On building strategies

The Libs were forced last week to acknowledge their failed attempts to poach current and former NDP MPs in order to meet their female-candidate targets. But while the Libs were working the backrooms, another of the NDP's most prominent figures made some noises about attracting centre-left support from the ground up:

Uniting Canada's left-of-centre political parties has leapt from being a suitable subject for idle chat over cups of fair-trade coffee to a matter for serious discussion by a pillar of the New Democratic Party. Lorne Calvert, Saskatchewan's NDP premier, a guarded politician hardly given to rash speculation, sketched the case for bringing New Democrats and Liberals together in a wide-ranging conversation with Maclean's editors and writers. Asked about the strength of the NDP brand nationally, Calvert volunteered that Canadian politics might be evolving toward something closer to the two-party U.S. model. "If that is the case, where is the natural party to bring together the centre and left-of-centre?" he said. "I think an argument certainly can be made that the New Democrats may be the natural place for that coalescing to happen."

Calvert did not propose formal steps for bringing together New Democrats and Liberals under a single banner. "I don't know if I'm here to propose merger," he said. Still, he noted that the uniting of the right, when Stephen Harper orchestrated the marriage of the old Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties, changed Canadian politics. And the premier made the case that the NDP need not be viewed as a junior partner in any future move to join forces with the Liberals. He praised Jack Layton, the party's federal leader, for broadening the NDP's base. "So there may be an opportunity," Calvert said, "for the New Democratic Party to capture some of that which is left-of-centre and build on it."

Now, I disagree strongly with Calvert's apparent view that Canada's current direction is, or should be, toward a U.S.-style two-party model. And indeed the current weakness of the U.S. Dems (even while holding congressional majorities) should serve as a cautionary signal rather than a model to be emulated by any of Canada's opposition parties.

That said, though, it's noteworthy that prominent Dippers - first Jamey Heath and now Calvert - are publicly making the case for a grassroots move toward the NDP as a governing alternative. And with Dion clearly having trouble winning the support of either his party or voters at large, the door may soon be open for the NDP to emerge as the leading force keeping PMS at bay.