Buzz says vote Liberal
by Jim, 8 October 2007
The president of the Canadian Auto Workers is urging Ontario voters to turn their backs on a party that largely owes its existence to the labour movement.
Buzz Hargrove, leader of Canada’s biggest private sector union, yesterday slammed Howard Hampton and the NDP, arguing the party has “lost complete touch” with the people of the province.
“They are worse than they’ve ever been. I see absolutely no reason to vote NDP,” said Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers. His union has 185,000 members in Ontario and 265,000 nationally, mainly in the auto industry but also in other important manufacturing sectors.
In an interview with the Star, Hargrove lavishly praised Premier Dalton McGuinty’s record, claiming the “Liberals have been more left than the NDP over the last four years” and predicting left-leaning voters will vote Liberal on Oct. 10.
The problem with the NDP, said Hargrove, “is they don’t understand economics.”
No to mention they kicked him out of the party because of a policy of strategic voting, a policy that was adopted by the union’s national convention.
Monday 8 October 2007 at 18:12
This is huge.
Another good one, Jim. At the very least, Hargrove’s latest might help shake out the mass-media and popular-culture assumption that the NDP is always to the left of the Liberal party.
When you look at the composition of the House of Commons and line up MPs on a conventional left-right spectrum, I see no evidence that NDP MPs outnumber Liberal MPs on the left.
About ten years ago, pollsters discovered that in Western Canada, voters who described themselves as “left wing” were more likely to vote Liberal than NDP. Since then I’ve met Conservative Party members who I would consider more left wing (allegiance to the working class, openness to state intervention to guarantee equality, the priority of the broad public interest over special-interest concerns, etc.) than NDP activists I know.
I regret to say I don’t expect Hargrove’s latest position to cause much soul-searching within the NDP.