Tom Mulcair says his legacy is to leave next NDP leader a truly national party
Tom Mulcair says he will leave the helm of the federal New Democratic Party confident that he helped secure a permanent base for the party in his home province of Quebec.
Mulcair — dressed in a suit, orange tie and cowboy boots ("It's the most comfortable footwear there is") — sat down with The House this week as the NDP prepares to release the first ballot results in the race to succeed him following the party's disappointing third-place finish in the 2015 election.
Four candidates, Niki Ashton, Charlie Angus, Guy Caron and Jagmeet Singh are on the ballot.
As he often does, Mulcair spoke fondly of being recruited to run in Quebec by former leader Jack Layton, and being given the task of helping to make the NDP a political player in a province that had only once elected a New Democrat to the Commons.
"When Jack tapped me he said, 'you can help us break through.' He knew about the progressive side of Quebec politics, he was convinced we could break through, and that's what we accomplished."
Mulcair won a byelection in Outremont in 2007. Four years later the party won 58 seats in the province, surprising all the pundits, as the so-called Orange Crush propelled the NDP to 103 seats nationally, and to the Official Opposition for the first time in its history.
Those were heady days. But the euphoria didn't last. Layton succumbed to cancer a few months later, and the support from 2011 didn't carry over under Mulcair in 2015.
Even so, he believes the party's presence Quebec is his most important contribution.
"Now, 2011 was beyond our wildest dreams with the numbers that we got. But today, in 2017, we have 16 strong members of Parliament for the NDP in the province of Quebec," Mulcair says.
"You could not claim to be a national party, you could not hope to be one, without that breakthrough in Quebec. And that's what Jack and I both understood intimately. For us to have that presence today, I think that's the best heritage we can be leaving to our next leader and I'm very proud of that."
Mulcair brushes aside polls that suggest the NDP remains a distant third among decided voters, and that support for the party has weakened in Quebec.
"The arrival of a new leader always produces a bump in those same polls. There will be a lot of interest around that new leader, whomever she or he might happen to be, and we will all rally around that leader."
He's similarly unconcerned that Quebec represents only 4 per cent of the 124,000 paid up party members across the country, because it's the only province without a provincial wing of the party.