[hurley_108]

Gerald Caplan wrote:

When the NDP won government in Ontario exactly 20 years ago, it constituted the greatest advance for social democracy in North American history.

It’s true that British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba had all elected NDP governments and that progressives had won small victories in various parts of the United States. But none of them (I hope this doesn’t hurt their feelings) mattered in the same way Ontario then did. It was the economic heartland of Canada, the home of much of Canada's industry and finance. What happened in Ontario impacted all Canadians. Now it was under the control of Bob Rae and the New Democrats.

The attacks came from all sides. It is no exaggeration to say hysterical fear-mongering and sabotage was the order of the day. Launched within the very first year of the new government, the attackers included every manner of business big and small, both Canadian and American-owned, almost all private media, the police (especially in Toronto), landlords and lobbying/government relations firms. Their goal was clear, and they had the money and power to achieve it.

They were determined to undermine the government every step of the way, to frustrate the implementation of its plans and to assure its ultimate defeat. In all three goals they were successful. The considerable achievements of the government – often forgotten or dismissed –were wrought in the face of a deep recession and ferocious obstruction.

The tactics were not necessarily subtle. Though the Soviet Union was ignominiously imploding, right-wing columnists such as Diane Francis and Barbara Amiel actually resorted to old-fashioned red baiting, smearing the government as “red” or “communist.” And after the new finance minister's very first meeting with the banking community , a bank vice-president told him, in the presence of an aide: “Nice speech, Mr. Minister, but we're going to kill you.” And they did.

Conrad Black was a leading executioner. Lord Black swore loudly that on principle he'd never invest in Ontario under an NDP government. Other corporate interests threatened a virtual strike of capital unless the government relented on its intentions to introduce higher business taxes and to strengthen union rights, environmental regulations and equity programs.

Mr. Rae and treasurer Floyd Laughren made themselves easily accessible to business representatives, many of whom ran Canadian branch plants of huge American multinationals, only to be threatened with capital blackmail. The premier was warned that their U.S. head offices weren't about to invest further in Ontario unless the government abandoned most of the programs it had run on.

Bond traders declared that slashing government programs to reduce the deficit was a prerequisite to Ontario borrowing at competitive rates, even though Ontario’s deficit was equivalent to that of Conservative-run Alberta. Suddenly the entire media was fixated on the government’s threatened credit ratings, never mind that Ontario had the only Standard & Poor’s AAA rating in the country. The Social Credit government in British Columbia, the Conservatives in Alberta and Robert Bourassa’s Liberals in Quebec all had lower credit ratings. Yet only in Ontario was the government threatened.

NDP government decision-makers, while innocent about so much, at least understood that the corporate world was not given to bluffing. Time after time they responded to the endless corporate blackmail by compromising on policies and commitments. In this way, they alienated many of their own followers but without ever appeasing business interests. They never could.

Some business protests bordered on the disloyal. Hysterical landlords took out an ad in The Wall Street Journal warning Americans not to invest in “leftist Ontario.” Others demanded the complete repudiation by the government of its most cherished legislation, as when several coalitions of powerful business interests, managed by government relations firms such as Hill & Knowlton, demanded the NDP scrap its entire plan to amend the Labour Relations Act. This was the kind of class warfare Lenin might have admired, especially since the government had already withdrawn many of its intended changes in order to meet business criticism.

One front organization, the “All-Business Coalition,” won headlines for warning that amendments the government had already disavowed would cost 450,000 jobs and cost $20-billion in investment. All the while the same groups were deliberately frightening investment away from the province.

Hostility to these fictional amendments also led to unusual solidarity among Toronto's rival newspapers. Of course hostile editorials were fully expected. Less predictable were the full-page statements in the press denouncing the labor amendments. Even more unprecedented was the delegation consisting of the publishers of all three dailies who appeared in the premier's office to express their hostility in person. The media in general played a key role in mobilizing perpetual hostility to the government, with business columnists regularly stirring up their readers while the Toronto Sun especially wallowed in the sheer joy of unrestrained excess and fabrication.

Throughout the five years of the Rae government, the Sun was its most powerful and effective foe, doing everything in its considerable power to damage the government. It repeatedly set the agenda for the entire media, even though competing reporters knew much of it was sheer hooey. The Sun gleefully sensationalized embarrassing facts, mere rumors, vicious innuendos and obvious lies, with no attempt to discriminate among them.

Perhaps the most chilling and underestimated of the government's enemies were the Toronto police, whose actions at times bordered dangerously on virtual insubordination against the civilian authorities. Here too certain newspapers and radio commentators repeatedly and deliberately inflamed angry officers against the government. Most successful was the Sun’s ongoing, systematic campaign to drive a wedge between the government and the Toronto police force, sometimes with the collusion of the police themselves.

The Sun and senior Toronto police officials maintained a troubling relationship. In one particularly outrageous episode, they colluded in smearing an NDP appointee to the police board on the very evening of her swearing-in. The Sun published intimate information on the appointee that could come, many thought, only from the office of the chief. Sun readers then began their 1991 Victoria Day weekend with a huge banner headline proclaiming “COP COMMISSIONER PART OF OPP PROBE”. The story claimed the new appointee had been discovered in a car in the middle of the night with a very shady operator connected to an even shadier operator.

It was a blatant frame-up. On Victoria Day itself, the Sun came clean. They publicly acknowledged the sheerimpossibility of anyone confusing the police commission member with the real passenger the OPP had found in the car. A Sun reporter described an “undeclared but very real state of war that exists between the new, NDP-appointed members of the police board and the great majority of the Metro [Toronto] force.” But that was pure mischief. The only war was the one the Sun was methodically fomenting.

The government introduced regulations that substituted the Constitution for the Queen in the oath that cops had to swear. Many media swiftly exploited the occasion to further exacerbate tensions between the police and the NDP. Yet the change had actually been initiated by the previous Liberal government and had been recommended by a committee consisting mainly of police. Their work had been completed when the NDP took office; the Rae government was simply implementing their recommendations.

I documented these facts publicly after interviewing numerous police reps, every one of whom supported the new oath. Nor could they see what the big deal was about. I asked the Toronto Sun, CFRB radio and CFTO-TV, who had most flagrantly misled the public on the issue, to demonstrate good faith by apologizing. Not one admitted the slightest fault. Good faith was in short supply in those years.

There are a world of studies yet to be written about the Ontario NDP's difficult and controversial years in office, none more important than the nature of the saboteurs who organized their very own Ontario coup. This includes much of the business community, government relations firms, the media and the police. There are lessons to learn here about the limits of left-wing politics in Canada. None of them are encouraging if you are a left-winger.

I've often thought this - that investment falls under left governments not because their policies are actually bad for business, but simply because they're Left. All that rational economic decision making touted by the right goes flying out the window.

[SprCForr]

The same argument can be made against other parties that formed a government in this country. If it's not business/corporations freaking out, it's unions and special interest groups.

Vive la same!

[Lemmy]

SprCForr wrote:

The same argument can be made against other parties that formed a government in this country. If it's not business/corporations freaking out, it's unions and special interest groups.

Very insightful. That's, in fact, a pretty eloquent way of explaining the theory of "cost-push inflation". The theory suggests that businesses would rather pass additional cost of labour on to consumers rather than fighting with unions. When a union expects inflation, they'll demand a cost of living adjustment in their next contract. This means that expected inflation can create inflation, even if the conditions that breed inflation never existed. Inflation can be a self-fulfilling prophecy of a sort; a problem borne out of panic rather than actual conditions.

[EyeBrock]

Well, I just remember 'Equity' and how I couldn't get a job because of it.

Only 'target' groups could apply for jobs in my field. As in women, non-whites, aboriginals, disabled or other groups that had experienced 'systemic' sidelining in the workplace by the system.

I'll never forget that Bob Rae and the NDP did that.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Oh boo-hoo-hoo about the article. Maybe all these groups did what they did cuz they knew Rae was a stupid fucking jack-off.
Face it, Ontario would have been better off being run by a lobotomized chimp....wait I retract that. We have a lobotomized chimp running it now and it don't seem to be any better off.

[EyeBrock]

Gerald Caplan is a huge NDP guy. The article obviously has an agenda.

[hurley_108]

SprCForr wrote:

The same argument can be made against other parties that formed a government in this country. If it's not business/corporations freaking out, it's unions and special interest groups.

Vive la same!

Except unions and special interest groups don't control billions in potential investment they can hold for the ransom of friendly policy. Unions and special interest groups don't control the government's credit rating. And unions, as I've read, weren't particularly impressed with Rae either.

Everything and everyone was stacked against Rae. Centre / right governments at least have some factions on their side.

[hurley_108]

EyeBrock wrote:

Gerald Caplan is a huge NDP guy. The article obviously has an agenda.

The USA did it to Chile after Allende took power. "Make the economy scream" and all that.

Leftist governments don't succeed because they're not permitted to.

[EyeBrock]

hurley_108 wrote:

EyeBrock wrote:

Gerald Caplan is a huge NDP guy. The article obviously has an agenda.

The USA did it to Chile after Allende took power. "Make the economy scream" and all that.

Leftist governments don't succeed because they're not permitted to.

I dunno Hurley.

Bob Rae is a bit of a mad professor type. Lighthouse in the desert and all that ( very bright but not a lot of use).

With the Ontario NDP government of Bob, they basically fucked up about everything they could.

They had their chance and they blew it, really, really badly. Caplan is just trying to lay the blame on a few dreaded enemies.

Bob Rae was his own worst enemy and it doesn’t matter what Caplan writes, those of us who were around to experience the provincial NDP government will never forget how bad they and Bob Rae were.

[hurley_108]

EyeBrock wrote:

hurley_108 wrote:

EyeBrock wrote:

Gerald Caplan is a huge NDP guy. The article obviously has an agenda.

The USA did it to Chile after Allende took power. "Make the economy scream" and all that.

Leftist governments don't succeed because they're not permitted to.

I dunno Hurley.

Bob Rae is a bit of a mad professor type. Lighthouse in the desert and all that ( very bright but not a lot of use).

With the Ontario NDP government of Bob, they basically fucked up about everything they could.

They had their chance and they blew it, really, really badly. Caplan is just trying to lay the blame on a few dreaded enemies.

Bob Rae was his own worst enemy and it doesn’t matter what Caplan writes, those of us who were around to experience the provincial NDP government will never forget how bad they and Bob Rae were.

Forgive me if I don't accept your ad hominems (against Rae and Caplan) and anecdotes as serious rebuttal.

I'm not saying that a Rae Ontario left to its own devices and treated fairly would have been a land of milk and honey. I'm just saying that this article espouses the same view as I've held before: leftist governments aren't allowed to succeed of fail on their own merits - they are pummelled relentlessly from all sides until they fail.

It's just reality, and probably something NDP supporters ought bear in mind. I've always felt Canada is at her best under the Liberals with a strong NDP acting as their conscience. The Liberals temper the NDP's radicalism but also serve as a filter to the outside observer and the NDP keep the Liberals honest and fair.

[EyeBrock]

It's not meant as a rebuttal Hurley, and there are some valid points in the article.
But, Caplan is a cheerleader for the NDP which does affect the credibility of the message in the article.

I think Harris was the other end of the spectrum to Bob Rae.

He was right wing and he fucked up everything he could too.

He also got a good pummelling from all sides (and rightly so) too, not to be overlooked.

If Bob Rae and his NDP had been competent they would have weathered the partisan attacks from the likes of Lord Black of Fraud Harbour. But they were terribly incompetent. They were easy meat because they were so bad.

I’ve always had a strong sense of social justice within me. I’m a Red Tory by Canadian standards. I believe unions have a place but they shouldn’t be an unelected opposition.

The whole ‘Equity’ thing caused me personally a lot of problems.

I couldn’t even get an interview because of my skin colour and gender until Oberst- Gruppen Fuehrer Harris got in.

I have my own personal immigration story that I won’t get into but it wasn’t pleasant.

Bob Rae tried to correct past injustices towards women and visible minorities by being unjust to white males.

It was a failure as was his government, and that wasn't the only very silly policy they brought in. The NDP goverment was bad, very bad and I'm not looking to stir things up. They were just awful.

[SprCForr]

hurley_108 wrote:

Except unions and special interest groups don't control billions in potential investment they can hold for the ransom of friendly policy. Unions and special interest groups don't control the government's credit rating. And unions, as I've read, weren't particularly impressed with Rae either.

Everything and everyone was stacked against Rae. Centre / right governments at least have some factions on their side.

Unions and special interest groups control the people working for those companies and therefore exert influence in that manner. They also have a huge influence through their pension funds. That same manner can affect credit ratings as well. The unions weren't "particularly impressed" not because of the policies brought in by the Rae government, but because the Rae government didn't go far enough. Business was outright against it from the get go.

Edit to add: I guess my point is that any "woe is me" story about politicians and parties just pisses me off. They're all the same: Uselss tits who need a slap upside the head from their mom.

[hurley_108]

Maybe you guys are right. I donno. Please don't consider my retreat a dismissal of yoru points - they're good ones - I just don't have the will to fight this one I thought I did.

What did Churchill say? "Whoever at 20 is not a socialist has no heart; whoever at 40 is not a conservative has no brain"?

I'm coming right up on 30 so I guess that puts me in the middle!

[EyeBrock]

It's kinda true Hurley! The Winston quote I mean. At 15-16 I was as far left as it came in the UK. Irish in Manchester, you have little choice! The older I get the less the far-left stuff resonates.

It's all down to experience I think.

[ASLplease]

there's a saying, if you are young and not a liberal, you have no heart. If you are old and not a conservative, you have no wisdom.