“. . .[If] this society does not evolve an entirely new set of values, if it does not set itself urgently to producing those services which private enterprise is failing to produce, if it is not determined to plan its development for the good of all rather than for the luxury of the few, and if every citizen fails to consider himself as the co-insurer of his fellow citizen against all socially-engineered economic calamities, it is vain to hope that Canada will ever really reach freedom from fear and freedom from want.”

 — Pierre Trudeau, “Economic Rights,” McGill Law Review, 1962.

Just three years after publishing this democratic socialist call to arms, Pierre Trudeau accepted an invitation to run for the federal Liberals. Aside from ego and ambition, his slide into Canada’s “natural governing party” was greased by the notion that the New Democratic Party (NDP), Canada’s social democratic party, could never take office at the federal level. They were simply too radical.

Nearly sixty years later, the NDP is no closer to leading a government in Ottawa. Consigned to their place as “the conscience of Parliament,” the party currently holds only twenty-four seats in the House of Commons. Even so, the party is able to leverage some influence on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal minority government, which on occasion has required NDP support to remain in power.