NDProgress

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NDProgress is a pressure group or faction within the Canadian federal New Democratic Party. Founded in 2000, NDProgress pushed for structural reform of the party as a means of increasing its electoral success.

Started by activists principally from Nova Scotia and Ontario, the group called for five reforms in an open letter to the party signed by Nova Scotia NDP MP Peter Stoffer. The five reforms were:

Introducing a one member one vote system to elect the party leader;
Banning union and corporate donations to the party;
Changing the relationship of the party with the Canadian Labour Congress;
Separating the provincial and federal wings of the party;
Changing the party name.

NDProgress emphasized loyalty to the party, avoiding accusations of factionalism that some critics leveled against the New Politics Initiative backed by MP Svend Robinson and social activist Judy Rebick.

In the spring of 2001, NDProgress organized a conference in Ottawa where federal leader Alexa McDonough endorsed the one member one vote plank. An amendment to the party's constitution, to provide a variant of one member one vote wherein affiliated labour groups would continue to have their own blocs of votes, was made at the following party convention after an effective lobbying campaign by NDProgress activists. The measure won support across the party, despite NDProgresses leadership being identified with the Third Way ideology of British Labour Party leader Tony Blair, which was unpopular in NDP activist circles.

At the next convention in 2003, when Jack Layton was elected leader by party members using the new system, NDProgress proposed and won passage of a resolution limiting corporate and union donations, fundamentally changing the financial character of the party.

Since the 2003 convention the group has not pushed for any specific intiatives, although its website and an internet discussion group remain active.

NDProgress has avoided the media attention sought by The Waffle faction of the 1970s and the contemporary NPI, and focused on organization in pursuit of its goals. It credits itself for winning four of its five original objectives.