‘Let the carnage begin’
Poor Tom Mulcair. He finally achieves frontrunner status, something no federal NDP leader has done before, and promptly learns that once you’re ahead, your adversaries will do everything to bring you down. Release the hounds and let the carnage begin.
This week, Maclean’s magazine ran a story about Mulcair’s “secret meetings with the Tories” before he pursued the NDP leadership. According to sources, in 2007, Mulcair was in discussions to join the Conservative party as a senior adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, “the first step in securing Mulcair to run as a Conservative candidate in 2008.” One of those sources, former PMO communications director Dimitri Soudas, told Maclean’s that Mulcair “told me he wanted $300,000 a year and that was his bottom line and, basically, I got back to him, saying I couldn’t go higher that $180,000, and I never heard back from him ever again. Two or three months later, he made the jump to the NDP.”
Ouch. What could be worse than painting their leader as a money-grubbing opportunist for a left-leaning party like the NDP? In his defence, Mulcair denies that talks broke off over money, but over a different kind of green: the Conservatives’ pos- ition on the environment. “My last exchange was with then chief of staff Ian Brodie, who was also looking at an advisory position,” said Mulcair. “The only subject was Kyoto and climate change. He made it clear that my support for Kyoto would have to change. That, for me, was out of the question. This was our last conversation. Our talks broke off on climate change.”
This story allegedly happened eight years and two elections ago — so why is it making news now? It’s also nothing new in media circles: I first heard it in March, from none other than Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe, who at the time was working as a political commentator. Duceppe and I were invited to speak to a gathering of 6,000 members of the CSN, Quebec’s largest labour union. While lunching with our hosts at the Quebec City Hilton, Mulcair’s name came up in conversation, whereupon a very animated Duceppe launched into the story of Mulcair seeking a meeting with Harper to discuss running for the Conservatives. The implication was that Mulcair was merely shopping around for the most advantageous entry point into federal politics, making him more demagogue than New Democrat.
Thinking of this made me chuckle while reading the Maclean’s piece, published barely a few weeks after Duceppe returned to the helm of the Bloc. It quotes “a source with knowledge of the discussions,” who remains anonymous. Coincidentally — or not — the Bloc has everything to gain from a drop in NDP fortunes; Duceppe needs to poach back the voters they lost in 2011, if they have any hope of surviving and he has any hope of keeping his newly recovered job.
Soudas’s contributions to the piece are also interesting. For nearly a decade, he was one of Harper’s key advisers, particularly on matters involving Quebec. Then last year, Soudas quit his job as executive director of the Conservative party after it emerged that he had involved himself in the nasty nomination battle of his spouse, MP Eve Adams, after promising not to do so.
Adams subsequently crossed the floor to the Liberals with great fanfare and is currently seeking the nomination in the Toronto riding of EglintonLawrence. At the time, Adams’s defection caused much speculation that the real prize in this deal was Soudas, his communications skills and his treasure trove of intelligence on the Tories. The Maclean’s story would seem to bear that theory out: like the Bloc, the Liberals desperately need to bring the NDP down if they are to go up, and attacking their leader is one surefire way to do it.
Which is why we can expect to see more of this kind of mud flying in all directions as voting day approaches. Better get a raincoat, Mr. Mulcair: the storm has only just begun.
With the NDP in the lead, Tom Mulcair better get used to political mudslinging