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The NDP is having a conference this weekend in Quebec City and the party had hoped to keep its draft policy resolutions hidden from public view until then. Some inside sources have foiled that scheme, however, by leaking the lot to Stephen Taylor, whose blog serves as headquarters for Canada’s Blogging Tories.
This morning Stephen has posted several economic policy resolutions. If these resolutions are adopted by the conferece, the New Democratic Party should consider changing its name to the Old Communist Party, for they call for state ownership of just about everything that moves in the Canadian economy.
The Oakville NDP calls for an NDP government (dream on) to “socialize all major primary resource industries in Canada”. Other NDPers, however, would call Oakville a bunch of pikers and small thinkers. Why stop with just the resource sector? The NDP associations of Trinity-Spadina and Durham want “social ownership” all across the economy,
including but not limited to the following industries: banking, communications, energy, health care, insurance, manufacturing, mass media, medical drugs, natural resources, transportation
Hey, NDP policy wonks, ya left a bunch of stuff out. Those industries account for less than 60% of Canada’s GDP. Even if the listed industries were fully nationalised, there would still be vast expanses of the Canadian economy in the hands of reactionaries capitalist sympathisers hoodlums counter-revolutionary outlaws running dogs enemies of the people private owners.
In a separate resolution, the Durham NDP adds in “the telecommunications industry (including phone and cable companies)”. Uh, fellas, I think you've already covered that under "communications".
The resolutions also mandate that all nationalised industries “be democratically controlled and managed by their workers, by instituting direct election of plant managers and enterprise directors”. Let’s have a jolly Socialist Workers’ Soviet of Canada!
For good measure, none of the proposed resolutions specifies how the nationalisations are to be carried out, leaving the door wide open for outright confiscation. A minor detail when vanquishing capitalist lackeys, no doubt.
What can you say to people still fighting the battles of the 1930s with policies that have consistently and predictably failed wherever they’ve been tried? Sweden is only the most recent example of an economic basket case brought about by statist socialism.
Of the NDP it may truly be said what Talleyrand said of the Bourbon Family:
“They have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.”
As discussed on this blog before, destructive economic policy nonsense is one of the hallmarks of the NDP.
Note: The 60% statistic cited above is a result of rough calculations from this Statistics Canada table showing Canada’s GDP by industry.
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