The Future of the Status Quo: The Left After the Nova Scotia Election

Wilson Common Room, New Academic Building, University of Kings College

Panelists:
Howard Epstein
// outgoing MLA for Halifax Chebucto
Judy Haiven
// Solidarity Halifax
// Saint Mary’s University
Alex Khasnabish
// Halifax Radical Imagination Project
// Mount Saint Vincent University

Description:
This Nova Scotia election season saw an array of positions on the Left concerning the outcome that might follow from the victory of the NDP. Among them, there were some who openly supported the incumbent Darrell Dexter as the lesser of evils, others who opposed him by casting a vote for another candidate, and still others who followed the abstentionist line by not voting at all. Many of those who voted for the NDP did so under the assumption that the they were a broadly center-left party with vaguely social-democratic tendencies, who might be pushed to reverse neoliberal policies and stave off measures of austerity. Some, while generally less optimistic, endorsed the NDP on the premise that organizing a mass movement against capitalism would be easier with the NDP in power. Others argued that the NDP had done nothing to deserve reelection, offering no hope for either change or progress moving forward. The rest, who took no stance either for or against any party, chose instead to eschew electoral politics altogether.

Now that the election is over we are afforded a brief chance to critically evaluate the prospects for the Nova Scotia Left’s transition into the next term. What is different today from the time of NDP's historic win in 2009, when the election seemed like a departure from the course taken under previous Progressive Conservative and Liberal governments? More recently, how are we to regard the Left's renewed focus on parliamentary politics (not only in Nova Scotia, but also in Quebec) when only a year earlier such politics were often deemed obsolete in light of the extra-parliamentarianism of Idle No More, the Quebec student strike and Occupy? Did the last four years since the election and last two years since the 2011 upsurge that started with the Arab Spring, signal progress or regress for the Left? How would the terrain shift for the Left with another term under the NDP? Will government social programs and infrastructure deteriorate yet further? Or will legislative reforms breathe life back into the moribund welfare state? Should we, in fact, take for granted the idea that keeping the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives out of office promises a better environment in which the Left to organize? What does the future hold for a Left caught in the stale air of the status quo?