Manitoba NDP chooses new Premier by Barry Weisleder, Co-chair, NDP Socialist Caucus, 27 Oct 2009

According to the business media, Manitoba Finance
Minister Greg Salinger, 58, became NDP provincial
Leader and Premier-elect by defeating a
challenger from the left, MLA Steve Ashton, 53.
Race for top job in Manitoba pits centre against
left , read a headline in the Toronto Star.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/socialistndp/message/4064

Not so, according to long-time socialist Harry
Paine. He was one of the 2003 delegates who
packed the Winnipeg Convention Centre on October
17 for the party leadership vote. The difference
wasn't left versus right. The issue was who is
best able to keep the labour-based NDP in
government in Manitoba, the prairie province
(population 1.2 million) just north of Minnesota and North Dakota.

In a report to the NDP Socialist Caucus, Paine wrote:

More significant for anyone attempting to gauge
the level of consciousness of the NDP membership
and consequently how that reflects the
consciousness of Manitobans was the fact that the
first candidate out of the gate, Andrew Swan (a
younger Cabinet minister) chose to drop out of
the race after a couple of weeks. There was some
speculation that the Third Way (neo-liberal)
machine that had been running the party for the
last couple of decades had been grooming Swan to
wear the mantle of Gary Doer (the 10-year Premier
who left office to become Canada's ambassador to
the United States), but the first few NDP
delegate selection meetings indicated a much
stronger intervention by community activists and
Swan was unable to get more than a handful of delegate supporters.
In the few short weeks of the campaign leading
up to the delegate selection meetings the
membership more than doubled and therein was the
first serious controversy. The Steve Ashton
campaign was accused of signing up hundreds of
new members from within ethnic communities, many
of whom had little or no real loyalty to the NDP.
This raised the whole question of voting process
and the ugly head of 'One Member, One Vote' arose once again.

Ashton tried to present as the more traditional
left candidate, but surrounded himself with some
questionable and opportunistic public face
supporters. The Chair of his campaign committee
was maverick City Councillor Russ Wyatt who has
joined, and quit, the party depending on his need
for assistance from the NDP electoral machine.
Main union support came from the Firefighters
Union, which is often just as comfortable
supporting Tory candidates as it is backing the NDP.

Greg Selinger was able to garner support from a
much wider sector of the working-class
organizations that included almost all of the
MLAs, the Manitoba Federation of Labour, the
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives staff and
most of the constituencies' traditional
activists. He was seen as a leader who could
bring the party together into the 'Renewal' mode.

Before being elected to the Legislature,
Selinger had a history of being a popular City
Councillor and a key contributor to CHO!CES, a
coalition of leftist independent community
activists. As Finance Minister he has brought in
ten fairly progressive and balanced budgets and
was seen as largely responsible for Manitoba
being relatively able to fend off the effects of
the current global financial crisis. He also
instituted an open community consultative process
in the period leading up to budget production.
'Renewal' was the slogan adopted by the
Provincial Executive going into this Leadership
Campaign and that was probably an accurate choice
as the departure of Doer marks a shift to a
greater involvement of community based influences
in the party and the government. How that will
reflect itself in policy is hard to say at this time.

Poverty is still a big issue in Manitoba
especially in much of the rural farm areas, for
those on a fixed income, and in almost all of the
First Nations reserves and communities. At the
same time there is a shortage of skilled labour
and fairly dramatic population growth. While the
effects of the latest crisis of Capitalism have
not been felt as much in Manitoba as other
provinces there is considerable nervousness and
discussion among those looking for answers.

Community activism that doesn't pose a clear
socialist alternative is little more than a
band-aid solution to cover the open sores of
Capitalism and make life a little more tolerable.
On the positive side there is a growing
consciousness that there needs to be a
fundamental structural change in the distribution
of wealth in society. Interest is renewed in the
lessons of the past, and Marxism is very much on the
discussion agenda.

I asked Harry Paine about grass roots
involvement. He responded, Activists in Manitoba
are not so much in political party life, as they
are involved in community organizations. I think
that is becoming somewhat universal as capitalism
declines dramatically; the working class has to
rely more on its defensive organizations. The
challenge for socialists is how do we integrate
the transitional demands of a socialist program
into the pragmatic concerns of these defensive
community organizations?

Manitoba has one of the highest rates of
volunteerism in North America. One in three
Manitobans volunteer in their community. Of
course that includes sports coaches and Girl
Guide leaders, but there are huge numbers who are
working with the homeless, the aged, in food banks, and so on.
These people often support the NDP because it is
a lot easier to get grants and legislation passed
with them than it was with the Tories in
government. The fact that community
representatives are listened to and consulted
does more to keep our membership figures up than anything.
For instance, I am President of the Manitoba
Society of Seniors, was appointed by the Cabinet
to the Council on Aging as an advisor to the
Minister and on the Boards of half a dozen other
community-based organizations and as such have
access to all the relevant Ministers and their
departments even though I am constantly reminding
people that I am a Trotskyist, and believe the
only real answer is to overthrow capitalism.

Last year I was the Campaign Manager for our MLA
Rob Altemeyer and ran the most successful
campaign, next to Greg Selinger's in St.
Boniface. I publish an on-line community
newsletter that goes to most of the local NDP
members once or twice a week, which has some
pretty radical stuff in it sometimes, and I have
never been challenged because of my leftist
slant. Actually I get lots of fan mail from
people who think that is the strength of the NDP riding
association.

In spite of his popularity, Gary Doer was seen
as being inaccessible and out of touch with this
growing and powerful sector of activists. There
are some members who are concerned and upset
because they feel abandoned by big daddy, but
most members feel honoured that he was chosen as
ambassador and will do a good job. Then again,
there are a lot of us who believe that either
there (Washington), or in the (appointed
Canadian) Senate, is where Doer properly belongs.

What about Ashton's so-called leftist stance,
including his pledge to freeze/reduce university
tuition and ban strikebreakers?
Ashton's base was to some extent in the northern
areas of the province where he comes from,
although Selinger cut into that with support from
First Nations' delegates. Community activists
seem to be divided into those who basically
support the NDP and those who stand aside and are
somewhat cynical about politics; the latter
provided the main active base of Ashton's
support. Some were traditional leftists, but for
the most part were an unprincipled combination.

As for his 'left' policies, for the most part it
was seen as posturing. It is easy to talk about
strikebreaking legislation in a province that
hasn't seen a scab situation in years and where
strikes that last more than a few days are pretty
rare. Unions haven't suggested anti-scab
legislation and only the Firefighters and the
Steelworkers from Thompson (the area Ashton
represents in the Legislature) supported him. The
main bulk of the Manitoba Federation of Labour
supported Selinger. Students were divided about
52/48 for Selinger. I don't think they really
believed Ashton was serious about his program.

The Manitoba NDP convention was over in three
short hours; no policy debate, no election of
officers. The leadership vote was Selinger 1,317
and Ashton 685. The regular annual party
provincial convention will occur in the Spring.
By then, in the face of the deepening global
economic crisis, the direction of the new NDP
Premier may be clear. The question is: what will
the new crop of Manitoba NDP members have to say about it?