OTTAWA—New Democrats are preparing to cast off the shackles of the socialist label by eliminating the word from the federal party constitution at a policy convention this weekend.

“The New Democratic Party is dedicated to the application of social democratic principles to government,” reads part of a proposed new preamble to the party constitution, which will be voted on at the 50th anniversary convention in downtown Vancouver. “These principles include an unwavering commitment to economic and social equality, individual freedom and responsibility, and democratic rights of citizens to shape the future of their communities.”

That language is much different from what exists in the current version of the constitution, where the principles of “democratic socialism” are described as being against making profits and for social ownership.

The change will make it trickier for Conservatives to dismiss the NDP as a bunch of socialists, but a senior party official said rewriting the preamble — which the party executive received the mandate to do through a resolution passed at the 2009 convention in Halifax — was simply about modernizing the language.

“Nobody uses the word ‘democratic socialist’ in contemporary times. It’s very rare,” the official said, noting the word is not found in campaign materials.

It is nonetheless true the NDP has been expanding beyond its core values — and voter base — in exchange for greater electoral success, which came when they vaulted over the Liberals and Bloc Québécois into official Opposition status.

With the arrival of Jack Layton as party leader in 2003 came an overhaul that included not only more robust fundraising tactics but also a policy review committee to weed out outdated resolutions from the policy manual.

The post-Halifax policy book still contains so-called leftist staples such as the decriminalization of marijuana and “an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian land,” but gone are the calls for Canada to leave NATO or nationalize banks.

The New Democrats also campaigned in the recent election on a job creation strategy that included tax cuts for small businesses, a previously unrealized constituency for the party they say dovetails nicely with their traditional championing of the little guy.

James Laxer, a political science professor at York University who once ran for the NDP leadership and was part of the socialism-based “Waffle” faction in the late 1960s and early 1970s, said the shift to the centre has been going on for decades.

“Like other social democratic parties in the West, the NDP has adopted much of the outlook of the neo-liberalism that is the dominant ideological strain in the market-centred era of globalization,” Laxer wrote in an email Tuesday, adding this has its pros and cons.

“The NDP has been able to challenge the Liberals as a less corrupt, more principled and somewhat more progressive party that occupies centre-left ground,” said Laxer, but added that in order for the NDP to become truly progressive, it needs to espouse policies that aim to close the widening gap between the rich and the poor in Canada.

“If it fails, it will be little more than the new Liberals,” said Laxer, although one of the proposed resolutions is for the party to formally reject any proposals to merge with the Liberal party.

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The trend does not sit well with the NDP “socialist caucus,” whose members introduced a long list of left-wing resolutions, including phasing out the “Alberta tar sands,” repealing the Clarity Act and boycotting “apartheid Israel.”

“The right-wing has done a very effective job monopolizing the political discourse through the mass media and other institutions in Canadian society,” said socialist caucus chair Barry Weisleder. “The NDP has adapted rather than challenged that elite consensus.”