2012 NDP leadership convention

[DL]

Of course if Mulcair becomes NDP leader it will be tough for the Tories to both attack him and also spread the word they they thought so highly of him that they tried very hard to get him to join them and run as a Tory and that he rejected them.

[DL]

Turmel: All she had to do was allow her frontbench to keep their Shadow Cabinet positions.

Its pretty standard procedure for all parties in Canada that if you run for leader - you have to resign from cabinet or from any shadow cabinet portfolios. I don't think there was ever much of an option. As it happens, of the eight people running for leader two (Topp and Singh) are not MPs and have no portfolios in the shadow cabinet to begin with. Two more (Ashton and Cullen) are not part of the shadow cabinet and are instead Commons committee chairs.

When all is said and done - in October of 2015 none of this will matter a hoot. It will all depend on the new leader and how he or she does. Did it matter in 1993 that for a year in 1989-1990 the federal Liberals were ineffectual under the interim leadership of Herb Gray? Did it hurt Stephen Harper in 2004 that back in 2001 the Canadian Alliance was in total disarray and split into two parties and for a while was led on an interim basis by John Reynolds?

I think that it made sense to pick Turmel as an interim leader because the interim leader had to meet a couple of criteria: they had to speak French perfectly since 60% of the new caucus was from Quebec and included a lot of unilingual francophones, they had to have no interest at all in becoming permanent leader, and they had to be respected in caucus and have some experience in leadership positions. In retrospect the only other person who might have fit the bill would have been Joe Comartin (who is actually franco-Ontarian) - but it was not 100% clear that he was not going to seek the leadership himself back in the summer.

People criticize Turmel for not doing good clips in English during Question Period - fair enough. But for all we know she may be doing a very good job behind the scenes in terms of managing caucus and internal organization

[DL]

I'm really not clear on why Mulcair thinks its so politically toxic for the NDP to suggest that the one half of one percent of Canadians with incomes of over $250k should pay a little more tax...while south of the border there is a consensus among everyone to the left of Mitt Romney that this has to be done.

The US is wayyy more conservative and anti-tax political culture than Canada is - and yet somehow Democrats are winning elections all over the place pledging to reverse the Bush tax cuts on the top 1%. In fact Obama and co. are drooling at the thought of using this as a wedge issue against Romney this fall. I don't see why Mulcair thinks the NDP needs to be scared of its own shadow and take a position that is to the right of anyone in the Democratic party in the US.

[DL]

I think its absurd to think that if Canada had a slightly higher marginal tax rate on people with incomes over $250k - there would be this sudden mass exodus of to the US. If that were true - the exodus would have already happened long ago.

I'm more concerned that a cap and trade system that was punitive enough to raise BILLIONS of dollars would cause entire industries to move south of the border to places like North Carolina...

Why are there ANY doctors whatsoever in Canada?? According to that argument, since doctors make more in the US 100% of Canadian medical school graduates would pack their bags and move to Miami.

[DL]

Impossible to gauge, but my best guess is that Mulcair would be in trouble if he doesn't win on the first ballot.

Mulcair is in trouble if he doesn't LEAD on the first ballot - but i think there is ZERO chance of him winning outright on the first ballot. Getting over 50% of the vote in a competitive 7 person race is almost impossible. I think he only has to lead and be over 30% on the first count to be unstoppable

[DL]

If Topp becomes leader, he will not "ask" anyone to resign. I strongly suspect that he already knows an MP who wants "out" and has made the offer to him.

[DL]

Yukon numbers make some sense, they just had a territorial election where the NDP did very well. Plus they have been the government of the Yukon a number of times so i think that helps; where as in NB the party seems to be in a funk. Any ideas?

Keep in mind that for the territorial membership numbers not only does the NDP have a membership base in Yukon where they are the official opposition, but the MP for Western Arctic in the NWT is Dennis Bevington of the NDP and I suspect that he has a large riding association.

AS for NB, they are actually doing quite well provincially these days with recent polls putting the NDP in the mid-20s after having had just 11% in the 2010 election. But they don't have any MLAs there so that removes a locus around which to organize and I understand that Yvan Godin has never bothered much with signing up any members in his federal riding.

[DL]

What family lineage? Adam Vaughan's father Colin was a city councillor in the 70s but was a non-partisan progressive and then became a news reporter...I don't think he was ever a Liberal.

[DL]

None of those things you mention will hurt him in a general election. Most likely they won't prevent him from being elected 3 weeks from tomorrow.

I hope they do.  If the NDP still has any commitment to labour rights, they should.  I'm amazed that so many labour figures have endorsed him. 

Mulcair announced more labour support today and also unveiled his labour policies and they strike me as being very progressive and pro-labour and have all sorts of provisions for banning replacement workers and making it easier for peoiple to join unions. What's not to like?

[DL]

The NB NDP is so small, they can't really afford to kick anyone out. They are probably glad that Cardy is willing to lead them despite almost no salary and no seat for the time being. Beggars can't be choosers!

[DL]

Is there any rationale for the Liberal Party to continue to exist in Canada. How many people fall into the category of "too smart to vote Tory and too rich to vote NDP"?

[DL]

The Liberal vote is probably as low as it can go out west and in Quebec, though at some point a few Liberal MPs with strong personal votes like Goodale or Hedy Fry or some Quebec MPs will retire and then their seats will probably go NDP in a Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca type scenario.

I think that the Liberal vote in Ontario could get eaten away some more in a lot of those 905 ridings where the NDP will probably compete much more strongly in 2015 and will be trying to expand on the Bramalea-Gore-Malton beach head.

The Liberals took 19% last year. If Mulcair works out and the next election is seen as a tight CPC-NDP race, i could easily see the Liberal vote drop another notch to say 14-15% nationwide.

[DL]

York West and Etobicoke North are actually the two poorest ridings in Toronto. They will be prime NDP targets in 2015. Last election the NDP more or less ran "paper candidates" in those seats, the Liberal incumbents won't get the same easy ride next time.

[DL]

Why would the 905 be so tricky?  Is it the memories of David Miller? 

The 905 is pure suburbia and exurbia, and as such is generally incompatible with social-democratic politics in Canada. It excludes the city of Toronto (that's area code 416). Oshawa, as mentioned, was historically the exception to this rule, but that's fading. As for Bramalea-Gore-Malton, that was a particularly strong candidate running first federally, then provincially. The region is simply too wealthy overall to be conducive to an NDP surge, barring a targeted and successful appeal by the party to Asian voters (particularly South Asian).

It isn't that the region is incapable of supporting the NDP (unlike some rural areas in Ontario), it's just that the party is starting from a weak position and has economic arguments that don't play so well to the wealthy 905.

If suburbia is so "incompatible with social democratic values" why do you suppose the NDP regularly wins seats in the Vancouver suburbs in places like Surrey and Burnaby and Coquitlam and Maple Ridge. The 905 region is very diverse. Some seats like Thornhill are very rich an unwinnablr for the NDP but there are demographic trends that are turning Brampton and parts of Mississauga into extensions of Scarborough. There are more and more low income, largely south Asian areas in 905 and as the NDP emerges as the Lear alternative to the Tories, I think you will see some big NDP breakthroughs there next time. Already the latest Ontario poll by Forum Rsearch shows NDP support in the 905 'burbs to be at 30%!

[DL]

...then there is suburban Montreal (aka: the "450" belt) which went totally NDP last May with the NDP even winning Pierrefonds-Dollard which is quite upper middle class and includes a lot of Jewish "nouveau riche" areas that are quite similar to Thornhill - so go figure!

[DL]

There are other suburban areas of Canadian cities where the NDP does very well. For example, there are parts of Hamilton East-Stoney Creek (i.e. the Stoney Creek part) and Hamilton Mountain that are very suburban that vote NDP, ditto with Peter Stoffer's riding in Halifax. In Winnipeg the NDP sweeps the suburbs in provincial elections.

One thing to kep in mind is that our definition of what is "suburban" is always changing. Scarborough used to be considered a stereotypical suburb of Toronto full of post war bungalows and cookie cutter houses etc...now it tends to be seen as part of Toronto and now we think of places much further out as being "suburbs"...meanwhile the NDP won two seats in Scarborough last May.

I think that the obvious area for the NDP to target is Brampton - which will have 5 seats by 2015 after redistribution. Apparently the NDP now has over 1,000 members in Bramalea-Gore-Malton and Jagmeet Singh and Co. are aggrressively expanding the beach head into the other Brampton ridings. By 2015 I think that an NDP official opposition with a slate of very strong candidates from the South Asian community running across Brampton would probably suck up the remnants of the Liberal vote and be very competitive. In Vancouver the NDP tends to win ridings with large South Asian populations and this trend is starting to be seen in Toronto as well in places like Scarborough Rouge River and BGM, this trend will only accelerate. Other "suburban" seats like Etobicoke North, York West and Don Valley East also have large Muslim and Afro-Canadian populations - two other communities that tend to hate the Conservatives for obvious reasons. 

[DL]

Of course in the next election if the federal Liberals are led by Bob Rae and the NDp by Thomas Mulcair there will be a weird role reversal where the Liberals will be stigmatized by being led by a man known for being a totally incompetent "tax and spend" premier - who managed to do both very incompetently, while NDP will be led by a man who was widely viewed as having been a competent cabinet minister in a Quebec government led by an ex-Tory leader!!

By 2015, the NDP may start to look like the moderate centre left pragmatic party that any suburbanite can be comfortable with - while the Liberals are stuck with Bob Rae's legacy and prattle on about euthanasia and drugs.

[DL]

Saying the general public in Canada doesn't "remember" Blair or Keating implies that they ever knew who these people were in the first place!! I guarantee you that less than 1% of canadians would ever have been able to name the PM of Australia in the early 90s. As for Blair, all that most Canadians know about him is that he joined Bush's war in Iraq...as long as Mulcair is not pushing for a Canadian invasion of Iraq, there is nothing "Blairite" about him...and given Mulcair long standing outspoken opposition to the war in Afghanistan - its hard to see what he has in common with Blair.