Jason Cherniak has caused a storm among NDP bloggers by claiming that their party is “sick”. Jason starts off by asking the following questions:

Why does the NDP exist?
What is their purpose in Canadian politics?
Should a political party be celebrating because they won less than 10% of the seats in the House of Commons?
Should a political party be celebrating because the group most opposed to their ideology is now in government?
Should a political party be kicking out lifelong members because they do not adhere to party policy?
What is the purpose of the NDP?

The short answer to these questions would be:

1. Because the Liberals and Tories refused to accept the “big government” concept in the 30s.
2. “Results for people!”
3. Yes
4. Not really. But…
5. No
6. “Results for people!”

But this is probably worthy of a bit more of a response than that, so I’ll give my take on the NDP.

Right off the bat, let me say that I agree that an NDP government would lead to some problems. There are a lot of things about the party I’m uncomfortable with and a lot of extremists in their ranks. But, that said, I think the NDP serves a valuable purpose in Canadian society. And, over the years, the NDP (and CCF before them) has done a lot of good for Canada.

I don’t want to get into a history lesson here, but the only reason that old pragmatist Mackenzie King ever brought in the child allowance (which, as an ironical aside, is kind of like the Tories childcare plan) or any single government program was because he was scared out of his mind about the CCF. King, like all good Liberals, was concerned about staying in power and he recognized that to do this, he’d have to steal a lot of CCF policies, something he went about doing quite effectively. We’ve seen this pattern repeat itself over the years with Liberals either adopting NDP policy because they needed their support in the House or because they were afraid of losing votes to the left.

The NDP has always been about keeping the Liberals “honest”. There are enough lefty-socialist-pinko-commie Canadians who would never feel comfortable voting for the Tories under any circumstances. Without an alternative to the Liberals, the Grits have no reason to work for their vote. It’s the same reason I think Alberta would be better off with a strong Alberta Alliance party capable of pulling in 17% of the vote and a half dozen seats. At the very least it would keep the Provincial PCs on their toes and working for their votes.

As for NDP supporters being happy with election results, they have every right to be happy. To quote their mustached hero, they “elected more NDP MPs” and 1 in every 6 Canadians voted for them. I was happy when the provincial Liberals got 17 16 MLAs in the last provincial election and I’d streak down 17th Avenue naked if we ever got a federal seat in Calgary. I’m sure a lot of NDP supporters aren’t happy about seeing Harper elected but that’s the fault of the Liberal Party, not of NDP voters. In the eyes of a lot of people, the Liberals betrayed their left wing values and were a corrupt government in need of defeat. Blaming voters for not holding their nose and voting Liberal is just another example of Liberal arrogance that turns a lot of people away from the Liberals. Another example of Liberal arrogance that could turn people away from the LPC might be question another party’s right to exist…