NDP's Crushing Rejection Of Mulcair Stunned Supporters, Detractors

EDMONTON — Thomas Mulcair was resoundingly rejected as the future of the NDP at a party convention Sunday.

Fifty-two per cent of the approximately 1,800 delegates in Edmonton voted in favour of having a leadership contest. It was a crushing defeat that surprised Mulcair's advisers, supporters and detractors alike.

The result was likely influenced by the NDP's disastrous election campaign, one that saw it blow a first-place lead in national public opinion polls to land with a third-place finish, by running on a platform that many New Democrats found too centrist.

Lukewarm support for NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, Forum poll shows

OTTAWA—Support for Thomas Mulcair appears tepid as the NDP leader heads toward a difficult vote on his leadership next month, according to a new Forum Research poll.

The March 15 poll found that 35 per cent of those surveyed approve of Mulcair’s job as NDP leader, essentially unchanged from a month before. But his support among the small group of NDP partisans interviewed by Forum fell to 67 per cent, down from 74 per cent in February.

Dear Mulcair: Fighting income inequality is not just an email petition away

A few days ago the NDP sent out an email to those who subscribe to their party email list that was ostensibly from its leader Tom Mulcair and that had as its title "Tackling income inequality."

It read, in part:

    "Our NDP team is back in Ottawa this week and ready to get to work for you.
    Front and centre is the issue of income inequality -- one of the most glaring injustices in our society. It's not enough to say that everyone has the same chance in a game that's rigged against the most vulnerable.
    That does nothing to help a child who lives in an overcrowded, unheated apartment and goes to school cold and hungry in the morning. Or the pensioner whose income is slipping away.
    In 2015, Canadian banks earned a record $35 billion in profits and handed out $12.5 billion in bonuses. Meanwhile, those same banks eliminated 4,600 good-paying Canadian jobs last year alone."

Thomas Mulcair Must Step Down As NDP Leader, Says High-Profile Ontario MPP

A high-profile Ontario New Democrat has publicly called for federal NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair to resign.

Cheri DiNovo, a member of provincial Parliament for the riding of Parkdale-High Park, told The Toronto Star's Thomas Walkom that Mulcair is "tainted" from a disastrous federal campaign and "has to go."

DiNovo told The Star that while Mulcair is not entirely to blame for the loss, the party abandoned its principles under his leadership by moving to the centre to try to win power. She pointed to Mulcair's "balanced budget nonsense" as an example.

Mulcair Shrugged: How NDP Strategists Failed the Left

Almost invariably, there is nobody less politically minded than somebody who gushes, "I'm a total political junkie!"

What they usually mean is that they are thrilled by the horse-race aspects of politics, the wheeling and dealing; they can't get enough of the panel shows that parse strategy and tactics without ever really getting into who will be affected by a particular set of policies, or how, or in whose interest they're being advanced. In this West Wing view of the world, triangulation and chess-playing are everything; the possibility of genuine political feeling among people who aren't already players is precluded.

Tom Mulcair: Bad Blood Between Trudeau And I Means Co-operation Will Be Tough

OSHAWA, Ont. — Stark policy differences and personal bad blood with Justin Trudeau makes potential co-operation between either a Liberal — or NDP — minority government difficult, Tom Mulcair said Tuesday.

The NDP leader also dismissed appeals to stop vote-splitting in the run-up to Monday's election, saying only his party has the strength and credibility to defeat the governing Tories.

Mulcair bobbed and weaved around renewed questions over the breadth and depth of possible co-operation between the Liberal and NDP leaders, who've both made it clear in no uncertain terms that they would defeat a Conservative minority at the first opportunity.

How Trudeau and Mulcair may hand victory to Harper

The insults, jabs and zingers were delivered with precision and laced with acid.

“Mr. Mulcair talks about having been Minister of Environment in Quebec,” Liberal leader Justin Trudeau said at one point, “but I was living in Quebec at that time and I remember he was talking about bulk water exports to the United States for Quebec and that’s certainly not something we are interested in.”

@Kady – No, possible future prime minister Tom Mulcair, you can't just pretend the Senate isn't there

“How do you get things through the Senate?”

The question – posed by CBC News chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge to New Democrat Leader Tom Mulcair as part of a series of one-on-one interviews with the four major party leaders –  seemed like a straightforward one, at least on the surface.

Even so, it was clearly unlikely to elicit a similarly simple answer, given the NDP’s decades-long campaign to roll up the red carpet coupled with its current perch at the top of public opinion polls.

CIBC Hints NDP Win Could Hurt Markets

TORONTO — The possibility of neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals winning the Oct. 19 federal election could be a negative for equity markets, although other factors are far more important, according to a commentary issued by CIBC (TSX:CM).

The note, dated Sunday and written by Ian de Verteuil, managing director and head of portfolio strategy and technical research at CIBC World Markets, predicted the recent decline in equity markets would continue until the end of the year.

Trudeau, Mulcair Say Harper Hasn't Been Honest On Wright-Duffy Affair

Both Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair are directly accusing Stephen Harper of deceiving Canadians on the Wright-Duffy affair.

The Liberal leader was first to be asked Wednesday morning to react to new developments at the trial of Sen. Mike Duffy.

A day earlier, Duffy's lawyer revealed that Harper's former legal counsel told police that Ray Novak, the prime minister's current chief of staff, knew Nigel Wright paid Duffy's expenses. Conservatives have maintained Novak was unaware of the scheme and a top spokesperson even said it would be "unfathomable" for Novak to know about the plan and not tell Harper.

Top federal Conservatives back Mulcair's explanation for 2007 headhunting talks

OTTAWA ­— Senior Conservatives and New Democrats are defending Thomas Mulcair’s portrayal of a period in early 2007 when the NDP leader — then poised to leave the provincial Liberals in Quebec — was in private talks with headhunters from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

They challenged the picture painted in a Maclean’s magazine article last week of Mulcair, formerly Quebec’s environment minister, as an unprincipled opportunist who was prepared to join a Conservative government, and even be a candidate despite the much-criticized Tory record on the environment.

Maclean's pushes non-story about Mulcair joining Harper team in 2007. Why now?

In 2012, when Tom Mulcair was a candidate to lead the New Democratic Party, the Toronto Star reported on his negotiations with the Harper government, five years earlier, about a possible job.

That 2012 story mentioned the possibility of Mulcair heading an unnamed "environmental agency" at a salary rumoured to be in the $150,000 range.

Over the years there have been other reports about discussions between Mulcair and the Conservatives -- discussions the current Official Opposition leader has never denied.

Two days before Canada Day 2015, Maclean's magazine decided to resuscitate the story, claiming to have new information.

Mulcair’s secret meetings with the Tories

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair was in discussions in 2007 to join the Conservative party as a senior adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, discussions that several sources, including former senior Harper staffers, say was the first step in securing Mulcair to run as a Conservative candidate in 2008.

The negotiations between the Conservative government and the man who is today leader of the left-leaning official Opposition allegedly broke down over money: Mulcair wanted nearly double what Harper’s office offered, two sources tell Maclean’s.

Thomas Mulcair emerging as the real agent of change

National polls five months from election day are not predictors. They merely provide a view of a thin slice in time.

They do, however, offer one constant that cannot be ignored.

Regardless of your pollster or method of choice, or whether you pay them no heed, they will all tell you that as many as seven in 10 Canadians are — right now — not going to vote for the incumbent Stephen Harper government.

Tom Mulcair's 'Dutch disease' diagnosis was poor politics, but sound economics

The latest national job numbers came as a great surprise.

Great because they were up — a surprise because analysts were predicting the numbers would be down.

The top-line numbers, however, mask the hollowing out of a portion of the Canadian economy.

According to the Labour Force Survey, 1,688,300 Canadians were employed in the manufacturing sector in March, a drop of 1.8 per cent from the previous month.

Mulcair Promises Proportional Representation If NDP Wins Next Election

If the NDP forms Canada's next government, Thomas Mulcair says he'll put an end to majority governments elected by a minority of the population.

In an op-ed published in Common Ground magazine this week, Mulcair promises that if the NDP has its way the next election will be the last in Canada's history conducted with a first-past-the-post system.

Jason Kenney's 'Crystal Ball' Comment About Syria Ridiculed By Thomas Mulcair

An admission from Canada's defence minister that he doesn't know how an expanded ISIL mission into Syria will end is proof that Conservatives lack a clear exit strategy, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair suggested Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters after the NDP caucus meeting, Mulcair zeroed in on comments Jason Kenney made the day prior in an interview with CBC's "Power and Politics" that aired hours after Prime Minister Stephen Harper made his case for extending the mission.

Thomas Mulcair Remains Open To Coalition With Trudeau Liberals

MONTREAL - NDP Leader Tom Mulcair is reiterating his openness to a possible coalition with the Liberals if it is necessary to topple Stephen Harper's Conservatives.

While expressing confidence he will become prime minister with a majority government, Mulcair told reporters Tuesday the scenario of a minority government cannot be excluded and that turfing the Tories is imperative.

The Opposition leader accused his Liberal counterpart, Justin Trudeau, of putting personal interests ahead of those of Canadians.

Michael Laxer is wrong: Mulcair is not soft on C-51

Writing here on rabble.ca Michael Laxer makes an unconvincing case that NDP Leader Tom Mulcair and his party are wobbly on Harper's anti-terrorist legislation, Bill C-51.

Laxer quotes this writer in support of his flawed argument.

He tries to make the argument that because Mulcair says he would amend C-51, were his Party to take power, not scrap it, the NDP leader has backtracked from his principled opposition to the Bill.

Nonsense.

From opposition to retreat: Tom Mulcair and Bill C-51

At the end of last week it looked like Tom Mulcair and the NDP caucus were going to rise to the occasion on one of the great threats to Canadian civil liberties and Canada's activist community in many years, Bill C-51. 

Bill C-51 is sweeping and dangerous. From the Privacy Commissioner, to commentators like Karl Nerenburg, to Green Party leader Elizabeth May, to the Communist Party, a wide-array of people and organizations have denounced and exposed the very disturbing implications of its passage.

Mulcair seemed to say as much and seemed poised to take a strong stance rejecting the bill, which earned him the praise of many -- myself included -- and which reassured many on the left that Canada's historically social democratic party was not going to abandon them or let them down.