CANADA’S NDP: Mulcair’s Victory: What Does It Mean? By Global Research Region: Canada Global Research, April 06, 2012 Theme: History Socialist Project 6 April 2012 On March 24, the membership of the Federal New Democratic Party (NDP) elected Thomas Mulcair to succeed the late Jack Layton as their national leader, who tragically died of cancer in August 2011. With about 65,000 of the party’s 130,000 members participating in the leadership election, Mulcair prevailed over runner-up Brian Topp on thefourth ballot, receiving 57 per cent of votes cast. Mulcair, who was widely expected to prevail, takes over the NDP that had surged to Official Opposition in the Canadian Parliament in the ‘orange wave’ in the May 2011 election under the popular and charismatic Layton. For the first time in the party’s history, the forming of an NDP government is within the realm of possibility. Layton’s Most Important Recruit Layton, a native of Quebec, had made winning seats in Quebec a priority under his leadership. In 2007, Layton recruited Mulcair to run for the NDP and appointed him as the party’s Quebec Lieutenant; Mulcair had given a speech at the party’s convention in Quebec City the previous year. Mulcair was a popular Quebec Cabinet minister in the Liberal government of Jean Charest. In June 2006, Mulcair was removed from his position as Minister of Sustainable Development, Environment and Parks due to his opposition to the selloff of lands to private condominium developers. Mulcair was elected in a by-election in September 2007 in the longtime ‘safe’ Liberal riding of Outremont in Montreal; he was re- elected in the 2008 federal election, the first New Democrat to win a seat in Quebec in a general election. Upon entering Parliament, Layton appointed Mulcair as one of the party’s Deputy Leaders, along with left-wing Vancouver MP Libby Davies. In the 2011 election, the NDP had a historic breakthrough in Quebec, winning 59 of its 75 seats and reducing the Bloc Québécois (BQ), which had held most of the seats in Quebec since 1993, to just four seats; even BQ leader Gilles Duceppe went down to defeat. Layton targeted Bloc supporters by appealing to a common social democratic outlook as well to an ‘asymmetrical federalism’ that would respect Quebec’s place in Canada; by uniting with progressives in English Canada behind the NDP, it was argued, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, extremely unpopular in Quebec, could be defeated. Mulcair campaigned for the NDP throughout Quebec and was widely credited for playing a key role in the ‘orange wave.’ Having won 103 seats (of 308) in Parliament and over 30 per cent of the popular vote, the NDP became the Official Opposition, not only wiping out the Bloc in Quebec, but achieving their longtime goal of leapfrogging over the Liberal Party and replacing them as the main party of the centre-left; the Liberals under the disastrous leadership of Michael Ignatieff | 1 were reduced to just 34 seats. Although the Conservatives only won 5 seats in Quebec, they won overwhelmingly in English Canada and obtained a majority government. It was indeed a bittersweet result for many Canadian progressives. And with the death of Layton, whether the party’s gains in Quebec could be sustained remained very much in question. The Leadership Contest The leadership race officially began on September 15, 2011, with the convention to be held in Toronto on March 23-24, 2012. It was based on a One Member One Vote system of voting; the 25 per cent vote delegated to affiliated trade unions had been removed by the party’s federal executive. About 80 per cent of members who participated cast their votes in advance online or by mail based on a ranked ballot; the rest were cast ‘live’ by convention delegates and voters online. The party executive agreed to have a longer leadership race in order to allow leadership candidates to sign up new members in Quebec, where membership numbers were low and no provincial branch exists. There were seven candidates in the race, including Mulcair, key party strategist Brian Topp, MPs Peggy Nash (Parkdale-High Park, ON), Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley, BC), Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre, ON) and Niki Ashton (Churchill, MB), and Nova Scotia pharmacist and businessman Martin Singh. Two other MPs who were elected in 2011, respected First Nations leader Romeo Saganash (Abiti-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou, QC) and former Nova Scotia NDP leader Robert Chisholm (Dartmouth-Cole Harbour, NS), withdrew from the race. Brian Topp was the first to declare his candidacy. Topp was a key figure under Layton, serving as national campaign director in the 2006 and 2008 elections, senior adviser to Layton in the 2011 election, and among the negotiators of the attempted Liberal-NDP coalition in the fall of 2008; he was elected president of the party in June 2011. He had previously served as deputy chief of staff to the government of Roy Romanow in Saskatchewan in the 1990s. Topp had the support of much of the party establishment, most notably from former leader and elder statesmanEd Broadbent, but also received an endorsement from left-wing icon Libby Davies. In spite of his role in the ‘modernization’ of the federal NDP as well as with the ‘Third Way’ Romanow government, Topp repackaged himself as a defender of traditional social democracy. Most notably, Topp came out in support of raising taxes on wealthy Canadians and corporations, even though under Layton the party had largely embraced anti-tax populism. For many, this ‘left turn’ came across as insincere and opportunistic. Topp also came under heavy criticism for never having been elected to office. Mulcair, in contrast, pursued more centrist themes in his campaign. Mulcair cited the Third Way government of Gary Doer in Manitoba as the model he wished to emulate. He repeatedly criticized the NDP for ‘outdated’ language and told theGlobe and Mail unlike other candidates (particularly Topp), he would not be ‘beholden’ to unions. In aninterview with the Globe and Mail, Mr. Mulcair recounted how he informed the Canadian national director of the Steelworkers, Ken Neumann, that he opposed a reserved voting block for unions at the NDP leadership convention in March: “It was quite clear he wasn’t used to being told ‘no’ by anyone in the NDP. And I said ‘no.’ I said, ‘Why not let the membership decide?’ Mr. Mulcair said of the ‘cordial’ conversation that occurred last month.” And speaking in the language of Third Way ‘modernizers,’ Mulcair stated in aninterview | 2 with the Toronto Star: “We have to renew. We’re one of the only social democratic parties to never have renewed itself. One of the things that we did in Quebec was that we reached out beyond our traditional base. We identified ourselves as progressives but we didn’t stick with some of the 1950s boilerplate.” Mulcair had the backing of 43 MPs, including the vast majority of Quebec MPs, as well as Premier Darrell Dexter of Nova Scotia and former British Columbia premier Mike Harcourt. Both Chisholm and Saganash endorsed Mulcair. With Mulcair’s much higher recognition and polling numbers in Quebec, there was a strong belief among many party members that Mulcair was the only leader who could hold onto their Quebec seats. Another ‘modernizer’ was Nathan Cullen, whose central campaign plank was to pursue tactical cooperation with the Liberals in order to beat Harper. Under this proposal, members of the riding associations of “progressive federalist parties” – NDP, Liberal and Green – could vote to have a joint candidate in that riding, which would be chosen in a “progressive primary.” Although this proposal was opposed by the other leadership candidates, the charismatic Cullen was able to make his proposal a central topic of discussion in all- candidates’ debates. Cullen had a particularly strong following among young voters and was very successful in organizing on the Internet, with the online advocacy groupsAvaaz and Leadnow.ca supporting his campaign. Peggy Nash, a former negotiator with the Canadian Autoworkers (CAW) prior to her entry into politics and who later had a stint as party president, pursued more traditional social democratic themes in her campaign. Nash proudly spoke of her trade union background and the crucial role of the labour movement in terms of creating a more egalitarian society, and stressed the need to engage with social movements and to reach out to the disaffected 40 per cent of the population that no longer votes. Nash made proportional representation a key issue in her campaign. She had also had a strong following among the young, with the majority of her campaign workers being under 30. Nash was supported by former federal party leader Audrey McLaughlin, Left political economists Mel Watkins and Jim Stanford, and many prominent trade union leaders such as Ontario Federation of Labour president Sid Ryan, CAW president Ken Lewenza, and CUPE president Paul Moist. With regard to the other candidates: Paul Dewar, who was backed by respected MP and NDP Ethics Critics Charlie Angus, saw his chances evaporate when his inability to speak French became increasingly well known; Martin Singh ran on an explicitly pro-business platform and served as a stalking horse for Mulcair; and Niki Ashton (at age 29 the youngest candidate), focused on traditional social democratic themes with a particular emphasis on generational inequality. Anybody But Mulcair? In the last few weeks of the campaign, ‘anybody but Mulcair’ sentiment increasingly solidified behind Topp, who repeatedly stated that “we don’t have to become Liberals to win” and warned that Mulcair would remodel the party on ‘New Labour’ lines.