Jack Layton

[Jack Layton's final letter to Canadians can be found here: http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/jack-laytons-last-letter-to-canadians]


I started writing a long post tonight about how Jack Layton's anti-prorogation legislation was awesome and that the Conservatives brought it on themselves because Stephen Harper did it twice in a year. Personally, I think it's pretty reprehensible because it's the political equivalent of saying, "Screw you guys, I'm going home, and I'm taking my ball with me."

That wasn't good enough though. I got several paragraphs in and realized I was ranting about that actually being allowed rather than what I wanted to do, which was tell a decent story or two about a political leader I actually admired.

Jack Layton wrote anti-prorogation legislation, one year before his party got more seats in Parliament than it ever has before. For a while there, there was a little chance that the NDP would have been the majority government. And because elections are reflections of the past, the odds are that he had at least a minor idea that his party would do well in the next election. But he did it anyway.

There are two ways you can interpret this. #1 is that Jack Layton, as the leader of a major political party in Canada, didn't know that his party was well-positioned for the coming election. #2 is that, regardless of that, he saw an injustice in our political system and addressed it. I tend to believe in the latter, but I'm kind of an optimist. I'm also one of the most politically cynical people I know, which is saying a lot.

This issue resonated with Canadian voters. It may have been a deciding factor in the NDP winning many seats from the Conservatives in the last election. See people resented the Conservatives for that, but they didn't trust Michael Ignatieff, so rather than voting for the Liberals, the NDP took a commanding lead in several ridings.

As a matter of fact, "fresh public opinion data from EKOS suggests the Prime Minister's dismissal of the democratic inconvenience known as Parliament is no hit with Canadians. Perhaps that will serve as a caution to a leader who routinely justifies his actions on the basis of whether or not swing voters care – as opposed to that lonely old standard known as right and wrong."

Jack Layton cared about right and wrong. He fought against animal cruelty by supporting Bill C-229, which would criminalize training animals to fight and stop the previous (and shameful) 99% acquittal rate animal cruelty charges had before. Name another Canadian politician who did the same.

In 2005, the NDP became the only mainstream party to have a formal policy supporting the legalization of marijuana. Regardless of where you come down on that debate, it's hard to argue against the fact that it has become an interesting election debate topic, with opinions ranging from "dude, like, taxing legal pot cultivation will totally, like, do…something" to "potheads will kill your pets and eat your children!" But they addressed it, because it was important to enough Canadians that it mattered.

This was a recurring theme in Layton's leadership—paying attention to what people actually wanted. For a brief time in 2009-2010, I lived in Stephen Harper's riding. No one ever asked anyone's opinion, no one ever showed an interest, and the minister's office was, as far as I could tell, closed nearly all the time. I understand that leading a party obviously takes you out of your riding and away from the people you are supposed to represent. But you'd think that, in his absence, his staffers would at the very least keep the lights on at his "office". Or answer the door. Or the phone.

I remember when I was in Toronto seeing a paper with an article on Layton. It wasn't "NDP Strikes Again!" and it wasn't "Local Losers Still Trying"…it was a simple picture of Jack Layton, with a giant grin on his face, sitting astride a bicycle, talking to people in his riding. Imagine that: the leader of a Federal political party, just…talking to people. Finding out what they think about stuff. Asking them what they wanted out of their government.

That's why Jack Layton was important. It wasn't his politics, entirely—I didn't agree with everything he said. It wasn't his personality, entirely—he was charming, but that's what we should expect from our politicians; they should be the best of us because that's what they are supposed to be. But his enthusiasm for our country and his vision for what it could be was inspiring all the same, and whether you agreed with him or not, you can't deny that he was exactly as he intended to be: a fire in the cold of Canadian politics, an ethical man in a profession of thieves, and an inspiration for idealists everywhere.

So please, regardless of your political affiliations, this weekend I hope you raise one glass of many to Jack Layton, a true Canadian statesman.