The accidental takedown of Thomas Mulcair, one year later
As the leadership race begins, NDP members are still trying to make sense of the last vote
OTTAWA— A stunned silence blanketed the room at the Edmonton convention centre. Did they hear that right?
The vote was 52 to 48 per cent for a leadership review. Thomas Mulcair had lost his bid to lead the New Democrats into the 2019 election.
A small group cheered, but mostly people just milled around, exchanging shocked glances, trying to make sense of what just happened. A visibly shaken Mulcair took the stage, flanked by the NDP caucus, and managed a few words.
“The disappointment from the election is obviously something we’re now going to be able to leave behind us with a change at the helm,” Mulcair told the people who just gave him his walking papers. “And that’s fine.” One year after that Sunday morning, New Democrats are still trying to make sense of what happened that weekend at the Edmonton NDP convention. And it’s not just historical curiosity driving the soul searching — understanding the forces that combined to take down Mulcair will be crucial for whoever ends up replacing him.
The Star talked to more than a dozen NDP insiders, activists, MPs and staff from across the country for this article, some insisting on anonymity while others spoke on the record. The consensus is that no one group or issue led to Mulcair’s loss, but a number of factors that came together — in some cases unintentionally or unwittingly — to cut short his tenure as leader.
The 2015 election was crushing for New Democrats, who saw Mulcair and the party in the lead for much of the campaign only to lose to a Liberal party promising progressivism. After the loss, Mulcair embarked on a cross-country tour to listen to the party’s grassroots.
The tour seemed to work. Accord- ing to two sources, Mulcair’s office was tracking support with delegates signing up to attend the Edmonton convention. In February, his office estimated only 40 per cent supported his continued leadership. By April, just days before the vote, that number increased to 57 per cent. They could work with that.
But outside the party, another movement was gaining steam and headlines. The Leap Manifesto, a progressive rallying cry backed by activists, intellectuals and artists, was gaining traction amongst some NDP riding associations.
“There was a need for this expression of this return to traditional leftwing values. And I think that needed to be aired,” said Avi Lewis, a Toronto-based filmmaker who became the lead spokesperson for Leap, in an interview with the Star last week.
The manifesto’s language of transitioning to a “clean energy economy” and a moratorium on new energy infrastructure was (unfairly, according to proponents) given a shorthand in the media: “leaving the oilsands in the ground.”
Two days before the convention, CBC aired an interview Mulcair had done with anchor Peter Mansbridge. He pressed Mulcair repeatedly on Leap, asking if NDP members voted for the manifesto would he commit to leaving Alberta’s oil in the ground.
“If the party decides (Leap is) the way, as leader of the party I’ll do everything I can to make that a reality,” Mulcair said.
Mulcair was heading into an Edmonton convention after expressing an open mind on a manifesto vilified — fairly or unfairly — as anti-oil sands and anti-Alberta. Most insiders who spoke to the Star agreed that was not a great scenario.
Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley gave a televised address the following night, on the eve of the federal convention.
“We can’t continue to support Canada’s economy unless Canada supports us. That means one thing: building a modern and carefully regulated pipeline to tidewater,” Notley told Albertans.
Delegates awoke on the convention’s opening day to copies of the Edmonton Journal with Notley’s words on the front page. Almost all sources were adamant Notley’s party didn’t organize to oust Mulcair — although one Mulcair loyalist bluntly dismissed that as “bull----” — but the tension between Leap and Notley certainly didn’t help Mulcair.
Notley gave a rousing speech on the Saturday of the convention, defending her position and the benefits of responsibly developing Canada’s natural resources. Delegates gave standing ovation after standing ovation. The crowd was no less enthusiastic for Stephen Lewis, the former Ontario NDP leader and father of Avi Lewis, who argued in his lyrical way the opposite position.
Notley and Lewis represented two diametrically opposed sides at the convention and were showered in applause from NDP members in attendance. Matching those performances would be a significant enough task, but Mulcair’s mission was even more difficult — he had to bridge the divide between the two, or at least convince a strong majority of delegates that he could.
Mulcair, his voice breaking slightly, began his speech the next morning by joking “no pressure.” A year later, the consensus was Mulcair’s speech didn’t accomplish what it needed to.
“Though there is a lot of respect for Tom . . . clearly that convention speech was an expression of the desire to turn the page and move forward,” said Rick Smith, a former chief of staff to Jack Layton who now works with the Broadbent Institute.
Later that morning, delegates voted to launch a leadership contest.
“Even though they had very different and opposite political objectives, (the two sides of the convention) ended up voting together to bring down Mr. Mulcair,” said Karl Bélanger, who was national director of the party at the time. “And I’m not sure either side knew this would happen.”
Several people suggested Mulcair promised the party in his leadership bid that he could deliver the 2015 election. When that didn’t happen, some turned on him.
Sally Houser, an NDP activist who helped manage the party’s last leadership convention, suggested Mulcair always had a difficult task in replacing the revered Layton.
But multiple sources said that Mulcair, for whatever reason, didn’t “work the room” at the convention and sway fence-sitting delegates to his cause. One anecdote, related by several sources, is on the Saturday delegates were deciding his fate, Mulcair was dining with his family at the posh Edmonton Fairmont hotel just down the street.
Others point the finger at labour leaders abandoning Mulcair — including leaders at the Canadian Labour Congress, the Public Service Alliance of Canada and the Alberta Federation of Labour.
Although it’s not clear which of these factors sealed the fate of Mulcair’s bid to hang on to the NDP leadership, whoever assumes that mantle this year will have to bridge these divides: between the Leapers and the Alberta NDP, between Toronto environmentalists and blue-collar union organizers, between the so-called “progressive” and “pragmatic” sides of the party.