Ontario New Democratic Party

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The Ontario New Democratic Party (formerly known as the Ontario Co-operative Commonwealth Federation) is a social democratic political party in Ontario, Canada. It is a section of the federal New Democratic Party.

1 Origins
2 Breakthrough
3 Dog days
4 Revival
5 The Rae years
6 After Rae
7 Leaders of the Ontario CCF/NDP
8 Election results
9 See also
10 External links

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Origins

The NDP was founded in 1932 as the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), a democratic socialist political party. The Ontario CCF saw itself as the successor to the 1919-1923 United Farmers of Ontario-Labour coalition that formed the government in Ontario under Ernest C. Drury.

While United Farmer Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) joined the Ontario Liberal Party, the United Farmers of Ontario (UFO), as an organization, participated in the formation of the Ontario CCF, and was briefly affiliated with the party. It decided to withdraw in 1935, alleging Communist influence in the new party. Many active members of the UFO remained supporters, including Agnes Macphail, who served as president of the Ontario CCF until 1935 when, as a UFO Member of Parliament (MP), she was forced to officially resign from the CCF when the UFO withdrew from the party. She was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as a CCF Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP)¹ in 1943.

Other prominent CCFers were Graham Spry who was the Ontario CCF's chairman from 1934 to 1936 and Elmore Philpott, a former Liberal Philpott joined the CCF in 1933 and became president of the Ontario Association of CCF Clubs before resigning from the party and rejoining the Liberals in 1935.

The CCF contested its first Ontario provincial election in 1934. It received 7% of the vote, and won its first seat in the Ontario legislature: Samuel Lawrence was elected in Hamilton East. The Ontario CCF failed to win any seats in the 1937 election.

¹ In 1938, Members of the Ontario Legislative Assembly (MLAs) passed a motion to adopt the title "Members of Provincial Parliament" (MPP).

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Breakthrough

The party achieved a major breakthrough under its first leader, Ted Jolliffe, in the 1943 election, forming the Official Opposition with 32% of the vote and 34 seats. The CCF was just four seats short of George Drew's Progressive Conservatives ("Tories"), who formed a minority government.

The Tories remained in government for 42 years. The prosperity of the 1950s, combined with the anti-Communist hysteria of the Cold War, caused the CCF's fortunes to decline in the 1950s. The party lost its position as the Official Opposition in the 1951 election to the Liberal Party, and was reduced to just two seats.

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Dog days

Donald C. MacDonald became leader in 1953, and spent the next fifteen years rebuilding the party. The CCF changed its name to the New Democratic Party in 1961, when it formed a formal alliance with the labour movement.

The Ontario NDP gradually picked up seats through the 1960s. It achieved a breakthrough in the 1967 election, when its popular vote rose from 15% to 26%. The party increased its presence in the legislature from 8 to 20 seats.

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Revival

Stephen Lewis took over the party's leadership in 1970, and the NDP's popularity continued to grow. With the 1975 provincial election, the governing Conservatives were reduced to a minority government for the first time in thirty years. The NDP became the Official Opposition with 38 seats and 29% of the vote as the result of a brilliant election campaign that forced the Tories to promise to implement the NDP's rent control policies.

Hopes were high that the NDP was on the verge of taking power, but in the 1977 election, the Tories under Bill Davis again won a minority government. The NDP lost five seats, and slipped into third place behind the Liberals.

The NDP declined further in the 1981 election under Michael Cassidy, but the party's fortunes turned around under the leadership of Bob Rae.

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The Rae years

Image:Rae.jpg

The 1985 election resulted in a minority legislature: the Tories under Premier Frank Miller won 52 seats, the Liberals won 48, and the NDP 25. The New Democrats entered negotiations with both the Tories and the Liberals. The NDP signed a two-year accord with the Liberals, in which the Liberals would form government with the NDP's support in exchange for the implementation of a number of NDP policies.

Miller resigned, opening the way for Liberal leader David Peterson to form a government. This was not a coalition government as the NDP declined an offer to sit in Cabinet, preferring to remain in opposition.

When the accord expired in 1987, the Liberals called an election and were re-elected with a majority. The NDP returned as the second largest party with Bob Rae becoming Leader of the Opposition.

In the general election of 1990, the party was elected to government for the first time by defeating the Liberal government.

Bob Rae became Premier of Ontario during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. In government, the NDP disappointed supporters by abandoning much of its ambitious program, including the promise to institute a public auto insurance system. As the recession worsened, the NDP implemented what it called the Social Contract — which represented a shift to the right that echoed that of Tony Blair's Labour Party in the United Kingdom. This was a package of austerity measures that;

reopened the collective bargaining agreements of public sector unions;
implemented a wage freeze for public servants; and
imposed Rae Days, which were a schedule of days in which government workers were given days off without pay.

The Social Contract resulted in a major breach in the NDP's alliance with the labour movement as several unions turned against the party. This split has not yet fully healed, and contributed to the party's defeat in the 1995 election at the hands of Mike Harris and the Progressive Conservatives. As a result of that election, the NDP again returned to third party status.

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After Rae

Image:Howard cell.jpg Howard Hampton succeeded Rae in 1996. NDP support fell even further in the 1999 election, leaving the party with just 9 seats. Under the rules of the legislature, a party would receive "official party status", and the resources and privileges accorded to officially-recognized parties, if it had 12 or more seats; thus, the NDP would lose caucus funding and the ability to ask questions in the House. However, the governing Conservatives changed the rules after the election to lower the threshold for party status from 12 seats to 8. The Tories argued that their decision was made due the new legislature's smaller size. Others argued that the Tories were only helping the NDP so they could continue to split the vote with the Liberals.

In the 2003 election, the party alienated some traditional supporters with an over-reliance on sophomoric photo ops. It won over some new supporters by emphasizing a few key issues, primarily "public" hospitals and "public" electricity. Despite a slight increase in raw vote, the party won only seven seats in the Ontario legislature. The NDP once again lost official party status and the concommitant speaking privileges and funding. The new Liberal government refused to change the rules as the Tories had done. However, the NDP regained party status when Andrea Horwath won a massive victory a by-election in Hamilton East on May 13, 2004.

The NDP's representation in the Legislature was again reduced to seven seats when Marilyn Churley resigned her seat to run in the 2006 federal election. However, the Liberals reversed their position and declared that the NDP would retain party status even if they lost the upcoming Toronto—Danforth by-election. Some opposition sources believed the Liberals, mindful of their humiliating defeat to Horwath, had loosened their interpretation of the rules so that whomever ran for the NDP in Toronto-Danforth couldn't use the threat of lost status in a campaign. This issue became moot when Peter Tabuns won the seat for the NDP comfortably by 9% over the Liberal's Ben Chin.

The Ontario NDP has retained its commitment to moderate socialist principles under Hampton's leadership. Shortly after the 1999 election, Hampton cited the Swedish model of social democracy as closely reflecting his own beliefs.

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Leaders of the Ontario CCF/NDP

E.B.(Ted) Jolliffe 1942-1953
Donald C. MacDonald 1953-1970²
Stephen Lewis 1970-1978
Michael Cassidy 1978-1982
Bob Rae 1982-1996³
Howard Hampton 1996-present

² The Ontario CCF became the Ontario NDP in 1961.

³ Bud Wildman was interim leader of the NDP in the Ontario legislature from Rae's resignation as an MPP to Howard Hampton's election as party leader.

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Election results

Year of election	Candidates elected	# of seats available	# of votes	% of popular vote
1934	1	90	na	7.0%
1937	0	90	na	5.6%
1943	34	90	na	31.7%
1945	8	90	na	22.4%
1948	21	90	na	27.0%
1951	2	90	na	19.1%
1955	3	98	na	16.5%
1959	25	98	na	16.7%
1963	7	108	na	15.5%
1967	20	117	na	25.9%
1971	19	117	na	27.1%
1975	38	125	na	28.9%
1977	33	125	na	28.0%
1981	21	125	na	21.2%
1985	25	125	865,507	23.8%
1987	19	130	970,813	25.7%
1990	74	130	1,509,506	37.6%
1995	17	129	854,163	20.6%
1999	9	103	551,009	12.6%
2003	7	103	660,730	14.7%