Mulcair to Tories: ‘We won’t back down’
NDP leader embraces conservative themes as he attempts to compete with Harper
OTTAWA — Tom Mulcair boasts that he often sounds more like a conservative than Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
It may seem an odd thing for the leader of a social democratic party to brag about.
But for the NDP leader, it’s part of his mission to prove to Canadians that New Democrats aren’t the wild-eyed, reckless taxers and spenders of lore.
Indeed, he maintains that’s a more apt description of Harper’s Conservatives, whom he accuses of racking up a huge environmental, economic and social debt that future generations will have to pay off.
“What’s a paradox ... is that these are essentially conservative themes that I’m evoking in the sense that it would be very conservative to say, ‘Don’t look for a handout, be self-reliant, pull yourself up by your bootstraps,’ all that sort of stuff,” Mulcair said in a year-end interview with the Canadian Press.
“But what the Conservatives are doing is living off the credit card of our grandchildren ... and I think that’s wrong.”
Mulcair still emphasizes traditional NDP issues: sustainable development and the need to reduce social inequalities. But he’s framing them in conservative language, essentially arguing intergenerational equity requires the current generation to carry its own weight.
“When we use a theme like that, the wording is almost conservative, right?” he said.
“But the Conservatives are the ones who are not following it. We’re the ones who are saying be prudent public admin- istrators and they’re the ones saying, ‘We’re going to sole source a $40-billion (stealth fighter jet) contract, we won’t even go to the lowest bidder.’ ”
Mulcair’s terminology reflects a frank political calculation that New Democrats must overcome lingering doubts about their economic management skills if they hope to realize their dream of forming government after the next election.
“If we want to form a government, we’ve got to, of course, convince our base that we can deliver on what have been long-standing policies and views. But we’ve also got to make Canadians understand that we’re confident about our ability to deliver good, competent public administration.
“We’re asking Canadians in the next election to do something they’ve never done be- fore, which is to give the NDP the keys to the store.”
To that end, Mulcair has focused heavily on economic issues since taking the NDP helm last March. He estimated about 60 per cent of his interventions in question period each day have been devoted to the economy and jobs.
He’s also adopted a more open posture on trade, supporting the only free trade deal — with Jordan — that’s come up for ratification since he succeeded the late Jack Layton and urging expedited negotiations with Japan.
“So those are themes that we maybe didn’t spend as much time on in the past as we do now and that’s probably ... one of the biggest changes” under his leadership, he said.
The Conservatives, no slouches at framing their political rivals, have fought back by doubling down on charges Mulcair is a typical anti-business, anti-trade, taxand-spend socialist.
Tory backbenchers use their daily statements preceding question period to relentlessly hammer away at the NDP’s proposed cap-andtrade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, labelling it a ruinous, $21-billion carbon “tax on everything” that would spoil Canadians’ enjoyment of pretty much everything — including Halloween and Christmas.
Mulcair pointed out Harper himself advocated a cap-andtrade system during the 2008 election, which the NDP leader calculates would have been more than twice as onerous as the one now championed by his party. For the Tories to now demonize the NDP plan as a tax on everything is “so disingenuous, it borders on foolish,” he scoffed.
For the most part Mulcair has not let any of the Tory attacks get under his skin.
“You know, the worst signal that we could have ever sent them would be that threats could intimidate us. And I can guarantee you they’ve never had that signal from us,” he said.
“They know that they’re facing a very tough and structured official opposition ... We won’t back down.”