The Backroom Caste of the NDP is Trying to do Something Incredibly Stupid

 

The backroom caste of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP), by which I mean not the party as conceived of as its members across the country, but rather as an army of permanent staff, consultants, lawyers, who serially invent titles, and indeed institutions, for themselves, and rotate around within these titled sinecures, are thick in the effort of doing something extremely, offensively, profoundly procedurally anti-democratic, something which betrays the spirit of the NDP as a social democratic party. These largely anonymous backroom personalities must be stymied and corrected in this malign effort, because the fate of the party, and indeed left politics in Canada for many years, depends upon this. All working class people, indigenous peoples, LGBTQ2S+ people, ecologically and democratically minded people across the country ought, by all rights, to take an interest in and opposition to this malign effort.

Do you want a social democratic party in Canada which genuinely captures, encourages, platforms, amplifies the most literate, eloquent, incisive social democratic analyses and political organization to problems and issues in society, which marshals these forces in a manner by which their aggregate becomes a powerful political force capable of assuming responsibility for the state and for making its function range to the benefit of working people in Canada, indigenous peoples in Canada, LGBTQ2S+ people in Canada, the vulnerable, the marginalized, the put upon, the underhoused, the overexploited, etc, or, by contrast, do you want a hollow, desiccated husk, made grotesque marionette by a tiny clique of effete basically-liberals, monologically foisting half-measures and half-solutions at you for the next, say, five years? That is the real question.

For those who haven’t been following the exigencies of Canada’s Third Party, the NDP, we are right in the midst of a directional leadership campaign, where different branches and elements of the party propose different routes and avenues forward for the party, and for left more broadly in the Twenty-First Century. It is my favorite kind of conundrum: simultaneously all important and totally meaningless. All important because this is literally the moment where a vision of Social Democracy which is historically, morally, ecologically and sociologically informed can win out, capturing and channeling virtually limitless social energies towards saving our country, and by extension the world. Totally meaningless insofar as the truth is they would inherit a profoundly discredited and ostensibly bankrupt vehicle, and indeed bankrupt in more ways than one. It would be like becoming captain of a great and honourable wreck, with the glimmer of a chance to resuscitate it to, and maybe even exceed, its former glory.

This campaign has been occasioned by the complete collapse of the NDP in the recent 2025 election under the then leadership of Ontario-come-South-Burnaby MP Jagmeet Singh. Singh had clung on to a governing accord with the former Justin Trudeau Liberals, and upon the Trudeau brand becoming critically saturated with hypocrisy, corruption, and cultish irrationality, some of that leaked over and coated Mr Singh, hobbling his credibility against an ‘outsider/insider’ like Carney. More overarchingly, as NDP strategist Karl Belanger astutely put it, Mr Singh had already signaled to the NDP membership, and indeed the broader public, that it was more vital to keep Pierre Poillievre, the neo-Trumpist (but nonetheless lifelong political insider snake) Conservative candidate, out of office, by just remaining in that supply and confidence agreement. He gave, in effect, a permission structure to abandon the NDP for the familiarity of the Liberal brand, apart from the cult of personality of Trudeau.

The declared and approved candidates thus far have been Heather McPherson MP, ostensibly the insider’s pick, part and personage of an effort to grow the party into Alberta; Avi Lewis, a filmmaker and social activist whose most notable political activity was promotion within the NDP of the ‘LEAP Manifesto,’ a forward-thinking and still extremely relevant plan and expression of intent for ecologically informed social democracy; Rob T E Ashton, a union activist who has distinguished himself with substantive and ambitious economic policy positions, and a willingness to onboard social justice themes and concerns, though not a proven track record of extemporaneously debating or arguing these positions; Tony McQuaill, a farmer and Vienam War resister, and proponent of deep democratic party reform; and Tanille Johnston, a social worker and Campbell River City Councilor, a working class indigenous candidate.

But there is the rub, these are the so far 'approved' candidates. And the entire fight for the future of social democracy in Canada actually hinges upon what ‘approved’ means, who ‘approves,’ for what reasons, with what degree of transparency are those reasons made public? Do they have to be good reasons? If they are not good reasons is there a mechanism of redress? These are the actual questions which anyone who cares about the fate of the NDP should actually be asking themselves right now. Because, as I say, the backroom caste of the NDP, the lawyers, the consultants, the permanent sinecures, are currently on course to commit a grave, completely illegitimate, and catastrophic injury to social democracy in Canada by excluding Yves Engler, an otherwise qualified candidate who has indeed followed the rules set by the Federal Council, from participation in the first televised debate on November 27, 2025, and indeed potentially from the leadership campaign itself.

There is an important point to be made here: nobody would benefit from the exclusion of Yves Engler from the NDP leadership race. Nobody. Not even the permanent sinecures, because, as noted above, the NDP is a ship with water in it. And maybe some particularly scummy and entitled permanent sinecure just does not care about the ultimate fate of the party, and is just in it for themselves, for as many days as possible. I don’t actually imagine this is the majority. Most are well meaning, with a horizon and frame of reference which is merely stunted, kept at an infantile liberal level well into professional maturity.

For that majority, the various reserve armies of staff and lawyers who trade off into this position, then that one, obscuring their failures and inadequacies by the rearrangement of titles, they too would not benefit, ultimately, from the exclusion of Yves Engler. Why? Because it would mark a signal crisis in the basis processes of the NDP: it would say, no matter even if you do follow the rules, if ideas or personages are deemed inconvenient to NDP central in Ottawa, they may not participate. This is particularly galling and acute in this instance because it is really the NDP socialist caucus which these bad faith boffins are attempting to abject and occlude, to shove into the basement. It would make the point that actual socialism simply cannot be a public part of the NDP. To me that is a death knell, that is an insistence that the party wither and die from ineptitude, incapacity, and unworkable complicity with reaction and censorship of completely valid left wing ideas and people.

Who is Yves Engler? I mean, you could say a lot of things. His detractors would call him an agitator, he regularly stages political agitation events, and indeed crashes high society events where there are weapons deals for despicable conflicts in which Canada is implicated, and interrogates those who profit from these kind of arrangements. This is a basic journalistic function. If there is one actual journalist in Canada, it might be Yves, because nobody, not even the crack team at the CBC, actually and actively interrogates power like Yves does. At the same time, one could say of him that he is a historian, that he has written eloquently, and persuasively, at length and meticulously academic in methodology, about Canada’s complicity in Imperialism, and our nation’s harmful activities abroad. It is this aspect of Yves which has perhaps drawn even more ire than the situationist tactics in interrogating the powerful, because what Yves actually says contradicts actually quite a lot of both Canadian societal orthodoxy, but the orthodoxy which has governed both Canada’s Liberal Party, and unfortunately, Canada’s NDP. On Foreign Policy, he is both exactly right, and voluminous in his explication of that correctitude.

But the point, the real point, is that one ought not have to need to say anything at all about his bona-fides in this respect if he has followed the rules set out by the NDP Federal Council. So it is therefore incumbent upon the NDP to clarify whether Yves has or has not done so, and if not, upon what basis. Because what we are talking about is not negotiations to necessarily become NDP leader, but only for that possibility to exist under a fair, transparent, and democratic leadership competition. Or, in other words, we are talking about just being allowed to run, to be part of the fray, contend in ideas, share wisdom, be impacted by and impact upon others through the democratic process, and indeed more particularly the social democratic process! Too many of Yves detractors, in contradistinction to his supporters, make so much of Yves’ alleged personal failings that they feel entitled to dismiss him and his candidacy, and simply rely upon an apriori administrative dismissal, by a completely unaccountable, backroom vetting committee, without protest. They avert their eyes, I guess.

That is why this ultimately discretionary decision, to slow-walk the vetting of Yves until at least after the first televised debate, by which time they hope to have cast the race in a certain manner, is so galling, and why if left unchallenged it will poison social democracy in Canada for many years: because the left being allowed to run, for the NDP socialist caucus to field (1) socialist and (1) French language candidate, for their ideas to be part of an earnest and real social democratic leadership contest, that is the bare minimum. To arbitrarily and procedurally stymie this would be to drive an enormous rift within social democracy between those who capitulate to cynical, curated spectacle, and those who don’t, almost exactly as we have had for almost a decade under Jagmeet Singh! It is this rift between the inside and the outside of the actual party organ which actually needs bridging and fixing! Be social democrats! If Yves should not be leader of the NDP, great, then make that argument in the context of the extant leadership competition. By all means, set out to convince the membership of the demerits of such a course of action. But do not fall back on this pseudo-lawfare weasel talk to exclude even his otherwise qualified and broadly supported candidacy from even participating in a supposedly ‘social democratic’ leadership competition.

This was, after all, almost word for word what launched Avi Lewis’s candidacy for leader, that the inside caste felt the party was their little thing, and they were at risk of driving it further and further into the ground. Well, illegitimately procedurally excluding Yves from the November 27, 2025 debate, if they try to do it, is going to be driving the party further and further into the ground. It does not matter, at all, what sparkly powerpoint presentations Lewis or Ashton have at the permanent sinecure approved, backroom authorized, scripted PSA they will film together if they try to exclude Yves. And if Yves is out there yelling on the street, he will be right, and they will be wrong. It is a deep and growing embarrassment for each of the candidates that they have not publicly called for the inclusion of Yves, even with whatever caveat about it being provided he is otherwise qualified. Nope, not even that, radio silence, ie participation in the spectacle. Is that what you want to be, Avi, is that your pitch for leadership? Participation in the spectacle? Careful, the spectacle might just go with McPherson!

The NDP is both ridiculous and venerable, antiquarian and futuristic, ruined and hobbled, but vital and necessary. It must necessarily step up to the plate to save Canada, but its capacity to evolve and adapt to do so, and its historical track record, are at best mixed. I believe it can be a vehicle for profound change and progress in Canadian society, but only contingent upon it developing and adapting to the modern age in pretty particular ways. One of those ways is to recognize spectacular falsity, and to reject and combat that. We are living in a disimformation age, the news media lies to us with a laurentian owning class bias, American tech conglomerates lie to us with Trumpian chauvinism splashed across our screens, you know where working people, indigenous people, LGBTQ2S+ people don’t actually need another spectacle, in the body of their social democratic party. It is important that the NDP be serious, and be real, and that means not only a recitation of this or that policy platform or plank, but the capacity to extemporize and expound upon those beliefs and positions, to be intellectually, morally, politically legitimate, such that one has credibility to intervene in the political sphere.

If the NDP’s backroom boffins persist in this putting their thumbs on the scales against the (1) socialist caucus, and (1) French Canadian candidate, they may feel, in the extremely short term, as though their petty spectacle has won the day; except that falsity not only would haunt the party going forward, but is in fact reflective of the falsity which has been undermining the NDP all along. Any ‘leader’ who emerges from a rigged, gatekept, curated spectacle, as opposed to from a fair, earnest, real social democratic contest will be hobbled and weakened by the experience – emboldened in precisely the wrong kind of echo-chamber. A real leader would welcome the opportunity to contend ideas for the left in Canada, and would be confident in the rightness of their own ideas, and not need to rely on capricious procedural exclusion of one’s friends and colleagues in progressive struggle. That is the kind of leadership competition which the NDP, and Canada, for that matter, needs.

The backroom boffins should relent. And I say this again, genuinely, even they would benefit, ultimately, from Yves’ inclusion and participation, because the leader who resulted from that earnest social democratic leadership contest would be stronger, rather than weaker, for the experience, that they would accrue legitimacy through it, and that therefore the party would be healthier, and ultimately more opportunities for the permanent sinecures. They themselves cannot be content with 7%, and indeed 7 to 18% is the perpetual fate of the NDP, if it persists in just doing falsity, instead of social democracy, until it withers and dies. That is not a fate that any of us want. They should relent from their discretionary slow-walk and offer up a podium, and some minutes, to, again, the one socialist and one French Canadian candidate in the race. The other candidates ought to call for his inclusion, and welcome his contribution, and the debate ought to be elevated and enriched by his participation. It is not too late for the backroom caste of the NDP to just not do something incredibly stupid, and do social democracy instead.