Doorstep Postings: Ontario NDP stumbles across a street where Nazi sympathies lived

Toronto Sun front page of Jan. 17, 2022, which set this controversy in motion.

This is the second in a series of opinion columns on the 2022 Ontario provincial election, written by Josh Lieblein for The CJN.

So, how does the Ontario NDP, an alleged government-in-waiting, end up distracted for the better part of a week over a difference of opinion over whether a street in Ajax should be named after a Nazi?  

Look, I could give you the usual song-and-dance about how the NDP has an anti-Israel problem, a Jeremy Corbyn fanboy problem, a problem with assuming antisemitism is solely a right-wing or white supremacist issue.

But the January back and forth over former Ajax mayor turned mercifully turfed NDP candidate Steve Parish’s support for renaming a street after Hans Langsdorff, a Nazi naval commander, can’t just be chalked up to ignorance of how this would go over in the Jewish community.  

Here’s a party whose members bring up Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather’s ties to the Nazis every chance they get. They’ll be the first to tell you about the links between Canadian soldiers and Ukraine’s neo-Nazi-supporting Azov Battalion. 

The NDP not grasping that Parish’s stance in particular made them look like total hypocrites on an issue that they’re supposed to own speaks to the fundamental issue with the party: that it isn’t really a party at all. It’s not a collection of like-minded individuals trying to implement a political program. It’s more like a condominium or synagogue board with reach that’s provincial in scope rather than just one building. Any group of determined and serious activists could take it over if they really wanted to, and twist it to whatever ends they wished. 

Most of the time, however, the care of the party is left in the hands of a group of people who either inherited it or volunteered because no one else was willing or available. As a former mayor, Parish no doubt had his own dedicated group of volunteers, name recognition, and lists of donors and likely voters. The party probably couldn’t have said no to him if they’d tried, and whoever replaces Parish likely won’t have the resources I listed.  

Naturally, this isn’t solely an Ontario NDP problem. The same could be said of many provincial parties, and some federal ones too, across the nation. But the really sad part is that I’ve seen an outside force animate the NDP and turn it into something to fear and respect. 

Back in 2013, Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak had picked a fight with provincial unions, who had bankrolled successful third-party efforts to ensure that parties other than the Conservatives stayed in power. The unions responded by absolutely wrecking Hudak in multiple byelections all over Ontario’s southwest, in ridings the Tories should have been winning.

It wasn’t that the NDP’s message was resonating with voters—the unions were forcibly, and self-interestedly, nominating and electing their own people under the orange banner. And it would have resulted in a NDP government in 2014, too, had Kathleen Wynne not struck a better bargain with the unions after Andrea Horwath decided to move to the centre to attract PC-friendly, anti-Liberal voters.

Having learned their lesson, the PCs are trying to make a political marriage between blue-collar Ontarians who vote orange, and loyal blue voters. The Ontario NDP, on the other hand, never learns their lesson. They sit and wait for orange waves, like the one that swept Bob Rae into power decades ago, rather than trying to make a win happen. 

So, when the party blunders into antisemitism, it’s not the result of some malicious anti-Jew campaign. It’s the result of the party’s left hand not knowing what its… other left hand… is doing. 

And, to my mind, that’s a lot scarier. 

Josh Lieblein can be reached at [email protected] for your response to Doorstep Postings.