expenses by a registered political party in a non election year in Manitoba to a paltry $75,000 or about 10 cents per voter; the continued allowance of virtually unrestricted government advertising during the pre-election period; and provisions enabling the government-controlled Legislative Assembly Management Commission to censor and control opposition communications materials and budgets. These proposals are in addition to existing provisions which permit the NDP government to allow virtually unrestricted third-party advertising during the election period when such advertising is to its advantage and then to proclaim restrictions on such advertising when it is not.
If Bill 37 is passed in its present form it will no doubt be challenged in the courts as an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of speech and association. But this will be a long and costly process. Hopefully cooler and more democratic heads will prevail, and the more pernicious anti-democratic sections of Bill 37 will be withdrawn or amended before then.
Preston Manning is a former Leader of the Official Opposition in the House of Commons. He is President and CEO of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy.
