Quebecer Thomas Mulcair supported CWB monopoly | Leader willing to develop regional policies rather than national plan
TORONTO — Montreal MP Thomas Mulcair was elected national New Democratic Party leader March 24, and even before his fourth-ballot victory, the question was being asked on the convention floor.
Is Western Canada, the region where the party is weakest and needs to grow if it is to become government, ready to embrace another national leader from Quebec?
During the past four decades, with just a few exceptions, they have not done well.
When rural northern Ontario MP and former agriculture critic Charlie Angus switched his support to Mulcair mid-convention March 24, he was asked the question directly by reporters.
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With his opposition to Alberta oilsands development and little apparent interest in agricultural issues, can Mulcair be sold to voters west of Ontario?
“Like other Canadians, the people of Western Canada are looking for someone who can become prime minister,” Angus said. “That has always been my ballot question.”
Former Saskatchewan MP Lorne Nystrom, Mulcair’s co-campaign chair, insisted that prairie delegates were a strong part of the candidate’s base.
“I would say in Saskatchewan he is ahead two to one.”
And when former Saskatchewan NDP health minister Louise Simard joined the Mulcair campaign midway through the March 23-24 convention when her preferred candidate, Niki Ashton of Manitoba, was forced off the ballot, she said the Quebec MP knows how to appeal to western voters.
“He is very much on top of the need to look at prairie issues,” she said.
Simard said Mulclair’s approach will be to develop a regional rather than a national approach to policy, much as the NDP did last year when it created a separate Quebec-centred policy that appealed to the province’s voters.
“One of the reasons I think the NDP will connect with the West is that he is interested in looking at policy regionally, to have it developed regionally and not imposed nationally.”
Mulcair, 57, is a lawyer who began his elected political life as a Quebec Liberal.
He was provincial environment minister when the party took power but then resigned in a dispute with premier Jean Charest.
In the aftermath, he talked to federal Conservatives about a job and then the federal Liberals before finally deciding to contest a Montreal riding for the NDP that was considered a safe Liberal seat.
He won it in a 2007 byelection and increased his margin of victory in following two elections.
In 2011, Mulcair was given credit for helping build the NDP Quebec base that led to a breakthrough from one seat to 59 in the province and to the position of official opposition in Parliament for the first time.
Mulcair was a polarizing force from the start of the leadership campaign after the death of Jack Layton, even as he was seen as the instant front-runner.
His reputation for abrasiveness and a short temper led critics to speculate that he would have difficulty keeping the caucus and party united.
As Quebec environment minister, Mulcair angered but also stood up to Quebec’s powerful farm lobby Union des Producteurs Agricoles for enforcing new environmental regulations that imposed rules and costs on farmers.
As an urban Quebec MP for more than four years, he has left almost no record on agricultural issues other than voting with the party to oppose the end of the CWB monopoly.
