Official opposition leader Jack Layton, who led the New Democratic Party to an historic electoral breakthrough less than four months ago, died today after a battle with cancer.
He was 61.
On May 2, he led the NDP to 103 seats and for the first time in its 50-year history, the position of government-in-waiting. It included a major party breakthrough in Quebec with 59 seats.
With Parliament resuming in a month, the NDP will be faced with a leadership decision.
Rookie Quebec MP and former national union leader Nycole Turmel has been interim leader since Layton announced a month ago that his battle against cancer had taken a bad turn and he was stepping aside temporarily to fight the disease. The party is expected to hold a leadership convention this autumn or winter to elect a new permanent leader.
“Jack was a courageous man,” Turmel said in an Aug. 22 statement. “It was his leadership that inspired me and so many others to run for office. We, Members of Parliament, New Democrats and Canadians, need to pull together now and carry on his fight to make this country a better place.”
She noted that in every email, Layton would include a quote from the first NDP leader and former Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas: “Courage my friends, ’tis never too late to build a better world.”
Statements of sympathy came from all political parties.
“I know one thing,” said prime minister Stephen Harper. “Jack gave his fight against cancer everything he had. Indeed, Jack never backed down from any fight.”
The son of Robert Layton, a Quebec Progressive Conservative cabinet minister in Brian Mulroney’s 1980s government and the grandson of a Quebec cabinet minister, Layton became the sixth leader of the NDP in 2003.
Until then, the Toronto city councilor had been something of a political failure — running unsuccessfully twice for Toronto’s mayoralty office and twice for a seat in the House of Commons.
But his elevation to leader helped him win a Commons seat in 2004 and over the next four elections, he built the party 13 seats to 19, 29, 37 and this year 103.
The Prairies is the only part of the country that never rewarded Layton’s NDP with more seats.
In 2011, the party was reduced to just three seats in the birthplace of the party.
