Angus returns NDP to its roots
Charlie Angus is a good fit for Toronto’s Pilot Tavern. The bar and the NDP leadership hopeful both have rich musical histories, so before he sits down for a bite, he has to bound over to say hi to the bartender, himself a member of a well-known band. Of course.
Angus, an old rocker, is in the final days of his longest tour of all. It’s the waning days of the party’s leadership race, one that has been fought well below the national radar, but one that has major ramifications for Canadian politics.
For Angus to win, he must motivate the party’s longtime members, many of whom he admits had let their memberships lapse, had drifted and were still bruised by a spirit-breaking 2015 campaign defeat.
He is believed to have most of that support, but they have to be enthusiastic enough to vote when balloting begins Sept. 18.
He must beat back an insurgent campaign from Ontario MPP Jagmeet Singh, the late campaign momentum of Quebec MP Guy Caron, who Tuesday picked up the endorsement of former party president Brian Topp, and the hard-left movement being built by Manitoba MP Niki Ashton.
Angus is working to return the NDP to the days of Jack Layton, when members had a stake in decisions and felt valued, before the days when they were impersonally hit up for cash and told what the party’s message was.
The party under Tom Mulcair had become rigid, hidebound, overly bureaucratic and afraid to take risks or make mistakes. It was the antithesis of bold. The Orange wave became the beige puddle.
It’s been a tough road for Angus. He’s had to campaign with the weight of his sister’s death this summer.
He’s had to endure sniping that he is too old, that politics, particularly leadership politics, are for the younger. Angus is 54, nine years older than Justin Trudeau, 16 years older than Conservative leader Andrew Scheer and Singh.
“Andrew Scheer acts a lot older than me,’’ he laughs.
“I am a generation younger than (Bernie) Sanders or (Jeremy) Corbyn.’’
His ability to bring the party back in Quebec is rightly questioned, although he would likely make Caron a deputy leader and Quebec lieutenant.
Singh says he has signed up 47,000 of the almost 124,000 eligible voters, including 30,000 across Ontario. Angus believes those numbers are bogus, part of a Singh bluff and bluster effort to win on the first ballot. But Singh has not backed down from his tally.
But Angus won’t reveal his own membership numbers.
Many Singh supporters will be seen as instant New Democrats and their commitment to the party beyond their candidate will be questioned.
But this is the bottom line in this leadership race. If Singh gets his people out to vote, Angus’s efforts to build bridges to second or third ballot support may not matter.
As leader he would target the Liberal government for walking away from promises.
He lists a “cynical” walk away from electoral reform. Not so much the policy, but more a prime minister blatantly breaking his word.
On Indigenous reconciliation, he says Trudeau has been all talk and symbols. Angus is rightly appalled at the sight of Liberal ministers going to court to fight a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision aimed at helping Indigenous children.
He sees an Indigenous justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, fighting residential school survivors in court. He sees a brutally inefficient Indigenous Affairs bureaucracy that can’t deliver services while children die and continues to try to erase Indigenous identity.
He would create an independent child’s ombudsman who could act so kids aren’t dying because somebody’s request for help is sitting on a desk somewhere.
He believes the Liberal government has also failed on the environment after its grand promises at the Paris environmental summit.
He would legislate the limits on greenhouse gas emissions, but remains somewhat vague on the West Coast Kinder Morgan pipeline which has pitted the Alberta NDP government of Rachel Notley against the British Columbia NDP government of John Horgan.
He says he is concerned about the safety of the pipeline expansion and he does not believe it has garnered the “social license” needed for the project but he wants to move beyond pipeline debates and talk about a new energy industry in this country.
Angus has the chops for the job and could reinvigorate the party from the bottom up. But only if the party looks away from the flash of the Singh insurgency.