“I pass the test that says a man who isn’t a socialist at
twenty has no heart, and a man who is a socialist at forty has no
head.”
— William Casey, Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, 1981-1987
The
sentiments of President Reagan’s man at the CIA have been
previously uttered by the likes of Disraeli, Clemenceau, and
Churchill. The ages of the young men varied as did whether the
young men in question were socialists or liberals. But the one
thing that remained constant is that if they remained socialists or
liberals as older men they were doomed to a life of
naïveté.
In my own case, I signed up as a card-carrying member of
the socialist Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP) in March 1988 at
the age of 15 while growing up in Thunder Bay. Although my mother
had been active in the NDP for many years, joining the party was
entirely my idea. I joined shortly after my tenth-grade history
class had partaken in a Model Parliament where I became, by
default, leader of the NDP. Subsequently, I would join the Port
Arthur NDP provincial riding association as its youth
representative.
Let’s jump forward to the summer of the 1990. In late
July, Ontario Premier David Peterson called a snap election set for
September 6. Peterson’s Liberal Party had won 95 out of 130 seats
in the Ontario legislature less than three years earlier. Legally,
Peterson did not need to call an election for another two years.
(Elections in Ontario are now held the first Thursday in October
every four years. Ontarians are due
to vote on October 6, 2011). However, Peterson was popular and
Liberal re-election appeared certain.
But a funny thing happened on the way to that Liberal
re-election. Voters in Canada’s largest province didn’t like having
their summer respite so rudely interrupted and they took that anger
out on Peterson and the Liberals. Under normal circumstances
Ontario voters would have turned to the Progressive Conservatives.
After all, before electing Peterson in 1985, the Tories had
governed Ontario for 42 years earning the nickname “The Big Blue
Machine.” But Brian Mulroney was leading such an extremely
unpopular Tory government in Ottawa that a mere three years later
they would be reduced to two seats in the House of
Commons.
So voters did the unthinkable and elected 74 New Democrats
to Queen’s Park, making Ontario NDP leader Bob Rae the new Premier
of Ontario. Among the group of 74 elected that night was Shelley
Wark-Martyn, a 27-year-old registered nurse with no previous
electoral experience. Not only was Wark-Martyn suddenly
representing the people of Port Arthur, Rae would appoint her to
his cabinet as Minister of Revenue. Among those who had helped
elect Wark-Martyn was a 17-year-old high school student who had
just grown his first beard. I did everything possible during that
campaign to ensure an NDP victory except to vote, as the election
took place ten days before my 18th birthday.
For those unfamiliar with Canadian politics, the idea that
the people of Ontario would ever elect an NDP government was about
as likely to happen as, say, the people of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts electing a Republican to succeed Ted Kennedy.
Needless to say, I along with NDP activists all over Canada became
euphoric. A new day had come to Ontario. A socialist paradise was
within reach.
But a funny thing happened on the way to that socialist
paradise. Call it having to live in the real world. What seemed so
easy in opposition suddenly became complicated in power. Things
were complicated by a very deep recession. That recession would
become further complicated when Rae’s Minister of Finance, Floyd
Laughren, introduced a provincial budget in the spring of 1991 with
a deficit of $9.7 billion,
earning Laughren the nickname “Pink Floyd.” Not surprisingly,
Ontario’s business community was not amused. Conrad Black would
describe
Rae as a “millionaire-baiting, anti-corporate agitator.” For Rae’s
part, he often
described Ontario’s economic situation as “the
worst recession since the 1930s.” Is this beginning to sound
familiar?t;/span>
The NDP government also managed to alienate its allies,
including its core support amongst trade unions. First, it
backed off implementing public automobile insurance, a program
that had been implemented by NDP governments in Saskatchewan,
Manitoba and British Columbia. Later, it would open up and
unilaterally rewrite public sector collective bargaining
agreements. Taking his cue from Rousseau, Rae called it the “Social
Contract.” Although it would save public sector jobs, among its
most unpopular features was the new regulation requiring unpaid
days of leave which would become known derisively as “Rae
Days.” I can remember when Rae was booed when he took the floor
of the 1994 Ontario NDP Convention in Hamilton.
The following spring, the Ontario electorate
unceremoniously tossed out the NDP in favor of Mike Harris and the
Progressive Conservatives (with Wark-Martyn one of the casualties.)
The Tories would be re-elected in 1999 before the Liberals were
returned to power in 2003 under Dalton McGuinty where they remain
to this day. The Ontario NDP has never come close to replicating
its triumph of twenty years ago.
I would not disavow the NDP until after the events of
September 11, 2001. But the seed of doubt was surely planted in me
while the NDP ruled Ontario. No doubt it was planted in Rae who has
himself moved rightward (somewhat) and is now a Liberal MP (Member
of Parliament). Whether President Obama, who has alienated both
adversary and ally alike, will be out after one term remains to be
seen. But I have no doubt that a seed of doubt has been planted in
many a young man who at 17 helped to elect President Obama. The
only question now is when that seed will germinate.
