Table of Contents
The Broadbent Institute was proud to contribute to the Canadian volume of the Next Left Country Case Study series, published by the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS).
This volume turns its lens on Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP) and makes a compelling contribution to the story of the progressive influence of social democracy in Canada over the last one hundred years. Written by Broadbent Policy Fellow David McGrane and Director of Policy and Engagement Clement Nocos, it traces the persistence and relevance of the NDP since its origins in the CCF (the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation) and Ginger Group, its role in federal minority governments, and provincial leadership. In light of the 2025 federal election and a newly minted Liberal leadership, this Next Left Country Case study inspects the present moment of the NDP at the crossroads, and the opportunities the party may take advantage of in a moment of global instability and domestic realignment. The volume accentuates the Canadian model of social democracy (which is distinct from the U.S. and Commonwealth variants), and ultimately affirms the NDP’s persistent status as a progressive actor (however, not necessarily a progressive leader).
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Introduction
Canada has existed in the shadow of the United States—a federation of several British North American colonies that organized in 1867 in the aftermath of the US Civil War, interdependent markets based on the export of Canadian natural resources that sustain US industries, and an asymmetrical relationship of economic and global power. Yet, Canada has carved out a distinctive politics for itself that it is notably to the left of its southern neighbour. Even a cursory examination of Canadian politics reveals that its governments have traditionally adopted much more progressive policies than American governments in a variety of areas such as the welfare state, public ownership, state intervention in the economy, labour legislation, human rights, and environmental protection. Given its geographical proximity to the United States and the massive influence of American culture on Canadian culture, why have the main contours of Canadian politics been historically to the left of the United States? Our answer to this intriguing question can be summed up in two words: social democracy.
What makes the United States unique compared to most industrialized western countries is that it has never developed a full- fledged labour party or social democratic party that has welded significant political power and influence. (Lipset, 1996) In contrast, a social democratic party has been active in Canadian politics and has achieved success in provincial constituencies and a limited amount of electoral success federally over the last one hundred years. It is the argument of this case study that the activity of Canada’s social democratic party has been largely responsible for pushing Canadian politics significantly to the left of American politics.
We make this argument by exploring the history of Canada’s social democratic party and then examining its present-day situation. For those unfamiliar with Canadian politics, Canada has a Single Member Plurality or first-past-the-post electoral system which generally produces majority governments (i.e., the governing party has a majority of seats in the legislature and has little incentive to seek the support of opposition parties to pass bills into law). However, there have been extended periods of times in Canadian history where its Single Member Plurality electoral system has produced situations of minority government (i.e., the governing party has only a minority of seats in the legislature). During time periods of minority government, the governing party is forced to rely on the support of one or more opposition parties in the Canadian legislature to pass bills into laws and to remain in power.
Canada’s social democratic party was founded in 1932 and was first called the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). Subsequently, it changed its name to the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961. The result is that, in the parlance of Canadian political historians, it is often referred to at times by the somewhat long and awkward acronym of CCF-NDP. NDP is the common usage today, with the CCF somewhat forgotten among ordinary Canadian voters. For the purposes of this case study, CCF-NDP is sometimes used to provide a throughline of continuity that spans nearly a century of Canadian history. While there have been some regional parties that rose to gain large numbers of seats in the House of Commons and subsequently disappeared, the CCF-NDP has traditionally been in competition with two other parties in Canadian federal elections.
The centrist Liberal Party of Canada has been the electorally dominant party in Canadian federal politics throughout the 20th century and early 21st century and is generally considered to be one of the most successful political parties in western democracies. (Clarkson, 2005). Since the first Prime Ministership of Conservative John A. Macdonald, the Liberal Party has opportunistically straddled the political centre, campaigning on contemporary left-wing values while governing on the right-wing. The party’s “Laurentian Elite” origins (Bricker & Ibbitson, 2013) negate its present-day alignment with social democratic Third Way parties in European countries with labour origins—having only been moderated by the social democratic influence of the New Democratic Party during periods of Liberal minority government. As European parties moved to the centre over recent decades, the Liberal Party of Canada has maintained the centre as a “Big Tent”, enveloping elements of the centre-left and centre-right.
The present-day right-wing Conservative Party of Canada (known as the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada from 1942 to 2003) has usually been the second-place party in Canadian federal elections and formed the Official Opposition in the House of Commons, though it has been in power occasionally and there have been several Conservative Prime Ministers. The original Conservative Party that existed from the time of Prime Minister Macdonald in 1867 to the Second World War reflected a British Tory tradition until its transformation into the Progressive Conservative Party that took a more centrist approach that challenged Liberal dominance throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Under this competitive Big Tent, the PC Party became more competitive with the Liberals, though there was much consensus between the two parties throughout the latter half of the century. At the height of neoliberalism, the development of the right-wing populist Reform Party of Canada in 1987 created a split among the conservative movement that lent itself to further Liberal dominance in the 1990s. This conservative split was resolved in the merger of the PCs and the renamed Reform Party briefly known as the Canadian Alliance in 2003, into the present-day Conservative Party of Canada, with the right- wing populists led by Stephen Harper overseeing the union. Today’s Conservative Party still maintains threads of Tory traditions connected to its original founding by Prime Minister Macdonald but also bears the resemblance of other European right-wing populist parties today.
Finally, Canada is a federal country with a central government that is referred to as the “federal government” with its legislature in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, and the sub-national or regional governments that are referred to as “provincial governments,” with their legislatures in provincial capital cities. There are ten provinces and three northern territories across Canada that vary greatly in geographical size and population and one province, Quebec, has a large, culturally distinct French-speaking population that has historically made up about one- quarter of Canada’s population. Furthermore, 2 in 3 Canadians live within 100 kilometres of the Canada-US border, contributing to the influence of the US economy, politics and culture across this boundary.
The sections that follow illustrate that, though the CCF-NDP has never formed government at the federal level and has never enjoyed a sustained period of country-wide electoral popularity, it has had what we call a “consistent progressive influence” on Canadian politics over the last one-hundred years resulting in the adoption of several left- wing public policy reforms that have significantly improved the lives of Canadian citizens. It has accomplished this “consistent progressive influence” through two separate avenues.
First, the CCF-NDP has rarely won more than 10 per cent of the seats in Canada’s federal legislature (i.e., the Canadian House of Commons) and has never had a member in Canada’s appointed Senate.1 The party has never formed a majority government or minority government at the federal level and has never been interested in joining coalition governments, meaning that there has never been a CCF-NDP Prime Minister or CCF-NDP federal cabinet minister in the history of Canada. Despite its limited electoral success and non-participation in federal Canadian cabinets, the CCF-NDP has strategically used its limited number of seats in the House of Commons to push Canada’s national political discourse to the left and convince federal governments to adopt left-wing public policies. This has particularly been the case when the centrist Liberal Party of Canada has formed minority governments and has been forced to rely on support from the CCF-NDP in the House of Commons. For instance, the modern Canadian Pension Plan and the country’s public Medicare system were introduced in the 1960s were forced on the Liberal government of Lester B. Pearson by Tommy Douglas’ NDP which held the balance of power. In these situations, the CCF-NDP has been able to negotiate left-wing public policy reforms in exchange for keeping the Liberals in power and keeping the right-wing Conservatives out of power. It is, notionally, much easier for a small social democratic party to push a centrist governing party to the left than to push a right-wing governing party to the left.
Second, the CCF-NDP has taken advantage of its pockets of strong regional support to frequently form Canadian provincial governments that have a wide array of jurisdictional powers in terms of taxation, social programs, and economic development. Indeed, Canada is one of the most decentralized federations in the world and Canadian provincial governments have more extensive powers than sub-national governments in many other federations (Watts, 2008, pp. 171-178). When it has controlled provincial governments, the CCF-NDP has used the considerable jurisdictional powers accorded to provincial governments in Canada to put in place ambitious left-wing policy reforms. While such policy reforms have only been put in place in one province and are not adopted nation-wide, the net result of CCF-NDP provincial governments implementing several left-wing policy reforms in several different provinces over many decades has been to push Canadian politics to the left over the last one-hundred years.
In many ways, the situation of Canadian social democracy is unique compared to other countries in the world. While the CCF-NDP has had a major influence on Canadian politics today and throughout the twentieth century, Canada has never had a very powerful social democratic party that has formed a national government like the British Labour Party, Australian Labor Party, French Socialist Party, or German Social Democratic Party. The electoral popularity of the CCF-NDP has been relatively weak at the federal level and unevenly distributed across the country compared to the popularity of social democratic parties in many other western industrialized countries, concentrated in urban centres, throughout the last century. Nonetheless, the CCF- NDP has been able to be a consistent progressive influence by taking advantage of a combination of two features of Canadian politics that are not present in other western industrialized countries: the electoral dominance of a centrist liberal party and powerful sub-national governments. A quick survey of most western industrialized countries illustrates that centrist liberal parties have been electorally weak since the 1920s (e.g., the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom) and there are many countries that are either unitary states or federal states with weak sub-national governments.
The combination of these two distinctive features of Canadian politics has given the CCF-NDP the opportunity to translate its limited electoral popularity into an outsized influence on Canadian politics over the last one-hundred years. The CCF-NDP have taken advantage of the electoral dominance of a centrist liberal party and powerful sub- national governments to be a consistent progressive influence in Canadian politics, that is responsible for Canada resisting the pull towards conforming to the right-wing politics of the United States and establishing an international reputation for itself as a progressive and tolerant country. As today’s Trump administration in the United States plays a role in emboldening right-wing politics in Canada, while the Liberal government of Mark Carney swings right-ward, today’s NDP will need to continue to play an outsized role in pulling Canada left.
- Senators in Canada are essentially appointed by the Prime Minister. And, since there has never been a CCF-NDP Prime Minister, there has never been a CCF-NDP Senator. It has, at times, been party policy to abolish the Senate due to its historical linkages to the UK’s House of Lords, its members being unelected and, therefore, viewed as undemocratic, and its institutional rivalry with Canadian federalism. ↩︎