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Brian Topp says one of his leading rivals for the leadership of the New Democratic Party proposes a path that risks throwing away the party’s principles.
Topp told the Toronto Star’s editorial board on Tuesday that Thomas Mulcair is suggesting that New Democrats move to the centre and compromise their core social-democratic values.
“It’s not just that we want to win but that we want to win for a purpose,” said Topp. “I think it would be tragic to set these aside just as we are winning . . . I fear that Tom is dancing around that.”
Topp said the NDP must resist what he called the “Blairite temptation” — the impulse to move sharply to the centre as Britain’s Labour party did under former leader Tony Blair. He said that involves an “over-eager embrace” of war, privatization and public-private partnerships in order to woo centrist and conservative voters.
Topp is a veteran party organizer who was a senior official in the NDP government of Saskatchewan in the 1990s. A native of Montreal, he is campaigning as someone who knows Quebec, is fluently bilingual and has experience both in government and the private sector.
He has put tax fairness and the need to fight for greater social and economic equality at the centre of his leadership campaign. He proposes increasing taxes on individuals making more than $250,000 a year, taxing capital gains as ordinary income, and restoring corporate taxes to 22 per cent, the level they were at when the Harper government took office in 2006.
Topp discussed his differences with Mulcair and other leadership candidates with the editorial board. Excerpts:
Why you and not the other candidates?
I worked closely with Jack Layton throughout his leadership to develop what I think is a reasonably successful answer to the Conservative playbook.
Having come this far, we’ve come from 13 seats to 103, from clinging to party status to being official Opposition — one step away from government — we now need to make the transition to being a credible alternative for government. The way to do that is to reach deep into our traditions of good governance at the provincial level.
I worked at the heart of a successful NDP government that was elected and re-elected four times. I think we can win the next election.
You want to be party leader when you haven’t even been elected. Isn’t that presumptuous?
I have quite a bit of experience in politics and I’ve been a leader in a number of domains. I’ve been a leader in the labour movement. I’ve been a leader in the cooperative movement. I’ve been a leader in the business community and in the party.
I understand that I am not a perfect candidate but there are no perfect candidates.
To the issue of scrappiness, the way I feel about it is that every hockey team needs an enforcer, there’s no doubt about that. But very few hockey teams make their enforcer their team captain because it is a different job.
I don’t think we’re going to win by outshouting the Tories. Outshouting their opponents is how they win. Getting people angry, dividing people from each other, persuading people not to vote — that’s how the Conservatives win. That’s not how progressives win.
We don’t need to out-rumble them in the corner. We need to out-think them and out-argue them and put a better proposal forward.
On opponent Thomas Mulcair’s view that the NDP needs to change fundamentally:
I think Tom should be with us a little longer before trying to lead us.
He’s missed the rethink of the federal party that has occurred in step with our work provincially. It is not true that the federal NDP has not rethought its work in the last 10 years. I simply reject that idea.
What he is saying is that . . . the NDP needs, in effect, to adopt the agenda of our opponents. I think he’s both wrong and taking us down a road that will not lead to victory.
I reject the idea that our party needs to set aside its principles and its values in order to win. That’s not true.
As a practical matter, if there are two Liberal parties in front of the people of Canada in the next election, then people will vote for the real one.
We need to do harder work than just adopting the agenda of our opponents. We need to finish the job of making ourselves a viable progressive alternative to government. There are no shortcuts. There are no gizmos. And there are no gadgets.
What NDP principles do you think Mulcair has set aside?
He does not accept my point about restoring government revenues. That’s a pretty fundamental issue. If you don’t do that, you can’t follow through on your commitments.
His proposal, to the extent that I can understand it, to divert revenues from our environment plan to general government revenues is wrong.
I haven’t heard him speak clearly on this issue of equality.
Canadians are increasingly aware that the Conservatives have broken the government and there is much they can’t do together as a result.
If Mitt Romney had filed that tax return that he released about three or four weeks ago in Canada, he would have paid lower tax than in the United States. That cannot stand. You cannot do what we need to do together as a society when the Conservatives have broken the government like that. It’s not about increasing taxes on “people”; it’s about reallocating money that is currently being spent on tax giveaways to people who don’t need help, in order to transfer the money to funds to people who do.
On continuity with the NDP’s founding principles:
Our movement was founded in the 1920s, a farmer-labour ginger group. When it was first put together it was a business of collecting nickels and dimes from people who when they made those kind of contributions were making decisions about what their family was going to eat that week. They had some hopes and dreams for our movement that we haven’t lost since then.
It’s not just that we want to win but that we want to win for a purpose. I think it would be tragic to set these aside just as we are winning, just as we’re on the cusp of achieving this.
I fear that Tom [Mulcair] is dancing around that, and that’s why perhaps he should be a member of our party a little longer before seeking to lead it.
On the importance of equality:
It is indeed a moral issue. It is an issue of what kind of country we are.
It’s also a very practical matter that increasingly unequal societies are bad societies for everybody, including the rich.
On Canada’s policy toward Israel:
I think it is quite appropriate to support Israel, just as I think it’s appropriate to support Palestine. That’s my essential difference with the Harper government.
Friends of Israel, like me, have the right to argue with the government of Israel when it is on the wrong path as I believe it is here. The occupation must end at some point. Construction of settlements in occupied Palestine must end. Terror must stop. Hamas must change its views about the existence of Israel. There are bad actors on all sides who are presenting obstacles to peace. So the issue is who do we stand with? Do we stand with people who are obstacles to peace or do we stand with those who are trying to find it? That’s my argument with the Harper government.
I was party president so I got to be our delegate at Socialist International. I attended the meeting last summer in Athens, Greece.
We were there for about four days and at least two of those four were consumed by a discussion on the Middle East. We had two sister parties present trying to work together. The Israeli Labour Party, represented by some of its veterans, people going back to the foundations of Israel and Fatah, also our sister party, with people in it who had been in that struggle. And they were working together through this conference trying to find a common statement in which they would and we would call on for the resumption of peace talks. On the basis of a two-state solution, two recognized states both free from terror, living in recognized borders at peace with each other. And they couldn’t, they couldn’t find the words. But they were trying.
That’s who we should stand with, people who are trying to find peace in the region. Blessed are the peacemakers, and that’s where we should be and not in joining the voices that are preventing peace.
On whether the Liberal party has a future:
One of the things that Jack Layton used to say is that in a swim race you pay attention to the people ahead of you and not the people behind you. To some extent the comparison between us and the Liberals has become irrelevant.
There is no road in the next election leading the Liberals to victory. So the people of Canada who are looking for an alternative to the Harper government will find it in the NDP.
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