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NDP on the hunt for new leader

Mulcair, blamed for running a cautious, uninspiring campaign, paid the price Sunday as a majority of delegates to the NDP convention in Edmonton voted to hold a leadership contest to find his replacement.

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Jean was also unimpressed with the fact that Notley was unable to convince her own party to move away from the Leap Manifesto during the NDP convention in Edmonton this past weekend.

“We’ve always been left of centre. If that’s the general mood of NDP and NDP members, I think two things: one is, the future of the NDP in Northern Ontario might be at risk in terms of the fairly large support we do enjoy; and the second is, I don’t want to see the economy of Northern Ontario impacted the same way Alberta has”.

Many expected Mr Mulcair to at least obtain the 50% needed legally to stay on, if not the 70% generally required to continue. Some New Democrats also fear the party’s ability to raise money will be impaired as long as Mulcair remains nominally at the helm.

“There was a bit of stunned silence when it was announced”, she told Canada AM, describing the mood at the convention.

“Well, allow me to be blunt”, said Mulcair. It was not immediately clear whether he would come out to acknowledge the outcome of the vote. Likewise with the reality that very, very few figures in positions of influence came out against Mulcair and those that did mostly did so in the final days, that no members of caucus did, that many of those who did finally step forward had little or nothing critical to say when it might of mattered and went along with Mulcair and praised and supported his leadership and the party’s campaign until it catastrophically failed, and so on and so forth. That would be incredibly hard to do, especially given the party’s recent tumble from Official Opposition status and the resurgence of Liberal support.

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.

“People hugged Tom. A lot of people were crying”, Angus said.

“I share your deep disappointment in the election results”.

Various discussions about policy ideas and political goals went smoothly.

Pay for it all by ending fossil fuel subsidies, imposing financial transaction taxes, increasing resource royalties, hiking taxes on corporations and the wealthy, introducing a progressive carbon tax, and cutting military spending.

“Politics is – wow”, he said.

A year ago alone, Canada’s big banks made a record $35 billion in profits, and handed out $12 billion in bonuses to their executives, all while cutting thousands of Canadian jobs, he said.

That said, our convention was about much more than the leader. “Liberals and Conservatives will tell you that this is just the way things are”. Though the forces pushing for a leftward shift seem to have the momentum, there is no predetermined outcome to this process of transition. “This is complete and utter BS”.

Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor from the University of Toronto, said the next leader would likely be an anglophone and unlikely to command huge support in Quebec, where the NDP had once been popular. However, his final rallying cry earned him a standing ovation.

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“So – stand with me…” In the finest spirit of New Democratic traditions, members debated the policies at the heart of who we are as a party.

Mulcair post leadership