Canada is at a crossroads. Workers, small business owners, and entire communities are being squeezed by rising costs, stagnant wages, and record debt. Housing and food prices have spiraled out of reach for millions, while public services — from healthcare to transit — are defunded and left to decline while the private sector is waiting to fill the gap at a price. Successive governments, be they Liberal or Conservative, seize sweeping powers to restrict Indigenous and labour rights, and crush democratic protest.
At the same time, the billionaire class has accumulated their wealth from centuries of stealing resources and land from the genocide of Indigenous peoples and maintains power to shape society for their benefit. Corporate boardrooms and foreign investors dictate national priorities, while ordinary Canadians are told to “tighten their belts.” The inequality and injustice is systemic and growing.
As a first step, the ongoing nature of settler-colonialism necessitates a significant return of land to Indigenous and First Nations from coast to coast to coast. Our platform does not shy away from discussions of class, gender, race, and other social inequalities that pervade our society. We are consciously choosing to lead with ethics and trust that Canadians are willing and able to confront the unequal way our society is structured and continues to operate.
Under Yves Engler’s leadership, a reinvigorated New Democratic Party of workers, Indigenous peoples, youth, and all those resisting imperialism will fight to expose the injustices of capitalism. We will champion a bold and unapologetic socialist transformation of Canada — organizing working and oppressed people to dismantle corporate control, give democratic and economic power to the working class, and build a society rooted in justice, equality, and solidarity.
Our platform recognizes that we as humans, regardless of income or identity, all have the same basic needs and that these should be met through universal basic services. We recognize that environmental protection and social justice are inherently linked. We know that more democracy, not less, is key to a prosperous future. And we fully reject the politics of centrism — our mandate is to build socialism.
Only a radical, socialist, and anticolonial transformation will meet the needs of the many, not the few.
Universal Basic Services: Meeting our Shared Needs
We are told time and again that economic growth must come before investment in social services. In truth, the reverse is clear: neglecting people’s basic needs holds the economy back. Homelessness, crime, unemployment, and chronic illness all carry enormous social and financial costs. Sustainable economic growth depends on people being healthy, secure, and educated. By investing in the social and material infrastructure to meet our shared needs, we not only lift working and oppressed people out of poverty and reduce inequality, but also create the foundation for stronger social cohesion and shared prosperity.
We all have the same basic needs: housing, food, healthcare, energy, water, education, transit, communications and information, and leisure. We propose guaranteeing these as rights and delivering on them through universal basic services (UBS), which are sufficient, accessible and affordable services available to everyone who needs them, regardless of income, and guarantee good jobs.
Universal basic services eliminate the stigma of receiving government aid, avoid exclusions by way of means-testing, and strengthen social cohesion because it is in everyone’s best interest that these services succeed. Just as importantly, UBS can drive progress on climate and environmental goals by shifting essential services from the private profit realm into the public, where they can be directed with ecological responsibility in mind.
Red Review is encouraging readers to check out the entire 40 page Policy Platform of the Yves Engler for NDP Leader campaign.