Ed Broadbent was a Canadian social democratic politician, political scientist, and chair of the Broadbent Institute, a policy think tank. He was leader of the New Democratic Party from 1975 to 1989.
Canadian socialist Ed Broadbent died earlier this month. On the weekend of his funeral, we republish his impactful first speech in the Canadian House of Commons, in which he argued for the need to deepen democracy and move beyond the welfare state.
Ed Broadbent is one of the most successful democratic socialist politicians in North America in the last 50 years. In a 1969 speech, reprinted here in full, he laid out a bold plan to erode the tyranny of private ownership and expand democracy to the economy.