A Bit More Detail

The CBC’s reposting of this Canadian Press report on the changing political balance deserves to be reposted. The past decade’s ascent of the NDP from third-place national opposition party (fourth if you include the regionally-concentrated Bloc Québécois) to Official Opposition making inroads in Conservative areas is a fascinating story.

(The NDP’s ascent has strongly negative implications for the Liberal Party, especially if the apparent shift of voters from the Liberal Party to the NDP is sustained.)

The Canadian Press Harris Decima survey indicates that the NDP have 34 per cent of popular support, compared to 30 per cent for the Conservatives.

With a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points, support for the two parties could be equally split.

Still, the poll indicates that the New Democrats have become competitive in traditional Tory areas.

Among rural Canadians, the poll suggests the New Democrats have 31 per cent support, compared to 35 per cent for the Tories.

The NDP appear to have the support of 36 per cent of urban and suburban men, a number that has risen steadily since February.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are seeing their support in that demographic appear to hover around 29 per cent, down from close to 40 per cent four months ago.

As well, the New Democrats appear to have supplanted the Liberals as the natural party among women, said Allan Gregg, chairman of Harris Decima.

“Remember this is a party that a decade ago, half the electorate said they would “never” vote for,” he said.

Facebook’s Ryan shared the news that Québec NDP MP Ruth-Ellen Brosseau, who–as I noted this month–has done quite well in her riding in central Québec despite her status as a political novice, is planning to run in the next election.

The success of Brosseau might be taken as an indicator of the NDP’s strength in Québec, a province that made the party’s fortunes in the last election despite a historically very weak presence. Can the NDP grow roots and take hold? If Brosseau’s any indication, the answer’s yes.

It was a year ago this week that Brosseau was making regular phone calls home from Las Vegas, where she was celebrating her 27th birthday under the bright lights of Sin City.

Those calls brought news that turned her life upside down.

“Of course being a mom, I called home all the time and spoke to my son and my family,” Brosseau told The Canadian Press in an interview.

“They were kind of like: ‘There’s, um, stuff going on here, you’re kind of in the news a bit for going on your trip.’ ”

[. . .]

The Canadian Press followed Brosseau last week in her riding, where she met with constituents and fielded French questions from local journalists at a news conference.

She appears to have grown into her new job and, given the French lessons she’s been taking, original claims about her lack of proficiency in the language now appear exaggerated.

Brosseau, who turns 28 on Thursday, insists she learned French as a child, but it was rusty and she didn’t have the confidence to express herself comfortably last spring.

In a twist, the rumours about her struggles with French are now working in her favour — many locals still believe she was a unilingual anglophone just a year ago.

Several people remarked last week about how impressed they were with her progress, with some crediting her quick mastery of the language for winning them over.

[. . .]

[Brosseau] says she enjoys talking with people and fighting for their interests.

With this increasing taste for politics, she plans to run again in 2015.

“I definitely got bit by the bug,” she said. “It’s been a whirlwind, it’s been a crazy year and it’s flown by. I’ve been lucky, it’s been very positive thus far.”

Torontoist’s Patrick Metzger points out that the Ontario NDP’s brinksmanship over the minority Liberal government’s budget, demanding tax hikes and new spending, could well bring the Conservatives into power provincially. Liberal assent would undermine the whole austerity project; Liberal dissent could bring an early election.

[W]ho would gain most from an election—or more importantly, who thinks they would gain most? The Grits would be hard-pressed to find anything they’ve done that’s going to pick them up seats, having already got farmers, northern residents, public servants, and Ford nation in a state of high dudgeon. Penny-pinching (er, nickel-pinching?) is never popular, and an election based on this budget would be neutral for the Liberals at best.

The NDP don’t want an election either—they are even less financially prepared than the Grits—but feel they could run a strong campaign on their budget ideas. A recent poll by the Broadbent Institute indicated that a majority of Canadians are comfortable with taxing the rich to prevent cuts in social programs, and tax credits for job creation are likely to find favour in a province where employment has barely recovered since the depths of the Great Recession.

The Conservatives have already defaulted to forcing an election if the Liberals and NDP don’t reach an agreement. If they won the contest, Tim Hudak would redeem himself from the defeat he pulled from the jaws of victory last fall, and if they lose, the Tories probably get to look for a leader who has a better shot at running the province. Either way, somebody’s problem gets solved.

I do not want Tim as premier, I do not.

Facebook’s Ryan linked to a worthwhile article from the Toronto Sun, Jessica Murphy’s status update on NDP MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau, elected for the central Québec riding Berthier—Maskinongé as part of the unprecedented NDP sweep of that province. I made a brace of postings at the time reporting on Brosseau’s surprise election–one of six NDP candidates in Québec who got elected without reporting any expenses, Brosseau hadn’t even visited the riding before her election, famously visiting Las Vegas during the campaign, and reportedly spoke poor French. It turns out that Brosseau is doing just fine.

Thousands of Quebec voters rolled the dice when they bet on Ruth Ellen Brosseau in the last federal election.

But mayors in her Berthier-Maskinonge riding say their constituents hit the jackpot when they opted for the 27-year-old bar manager-turned-politician at the ballot box.

The francophone riding — about midway between Montreal and Quebec City — includes nine small towns and part of the bigger city of Trois-Rivieres.

“For a young neophyte, she’s wonderful,” said Lavaltrie Mayor Jean-Claude Gravel, predicting she’ll take the next election in a cake walk. “She has all my confidence.”

[. . .]

Louiseville Mayor Guy Richard said he often bumps into the fresh-faced MP and that she appears to be working hard and enjoying her new role.

“It’s a big role to be tossed into suddenly,” he said. “(But) she’s at ease with the people here.”

Brosseau puts the praise down to elbow grease and weekends on the hot-dog-and-spaghetti-dinner circuit.

“It was really just rolling up your sleeves and meeting people,” she said Tuesday, along with a determination to prove critics wrong — something she said she shares with her constituents.

The mayors say the media firestorm that surrounded the newbie MP in her first weeks on the job is all in the past.

“At first, we heard all kinds of rumours and we hadn’t set eyes on her,” admitted Lanoraie Mayor Jacinthe Brissette.

“So when we met her we were happily surprised. She’s got a lovely personality, speaks French well, and is always available.”

Mayor Claude Caron from Saint-Boniface said she just had the bad luck to get all the media attention.

“That’s politics,” he said, shrugging. “That’s how it works.”

Unsurprisingly, NDP candidate Craig Scott won the by-election in the riding of Toronto—Danforth–the riding held by late NDP leader Jack Layton–by a very comfortable margin. Hopes that a Liberal resurgence might begin in this riding, lost to Layton back in 2004, seem doomed to be unsatisfied.

Jack Layton’s former riding will remain NDP orange after rookie candidate Craig Scott captured the highest number of votes in Monday’s byelection in the federal riding of Toronto-Danforth.

Scott, a law professor, held off a challenge from Liberal Grant Gordon.

Monday’s result ends what was a muted race over which Layton’s name loomed large.

Leading the party in last May’s federal election, Layton hoisted the NDP to Official Opposition status for the first time in its history before falling ill to the cancer that claimed his life in August.

In his victory speech, Scott praised Layton and vowed to continue his push to hold the governing Conservatives to account.

“It looks like the orange crush is here to stay,” said Scott. Echoing words from Layton’s famous final letter, Scott said “we have chosen love, we’ve chosen hope, we’ve chosen optimism.”

The Liberals conceded their loss in Monday’s byelection at about 9:15 p.m., before the NDP win was official.

With some polls still to report, Scott had won about 59 per cent of the vote, while Gordon was running a distant second with about 29 per cent.

At the National Post‘s Full Comment blog, Michael Den Tandt makes the plausible point that the Conservative Party might well want Québec NDP MP Thomas Mulcair, front-runner in the NDP’s leadership race, to win. Why? Mulcair might be a good enough leader to help eviscerate the remains of the Liberal Party, and his leadership would strengthen the NDP position in Québec, but Mulcair might also be unable to pull the NDP close enough to the economic centre to let it challenge the Conservative Party.

(Of course, the mention of Tony Blair and New Labour is something that should make people worry. Right, Britons?)

The Harper Conservatives are already training their cannons on the New Democrat front-runner, some say, because he is the one they most fear. Mulcair’s combativeness, experience and brains make him a formidable foe. Moreover, he’s the New Democrat best placed to pull a “Tony Blair,” and shift the party further to the centre, where conceivably, it might contend for power.

But there’s another line of thinking, which suggests a Mulcair victory would suit Prime Minister Stephen Harper just fine. It gets back to Harper’s lifelong dream of destroying the Liberal party. Mulcair, it is believed by those who’ve seen him work in Quebec, has the capacity to wipe out or to absorb the Liberals. A Liberal-Democratic Party would necessarily position itself left of where the Liberals stood in their small-c-conservative period in the late 1990s. And that would at last leave the economic centre unobstructed, which is precisely what Harper wants.

[. . .]

Mulcair has taken great pains to avoid open comparisons with former British prime minister Tony Blair, who held power in the U.K. from 1997 to 2007, after jettisoning the most impossible of the British Labour Party’s socialist policies. But the parallels are clear. A couple of weeks ago, I asked Mulcair about the NDP’s reputation as a party that doesn’t understand kitchen-table economics. “To concede the point,” he said, “we’ve always been very conscious of the fact that a majority of Canadians share most of our goals and values. It’s been difficult in the past to convince them that we can provide good, competent, confident public administration.”

His solution, he said, would be to demonstrate while in Opposition that “we’re capable of running a G7 country.” Reading between the lines, in my judgment, that means he intends to pull a Blair.

Small wonder then, that there’s more than a whiff of fear, in Liberal ranks, at the prospect of a Mulcair victory. Should he transform the NDP into a mass-market party, as Blair did to New Labour, what remains of Liberal support could easily bleed away, permanently. In that event, a merger — say in 2014, after the smoke of the Liberals’ own leadership race has cleared — would be more akin to a takeover.

How would this benefit the Conservatives? Gerry Nicholls, a conservative consultant who worked alongside Harper at the National Citizens Coalition, holds that this PM would love nothing better than to do politics in a two-party system. That’s because, in a standup fight between a socially moderate party of the centre-right and a party of the centre-left, this PM believes Conservatives will win every time — because most Canadians, while socially moderate, are economic conservatives. The Liberal party, because of its chameleon-like ability to mould its ideology as needed, will always be a threat to the Conservatives. But a Liberal-Democratic Party, with the history of the NDP embedded in its DNA? Perhaps, not so much.

Will the New Democratic Party follow up on its success in the 2011 federal election and manage to position itself as the alternative party of government, replacing the Liberals? Much depends on whether the New Democratic Party can come up with a leader who can live up to the late Jack Layton’s promise; still more depends on whether the party’s membership will grow sufficiently, especially in regions of the country where it has traditionally been sparse. Joan Bryden’s Canadian Press report puts an optimistic spin on trends.

A record number of card-carrying New Democrats are eligible to choose the federal party’s next leader, with British Columbia and Ontario holding the key to victory.

Final membership numbers released Tuesday by the party show membership has swelled to 128,351, an increase of just over 50 per cent since the start of the leadership contest last October.

All members are entitled to cast ballots, starting March 1 and culminating in a Toronto leadership convention on March 24.

British Columbia, with 38,735 members, and Ontario, with 36,760, will have the most influence over which of the seven contenders emerges victorious. The two provinces account for 30 per cent and 28.6 per cent of the membership respectively.

Ontario outstripped all other provinces in terms of membership growth, adding more than 14,000 members since October.

In Quebec, membership numbers have shot up to 12,266 from 1,695 last fall — a 600 per cent increase.

Still, Quebec accounts for only 9.5 per cent of the total membership, leaving the province with limited influence in choosing the party’s next leader even though it delivered more than half the 103 seats won by the NDP in the May 2 election.

[. . .]

Quebec’s clout is virtually identical to Manitoba’s 12,056 members (9.3 per cent), and only slightly better than Saskatchewan’s 11,264 (8.7 per cent), and Alberta’s 10,249 (7.9 per cent).

Nova Scotia is the most influential of the Atlantic provinces, with 3,844 members (2.9 per cent). The other three Atlantic provinces and the northern territories each account for less than 1 per cent of the national total.

By way of comparison, Québec’s population of eight million is ten times the size of Nova Scotia’s, eight times the populations of Saskatchewan’s and Manitoba’s, and a bit more than twice the size of Alberta’s. Québec is also the province that elected 59 NDP Members of Parliament out of a total of 75, providing a majority of the NDP’s caucus in Parliament.

Dan Arnold at the National Post‘s Full Comment blog is more skeptical of what this means.

First off, 45,000 new members isn’t “skyrocketing” when you consider both the Liberals and Conservatives exceeded that level in their most recent leadership contests. Heck, the B.C. Liberals and Alberta PCs posted similar or higher membership totals in their leadership races last year.

As for that “staggering” increase in Quebec – a little perspective people! Yes, that’s a big percentage increase, but it also means Quebec will have just a third the votes of B.C. Adding 12,000 Quebec members is well below Mulcair’s original target of 20,000, and it’s below the 14,000 who voted in the BQ leadership race. Keep in mind, those are actual BQ votes, not memberships, from a party most describe as “dead”. It’s also a total nearly every media outlet in Quebec ridiculed at the time.

In fairness, the NDP seems likely to surpass the 58,000 who voted in their 2003 leadership contest – though even that isn’t assured when you consider many of their current members are only members because of provincial leadership races last year. Still, we probably shouldn’t sneeze at 45,000 new members, especially when that includes the NDP’s first real Quebec membership base ever. There might very well be more votes in the NDP leadership race than the Liberal leadership race – especially if no one runs for Liberal leader.

Much depends on whether the NDP can deepen its base in Québec–increase its membership, especially–in time to keep its newly-acquired base and secure its position as a national party.

My candidate, my vote, a photo by randyfmcdonald on Flickr.

Campaign sign for Jonah Schein, NDP candidate for the Toronto riding of Davenport, photographed just north of Dufferin and Bloor.

The blogTO roundup of the reactions to the surprise death yesterday of Jack Layton, the Toronto politician who in a mere eight years of leadership made the social-democratic New Democratic Party a federal also-ran into the Official Opposition in the Canadian federal parliament this May, pretty much sums it up. Everyone in Canada, I think, was looking forward to Layton’s appearance in parliament when the fall session opened. Even when he made his last public appearance only a month ago, looking terribly wasted and with a horribly aged voice, no one really though that he’d die.

As the New APPS Blog’ Moham Matthen observed, his death weakens the NDP at a terribly vulnerable time: not only has it been left without a leader going into its first parliament as official opposition, but without the fluently bilingual and popular Layton the NDP might have trouble sustaining its new strength in Québec. Any number of failure scenarios are possible, ranging from the quotidan of a permanent collapse in the NDP’s share in Québec seats and a movement to another party–a revived Bloc Québécois?–to fates still more arcane.

Call me an optimist, but I don’t think that concluding the party’s imminent doom is warranted. Layton led the party, yes, but the party included people other than him, with different candidates appealing in different ridings, too. Thomas Mulcair, the bilingual parliamentarian who was the first NDP MP elected in Québec, is a strong contender for the leadership; Libby Davies, is another. The shift in the Québec electorate towards the NDP may well be permanent, inasmuch as the Liberals and the Conservatives are limited to their small strongholds in that province and the Bloc’s revival being very far from a sure thing. There may yet be failures, but the people involved have been trying to address them with a certain amount of success so far.

The NDP may well continue strengthened by the now-iconic image of Layton, with his cheeriness and his introduction of the rhetoric of hope back into the Canadian political sphere. He crafted his last letter to the Canadian public with that aim in mind.

All my life I have worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to change this country and this world. There are great challenges before you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the future.

And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.

Andrew Barton’s commentary–very much recommended, by the way–is accurate in pointing out that this hopefulness is quite unique, that Layton’s positive vision of how Canada could be better played well indeed to an electorate used to rhetorics concerning the dire fates Canada must evade. If the NDP is smart, and capable, it would do very well to continue using the rhetoric of hope. Certainly we saw how well it worked in the United States’ recent presidential election campaign.

And who knows? As terrible as it may sound, having a sainted leader who’s now dead and beyond reproach can be an asset for any community: the trope of the prophet who passes just before reaching the holy land is an ancient one, and in its pregnant pain has the potential to be an inspiring one. Will anyone in the New Democratic Party be willing to give up on the political party that Jack took so far when the goal of becoming a potential governing party is so close? Letting down Jack just isn’t an option, at least not right now.