Yogi Yogi:
All 'we' got to do is look at every province the dippers ran/run-right into the ground!
Lest We Forget; Manitoba-Ontario-Saskatchewan-British Columbia- RIP
The thing is, though, that when we do that we get a much more complicated picture than you might realize.
Let's start with Ontario under Bob Rae, the most infamous example. Part of the problem was that Rae was governing during a
brutal recession, which was arguably made worse by the
interest rates of the bank of Canada and the move of a lot of industry out of Ontario.. Rae began trying to implement spending cuts to get Ontario's finances in order, and as noted on Wikipedia, the unions boycotted Rae's attempts to talk to them. He ended up imposing the "Rae Days" and "Social Contract" salary cuts on his own, and pissed off the unions who, according to the stereotypes, always have the NDP in their pockets.
So Rae got really unlucky and angered some of the NDP's strongest supporters, which fatally weakened his re-election efforts in 1995. The thing is that Rae was actually trying to save the province money without cutting jobs...and if I had to choose between a pink slip and a pay cut, I know which one I'd go for!
A couple of provinces over in Nova Scotia, Darrell Dexter's NDP government lasted one term before being defeated. Oddly enough, during that time
Dexter cut education funding and balanced the budget. According to the
Halifax Chronicle-Herald, part of the reason for the NDP's defeat was that their own activist base became frustrated and disappointed.
At the other end of the country in British Columbia,
Mike Harcourt reigned over a province that was one of the few areas of economic growth in the country during the early 1990s, at least according to the Canadian Encyclopedia.
In Manitoba,
Gary Doer's long-running NDP government delivered a series of balanced budgets, opposed the long gun registry, cut provincial income taxes and shifted the provincial tax base more towards consumption taxes, the latter policy long advocated by conservatives advocating tax reform.
Oh, and then Doer ended up getting appointed by Stephen Harper as our ambassador to the United States, where he's been for the last five and a half years.
Here in Alberta,
writing in the Sun newspapers, David Akin pointed out that Rachel Notley strongly supports twinning the Kinder Morgan pipeline in B.C., and the Energy East pipeline.
She might not support Northern Gateway, but that's in no small part due to the fact that Harper has pretty much crapped the bed on getting social licence for the pipeline, as
Jim Prentice,
Doug Eyford,, Kinder Morgan president
Ian Anderson, former Canadian Gas Association CEO
Michael Cleland and Brent Rathgeber have all criticized Harper's handling of the issue. If you look at their CVs, none of these guys are exactly known for their Marxist tendencies. (I cant provide a reference for Rathgeber, but that's because I heard him say it verbally a few months ago when I was meeting with him).
Obviously, all of these NDP governments did things that could be considered left-wing. But many of them either said or did things that could also be considered right-wing, too, in some cases pissing off their own base in the process.
Like I said, when you actually study the history of provinces governed by the NDP, things are a lot more complicated than they seem at first glance.
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