She also reiterated she has no plans to seek out the leadership of the Federal NDP.
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“We want to thank Tom Mulcair for his tireless work on behalf of our party, and all Canadians”, said national director Karl Bélanger, who explained that Mulcair will remain in the position until after the leadership election. In the end, it wasn’t close.
I think Mulcair thought if Andrea Horwath could survive a challenge to her leadership of the Ontario NDP after going from holding the balance of power in a minority government to being a third party with no influence, so could he.
Reid says, for now, the party has no apparent leader-in-waiting and no clear direction on where to go next.
Not only does the federal party now have to contend with a potentially divisive leadership race within the next 24 months, it also has to contend with a now very-apparent rift with the governing Alberta NDP.
Tasked with figuring out where to go next after a major loss in last year’s election, 52% of the party voted for a leadership race. Mulcair said he would continue to work “tirelessly” in the House of Commons as the party searches for his replacement. “I won’t speak for all of caucus, but he has my support”.
“Some parts of the party like to chat and so that’s what they’re doing”, said Notley, trying to downplay the significance of the vote.
The NDP conducts such votes at every convention, though they rarely generate the kind of tension attending this one. All this is happening while many Canadians are working 40 hours a week and living in poverty, he said.
In Mulcair’s home province, the Bloc Québécois campaigned effectively against his defence of a Muslim woman’s right to wear the veil known as the niqab. Though the forces pushing for a leftward shift seem to have the momentum, there is no predetermined outcome to this process of transition.
Honestly, I’m not so sure if Mulcair was too centrist.
“Well, allow me to be blunt: This is complete and utter BS”.
But delegates would turn away from Mulcair.
She spoke with media over the lunch hour Monday and faced questions over a contentious debate around the “leap manifesto”. The party’s finances are likely to be further straitened by the coming leadership contest, as candidates solicit donations for their own campaigns.
On the weekend, delegates to the federal NDP party convention in Edmonton voted to discuss the Leap Manifesto and its policy implications at the constituency level.
Canada’s only other NDP premier, Greg Selinger of Manitoba, was asked about the manifesto while campaigning in Winnipeg for a provincial election later this month. “In politics sometimes things become symbols and not policies, and that is what has become of the Leap Manifesto”, McGowan says.
It’s not something the opposition parties in Alberta are buying, though.
Wildrose leader Brian Jean is calling the resolution radical and anti-Alberta.
“The mantle of being progressive has been stolen from the NDP by the Liberals, and that is a hard truth to face up to”, said David McGrane, a professor of political science at the University of Saskatchewan and a member of the NDP.
More than 1,800 New Democrats gathered in Edmonton on the weekend to debate ideas, reflect on the past and lay the necessary groundwork for our shared path forward.
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One painfully obvious reason is grassroots members were more angry with Mulcair’s performance in last year’s federal election than originally assumed.
