NDP needs victory on two fronts
MONTREAL— For what it’s worth, Outremont MP Thomas Mulcair heads into the weekend’s first official Quebec leadership debate as the prohibitive favourite among NDP voters.
A Forum Research poll published by the National Post on Friday pegged Mulcair’s support at 35 per cent, with Peggy Nash running a distant second at 17 per cent. If NDP voters were truly representative of the party’s base, the only race to be settled on March 24 would be for the runner-up position.
The bad news for Mulcair’s six opponents is that the campaign to date has done little to raise their public profiles. That is particularly true in Quebec where they — like the campaign itself — are all flying well below the radar.
The good news, if it can be so described, is that the outcome of the leadership vote may not have much to do with what NDP sympathizers — especially in Quebec — feel about who should lead the party.
In the topsy-turvy world of the NDP, it is more important for a leadership aspirant to win over Saskatchewan — a smaller province where the party currently holds no seats — than Quebec, where it has 58.
It is hard to say whether the Liberals or the Bloc Québécois would be happiest to see the New Democrats pass over Mulcair next month.
There is a virtually unanimous consensus among Quebec insiders that none of the other contenders is likely to hold the province for the NDP in the next election — especially if the Liberals run under a Quebec-savvy leader like Bob Rae.
The Conservatives, on the other hand, see the NDP leadership campaign as a win-win regardless of its outcome. Given the option though, Mulcair would be their first choice. Here’s why.
In the next election, Quebec is shaping up to be the ground zero of a no-holdsbarred opposition battle between the NDP, the Bloc and the Liberals.
That suits the Conservatives just fine. They don’t really have a dog in the Quebec fight and a three-way opposition split enhances their chances of achieving a few accidental gains.
Moreover the leader best placed to hold Quebec for the NDP may not be the one best-placed to increase the party’s seats in Western Canada, where the Conservatives have a fortress to protect.
No Conservative strategist would be caught dead saying so in public but in private some candidly admit that a lingering anti-quebec bias could make Mulcair a harder sell for the NDP in Western Canada.
Mind you, it is not as if the NDP line-up featured a candidate that truly stands head and shoulders above the pack for his or her appeal in the Prairies or in British Columbia.
Holding on to as many ridings as possible in Quebec in the next election has to be an absolute priority for the NDP. In the short-term, doing better in Quebec may be the only realistic path to a Liberal recovery. But an opposition heavily invested in a war of attrition in Quebec could be a winning condition for the ruling Conservatives.
They already hold 72 of 92 Western Canada seats. That’s twice as many as the NDP. As for the Liberals, they barely salvaged four seats west of Ontario last May.
In the next election, the number of Western Canada ridings will increase to 104 and the Conservatives will have the inside track in most of the new seats.
As the last census has just confirmed, clout has been shifting west over the past decade.
In stark political terms, dominance of Canada’s fastest-growing region is as much an ace up Harper’s sleeve as the solid Liberal hold on Quebec used to be to Pierre Trudeau.
The Liberals and the NDP may shun the notion of coming together to offer Canadians a recast progressive alternative to the Conservatives but under the current configuration, neither is likely to form a viable government without a high degree of cooperation from the other. Indeed, under two strong leaders, they would be as likely, if not more, to kill each other off as to seriously wound the Conservatives. National affairs writer Chantal Hébert’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.