She says voters might also be re-evaluating whether the NDP is the party that stands for their interests and values. Earlier in the campaign, many felt the election would be decided in Ontario.
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But it has failed to distinguish itself from fellow centre-left party the Liberals as the best alternative to the nine-year-old government of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Viewers can expect Mulcair to be extremely cautious with his wording on the niqab issue during this debate, and to push hard on the elements of his party’s platform that appeal specifically to Quebecers, such as environmental policy.
NDP campaign spokesman Brad Lavigne said each of the three parties have been at or below the NDP’s current levels, and that while NDP support has slipped in Quebec, it is still the favourite choice in the province.
Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is suddenly surging and pulling ahead of the NDP, according to a new Léger Marketing poll.
A combative NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says he’s looking forward to tonight’s French-language debate as an opportunity to lay out for Quebecers a vision of Canada that is starkly different from that of his main rivals.
“This kind of irresponsible dog-whistle politics has no place in Canada”, Dewar said in an email.
“Let’s be clear”, said the former Conservative immigration minister who now holds the defence portfolio.
Paquet said she believes the Bloc leader displayed his sharp debating skills last time round.
The emotional issue of religious accommodation and specifically the wearing of face coverings during citizenship ceremonies, has become one of the most contentious issues.
A pair of teens tore the headscarf from a pregnant woman in Montreal this week, causing her to fall on the ground.
The attack is just the latest this year across the country and “comes at a time when inflammatory rhetoric targeting Muslims has been heightened by a federal election campaign in which Muslim women who wear the niqab have been vilified by politicians”, Ihsaan Gardee, the council’s executive director, said in a statement.
Mulcair’s announcement Thursday made mostly in French came in a riding the New Democrats took from Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe in the last election.
Duceppe’s debate performance could go a long way in determining whether the Bloc can woo back voters who deserted the party en masse in 2011 and migrated to the NDP under Jack Layton.
Mulcair also pledged $150 million over four years to a green municipal fund. The money would offer local governments stable funding for sustainable projects and cleaner transit.
The Quebec dairy industry worries that deal will weaken the supply management system of tariffs and production quotas and Harper will try to allay those fears.
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Former Harper colleagues say his long-term goals are to kill the once widely entrenched notion that the Liberals – the party of long-time leaders Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien – are the natural party of government in Canada, and to redefine what it means to be Canadian.
