Some New Democrats also privately worry the party won’t be able to raise money with Mulcair as leader.
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Members of the NDP have soundly rejected Tom Mulcair’s bid to stay on as the party’s leader, voting 52 per cent in favour of choosing a replacement within the next 24 months.
As the announcement was read, it clearly shocked a great deal of the people in the room at the Shaw Conference Centre.
Mulcair had said in the days leading up to the convention that he was looking to get at least 70 percent support from NDP members Sunday.
A year ago, the New Democratic Party was surfing a swelling wave and Tom Mulcair appeared poised to become the first NDP prime minister in Canada’s history. “It’s going to have to be somebody that has a vision that takes us forward to the next election”.
The party will now be entering a leadership race to replace Mulcair.
Delegates have voted to study the document, but in a watered down version in an attempt to soften the blow to Alberta.
He said he was surprised by the number of votes seeking a leadership review. “Merci (thank you). Thank you”.
The rifts exposed by the NDP’s divisive non-confidence vote in Tom Mulcair’s leadership deepened Monday as some New Democrat MPs questioned his intention to stay at the helm until a successor is chosen. Mulcair was not in the room, but officials said he was backstage.
“I think New Democrats wanted to be reassured”.
He said he has accepted the blame for the mistakes of last year’s disappointing election campaign, but insisted he is re-energized, reinspired and re-engaged after six months of meeting grassroots supporters.
Former NDP MP Olivia Chow also said many were shocked by the outcome of the leadership vote, but the results were clear.
“Premier Notley sold her carbon tax, coal industry shutdown and a cap on oilsands development to Albertans with the promise that it would provide the credibility we need to get opponents of pipelines on board – that these policies would get ‘social license, ‘” said Wild Rose party leader Brian Jean in a statement.
The premier’s comments underline the policy split between the provincial NDP in Alberta, which is home to Canada’s oil sands and the No. 1 exporter of crude to the United States, and its federal counterpart.
“That’s democracy. People felt it was time for a change”, Saskatoon West MP Sheri Benson said after arriving home from the Edmonton convention Sunday evening. Every delegate I talked to described bigger, better-funded campaigns with more volunteers and stronger candidates than they had ever seen. We can’t let them down.
The manifesto, spearheaded by Lewis’ son, Avi, calls for an overhaul of the capitalist economy to wean the country quickly off fossil fuels. That divide will likely play out during the leadership race, making it challenging for the NDP to provide coherent opposition to the Trudeau government in the House of Commons. “I guess those were the two issues that showed division in the party”, NDP member John Gerassimou, from LaSalle, Ontario, told the BBC.
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The Leap Manifesto is the NDP’s pledge against climate change and includes many different policies including a rapid shift from the use of fossil fuels and a moratorium on all new pipeline projects.
