Ed Broadbent was a tireless advocate for a fairer society

In the messy and often emotional business of politics, enemies are made, resentment can build and scars can remain. Unless you were Ed Broadbent. Broadbent’s era tended to be viewed through a gauzy lens in the to the . The 2024 era of politics is certainly more toxic, more personal and even more dangerous due in large part to social media and its endless fire hose of bile and misinformation.

But Broadbent led his party in a time that was every bit as fiercely partisan as the politics of today, particularly during the seminal free trade election of 1988 which simultaneously gave him and his party its greatest success and its most bitter disappointment. But Broadbent never stooped to the personal.

He always respected the dignity of his political opponents and aimed his criticism at the policy, not the person. It is a tribute to the man that 35 years after his political pinnacle and the bitter aftermath of that campaign, Broadbent was still a well known and on human rights, societal equality, climate change and foreign policy.

His counsel was sought by party leaders until the day of his death and he wept with joy when New Democrat Wab Kinew was elected as the country’s first First Nations premier in last October’s Manitoba election. Beyond active politics, Broadbent worked as a human rights leader, a statesman and, in his later years, the of the country’s social democratic movement, moving easily among his flock at the annual gala at the Broadbent Institute which he founded, glad handing with the humility and warmth that marked his political career.

He was an intellect rooted in the union town of Oshawa, where he saw firsthand the benefits of labour unions and the annual United Auto Workers union (later CAW) picnic was the event in his hometown each year. But for all that, Broadbent let history for his party slip from his grasp in 1988. In the lead up to that year's federal election campaign, he was ahead in opinion polls, taking New Democrats to electoral levels never before seen, featured on the cover of Maclean’s magazine as the next prime minister.

And then he got squeezed between and Liberal Leader John Turner’s opposing “fight of his life.” Canadian voters were happy to date Broadbent between elections, but they ran off with Mulroney come voting day. The NDP won a then record 43 seats but could not break through in Quebec despite the tireless efforts of the man with the fractured French that never seemed to improve.

Tellingly, after he left, the NDP lost party status and never regained its bearings until the . It's disheartening that when Broadbent stepped down as leader in 1989, he lamented the same things we lament today the widening gap between rich and poor, underequipped and understaffed hospitals, regional unfairness, homeless living in the shadow of luxury condos, children going to bed hungry.

His final speech in the Commons was his by 2000, endorsed by all parties and studied in political science classes to this day. “For too long we have ignored the appalling poverty in the midst of affluence,” Broadbent said. “This is a national horror. This is a national shame. It is a horror and a shame that we should put an end to.” Sadly, the shame persists to this day.

Political life was all consuming, Broadbent said. “But there are few other things in life that give you as much satisfaction as getting up in the morning and working flat out for what you believe in.” Ed Broadbent was the first New Democrat this newspaper, in this space, endorsed to be Prime Minister of Canada, ahead of the 1979 election.

Today, we endorse him again. We endorse Ed Broadbent for his fierce belief in equality and workers’ rights, his lifelong contribution to an elevated political discourse and the legacy of championing the underdogs and the oppressed, here and internationally, that he leaves behind..