Think we never went to Iraq? Think again.

In March 2008, when the invasion of Iraq by George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing” marked its fifth anniversary, Canadian media outlets were in a self-congratulatory mood: “Canada isn’t involved” there, one reporter wrote. “The further we get away from the actual date, the better Canada’s decision to not get involved with the U.S. invasion of Iraq looks,” wrote another. Another referenced the anti-war demonstrations that “stopped the Canadian government’s support for the invasion of Iraq.” It was a fact to be proud of: “We didn’t go to Iraq.”

Didn’t we? In fact, Canada has been involved with the Iraq conflict in many ways—political, economic, military—some subtle, some overt. But the notion that Canada “didn’t go to Iraq” is, at best, wishful thinking. And though the war has slipped off the front page of the newspaper, Canada’s involvement in Iraq hasn’t decreased—in fact, today we’re in it deeper than ever.

Since the beginning of the Iraq invasion, a handful of Canadian military personnel have served with the U.S. and U.K. military as part of ongoing troop exchanges. When it originally emerged in November 2003 that Canadian General Walt Natynczyk was going to be serving in Iraq (along the fast track to becoming Chief of Defence Staff), NDP leader Jack Layton expressed his outrage in the House of Commons.

“When it comes to having someone in charge of thousands and thousands of troops in a war which is illegal and should never have happened … this makes us complicit in the unilateral philosophy of George Bush and his administration,” he told the House.

The denunciations stopped, but the arrangement carried on. This owed as much to the media’s indifference toward the issue as it did to the Liberal government’s playing it down: such troop exchanges were defended in the House of Commons as being “routine.” But it later emerged that keeping Canadian soldiers on exchange in Iraq was actually part of a political commitment that Ottawa made to Washington immediately following the formal announcement that Canada would not join the coalition forces going to Iraq.

Today, Liberal Party foreign affairs critic Bob Rae says that commitment made sense, and still does: “Because of certain agreements between Canada and the U.S., there were some Canadian officers who served in Iraq, in the U.S. Army,” he says. “This is different from Canadian troops serving in the country. To have ended all military co-operation between Canada and the U.S. would have been a mistake. To have sent troops to Iraq would also have been a mistake.” In an emailed statement, the NDP’s foreign affairs critic, Paul Dewar, disagrees: “Since the beginning of the war our party has spoken [out] against the hypocrisy of stating that we’re not in this war on the one hand, and then sending some of our troops and generals to the war on the other.”

Even the Liberal defence minister at the time of the invasion, John McCallum, later admitted to authors Janice Gross-Stein and Eugene Lang, when interviewed for their bestseller, The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar, “It was pretty untenable not to be a part of the Iraq war but to have soldiers in Iraq.”

In a rare but extensive article about the topic in 2006, Maclean’s referred to what was becoming Canada’s “dedicated presence” in Iraq: “From the very first days of the U.S.-led Iraq war, Canadians have been deeply involved: setting up crime-fighting units, working as engineers with coalition forces, serving with the UN, flying planes that help guide missile attacks, even fighting. There are anywhere from 100 to 200 working in the country. Iraq may be an unpopular, troubled conflict, but it is a place everyone, from soldiers to high-ranking officials, acknowledges Canada cannot, and has not, ignored.”

Canada’s military involvement in Iraq, however, is dwarfed by the presence of Canadian private industry. Dozens of Canadian companies have benefited from the war and occupation with at least the tacit support of successive Canadian governments. Many of these companies, especially in the military-industrial sector, do so indirectly, through sales to the U.S. military or other militaries that are occupying Iraq.

Canada’s miniature Iraqi military-industrial complex has two prongs: oil companies and the private security firms that protect them. At least 15 Canadian-based companies have signed some form of exploration, production, or production-sharing contract with Iraqi or Kurdish-Iraqi officials since 2004.

Those companies require logistics, security, transportation, and equipment to operate, and Canadian companies are deeply involved on that side of the business too. In various, significant ways, Canadian companies have been providing private, for-profit “mission critical” support to the U.S.-led occupation since the very beginning of the invasion.

As many commentators have noted, thanks to the Iraq war and the accompanying spike in oil prices, the Canadian tar sands became economically viable. In turn, the U.S. officially recognized the tar sands as oil reserves, culminating in Prime Minister Harper’s proclamation that Canada is now an “energy superpower.” Among other benefits, the political capital that these circumstances have generated for Canada has at least indirectly assisted Canadian oil and gas companies in gaining a foothold in securing access to Iraq’s vast, untapped oil fields, especially in the relatively stable Northern Kurdistan Region, which is governed by the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

There is also reason to believe that, with its own strategic interests in mind, the U.S. has given its northern ally a green light to sign contested oil contracts. Writing in Report on Business, Paul Christopher Webster suggests that for obvious reasons of perception, the U.S. has taken a back seat on commercial development, instead allowing non-U.S. companies to do the work for them. “America needs oil,” Webster writes, “but the optics of American oil companies invading Iraq wholesale are not good. Far better, Iraqi and American officials seem to be signalling, that companies from elsewhere predominate in the first wave.”

Eight Canadian oil companies, either alone or with partners, have signed production-sharing deals with the KRG. One of the first to do so, Heritage Oil, recently discovered upwards of 4 billion barrels of oil ready for pumping and export. Other Canadian companies have made discoveries, have begun active exploration, or, like Addax Petroleum, are ready to begin exporting oil and expanding existing production. (Addax may not be Canadian much longer, however, since a Chinese oil company offered an $8.3 billion takeover of the company in June 2009.)

Greg Muttitt, from the U.K.-based oil industry watchdog Platform, summed up the complex political manoeuvrings that these Canadian firms are caught up in, with the Kurdish authorities fighting to maintain oil contracts that the central Baghdad government wants to scrap: “It’s a very serious concern that there’s absolutely no transparency on these contracts, that there’s not even a bidding process; these are just done through closed negotiations and the KRG consistently refused to … disclose any of the terms. There’s no way of checking out that everything is above board.” (KRG officials did not respond to an interview request to discuss their contracts with Canadian oil companies.)

Official U.S. policy under President George W. Bush favoured the establishment of a mutually acceptable hydrocarbon law, and the White House publicly sided with Baghdad in opposing the KRG’s unilateral signing of production-sharing contracts with foreign oil companies. The Canadian government, and Canadian oil executives, remain silent on the details of their operations in such a politically sensitive environment. “Canada maintains full diplomatic relations with Iraq, and respects Iraqi sovereignty. We recognize the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) as a sub-national component of the Iraqi federal system,” a Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade spokesperson told me. “We encourage Canadian firms to participate in the economic development of Iraq, while fully respecting Iraqi sovereignty and the jurdisdiction of central Iraqi authorities.”

And participate they have: the public record, along with private interviews and leaked documents obtained by This, shows a pattern of steadily escalating Canadian involvement throughout Iraq since the invasion.

Fewer than six weeks after the invasion commenced in March 2003, DFAIT sent then-Minister of International Trade Pierre Pettigrew a memo (obtained through a Freedom of Information request) saying that when the dust settled in Iraq, DFAIT “anticipate[d] important opportunities for Canadian companies, particularly in the oil and gas sector.” This memo, dated April 28, detailed an internal meeting earlier that week “to plan coordinated actions and ensure synergy between key departments and agencies that can provide assistance” to companies interested in Iraq. Canada’s embassy in Damascus, Syria, was to “be actively supporting Canadian companies interested in doing business in Iraq,” while exhibiting “a firm commitment … to assist businesses in any way possible to penetrate the market.”

Shortly after, on May 5, 2003, Pettigrew himself sent a letter to Canadian CEOs regarding “emerging export opportunities for Canadian companies in Iraq.” The thrust of Pettigrew’s letter was that while the war made the situation in Iraq “complex,” there was, nevertheless, good reason for optimism, to the extent that “the longer-term prospects for Canadian successes in that market are very good.” Canada’s support of the “reconstructing” efforts in Iraq, said Pettigrew, “is recognized with appreciation by the United States administration.” He wrote that “additional opportunities … will emerge for our exporters in Iraq … especially in such sectors as oil and gas.”

That prediction has come true: today there are more than 12 Canadian companies operating in Iraq’s oil and gas fields. Neatly coinciding with President Bush’s infamous “mission accomplished” speech in May 2003, several large Canadian oil and gas companies let it be known that they had “sent scout teams into Iraq to look for potential projects,” including Nexen, Talisman, and Ivanhoe. Nexen (whose board of directors now includes former Deputy Prime Minister Anne McClellan) has patiently waited for the situation to stabilize while maintaining good relations with Baghdad as one of 30 foreign oil companies short-listed to bid on future contracts. Ivanhoe has signed a number of contracts with the Ministry of Oil in Baghdad. Talisman, on the other hand, has taken the riskier route of forsaking Baghdad in lieu of signing a contested contract with the KRG.

It has been difficult to determine the extent of Canadian government support for oil companies that are seeking contracts in Iraq. Most companies whose spokespeople were reached said that they have neither sought nor received support from Canadian officials. Only one company, Calgary-based OGI Group, confirmed any beneficial interaction with Canadian officials. DFAIT’s O’Shaughnessy said, “The Government of Canada does not participate in commercial negotiations between business firms and foreign governments.”

OGI, a private company that does not disclose its board of directors, has won several contracts from Baghdad going back to 2004. A spokesperson with OGI, speaking on condition of anonymity, says they are “doing the full operations … right from exploration, development, right through to construction.” The spokesperson also con-firms “we have pipelines in there that we’ve designed and [are in the] process of building.” Just how the deals get done is not clear, but government help is, apparently, forthcoming: the source inside OGI says the Canadian officials “provide us with an opportunity, if we need to meet with some dignitaries.”

There are no smoking guns here, no conspiracy theories. Oil and politics have always gone hand in hand, and such deals always hinge on tangled networks of privilege and inside knowledge; it’s the nature of the business. As such, it is not unusual to find former political figures working for oil and gas companies as consultants and advisers. Nexen and Talisman, for example, have hired the services of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien whose “international standing opens doors” and who is able “to pick up the phone and speak to a series of ambassadors, presidents, prime ministers, ministers.” While Chrétien’s oil diplomacy has been publicized in the case of conflict-ridden Nigeria and authoritarian Turkmenistan, it is not known if he has “opened any doors” for his clients in Iraq. The same cannot be said for one of his (and Paul Martin’s) former top cabinet ministers, Pierre Pettigrew.

Up to the defeat of Paul Martin’s Liberals in the January 2006 elections, Pettigrew ran the foreign affairs portfolio. As Pettigrew himself boasted to me during an interview, he is the only MP in Canadian history to have had all three foreign affairs portfolios— international cooperation, international trade, and foreign affairs. Few people in Canadian government would be as familiar with Canadian interests in Iraq as Pettigrew.

Upon losing his seat in January 2006, Pettigrew re-entered the private sector. Before the year was out, he joined a little-known merchant bank, Forbes and Manhattan, as an advisor. F&M manages a network of more than 20 junior resource companies that span the globe and employs numerous retired politicians, diplomats, military officers, and intelligence professionals as advisors and board members.

In late 2008, Pettigrew joined the board of directors of Vast Exploration, an F&M-connected firm that has an oil production deal with the Kurdish authority, and he speaks proudly of how his connections, built up during his time as cabinet minister, have now proved useful to Vast. Pettigrew refused to discuss the Iraq-related memos from 2003 or Liberal government policy toward Iraq while he was a Minister. But, he says in an interview, he has “a pretty impressive network around the world. I have a rolodex like few Canadians have.”

“We’re perceived differently because we’re Canadian,” said Stephan Cretier, president of Garda World Security Corporation, in 2007. “It’s a good flag to work under.” Among Garda World’s many clients in Iraq, their 2009 Annual Report notes that the company “provides security services for one of the…Canadian companies exploring for oil in the region.”

As one of the world’s largest private security firms active in Iraq and many other hotspots around the globe, Garda World was, at the time of Cretier’s comments, on a public relations campaign, setting about to distinguish itself from “the stereotypic image … of big black SUVs with guys hanging off them with guns,” an image notoriously exemplified by the U.S. mercenary firm Blackwater. The company’s decision to undertake a public branding campaign—with its Canadianness at the core of the message—“came about because of the controversy that had broken out around Blackwater and the sort of popular notion that they represented the way all of these firms operated—which is not at all true,” company spokesperson Joe Gavaghan says.

Cretier’s comments about Garda World’s Canadian advantage, according to Gavaghan, served two purposes. First, to “distinguish us and the approach that we take from Blackwater—which just happens to be an American firm.” Second, “there was also acknowledgement that Canada did not participate in the Iraq war.” But isn’t Garda World simply profiting from an illegal war and occupation? Gavaghan says his company sees Iraq as being “post-conflict.”

“The Iraqi government and international aid organizations are all trying to rebuild that society, rebuild industries, rebuild infrastructure and, you know, we are assisting companies who are engaged in those activities,” Gavaghan says. “So we don’t regard that as being part of a conflict or a war.”

Of Canadian companies active in Iraq that rationalize themselves as benevolent-but-armed aid workers supporting “reconstruction and democratization,” Garda World is merely one among many.

Armoured cars are one of the key pieces of equipment being employed by the Iraqi counterinsurgency and the private security firms that support it. Armoured car sales thrive not on the shock-and-awe phase of conquering a country, but in the dirty, protracted street-level conflict that follows, and in that sense, Iraq has now furnished the ideal sales climate for half a decade. I contacted four Canadian armoured-car companies, all of whom offered similar takes: their products are defensive-only and save lives.

The Streit Group of Companies, based in Innisfil, Ont., has shipped at least 700 armoured cars to Iraq, and while a company spokesperson, Don MacMillan, refused to name Streit’s customers, he acknowledged that the U.S. military is top of the list. “Troops that are over there and private security firms,” MacMillan says. “We are doing all that’s possible to help protect them.” Toronto-based INKAS Armored Vehicle Manufacturing, Toronto-based International Armored Group, King City, Ont.–based Armet Armored Vehicles— all three gave variations on this response.

“Should our customers not use armoured vehicles and be exposed to high risk or not to provide services in [Iraq]?” asks INKAS spokesman David Khazanski. “Our product is designed strictly to protect passengers and shipments from ballistic and blast threats. No features on our vehicle make it a product for offence.”

Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, dismisses the explanations. “Any company that facilitates the U.S. occupation of Iraq is by default ‘pro-war,’ because they are part of a system that continues to trample on the self-determination of the Iraqi people and support a foreign occupation,” Scahill says. “Companies that provide armed men for hire, or weapons and other equipment to these mercenaries, are the worst of the lot.”

The Canadian company that appears to be most deeply involved in Iraq—although given the nature of the business, such measurements are difficult to make—is Toronto-based SkyLink Aviation, and it is also the most tight-lipped about its operations there. A 2006 newsletter from SkyLink Arabia, the company’s wholly owned and operated Iraq-based subsidiary, describes some of its activities, including transporting armoured vehicles and parts into Iraq, and performing final assembly on armoured cars at its Baghdad warehouse. (Armet Armored Vehicles spokesman Bill Whyte confirmed that his company used to employ SkyLink for these services, but now only uses them to transport vehicles in and out of Iraq.) The newsletter had originally been posted on a SkyLink affiliate’s website, but was taken offline after I called seeking comment.

SkyLink’s Canadian location is no coincidence. The firm’s owners located their headquarters in Toronto because Canada is, according to company co-founder Walter Arbib, “an ideal location” because “it’s a sort of neutral country, like Switzerland, and Canada is known for its peacekeeping.”

The company promotes itself as a “humanitarian aid delivery firm” and “one of the world’s leading providers of aviation and ground logistics in unsecured and hostile environments.” The company’s slogan is “Doing difficult jobs in difficult places.” SkyLink’s co-founders, Walter Arbib and Surjit Babra, were awarded B’nai Brith’s Award of Merit in 2006 for their company’s “strong ethical code” and their “caring, philanthropic efforts.” The keynote speech at the awards ceremony was delivered that evening by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who began by thanking Arbib and Babra “for all you’ve done and all that I know you will do to help our great country in the future.”

With the addition of former Liberal minister of defence turned senator Art Eggleton to their company’s advisory board, SkyLink has not only airplanes, but powerful political allies, in high places. (Both Arbib and Babra were among the guests at Eggleton’s wedding in 2008. A spokesperson for Senator Eggleton says “he has nothing to comment on” regarding the company and that, in his capacity as a member of the SkyLink Group of Companies advisory board, “he’s not involved” with any of their Iraq operations.) Immediately following the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, SkyLink signed a lucrative USAID contract to manage Iraq’s airports. This contract, which would fetch them more than $17 million, would in turn translate to multiple other “mission critical” contracts in the war-torn country over the next six years. All my queries to SkyLink were directed to the company’s public relations firm, which provided a single-paragraph response by email: “For the past five years, Skylink has been operating commercial flights, managing airports and providing ground handling in Iraq. More recently, it opened an office in Erbil, providing airport services to help oil companies expand. ‘Skylink is committed to helping Iraq rebuild,’ said Jan Ottens, CEO of Skylink Aviation Inc. ‘We are familiar with Iraq and can make a real contribution in the reconstruction and rebuilding of its economy.’” (Ottens himself, reached on his mobile phone, refused to be interviewed for this article.)

For several years, SkyLink’s Canadian headquarters tried to distance itself from its affiliate companies’ operations in Iraq. As the Center for Public Integrity reported in 2004, the U.S. subsidiary active in Iraq, SkyLink Air and Logistic Support (USA), “turn[ed] to a public relations firm to help deal with the media and distance itself from the Canadian sister company.” A public relations spokesperson told the center, that “the two companies are financially and operationally independent.”

A recent lawsuit has offered a possible glimpse into the company’s operations. A former consultant to the company and part-owner of the Iraq-based arm, SkyLink Arabia, Richard Galustian, is suing Arbib and Babra in a Toronto court for several million dollars, alleging fraud and other mistreatment. Galustian’s affidavit alleges that Arbib and Babra defrauded him of a promised stake in the company and that they conspired to create a fake Iraqi arrest warrant to force him out of the country.

Galustian’s affidavit goes on to say that SkyLink is under two separate investigations, by USAID and the U.S. Army, related to its activities in Iraq. (Reached for comment, both USAID and the office of the U.S. Army’s Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction could not confirm or deny any such investigations.) The suit is ongoing and none of the parties will comment. But it is clear that Galustian believes SkyLink is finding Iraq a lucrative place to do business: from January 2007 to March 2008, Galustian’s affadavit alleges that SkyLink Arabia’s total revenues were approximately US$100 million.

With little or no scrutiny of their operations either by an indifferent media or a public that believes it won a considerable victory in 2003 by forcing the Liberal government to “stay out” of Iraq, it is unclear what will be the implications, if any, of Canada’s miniature “mercenary-oil-industrial complex” in Iraq. The war itself has cost upwards of one million Iraqi lives, the country is considered among the most corrupt in the world, and the war, and occupation, are far from over.

Clearly, it was not what Martin had hoped for. But for the rest of us, it might not be a bad thing. Although Canada has seen its share of difficulties with minority governments (think of Joe Clark’s short-lived Tory government in 1979), a lot of progressive legislation has come out of a centrist government forced to lean on the left for a little support.

Below, we’ve compared the legacies of Lester B. Pearson’s minority government, which sat for two terms from 1963 to 1968, with Jean Chrétien’s majority reign of power from 1993 to 2003.

Education Pearson created the Canada Student Loans Program in 1964 to make post-secondary education possible for lower-income families, providing eligible students with low-interest loans.

Chrétien cut $4 billion from federal funding for social services, including education. Thanks to Chrétien’s changes, the National Student Loan Service Centre, banks and even the government itself will now report delinquent grads to private debt collectors and take legal action if they default on their loans.

Medicare Pearson introduced universal medicare in 1968, due in no small part to the urging of Tommy Douglas and the New Democratic Party.

Chrétien was soft on two-tier health care, allowing private MRI, CT, orthopedic and ophthalmology clinics to grow across Canada.

Military Pearson resisted US pressure to participate in the Vietnam War and spoke out against the bombing campaign, angering then-president Lyndon Johnson.

Chrétien ordered troops to join the coalition to fight in Afghanistan immediately after September 11. Operation Apollo brought soldiers, patrols, frigates and other military equipment to the war against terrorism in the Middle East.

It’s a week before election day, and the York Event Theatre in Toronto is filled with middle-aged New Democrats waxing nostalgic and rocking out to protest songs from the ’60s. The theatre is a sea of orange and green signs, carried by candidates and campaigners. There’s a contagious air of excitement as the crowd anxiously awaits the arrival of Jack Layton, the man who in a little more than a year has pulled the New Democratic Party from oblivion. A Toronto Star poll released the day before showed NDP public support at 20 percent nationally and 26 percent in Ontario—highs not seen since the party’s glory days in the late ’80s.

In a nod to the past, Ed Broadbent, 68, who led the NDP from 1975 to 1989, takes the stage to introduce Layton: “It is my pleasure to bring you the greatest political leader of our time: Jack Layton!” That’s quite the compliment coming from a man who claimed in an online spoof during the campaign that he was once more popular than Pierre Trudeau. Layton is the first Ontario-based NDP leader since Broadbent, and both share a love of academia: before sliding onto the political scene, Broadbent taught at York University, and Layton taught at three universities, including the University of Toronto. The crowd erupts into thunderous applause as Layton winds his way to the stage surrounded by camera crews and reporters, energized by the upbeat rhythm of the party’s theme song “Bring All the People Together,” a remix of the Parachute Club’s gay rights anthem “Rise Up.” Layton takes the stage with his wife and fellow federal candidate, Olivia Chow, on one side, Broadbent on the other, and dozens of the party’s Toronto-area candidates behind him, and declares: “We’re going to paint the town orange!”

An ambitious goal; some said too ambitious after the votes had been tallied just seven days later—the predicted “orange wave” across Toronto having dwindled to a lone orange island (Layton) in a sea of red. Layton had predicted 43 seats and an influential role in Parliament. In the weeks after the election, NDP officials claimed victory for doubling their popular vote, but to go from forecasting a role as the official opposition to winning just a few more seats than required for official party status has left many asking what happened. Layton’s charisma and mass appeal pulled the NDP out of oblivion, but ultimately Jack Fever, coupled with one of the slickest campaigns the party has ever delivered, just wasn’t enough to lure centrists, and even some scared lefties, away from the scandal-ridden Liberals and edge out the status quo.

Of course, it started out great. The NDP went into election mode soon after Layton, 54, was named leader in January 2003. Though he didn’t have a seat in the house, New Democrats knew they had a jewel in Layton; strategists now had to decide how to market him. “There’s no question that Jack Layton’s leadership was paramount to the momentum of the campaign,” says Brad Lavigne, the party’s director of communications. “We have more money because Jack is an exciting leader who people want to donate to. Everything flows from Jack.”

Thanks largely to donations generated from excitement about Layton, the NDP was able to spend twice as much on advertising in 2004 as it did in the 2000 federal election. The party was determined to increase its popular vote, which had slipped to 8.5 percent, and, more importantly, to increase its seat count, which, at the time, stood at 14. “Sitting in the corner being the conscience of Parliament was no longer an adequate goal,” Lavigne says. “We wanted a larger role and greater influence.”

In August 2003, the NDP hired Vancouver-based ad firm NOW Communications to handle the looming 2004 campaign. NOW is a progressive company that specializes in public-advocacy marketing. Paul Degenstein, the firm’s vice-president, managed the NDP file. Degenstein is no stranger to the party—he was a speechwriter for former NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin. (In 1992, a cartoon in Saturday Night magazine depicted him as the ventriloquist to McLaughlin’s dummy. He responded in the media by calling the cartoon “stupid and unethical.”) The firm has handled several provincial NDP campaigns, including recent runs in Nova Scotia and Manitoba. The Nova Scotia election saw the NDP gain five seats and retain its position as the official opposition. In Manitoba, NOW helped the party increase its majority and carry Premier Gary Doer to an easy re-election. Lavigne says the federal NDP watched the firm closely during the provincial campaigns: “They have a fantastic track record.”

Soon, NDP television spots began popping up where you least expected them: on prime time television. Once relegated to late, late night TV, NDP ads now played during the Academy Awards and Stanley Cup play-offs. The ads also infiltrated various community papers and radio stations, in multiple languages.

Despite the high-profile TV spots, marketing experts say the message was soft. Early ads touched briefly on issues like health care, cities, pensions and the environment, but didn’t focus on one point in particular. “If they’d given [voters] something to latch on to, they may have done better,” says Richard D. Johnson, chair of the department of marketing, business economics and law at the University of Alberta. Marketing specialist Martin Wales agrees. “They didn’t give me enough reason to vote for them—they didn’t present anything unique.”

However, the NDP was getting valuable screen time outside of the ads, as Layton began regularly making the evening news. “Layton has a skill for good soundbites—even without a seat he was in the national media for a year,” Wales observes.

The NDP hired a professional fundraiser and, in January, began mailing promotional packages to gear up for the expected spring election. The party targeted 100,000 NDP members and donors, and 200,000 addresses gleaned from progressive Canadian organizations. “The response was unprecedented for the NDP…. I would say we tripled our predictions,” marvels Diane Alexopoulos, the party’s fundraising coordinator. “We’ve surpassed our goals twice already—we have to keep drafting new plans.” She, too, attributes the sharp rise in support to excitement about Layton.

Coupling the NDP’s grassroots history with the growing power of the internet, the party borrowed a fundraising tactic from the American Democrats. Personal e-campaigns recruited NDP supporters—young, tech-savvy ones in particular—to run their own electronic fundraising campaigns on behalf of the party. Campaigners used their personal address books, and set fundraising goals for themselves. The average goal was $1,000. The initiative attracted 500 personal e-campaigners and raised almost $10,000. “The NDP did a good job of using the internet,” Wales remarks. He credits the party with innovative initiatives to lure people to their sites, pointing to Broadbent’s satirical online video in particular. “I think [the video] did do a number of good things, primarily introducing the internet to the election process,” he says.

In another attempt to attract younger voters, the NDP staged concerts like the Toronto event “Let’s Jack it Up,” hosted by Layton and Barenaked Ladies’ singer Steven Page. The event featured indie rock bands popular with the young folks like The Sadies and the Constantines. Lavigne says the artists themselves approached the NDP with the idea. “The artists come out and say, ‘We play for these people day in and day out and they’re hungry to hear a leader talk about how to make their country great,’” he says. “Let’s Jack it Up” played to a sellout crowd of over 2,000.

Jim Laxer, a York University political science professor and former NDP research director, attributes part of Layton’s youth appeal to his progressive platform. “It’s a very positive agenda that could actually speak to younger voters.” He notes that past NDP platforms have focused more on defending existing social programs, an appeal that targets older voters. “Let’s face it—Jack Layton is the first [NDP] leader to be able to speak at universities to a packed room in a long time,” Laxer says.

Perhaps the strangest example of the party’s cross-generational appeal came from a New Democrat with a cult celebrity status of his own. Ed Broadbent’s decision to join Layton’s team and return to politics after stepping down as leader in 1989 stirred up nostalgia among older NDP supporters. Strategists played up Broadbent’s return through traditional campaign tools like flyers and public appearances. Then, in late spring, the party received a gift of sorts. TV show This Hour Has 22 Minutes produced a mock music video featuring Broadbent rapping: “I’m the one you all should know/ Once more popular than Trudeau … Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee/ It’s time for voting NDP.” The show decided not to run it, and the NDP jumped on the chance to adopt the video as its own. “When we saw it, we realized its great potential to attract young people to the website,” Lavigne explains. “It was very successful—it went viral.” The video never ran as a television ad, but it received plenty of news coverage, drawing people to the NDP website where they could download and play the video. Its self-deprecating humour was a welcome step away from the perception that the party takes itself too seriously. “The NDP has a certain air of puritanism and self-righteousness,” Laxer notes. “Anything self-deprecating sounds good to me.”

It’s less than 60 hours before the polls open, and the waitresses at the Woolwich Arms pub in Guelph, Ontario, are saying it’s the busiest night they’ve witnessed. It’s just after midnight, and the pub is crammed beyond capacity with a crowd of 40- and 50-somethings who staked out a place at the Wooly in the early evening to ensure they’ll get to see Layton. Guelph is the final stop on today’s eight-city campaign trail. Layton’s NDP is near the height of its popularity. Today’s polls—the last before the election—place public support for the party at 17 percent, and even the most conservative pollsters are predicting 25 orange seats.

When the campaign bus arrives, two and a half hours late, more than 100 people are lining the grass outside. Layton exits the bus, again surrounded by camera crews and reporters, smiling and shaking hands. He makes his way through the cheering crowd into the pub’s small darts room. “The man, the legend,” one man remarks. “I shook his hand!” a flustered woman gasps, laughing like she’s just encountered a rock star.

Layton’s uncanny ability to draw people in, paired with tireless touring, helped give the NDP campaign a human face. Everywhere he went he spoke to packed rooms—that’s normal for larger parties, but for the NDP it was a surprising new development. The Toronto-Danforth all-candidates debate in a small community centre in Layton’s riding packed in several hundred residents, leaving at least 150 more outside in the rain, straining to catch the action on loudspeakers outside. (The all-candidates debate in Defence Minister Bill Graham’s neighboring Toronto-Centre riding drew just 40 people.) Layton’s relentless campaign schedule didn’t seem to bring him down—he always looked invigorated. “I’ve known Jack now for over 30 years, and he’s always had this tremendous energy,” says Laxer. “He’s an extra-human phenomenon.”

Even with Layton’s drive and appeal, the NDP just wasn’t equipped to fight in a new and unexpected battlefield. There are a few factors that can help explain—with the benefit of hindsight—the party’s reversal of fortune. The Liberal sponsorship scandal changed the dynamics of the campaign before it even officially started. After Christmas, the Liberals seemed untouchable. The NDP kicked off its TV campaign early in the year by taking aim at the Grits. After Adscam brought the Liberals down, and the united right suddenly became a huge player, the NDP shifted its focus to position itself as an alternative to the Conservatives. NDP TV spots began targeting both parties instead of focusing on just one, using catch phrases like “If you don’t trust the Liberals and you’re worried about the Conservatives’ hidden agenda, there is a positive choice.” Ken Wong, a marketing professor at Queen’s University, says this shift hurt the party. “I think that if they had stuck to their original message, which was anti-Liberal, instead of switching to anti-Conservative, they would have been more successful,” he says.

Laxer cites this “who to target” dilemma as a chronic thorn in the party’s side. “The biggest weakness of the campaign was the inability to figure out what to say to voters about the threat from the right,” Laxer says. He points to the NDP’s attempts to dismiss the Liberals as Conservatives in disguise as a huge mistake. In June, the party launched an Ontario-only TV ad that pegged Stephen Harper, Dalton McGuinty and Mike Harris together. “I would regard myself as someone on the left, but when they try to tell me that the Liberals and the Conservatives are the same, what’s left of my hair stands on end because I just don’t buy it.”

By June, Harper’s Conservatives had made enough public gaffes to effectively scare most moderate Canadians. As gay rights and abortion edged their way into the election spotlight, the Liberals pounced and positioned themselves as the social justice-loving, tree-hugging, progressive choice. On June 22, Paul Martin told British Columbia voters: “There are two parties that could form the next government. If you are thinking of voting NDP, I ask you to think about the implications of your vote. In a race as close as this, you may well help Stephen Harper become prime minister.” The Liberals were hijacking the NDP platform in a last-ditch attempt to save themselves. And it worked. Even when it didn’t make sense—in ridings where the Liberals stood no chance—many previous NDP supporters checked the Liberal box, ironically pushing the Conservatives ahead just enough to win in dozens of NDP/Conservative swing ridings across the country. Henry Jacek, a political science professor at McMaster University, points to Oshawa as a perfect example of counter-intuitive strategic voting. Just a few days before the election, the NDP candidate Sid Ryan was in the lead in this southern Ontario riding, followed by the Conservatives, with the Liberals a distant third. After Martin’s appeal to vote Liberal, voters pushed the Conservatives into the lead, with just enough progressives voting Liberal to put the NDP in second place. Lavigne attacks the logic behind strategic voting, claiming the randomness of the outcome takes all the strategy out of the act. “I call that voting for something bad to avoid something worse,” he says. “I don’t call that str
ategic at all. That’s the opposite of strategic.”

He says the party will keep grappling with how to address the problem of strategic voting, but he offers no insight into what exactly it will do. “Liberal scare tactics elected more Conservatives,” Lavigne contends. “We’ll continue to appeal to voters to not buy into the fear.”

The NDP also may have underestimated the Green Party threat—a party that came from obscurity to qualify for funding from Elections Canada. Jacek recommends that in the leadup to the next election the NDP attack the Greens. “I suspect Green Party voters are far to the left of the people running the Green Party. This is not a European-style Green Party,” he says. “The NDP largely ignored the Greens. In hindsight, perhaps that wasn’t wise. Even if they got half, or even one third of the Green Party votes, they’d have more seats.” Lavigne agrees. “We’d probably have another 10 to 20 seats had the Green Party vote not been at four percent nationally,” he says. “I think in the next election people will understand that the Green Party is not progressive—it’s a right-wing, regressive party…. I think with scrutiny and closer examination people will see the Green Party for what it really is.”

As the NDP prepares for the first sitting of the new government in October—just one seat away from giving the Liberals the balance of power—Layton’s role is still uncertain. But the next election may be sooner than anyone expects. And, for all Layton’s political experience, he’s still a rookie in Ottawa. Laxer notes that run-off elections, the type that occur soon after the election of a minority government, tend to treat third parties badly. But he’s optimistic that Layton will be able to buck this trend. He predicts the Parliament convening in October will be a progressive one, and if the NDP can take credit for its role in implementing popular new policies, the party just might be able to improve its showing next time around. “Jack has got to take credit for things,” Laxer says. “And—I’m saying this in the most complimentary way—Jack is pretty good at taking credit. As a political leader, you have to be.”

Lavigne says the party has no regrets. “I can’t think of any tool that we could have used that we didn’t,” he muses, noting that the NDP is already gearing up for the dropping of the writ. “The next election could be 12 to 24 months away. We’re going to take all the good things from this campaign and use them again. And, our guard is going to be up.”

Wong gives the NDP the nod for running the best marketing campaign, but he’s careful to point out that being a winner among losers is not much of a victory: “That doesn’t mean I think it’s done a good job. I think the other two parties have done a horrific job.” Johnson criticizes the Liberals and Conservatives for relying too heavily on attack ads, and credits the NDP for incorporating a positive message in its television appeal. “You don’t give people a fear message without a positive way to solve it,” Johnson says.

“When everyone looks like a loser, people tend to stick with the status quo, which looks like what happened here.”