What the Parties Want - New Democrats

Jack Layton has a great mustache and a knack for one liners ("Where is your program Harper? Under the sweater?"), but does he have a plan for Canada? Yes he does, especially if you have a table in your kitchen, which is a piece of furniture for which he has an odd obsession. He also deserves credit for being the leader who most consistently raises the issue of First Nations social conditions, which he seeks to address directly. He also has plans for women, for immigrants, for the environment. He claims to be running for Prime Minister, and I believe him. But he doesn't really want to be Prime Minister of Canada - just Prime Minister of Canada minus the bigger corporations (which don't like the NDP anyway), which under his government will be best represented by the ambassador of the United States.

Worker's Paradise

The New Democrats understand the plight of regular Canadians, and they want to ease the economic burden on the working class and the middle class. This will be done with lots and lots of money - money for doctors and nurses, money for education and retraining, money for First Nations communities, money for culture and the arts, money to enforce environmental regulation, money for pharmacare. And where will this money come from? The corporations!
New Democratic Canada would be a country where the gains from economic growth and development fell to those who deserved them - the workers and employees whose effort and energy, tireless labor and selfless dedication, produced the wealth which is now sequestered in the jewelry boxes of second wives in Toronto and fancy motor vehicles (terrestrial and aquatic) throughout Alberta. The only thing standing in the way of a genuinely equitable society where no one need worry about the necessities of life - housing, healthcare and education - or labor under dangerous and demeaning conditions is the reluctance of political leaders to take on moneyed interests. The NDP would shake down the bankers and the executives and, by collecting corporate profits as well as the loose change found in their pockets, provide those necessities and decent working conditions for the great mass of unluxuried Canadians. There is no ill that public spending can't fix! And no amount of money that taxing the rapacious private sector can't provide!
In this Canada, one would select an appropriate course of training for one's chose career, which would be heavily subsidized to ensure freedom from debt for the new graduate, and then find a job either in the state apparatus (which, given the needs of administering all the new spending and programs, would likely have a great demand for labor) or in a unionized job in the private sector (which, despite its sizeable tax liability, would still be willing to hire). Once on the job, Canadians would work hard and contribute to the economy, secure in the knowledge that their income, their pensions and their social services were all secure and guaranteed by the state. The Conservatives see the market as the ultimate venue for the expression of individual freedom, and seek to expand freedom by enlarging the market and shrinking the state (they believe this because they are investors, entrepreneurs and career politicians, and the market is good to them). The NDP have the opposite view - the market is a venue for exploitation and insecurity, and true freedom rests in freedom from the competitive pressures of the market place. Work is part of life, and everyone should work - its part of what makes you decent - but it is a moral wrong to tie quality of life to the outcomes of a fickle marketplace slanted in favor of those who start out with money. Instead, the state should take direct action to provide for everyone means sufficient to live a decent, dignified life. This includes not just typical workers, but other groups that suffer in the marketplace - artists, First Nations living under the legacy of dreadful reservation conditions, recent immigrants. All in Canada deserve a decent life.
The egalitarianism and charity of this vision has a certain appeal. One weakness needs to be pointed out - where will the money come from? Sure, the rich and the corporations can be soaked for a while, but then they become poor and bankrupt, and the money well is dry. Under conditions of globalization, it's hard to suspend the market in a single country - capital and investment can flee elsewhere, just as the American auto industry decamped to Windsor ON when it made sense to abandon Detroit. The NDP has a plan to distribute the wealth created by private companies but few plans to strengthen the ability of those companies to compete internationally. The risk is that excessive demands on the private sector may stifle growth, and leave the country as a whole worse off despite a more equitable sharing of the national product. Then again, some industries can probably be pretty well shaken down without dreadful consequences - the resource extractors, especially the Alberta oil firms, generate sky high profits and could afford a little extortion. The banks, until recently, also fit the bill. Ironically enough, when it comes to the financial crisis, he may be the man for the job - he'll hand out money like it was going out of style, and smack enough regulation on Canadian banks to keep them from being tempted the next time US investment banks are peddling toxic waste.

Jack Layton wants Canada to look like: France in the 60s
Best case scenario: France in the 90s
Worst case scenario: Have you been to Cuba?
Likelihood of success: 0% A minority government may need him, may even include him, but ultimately will not listen to Jack Layton