Comstock: NDP Waffles as problems pile like pancakes

The NDP was founded in 1961. The party has had six leaders: T. C. Douglas (1961-71), David Lewis (1971-75), Ed Broadbent (1975-89), Audrey McLaughlin (1989-95), Alexa McDonough (1995-2003) and Jack Layton (2003-present). The federal NDP has averaged 15.4% of the vote, which is enough to influence Canadian politics, particularly in a minority government. The domination of the NDP in Downtown Toronto has been achieved by a membership of quick wit and an understanding of political concerns. It is a working, grass-roots organization (this is a pun) and always remember: The left never fails to plan. It’s a generational party, growing its number during those heady daze of David Lewis and Ed Broadbent, the 1970s and ‘80s. It is a party of the common man and youthful hope for a compassionate society.

In 1969 the Waffle was established as a caucus within the New Democratic Party. Led by Mel Watkins and James Laxer, it was militantly socialist and nationalist. The general membership, believing that it really could take power in Canada one day, forced the too-far-out Waffle off its agenda in 1972; they operated independently of the NDP until 1974.

It is my belief that the NDP has within it yet another Waffle, an internal, anarchistic faction. It hasn’t yet been purged because the NDP doesn’t any longer feel that it really will take power in Canada one day. It is free to never have to appeal to the average Canadian. This juvenile intellectual faction gives the party the cache of rebelliousness, clueless rebelliousness, but it doesn’t alter the maintenance of the status quo and that safe 15% nationally. So, it is tolerated.

There is a downside to maintaining fringe elements. The policies and tactics that make this new Waffle edgy, delineate it as a bit over the top of normal judgment. In Toronto’s NDP the Michael Shapcott-led anti-poverty disaster bunch have given Toronto quite a lot. A “Bread Not Circuses” history that crushed public opinion of any Olympic bids still plays on point in the recent failure of the World Fair idea for the Port Lands. For Toronto, Shapcott’s vision evokes the creation of Stalinist drab apartment blocks as our brightest moment.

Most importantly, they continue with a failed “homeless strategy” that supports sleeping on the street by sick and troubled men. This later “defence of the poor” results in withholding an intervention of this deplorable behaviour. Any social worker not affiliated with this NDP faction will tell you that people left passed out on the street is harmful to the individual and the neighbourhood where that occurs. For these anti-poverty crusaders the watershed of thought is that having this blight of people so obviously in need of intervention left sleeping on the sidewalk will some how translate into a general political awareness that housing is a crying need. Housing is the least of these street sleepers needs!

This strategy is demented. It places the boot of political marketing on the neck of depressed alcoholics. God, there must be an NDP heart that will purge this stupid thinking and let help intervene in the tragedy of people left sleeping on the streets of Downtown Toronto. The non-jail intervention of a central intake assessment facility was proposed four years ago. Only this Waffle wrinkle and its old arguments have kept Social Services from setting up an assessment centre for these approximately 200 street people. The sixth largest industry in the country is tourism, employing thousands of workers Downtown.

The business community in the Downtown core would gladly pay for the facility needed to end this visual slaughter of Toronto’s tourism business. Like the NDP, the City of Toronto will never have successful, enjoyable Downtown if it continues “homeless” policies that the majority of residents see as failed.

On another subject: I heard some negative comments about my call for a toll on the Gardiner and DVP. Let me remind everyone that a reasonable “1-looney toll” would raise $72,800,000 annually on the Gardiner alone, and smooth some gridlock.

Also, $72 million would pay for a renovated Gardiner and a new swimming pool for every neighbourhood. Just think about a Tooney Toll.