by PATRICK LEJTENYI

The past few years haven’t been the best for the federal New Democrats. The listless party has lost 35,000 members, many of whom would blame the outgoing leader, Alexa McDonough. Its presence in Ontario and Quebec is virtually nil, and in the West, where it has traditionally been strong, its support has been swallowed up by the Canadian Alliance. If the NDP is to succeed in the next federal elections, breaking into central Canada is crucial. What remains to be determined is the question of who will lead them there.

One candidate (of six) is Jack Layton. First elected to Toronto city council 20 years ago, Layton, Montreal-born and fluently bilingual, has garnered a reputation as an advocate for Canada’s homeless, workers, municipalities, minorities and environmentalists. The former president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and founder of the White Ribbon campaign to end male violence against women is well aware of the obstacles his party faces to make the country care about social democracy again.

Last week, Layton stopped by the Mirror office before one of many debates leading up to the leadership vote in January. The next debates will be on Sunday, October 27, at the CEGEP Vieux-Montréal, from 3 to 5 p.m. and on Monday, October 28, at McGill University’s Leacock 232, from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.

Mirror: What was working with Mayor Mel Lastman in Mike Harris’ Ontario like?

Jack Layton: [laughs] “Brutal” would be the word to use. Here was an administration that simply picked up the hand-off from Mulroney, implemented by Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien, which dramatically cut the funding of the social and community infrastructure that made our cities livable. The first and most visible evidence of that was the growth of food banks. After food banks began to emerge, then homelessness began to be experienced. And we’ve seen a rapid increase in homelessness after Mike Harris was elected, because he went further in the annihilation of social programs.

M: Last month, the Tent City in Toronto was forcibly vacated. What was your reaction to that?

JL: It was an indictment of Canada’s vacuous housing policy. We have no housing policy, we were building no affordable housing, and the result was, people had to build their own, wherever they could find some land. And that is a phenomenon that is spreading all over Canada—the Tent City was actually the first time when there was actually the beginning of a kind of community being created with a support infrastructure.

I thought it was a very important initiative. I was a part of helping to encourage it to happen, because I felt that if society wasn’t going to provide housing, people should have the right to provide their own, rather than being on the sidewalk and freezing to death. It’s the kind of statement that needs to be made these days.

Private over public continues

M: Do you think what we’ve seen in Ontario—cutbacks to health, privatization of public services and so on—is a trend that we’re going to see continue in Canadian cities?

JL: Yes, it’s a worldwide trend. This is the global corporate agenda, to downsize government spending to accomplish two goals: one, to reduce taxes to the affluent and to the corporate sector to increase profitability. Second, if you drive down the quality of public services, that creates a demand among the public for better services. What they tend to say then is, “Give us the choice. We’re not happy with what’s happening in the schools. Allow us to send our kids to a private school—and by the way, we should at least get a tax credit for that.” Which is an expenditure of money by the government. And it’s cheaper for the government to give a tax break to the affluent to send their children to a private school than to open a new space in the public school system.

We’re seeing the same thing with health care and we’re seeing the same thing with municipal services: cut the ability of municipalities to fund their sewer and water systems, and before you know it, they’re going to have to find someone to upgrade it. And who’s going to be happy to do that? Well, the private sector.

The agenda here is continuous, and what we need to do is build a movement, globally, locally and everywhere in between, to push back against it and put in alternative strategies, because Canadians’ values, I think, are much more in tune with having a strong system of public services. And this can be done.

M: What are your expectations for the Romanow report [on the future of health care]?

JL: I’m hopeful that the Romanow report is going to, in fact, push back against this trend. I’m hopeful that it will demand that the federal government restore its appropriate level of funding, which should be 25 per cent of health-care cost. That’s not quite doubling of what they’re currently paying, but it’s close.

Romanow has the opportunity to push back with his recommendations, let’s hope he does. And let’s hope he also recommends a national home-care program. Also, we like the national childcare program in Quebec. I’d certainly like to see the Quebec model adopted by other parts of the country. It is, to me, like how Saskatchewan gave us health care, Quebec gives us childcare.

Opening up the centre

M: Let’s talk a little bit about the federal NDP. Alexa McDonough: good job, bad job, best in a rotten situation?

JL: She was in a very tough situation. She built our party very well in Atlantic Canada… so it opens up the doors for us to be actually considered as a national party, provided we can break through in Ontario and in Quebec.

M: What do you think is the best way to make the federal NDP relevant to Canadian voters today? And how would you do it?

JL: I’ve proposed that we launch these action campaigns. That we become a party focused on campaigning for change in key areas; that we not attempt to take positions on hundreds of different issues, that we focus on some major issues and that we launch these national campaigns in conjunction with social movements that are out there and work with them to raise these issues.

We should concentrate on a campaign to invest in our local communities. And this would be transportation and infrastructure like sewers and water, and affordable housing. The strength of our local economies is predicated on the infrastructure, and we haven’t been investing in it, so that’s the first thing.

The protection of Medicare is clearly going to be another. It is going to fall to us, as New Democrats, to defend and enhance the Medicare system post-Romanow, no question about it. And there will be a campaign around some of our natural resources, particularly water, water privatization, bulk water exports and the protection of our water resources. These are things Canadians feel incredibly strongly about.

[Also,] a campaign against the undemocratic and very powerful provisions being contemplated through the World Trade Organization for the GATS and for the FTAA. We’ve got to re-open the Free Trade Agreement in North America and eliminate some of the provisions that are there, because they’re having devastating effects. Canadians don’t know much about this, so we need these campaigns. We’ve got to give people the information, we’ve got to involve people across the country, we’ve got to put pressure on the government and then win the issue. :