Ken Hanley, in discussing the introduction of medicare in Saskatchewan in the early 1960s, called it a social democratic move but he did not think that the CCF referred to themselves as social democrats at that time. As it happens, I was leader of the young CCF on the Campus of the University of Saskatchewan in the year leading up to the medicare election. (I was leader of the opposition in the mock legislature, the premier of the government of the mock legislature was Roy Romanow, now premier of Saskatchewan and leader of the NDP. At that time he was leader of NatCreCon, an actual registered party in Saskatchewan but for purposes of the university elections, a kind of Rhinoserous Party.) We did refer to ourselves as social democrats and used it more or less interchangeably with democratic socialist. Those more to the left were democratic socialist, those more to the right, social democrats though, to the best of my memory where one drew the line was self designated. Again, if I remember correctly, the Senior party thought we were too far left and often refused the designation socialist for the softer social democrat. I am what I call a "veteran of the Saskatchewan Civil War", the battle for medicare which was won in the streets and not directly in the legislature. When the doctors went out on strike to oppose single-payer, socialized insurance, we took to the streets handing out flyers, knocking on doors and demonstrating. Despite some consessions to the original proposals (e.g. opting out of the direct payment, restrictions on community clinics, etc.), we won the basic principle and, though not revolutionary, the political agenda in Canada in the area of medical and health services has never been the same since, though a concerted attack is underway led by multinational medical corporations and the neoliberals in Canada (Liberals, Conservtives and Reform), to reverse this substantial reform. Only the NDP (and the seperatist BQ) is mounting any campaign to save health care from a two-tier, semi- privatized system. In that regard, I think it is worth fighting for the NDP during election years, and becoming the left-wing non-parliamentary opposition in intra-election years. This has been the strategy of Cho!ces, the social justice coalition in Manitoba which has pioneered the development of alterntive budgets at the Municipal, Provincial and Federal levels where the broad coalition of social action groups, labour and us socialists/ social democrats/left liberals academics develop through democratic consultation and consensus an alterntive budget which is released a day or two before the official budget. (By the way this was done in Saskatchewan this year, before the NDP budget.) One problem we have is that this year, the Alterntive Federal Budget developed by CHo!ces and the CCPA (Cdn. Centre for Policy Alternatives) with hundreds of social action groups and unions accross the country, has been more or less completely adopted by the national NDP as its election budget. Kind of difficult getting respectable :-) Nasvidinje, Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
