quo and the downtown Toronto establishment that rules people’s lives. Instead, what they will get is a vicious class-war government that attacks workers and the poor, and that erodes social services that people rely on.

Liberal corruption

The Liberals have been on life support for a number of years. First elected in 2003, they racked up scandal after scandal. They wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in the gas-plant scandal, with Liberal operatives convicted for wiping government computers to destroy evidence. But they managed to survive in the 2014 election by demonizing the Conservative plans to lay off 100,000 workers, while sidelining the NDP with a fake-left face.

In hindsight, it can be said that the final nail in the Liberal coffin was the spike in electricity costs in 2015-16. PricesConservatives. In the 2014 election NDP leader Andrea Horwath had even been proposing $600-million in cuts!

NDP reforms

Finally, after defeat after defeat, the brain trust at the top of the NDP began to catch on. Partially learning from the example of Sanders and Corbyn, the NDP actually developed a platform containing some modest reforms. They proposed a childcare, dental, and pharmacare program, plus the renationalization of Hydro One. None of these programs were universal, and the hydro renationalization was a slow and expensive buy-back plan at market rates. But for the first time since the 1990s the NDP was actually putting forward some reforms that would improve the lives of working class people, if only partially.

The first leadership debate was a watershed moment for the NDP. Ford and Wynne