The following is an excerpt from The New Left in Canadian Politics: The Waffle Movement and the NDP, 1965–75 by professor David Blocker, released on April 15, 2026 by UBC Press.
By early 1969, James Laxer, a leading New Left activist, graduate student, and former president of the Canadian University Press, had become disillusioned with the student movement in Canada for uncritically replicating its American counterpart. At much the same time the economist Mel Watkins, who in 1968 was writing a prominent report on foreign ownership commissioned by the federal government, concluded that Canadian independence could only be achieved through socialism. Meanwhile, Gerald Caplan, a young professor and NDP activist, added his voice to this growing chorus of lament by expressing frustration with the NDP for its timidity over “the growing dominance of the United States” in Canada.
In April 1969, after Watkins had spent the year as promised promoting his report, he was invited by Caplan to attend a weekend meeting at his home in Toronto. Also on the guest list were, as Caplan explained, other like-minded friends and acquaintances “who feel that we’re significantly left of the NDP but not happy to simply embrace all of the jargon and tactics of the New Left.” Watkins and Caplan were joined by Ed Broadbent, James Laxer, Krista Maeots, Doug and Carol Myers, John and Patricia Smart, and Giles Endicott in what would become the inaugural meeting of the Waffle. Among Caplan’s invitees, only Stephen Lewis, the MPP for Scarborough West, failed to respond to Caplan’s invitation. Caplan and Lewis were close friends, but Lewis’s nonattendance reportedly did not surprise the others.
Over the course of the weekend the group discussed the state of the NDP and the left in Canada, while formulating ideas for inclusion in a draft statement that Laxer would compose. Watkins later recalled that Laxer, “already miles ahead of most of us… showed up at that very first meeting with a draft of a resolution that quickly garnered acclaim.” The group also agreed that new recruits should be members of the NDP. At the second meeting held one month later at John and Patricia Smart’s home in Kingston, they were joined by Lorne and Caroline Brown, who had been active in the Saskatchewan NDP before moving to Kingston where Lorne was a graduate student. Also new were Don Taylor, an assistant research director for the Steelworkers, Hugh Winsor, a reporter for the Globe and Mail, Gordon Flowers, the federal NDP youth secretary, Hans Brown, a staffer in the federal NDP leader’s office, and several others, mainly from Toronto and Kingston. The enlarged group assigned Watkins the task of incorporating ideas from their second meeting into Laxer’s draft. After a third meeting held in Toronto two weeks later, Caplan made the final edits to the document.
Much of the substance of Laxer’s draft would be included in the final Waffle Manifesto, and reflected many of the concerns he had previously expressed in articles appearing in Canadian Dimension. The draft highlighted two key issues: domination of the Canadian economy by a morally bankrupt United States tainted by chronic racial inequality and its war in Vietnam, and the potential for a heightened emphasis on Canadian economic nationalism to attract Québec nationalists into a pan-Canadian socialist coalition. The first draft also argued that capitalism caused regional inequalities within Canada, and included a nod to the importance of “the struggle for worker participation in industrial decision making.” No mention was made of the NDP specifically until the final paragraph. Laxer later recalled that “we had the spirit of the New Left. The Manifesto was an expression of the youthful radicalism of the era, but it was Watkins who made it a brilliant document.”
Watkins’s draft considerably improved Laxer’s. Watkins added stirring introductory and concluding paragraphs, reworked some of Laxer’s awkward phrasing, and included three paragraphs on industrial democracy — a major preoccupation of Broadbent’s — that highlighted the need to redistribute managerial power to workers and concluded that the labour movement was crucial to the struggle for Canadian independence and socialism. The draft acknowledged that “concern is sometimes expressed in Canada about the role of international unions and there are some who call for national unions” before rejecting such an approach for fear of “weakening unionism and the condition of the working man.” As Watkins later explained:
Although we were nationalists, we did not want to take a stand denouncing international unions, despite urgings from some of our friends on the Left. We felt that taking that stand would have been political suicide. For one, it would have made it impossible for us to stay in the NDP. Also it would have put our supporters who are militant members of international unions, in an intolerable position.
The references to international unions were eventually removed, and the final version of the Manifesto remained silent on the issue. According to Endicott, the discussion over international unions inspired the group’s odd name:
We agreed that the case was very different from that of multinational corporations, since the corporations have real power to initiate and control economic development whereas the unions do not. But in the course of this discussion it was argued that if we were going to waffle, it would be better to waffle to the left than waffle to the right.
After the Globe and Mail used the term in a September 1969 editorial “The Waffle Manifesto,” the group quickly adopted the “Waffle” name publicly. Even prior to the editorial, Endicott had signed his letters “the Waffle King,” and declined some requests for copies of the Manifesto with the regretful admission “we are now out of waffles.” Laxer recalled that “we might not have had it without the editorial… We knew it would be a problem to have a left-wing group that was seen as too serious, so to have a name that was humorous was just great. We knew right away that it was a great name.”
The group also waffled on the strength of their statement’s wording on the thorny issue of Québec’s right to self-determination. Explicitly stating support for Québec’s right to determine its own fate, including separating from the rest of Canada, went further than existing NDP constitutional policy that endorsed a “deux nations” approach to federalism including “special status” for Québec. When the executive committee of Endicott, John Smart, Caplan, Laxer, Watkins and Don Taylor met in June to finalize the Manifesto, they did not alter the document significantly aside from striking the sentence “Québec’s right to self-determination is not in question” from a paragraph that began “a united Canada is of critical importance in pursuing a successful socialist strategy.”
Despite the controversy it soon created within the party, the Waffle Manifesto did not represent a complete radical rupture with NDP policies and ideology in the late-1960s. As Ontario NDP Provincial Secretary John Harney explained to Waffler Steven Langdon, “there is almost nothing in there that I have not endorsed already as a member of the NDP… if anything, I think that the ‘manifesto’ is not radical enough, and in several points seems to be taking a step backward from positions which the party has already taken.” Certainly the Manifesto’s proponents had waffled on the contentious issues of international unions and Québec’s right to self-determination. However, the Waffle Manifesto distinguished itself from the mainstream Canadian left, as represented by the leadership of the NDP and the affiliated labour movement, by its aggressive tone and its origins in the New Left, both as articulated by its authors and as evidenced by its approach to the issues of capitalism and Canadian independence.
The Canadian nationalism central to the Manifesto — it pronounced that “the most urgent issue for Canadians is the very survival of Canada” — was a product of the New Left’s avid opposition to American “racism at home and militarism abroad.” The civil rights and anti-war movements in the United States were pivotal for a generation of young people who mobilized to expose the hypocrisy they perceived at the heart of Cold War America. The Canadian New Left in turn demanded Canada chart a course distinct from the racism and militarism plaguing American society. Capitalism, too, was condemned for threatening Canada’s independence. The Manifesto linked the American “empire” and “military-industrial complex” to a dominant corporate capitalism it castigated for producing Canada’s regional economic disparities. Notably, the Manifesto did not attack capitalism for impoverishing Canadians or alienating workers. Moreover, it is vague in its discussion of socialism, indicating only that it will be achieved “by national planning of investment and by the public ownership of the means of production in the interests of the Canadian people as a whole.”
A New Left emphasis on democracy was central to the Waffle Manifesto’s assertion that neither independence nor socialism “are meaningful without true participatory democracy.” A section on industrial democracy argued that “the NDP must provide leadership in the struggle to extend workingmen’s influence into every area of industrial decision-making.” Despite its stance that the NDP must ally with New Left social movements as “the parliamentary wing of a movement dedicated to fundamental social change,” the Manifesto was not an expression of a post-materialist, “new social movement” approach sometimes associated with the transnational New Left.
The Waffle’s executive committee next decided to draw more publicity for the Manifesto in advance of the upcoming 1969 federal NDP convention by seeking endorsements from prominent New Democrats “whose names will be recognizable and attractive.” Copies were sent to potential supporters with a note explaining the desire to “swing the NDP convention a bit to the left.” Among those Endicott contacted were MPs Alf Gleave, Grace MacInnis and Max Saltsman, newly-elected Manitoba MLA and editor of Canadian Dimension Cy Gonick, Nova Scotia NDP leader Jeremy Akerman, former BC NDP leadership candidate and New Left activist John Conway, United Auto Workers-Canada Director Dennis McDermott, left-wing Simon Fraser University political scientist Martin Robin, and two American-born professors in Saskatchewan, Joe Roberts and John Warnock.
Many of the recipients were already aware of the Manifesto. Broadbent had presented it at a meeting of the federal caucus, and he was informed “that such papers should not be circulated without having their source attached.” Both MacInnis and Gleave thought the document “interesting,” but declined to endorse it. The response beyond the federal caucus was considerably more positive. Cy Gonick, Joe Roberts, John Warnock and Jeremy Akerman all indicated their enthusiastic support, but not without suggesting some revisions were in order. Gonick in particular explained that he had spoken at length with Watkins and Laxer about the document and indicated that “the contents are okay but it starts off badly.” Concerned that the Manifesto “casts us as outsiders,” Gonick offered a new preamble he had written that he thought better situated concerns about American economic and cultural domination of Canada within the broader history of the CCF/NDP. Endicott replied positively to Gonick’s preamble, but regretted it was too late to make further changes to the document as it had already been distributed widely among potential supporters. Stephen Lewis recalled that he “came fairly close to signing” the Manifesto because “I felt I had a similar view of the left.” However, he explained “I think I was scared off by David [Lewis]. I think it was a severe parental admonition — he scared me off — and it was ironic that I didn’t rebel by signing.”
The philosopher Charles Taylor, who had signed and subsequently renounced the Waffle Manifesto, collaborated with NDP deputy leader David Lewis in producing a statement “For a United and Independent Canada,” that both acknowledged the Manifesto’s popularity within the party and attempted a repudiation of its more radical elements. Labelled the Marshmallow Manifesto by convention delegates for its moderate tone, the Taylor/Lewis statement criticized anti-Americanism as a “barren and negative” concept and was adopted by the party’s federal council.
The 75-minute televised debate between supporters of the Waffle and Marshmallow Manifestos proved a highlight of the 1969 NDP convention. NDP deputy leader David Lewis started off, urging delegates to reject the Waffle Manifesto’s anti-Americanism. Mel Watkins responded, rejecting accusations of anti-Americanism by explaining how “a growing number of Americans reject American militarism and the exploitation of the third world by its multi-national corporations.” Referring to the rapidly changing politics of the 1960s, Watkins implored the NDP to “relate itself as a Party to these new undercurrents of radicalism… It must become the parliamentary wing of a broad social movement.” Several more speakers, including Dennis McDermott and Ed Broadbent, accused the Waffle Manifesto of anti-Americanism, with McDermott reminding delegates “we belong to a political party not a pseudo-intellectual debating society.” Despite earlier comments he made to Steven Langdon, John Harney criticized the Manifesto for implying that Québec separatism was desirable. Three MLAs spoke in its favour. Cy Gonick suggested the NDP had become “too soft… too timid… more concerned with respectability than with social action,” while Gordon Dowding (Burnaby-Edmonds) and Walter Smishek (Regina North East) beseeched the convention to support the Manifesto as a clear affirmation of their commitment to independence and socialism. Party leaders added to Lewis’s opposition. Allan Blakeney, the federal NDP’s incoming president, and federal leader Tommy Douglas both rejected the Waffle Manifesto for its lack of specificity compared to the Marshmallow Manifesto’s clear policies on introducing a Canadian Development Corporation, corporate financial disclosure rules, and a takeover tax. Douglas indicated “both documents recognize that we can only attain independence through democratic socialism, and that we will never get complete democratic socialism until we have succeeded in winning economic independence,” but questioned the meaning of the Waffle’s commitment to “public ownership of the means of production.” After lengthy and boisterous debate, delegates defeated the Waffle Manifesto by a vote of 499 to 268, and passed the Marshmallow Manifesto by a wide margin in an unrecorded vote. Despite the setback, Wafflers were energized by their success in garnering significant support for several of their policy proposals throughout the convention, as well as over the substantial media attention they had attracted.
The Waffle Manifesto and its supporters shook up the 1969 NDP convention. The image of an incursion by radical young activists into the staid and sober NDP was enhanced by media reports, well-versed in the Sixties tropes of the generation gap, that emphasized the Wafflers’ youth and unusual appearance. One Toronto Star reporter described the “long-haired and bearded” leftists while another columnist explained “many of them have long curly hair, with sideburns and mustaches. They do not favour ties and wear jeans as if they were a uniform for the guerrilla army.” NDP leaders rejected any suggestion that the Waffle represented one-third of party members, despite the results of the Manifesto vote, and argued that “students and other radicals” were overrepresented at the convention. Yet this element of the Canadian New Left was unusual in its embrace of the ‘new nationalism’ that had emerged in English-Canada during the preceding decade as well as anti-imperialist decolonization movements internationally. The authors of the Waffle Manifesto, with backgrounds in both the New Left and the NDP, had become concerned that the party was ignoring the single most pressing issue of the time — American domination of the Canadian economy. Convinced that only extensive public ownership could reverse this trend, they sought to convince the NDP to turn leftward and espouse a similar message. Coming together in the spring of 1969, they had crafted a Manifesto that resonated with a significant minority of New Democrats and attracted excited media attention to the party’s 1969 convention. After the Waffle Manifesto’s defeat Tommy Douglas thanked the young radicals for helping to revitalize the party and suggested he was “delighted” they were part of the NDP. Douglas praised the debate the Manifesto had spurred, commenting “the time to worry is when a convention turns into a mutual admiration society.” The New Left’s arrival in the party via the Waffle ensured that would not be the NDP’s immediate fate.
David Blocker is assistant professor of history at Huron University in Canada and also teaches in the peace and conflict studies department at Conrad Grebel University College in Canada.