I don't like disagreeing with
pingouin but my memory of the
history of the
NDP compels me.
The Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation, or CCF, was not a labor party in the sense that we think of the NDP as a labor party, or the Labour Party in England.
The founders, among them J.S. Wordsworth, and Tommy Douglas were Presbyterian ministers. More to the point, the preached a social gospel, were called social gospellers.
It is the alliance with the Canadian Labour Congress that turned the CCF into a labor party, the NDP.
The connection at the top of the labor movement in Canada with the top of the NDP is intimate. Although labor is generally unable to bring out workers to vote for the NDP in numbers any greater than the general population. The one exception seems to be women in public sector jobs.
My own experience in the NDP leads me to believe that a party more like the CCF would stand a better chance of connecting with ordinary people than the labor party it became.