Mulcair trumpets year of successes
Brushes off troubles on first anniversary
Tom Mulcair says his first year in office was a huge success even if these last few weeks were marred by accusations of treason, ridicule over an alternative budget with no cost figures and a defection to the Bloc Québécois.
In an interview two days before the anniversary of becoming leader of the NDP, Mulcair stood by comments he made in Washington last week about the dangers of the Keystone XL pipeline and dismissed the notion that support in Quebec might be slipping in the wake of Claude Patry’s flip-flop over the NDP’s position on the Clarity Act and sliding support in public opinion polls.
He says he’s not losing any sleep over the Senate conundrum — the fact the NDP has no senators since it wants the red chamber abolished but would have a hard time passing a bill to that or any other end should it form government — and trumpets his party’s achievements, including an NDP private member’s bill to protect individuals against discrimination based on gender identity that won all-party support days ago.
He’s also proud of a widely supported NDP private member’s bill that would require all officers of Parliament to be bilingual and takes credit for knocking three Conservative ministers — Bev Oda, John Duncan and Peter Penashue — off the front bench for “ethical reasons.”
“I think it’s been a very successful year, of course. I’m frankly quite proud of it,” he said. “I’m leading a really strong and united official Opposition. We’re holding the Conservatives to account. We’re standing up to them. The previous oppositions were not able to do that.”
During year two, Mulcair says he will be “pivoting away” from official Opposition to government in waiting, which means Canadians will start to hear more about the sort of policies an NDP government would pursue. He says he’s started that already with a proposal to move petroleum products from west to east instead of north to south via the 1,800-kilometre Keystone pipeline to Texas, which he argues will lead to few jobs for Canadians.
First Nation’s issues, universal childcare and infrastructure building are some of the other issues the NDP will focus on going forward, he says. He’ll also continue travelling the country “getting people more comfortable” with him and his party and reaching out to high-calibre potential candidates who can run for the NDP in the next election. A policy convention next month in Montreal is widely expected to set the party’s agenda in advance of the 2015 election.
While western premiers tend to criticize his comments on “Dutch disease” — his contention that the oilsands are artificially inflating the Canadian dollar and killing manufacturing jobs — he says the public has been more receptive.
“We’re talking about the basic rules of sustainable development like polluter pay and we’re talking about the sustainable development of all our resources, which includes getting as many value-added jobs in Canada as opposed to shipping natural resources raw to another jurisdiction,” he said. “I think most Canadians connect with that.”