Thomas Mulcair: federalist liability

When the NDP picked its leader in 2012, Thomas Mulcair required four ballots to beat out Peggy Nash, Nathan Cullen and Brian Topp. Even on the last vote, he secured only 57% support. The main fear, many NDP members said, was that Mr. Mulcair was too much a creature of Quebec provincial politics to properly represent the NDP on the national stage. His off-putting remarks last week — including serious, unsubstantiated allegations that the Supreme Court of Canada is conspiring to thwart document requests in regard to the repatriation of the Constitution — proves that these fears were entirely justified.

It is not just that Mr. Mulcair’s commitment to federalism is paper thin. It is the larger fact that he seems completely ignorant about the three-quarters of Canadians who don’t happen to live in the province of Quebec.

Mr. Mulcair’s conspiracy theories about the Supreme Court originate with claims contained in a book recently published by a Quebec jour- nalist. The book has become a sensation in Quebec — particularly among separatists. But it has caused barely a ripple in the rest of Canada: Few of us would care much if we learned that (as claimed) a pair of longsince-retired justices supplied legal advice to long-since-retired elected officials at an important and legally sensitive juncture in our history.

Yet Mr. Mulcair has gone all-in on this issue — to the point that he now seems quite ridiculous to everyone west of Ottawa and east of Gaspé. In political terms, he’s now the weird taxi driver who won’t shut up about how the government is suppressing flying-car technology, until you hurriedly pay the bill and slam the door.

It’s his choice, of course. But Mr. Mulcair isn’t just some loopy backbencher. He’s the leader of the Opposition. And it’s alarming that someone in his position would be so tone deaf to the vast majority of the Canadian population. The last time Canada had an Opposition leader this out of touch, his name was Gilles Duceppe and the year was 1997.

Mr. Mulcair’s attitude tells us something about the parochial nature of his political aspirations. Someone in his position should be broadening his party’s base (which the party itself seems to recognize is vital, given its recent steps to tone down the overt references to socialism contained within the party’s charter). But Mr. Mulcair’s Supreme Court gambit is a Bloc Québécois move: To the extent Mr. Mulcair is being strategic — and not just splenetic — he seems to be more interested in protecting his 57 MP Quebec caucus than expanding the 43 MP total he’s got in the rest of the country.

Arithmetically, he’s playing for a stalemate, in other words — campaigning to retain his status as leader of the Opposition with another big showing from Quebec nationalists who share his taste for conspiracism.

Centre-left voters outside Quebec should look at the NDP and ask themselves, “Why bother?” Policy-wise, there likely will be a lot of crossover between the NDP and Liberal platforms in the next election. Except that the Liberals offer a more charismatic leader, who presumably will not add scare quotes, asterisks, typographical daggers and double daggers to every statement made in regard to Canada’s federalist character.

In fact, now is a good time to revisit the f-word. We call the NDP a nominally “federalist” party because its leader has not declared himself for the separatist cause. But should that be enough? What kind of “federalist” wants to gut the Clarity Act — Jean Chrétien’s legislative masterstroke, which ended the threat of separatist blackmail on the strength of a crooked, razor-thin referendum vote? What kind of “federalist” intentionally stokes up obsolete, three-decade old Québécois grievances about an act of repatriation that their provincial government never signed on to anyway?

Canadians have become accustomed to the endless dripdrip of trumped-up grievances and petulant fight-picking rhetoric emanating from Pauline Marois and other Quebec separatists that we now often tune it out. But we should not become so blasé about this stream of agitating nonsense that we tolerate it from a “federalist” leader of the Opposition.

Perhaps a few bold members of the NDP caucus who aspire to something beyond Opposition status might rouse their convictions, and tell Mr. Mulcair that he is becoming a liability to his own party, and an embarrassment to federalism.