there was a time in the very distant past when the ndp were an example of something called "prairie socialism", based around a fundamentalist christian imagery and ideology. even back then, they were scary in their enforcement of puritanism and evangelicalism. it was bordering on being a cult. it is widely understood that their most important leader in the last century, thomas douglas, was essentially a nazi in his support for eugenics, which was something that was widespread on the "christian left". they supported all of the terrible, oppressive, tyrannical, conservative things that progressives supported in the progressive era.

the ndp's health care plan, as initially enacted in saskatachewan, was not single payer. rather, it was quite similar to obamacare, in that it was a law that mandated the purchase of insurance premiums, and attempted to decrease costs through group coverage. the single payer system in canada was brought in by the federal liberal party in stages from the 40s to the 80s, culminating in the canada health act by the elder trudeau, and modeled not after the system put in place by the ndp but rather after the nhs in britain - which was put in place by the tories. the ndp supported this system, but so did the conservatives, and the idea that the ndp were ever the "party of healthcare" or that douglas was ever the "father of healthcare" is really just party propaganda designed for internal consumption. it's historical accuracy is highly dubious, at best. every piece of legislation in our healthcare system was passed by the liberals.

in the 70s, douglas was pushed out by a clique of jewish socialists and they started to swing away from the "prairie gospel" messaging and towards the kind of universalist socialism that was popular amongst the jewish left at the time. they started to moderate in the 80s under broadbent, before being relegated to fringe status in the 90s under a sequence of unpopular female leaders. it turns out that the canadian left had a big problem with voting for women.

the party was revived by a city councilor from toronto named jack layton in the early 00s, who tried to brand himself as some kind of twee leninist, and was very much in the prototype of lenin in the sense that he was really a conservative in disguise. the ndp don't like to tell you this, but he was in fact an aristocrat, with a long family history in the conservative party. his father and grandfather were both cabinet ministers in right-wing governments; his son is now a city councilor in toronto. while the ndp under layton admittedly offered an attractive alternative to the governing liberals, who were moving quickly to the right, the truth is that they were at most a centrist, if not a centre-right, party by this point. layton's legacy is in continuing on with the moderating of policy that was started in the broadbent years. and, to an extent, they had to do this, because workers in the populated parts of canada had joined the middle class; they weren't interested in radical politics anymore.

layton died of cancer shortly after the 2011 election, and the party was taken over by a self-declared thatcherite from montreal, a former cabinet minister in the right-leaning provincial liberal governments of the 00s, one thomas mulcair. the ndp had managed a large breakthrough in quebec as a result of a backlash against michael ignatieff, a truly awful candidate in every way. mulcair continued the right-ward journey of the ndp, to the place it is now in the spectrum, which is just another neo-liberal party.

and, activists in canada have reacted accordingly by abandoning them; they are on track to losing party status, this election.

in 2019, the ndp is driven not by any variant of utopian socialism but almost entirely by oil politics. the notley government in alberta was an oil dictatorship, just like the previous and current conservative governments, running a scorched earth policy to maximize exports from the tar sands. notley was truly the queen of mordor, lost entirely to reason, and driven by a singular purpose. in southern ontario, it is the party of unifor, a union of automative and pipeline workers that are themselves directly financially tied into the ongoing environmental rape of the planet. it has been wiped out of saskatchewan, and will soon be wiped out from quebec. and, in bc, it is increasingly being squeezed against a rising green movement that no longer trusts it's motives or ambitions.

you will not get anything from the ndp at this stage in history besides a continuation of the petro state. and, thankfully, the canadian left seems to understand that - and is abandoning the party in droves.