Ed Broadbent Kept the Flame of Social Democracy Alive in Canada
Ed Broadbent, the leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party for nearly 15 years, died last month at age 87. He was one of North America’s most important champions of social democracy.
Ed Broadbent addressing a crowd gathered to hear US senator Bernie Sanders talk about Canadian health care at the University of Toronto, October 29, 2017. (Steve Russell / Toronto Star via Getty Images)
Ed Broadbent, the longest-serving leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP), passed away on January 11, 2024, at the age of eighty-seven. Widely respected among Canadians, Broadbent led Canada’s social democratic party between 1975 and 1989 and was a recipient of the Order of Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau granted him a state funeral — an honor usually reserved for prime ministers, governors general, and cabinet ministers — which took place on January 28.
A political theorist as well as a practitioner of politics, Broadbent was at the center of debates about social democracy over the past fifty years. Over the course of his life, he stood for a principled, traditional understanding of social democracy, even when most social democratic parties started trying to “modernize” by embracing neoliberalism.
Early Life and Education
Broadbent was born in the automobile manufacturing community of Oshawa, thirty miles east of Toronto. His father Percy was a grocery salesman who later worked at General Motors, and his mother Mary was a homemaker; Broadbent credited his mother — an “intuitive egalitarian” — for his “socialist instincts.”
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