Canada’s NDP: A proud history of getting results for people

Canada’s NDP has a long and proud history.

Whether it was working to introduce medicare, pensions, or the 2005 better balanced budget– the NDP has always worked to get results for people.

It’s a history that has always worked for a better future for all.

Tommy Douglas and the formation of the NDP

At the founding convention of the New Democratic Party in 1961, Thomas Clement (T.C.) Douglas was chosen as its leader. From 1944 to 1961, Douglas served as Premier of Saskatchewan, the first social democratic government elected in North America.

Douglas' working-class and religious family provided a strong background for both his politics and his faith. His family left Scotland and settled in Winnipeg in 1919 where Douglas witnessed the Winnipeg General Strike that year. Leaving school at the age of 14, Douglas began a printer's apprenticeship, then became involved in church work and in 1924 decided to enter the ministry. He was at Brandon College for six years and it was there that he was exposed to the Social Gospel.

When Douglas moved to Weyburn, Saskatchewan, following his ordination in 1930, he found much suffering caused by the depression and drought. Douglas soon became involved in ministering to people's physical as well as spiritual needs. His studies, along with his experience of the Depression of the 1930s, led him to conclude that political action was necessary to alleviate human suffering.

In 1931 he helped form a local association of the Independent Labour Party, and two years later he attended the founding convention of the new Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. Douglas ran unsuccessfully in the 1934 Saskatchewan election. Friends then convinced him that he should be a CCF candidate in the federal election of 1935. This time he was successful.

The Second World War further entrenched Douglas’ convictions. Although he heard it repeatedly argued by Liberals and Conservatives that money could not be found to put people to work during the Depression, money was found to finance a war.

During his first two terms in Parliament, Douglas earned a reputation as a skillful and witty debater. He claimed as his constituency the underprivileged and exploited and he often took unpopular stands in defence of civil liberties, including opposition to the internment of Japanese-Canadians.

In 1944 Douglas resigned his federal seat to lead the Saskatchewan provincial party in the successful general election campaign.

As Premier of the province for the next 17 years, he became a symbol of what social democracy promised. His government was innovative and efficient, balanced the budget each and every year, and pioneered many programs that would later be replicated others, notably in the field of social services.

Douglas was elected the first federal leader of the NDP because of his success in Saskatchewan and because he was universally regarded as the left's most eloquent spokesperson. He was able to inspire and motivate Party workers and he could also explain social democracy in practical, moral, and ethical terms.

Douglas was defeated in the federal election of 1962, due largely to a doctors’ led backlash at the time against the Saskatchewan NDP government's introduction of Medicare.

Winning a British Columbia seat in a by-election, Douglas went on to serve as leader of the New Democratic Party until 1971 during which time he helped ensure the introduction of medicare, pensions and the expansion of Canada’s social safety net in successive minority Parliaments. Tommy Douglas retired from politics in 1979 and died in Ottawa in 1986.

In 2004, nearly twenty years after his death, Tommy Douglas was voted “The Greatest Canadian” in a national CBC Television contest. Among the nominees who Douglas edged out for the title were Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau and Terry Fox.  

CBC's The Greatest Canadian

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David Lewis: Making Minority Parliament Work

David Lewis succeeded Tommy Douglas as leader of the New Democratic Party in 1971.

As a child, Lewis lived through the German invasion of Russia in the First World War and through the Russian Revolution. In 1921 his family moved to Montreal.

Lewis attended McGill and won a Rhodes scholarship to attend Oxford where he established contacts with members of the British Labour Party.

Returning to Canada, Lewis practised law in Ottawa and in 1936 became National Secretary for the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. During these years he also became a key CCF theorist. Efforts to gain election to Parliament in 1940, 1943, 1945 and 1949 were unsuccessful.

In the 1950s, Lewis practised labour law, held a variety of executive positions in the CCF. He consistently worked to rid the labour movement of communist infiltration and to forge a link between the Canadian social democratic and the labour movements. Through his efforts, the primarily western farm-based CCF was transformed into the more urban and successful New Democratic Party.

Lewis ran for Parliament in York South in 1962, 1963, 1965, 1968, 1972 and 1974, losing only in 1963 and 1974. He quickly became one of Parliament's most skilled debaters and served in a variety of the Party's executive posts culminating in his election as leader at the 1971 NDP Convention.

Campaigning against "corporate welfare bums", Lewis achieved his greatest political prominence in 1972 when New Democrats held the balance of power during the Liberal minority government of 1972-1974. Parliament introduced a national affordable housing strategy, a new Elections Expenses Act, pension indexing and created Petro-Canada and the Foreign Investment Review Agency, because of NDP support.

Following his defeat in the 1974 federal election, Lewis stepped down as leader but remained active in the Party until his death in 1981.

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Ed Broadbent: Growth & Influence

Ed Broadbent, the Member of Parliament for Oshawa, succeeded David Lewis as Party leader in 1975.

Born to an autoworker's family in Oshawa in 1936, Broadbent studied at the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics before joining the political science department at York University in 1965. He was first elected to the House of Commons in 1968.

As leader he emphasized economic issues and helped the Party recover from its losses of 1974. Although New Democrat support appeared to decline prior to the 1984 election campaign, Broadbent waged a brilliant campaign, emphasizing tax reforms, lower interest rates and equality for women.

In the 1984 election, the New Democratic Party emerged with 30 seats, only 10 fewer than the Liberals.

The Broadbent years of leadership were marked by great changes in Canadian politics in which New Democrats played major roles. It was the period when the Canadian Constitution was patriated with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms and when corporate interests pushed for rapid globalization of the economy which, in Canada, was highlighted by the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In the 1988 federal general election campaign, Broadbent led New Democrats in a campaign that elected 43 seats in the House of Commons, the largest number of NDP MPs ever. Broadbent retired as leader in December 1989 and went on to become the founding President of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development.

In 2004, Broadbent returned to federal politics and was elected MP for Ottawa Centre, a seat held by the Liberals for the previous 16 years. He served as the NDP critic for democratic reform and served as a beacon of respect and civility at a time when Canadians were rapidly losing faith in parliament and their federal politicians.

He announced his retirement in May 2005.

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Audrey McLaughlin: First Woman to Lead Major Political Party

Audrey McLaughlin was born in Dutton, Ontario in 1936. She had a strong background as a community and social worker, serving as Executive Director of the Metro Toronto branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association and teaching for some years in Ghana. She moved to the Yukon in 1979 and ran a consulting firm in Whitehorse.

She was first elected to the House of Commons for the Yukon in a by-election in 1987 and re-elected in the general elections of 1988 and 1993.

Chosen as Leader of the Party on December 2, 1989, Audrey McLaughlin became the first woman to lead a major federal party in Canada.

For the next six years she led the Party through a tumultuous time during which the NDP formed the provincial governments in Ontario in 1990, under the leadership of Bob Rae, and in British Columbia in 1991, under Michael Harcourt. The NDP returned to government under Roy Romanow in Saskatchewan.

But Canadians, distressed by nine years of government under Conservative Brian Mulroney, turned to the Liberals in the 1993 general election and, as a result, only nine New Democrat Members of Parliament were elected, three less than that required for official party status in the House of Commons.

Audrey McLaughlin stepped down as leader in October 1995 and announced she would not seek re-election. She later served as President of the Socialist International Women and special representative for the Government of the Yukon on Circumpolar Affairs.

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Alexa McDonough: Standing up for Medicare

Alexa McDonough became the Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada in October 1995.

Born in Ottawa in 1944, while her father, Lloyd Shaw, served as the CCF's first National Research Director, McDonough's family returned to their native Nova Scotia soon after her birth.

She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dalhousie University in 1965 and a Masters degree from the Maritime School of Social Work in 1967. Her work experience includes community development with the Nova Scotia Social Services department, social planning with the City of Halifax, and teaching at Dalhousie's Maritime School of Social Work.

Elected leader of the Nova Scotia New Democratic Party in 1980, McDonough until 1984 was the only New Democrat and only woman in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly. She was re-elected in 1984, 1988 and 1993.

She earned a reputation as a tenacious advocate for Nova Scotians by leading the fight for -- and winning -- the first ban on extra Medicare billing in Canada, worker health and safety improvements and human rights protections.

In the federal general election of June 2, 1997, McDonough and 20 other New Democrats were elected Members of Parliament, including six, the largest number ever, from Nova Scotia and, for the first time, two from New Brunswick.

The NDP caucus in the House of Commons pursued a determined course, demanding the Liberal government set targets to reduce unemployment in the same way governments set targets for reducing deficits.

McDonough and her caucus colleagues were at the forefront of the fight to save Medicare, the Canada Pension Plan and Canada's unemployment insurance system. At the same time they were a strong force in Parliament in opposition to the Multilateral Agreement in Investment (MAI) and schemes to merge major Canadians banks.

In November 2000, McDonough led the New Democratic Party in a critical federal election campaign in which she focused on the threat of increasing privatization of Canada’s Medicare system under the Liberals. In that election 13 New Democrats were returned to the House of Commons.

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Jack Layton: Getting Results for People

Jack Layton succeeded Alexa McDonough as NDP Leader in January 2003.

Layton was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1950 and grew up in the small town of Hudson, on the Ottawa River in Quebec. He received his Bachelors degree from McGill University and his Masters degree and PhD from York University. His doctoral thesis concerned attempts by countries to control multinational capital flows. Layton became a professor at Ryerson University in 1974 and has taught at all of Toronto's universities.

For nearly 20 years Layton served as a city councillor in Toronto. He also served as President of the Federation of Canadians Municipalities where he forged a united and powerful lobby that led to a new national focus on the state of Canada’s municipalities and the services they deliver.

Layton was elected MP in Toronto-Danforth in the 2004 federal election which saw the NDP’s national vote climb by more than one million votes.

In May 2005 Layton negotiated an amendment to the government’s budget in exchange for NDP support in the minority Parliament. The NDP’s budget amendment included deferring $4.6 billion in corporate tax cuts and instead invested that money into lowering costs for education, cutting pollution, building affordable housing, more transit, increased foreign aid, and new protection for pensions in the case of employer bankruptcies. Another example in the NDP’s long history of getting results for people.

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