Mid-week podcast: Megan Leslie says 'I don't want it' for NDP leadership
Former NDP deputy leader Megan Leslie will not be running in the party's leadership race.
"I am not," she told host Chris Hall in an interview on The House midweek podcast.
"I'm tired. My energy has gone. I don't have the passion in me right now for politics," Leslie said. "The NDP deserves a leader who has that passion, who wants it. And I don't want it."
Leslie, who lost her long-held Halifax seat in the Liberal sweep of Atlantic Canada in last fall's federal election, isn't ruling out an eventual return to politics, but said it wouldn't occur before Canadians head to the polls again in 2019.
She added that whoever is chosen to lead the party into the next election — and take on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — doesn't necessarily need to come from within the party's current ranks.
"I think that'd be exciting [to have an outsider]. There are a lot of options out there, there's 36 million Canadians," she said. "We will cast the net far and wide."
The NDP has two years to choose its new leader before the next convention. Until then, Mulcair will stay on to helm the party.
As for who will replace him, Leslie didn't touch on any of the names that have been floated as possible successors, but opened up on the type of leader the party will be looking for.
"We need someone youthful. I don't think age matters, but I think youthfulness matters," she said.
"We need someone who understands what it means to be a social democrat, and can look at what the Liberals are doing and actually make a distinction. We don't need someone who blurs those lines."
MPs debate situation in Attawapiskat
Members of Parliament held an emergency debate on Tuesday evening to discuss the situation in Attawapiskat. The northern Ontario community has been grappling with a suicide crisis.
On April 9 alone, 11 people attempted suicide in the isolated community of 2,000. Many of them are children and teenagers. In March, 26 people attempted suicide.
"I just talked about how tragic it is and how it just doesn't only affect one community, it affects a lot of communities across First Nations and… across this great country," North Bay-Rainy River MP Don Rusnak told Chris Hall about his intervention during the debate.
Rusnak is one of eight indigenous MPs representing the Liberal Party in the House of Commons. He argued the crisis in Attawapiskat is not unique.
"First Nations have been under-funded and have ended up essentially in this black hole of despair. We need long-term solutions to fix these chronic problems. [In the short-term] we need to get immediate mental health workers into the communities," he said.
Rusnak sits on the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. He said the committee approved a motion to study suicides in rural indigenous communities, which will include visiting areas to survey affected individuals. He said this is a step towards really understanding the challenges facing under-served communities.
"This is a very sensitive subject, so we want to make sure we get it right," Rusnak said.
Attawapiskat's suicide problem is not unique
The current crisis in Attawapiskat is a sad reminder that problems in rural communities still haven't been addressed, according to the President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Natan Obed.
He told The House that suicide rates in the communities he represents are 10 times higher than the national average.
"We have conditions in our communities…and a confluence of multiple risk factors that in any society, in any place on this earth, would cause concern for risk of suicide," Obed said.
According to Obed, these risk factors include a lack of educational opportunities, poverty, food insecurity and abuse. "There is no mystery of why we have an elevated rate," he added.
"Somehow with indigenous suicide and Inuit suicide…governments throw the question back on us and back on our youth to say, 'what can we do?' As if it is some magical mystery that only we can solve. The idea of having the best start to life, to having education, to having the ability to live our lives in the way we want to live them, and the ability to have opportunities through education and employment," Obed said.
Ultimately, Obed believes real change won't occur in indigenous communities until the rest of the country accepts there are real, intolerable problems.
"The first thing that we need is for Canadians to start discussing this in an intelligent, sophisticated way, in the way that we talk about things like cancer," he said.