The accidental takedown of the NDP’s Thomas Mulcair
One year after disparate forces unwittingly combined to knife the NDP leader, New Democrats are still searching for answers.

thestar.com
By ALEX BOUTILIER
March 14, 2017

A stunned silence blanketed the room at the Edmonton convention centre. Did they hear that right?

The vote was 52 to 48 for a leadership review. Thomas Mulcair had lost his bid to lead the New Democrats into the 2019 election.

A small group cheered, but mostly people just milled around, exchanging shocked glances, trying to make sense of what just happened. A visibly shaken Mulcair took the stage, flanked by the NDP caucus, and managed a few words.

“The disappointment from the election is obviously something we’re now going to be able to leave behind us with a change at the helm,” Mulcair told the people who just gave him his walking papers.

“And that’s fine.”

One year after that Sunday morning, New Democrats are still trying to make sense of what happened that weekend at the Edmonton NDP convention. And it’s not just historical curiosity driving the soul searching - understanding the forces that combined to take down Mulcair will be crucial for whoever ends up replacing him.

The Star talked to more than a dozen NDP insiders, activists, MPs and staff from across the country for this article, some insisting on anonymity while others spoke on the record. The consensus is that no one group or issue led to Mulcair’s loss, but a number of factors that came together - in some cases unintentionally or unwittingly - to cut short his tenure as leader.

The 2015 election was crushing for New Democrats, who saw Mulcair and the party in the lead for much of the campaign only to lose to a Liberal party promising progressivism. After the loss, Mulcair embarked on a cross-country tour to listen to the party’s grassroots.

The tour seemed to work for Mulcair. According to two sources, Mulcair’s office was tracking support with delegates signing up to attend the Edmonton convention. In February, his office estimated only 40 per cent supported his continued leadership. By April, just days before the vote, that number increased to 57 per cent. They could work with that.

But outside the party, another movement was gaining steam and headlines. The Leap Manifesto, a progressive rallying cry backed by activists, intellectuals and artists, was gaining traction amongst some NDP riding associations.

“There was a need for this expression of this return to traditional left-wing values. And I think that needed to be aired,” said Avi Lewis, a Toronto-based film maker who became the lead spokesman for Leap, in an interview with the Star last week.

The manifesto’s language of transitioning to a “clean energy economy” and a moratorium on new energy infrastructure was (unfairly, according to proponents) given a shorthand in the media and by partisans: “leaving the oil sands in the ground.”

With Leap gaining traction amongst some party members, including former MPs like Megan Leslie, Libby Davies and Craig Scott, Mulcair had to field questions about it. And with the dominant narrative about Leap being anti-oil sands, and the convention taking place in Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley’s backyard, it was political trouble for the embattled leader.

Two days before the convention, CBC aired an interview Mulcair had done with anchor Peter Mansbridge. Mansbridge pressed Mulcair repeatedly on Leap, asking if NDP members voted for the manifesto would he commit to leaving Alberta’s oil in the ground.

“If the party decides (Leap is) the way, as leader of the party I’ll do everything I can to make that a reality,” Mulcair said.

Mulcair was heading into an Edmonton convention after expressing an open mind on a manifesto vilified - fairly or unfairly - as anti-oil sands and anti-Alberta. Most insiders who spoke to the Star agreed that was not a great scenario.

Notley gave a televised address the following night, on the eve of the federal convention.

“We can’t continue to support Canada’s economy unless Canada supports us. That means one thing: building a modern and carefully regulated pipeline to tidewater,” Notley told Albertans.

Delegates awoke on the convention’s opening day to copies of the Edmonton Journal with Notley’s words in a front page headline. Almost all sources were adamant Notley’s party didn’t organize to oust Mulcair - although one Mulcair loyalist bluntly dismissed that as “bull----” - but the tension between Leap and Notley certainly didn’t help Mulcair.

Notley gave a rousing speech on the Saturday of the convention, defending her position and the benefits of responsibly developing Canada’s natural resources. Delegates gave standing ovation after standing ovation. The crowd was no less enthusiastic for Stephen Lewis, the former Ontario NDP leader and father of Avi Lewis, who argued in his lyrical way the opposite position.

“It’s time to put to bed the understandable but misplaced skepticism about the transition to renewables,” Lewis told the crowd.

“As always, it’s a matter of political will. Do you want to transform the economy? It can be done.”

Notley and Lewis represented two diametrically opposed sides at the convention, and were showered in applause from NDP members in attendance. Matching those performances would be a significant enough task, but Mulcair’s mission was even more difficult - he had to bridge the divide between the two, or at least convince a strong majority of delegates that he could.

Mulcair, his voice breaking slightly, began his speech the following morning by joking “no pressure.” A year later, the consensus was Mulcair’s speech didn’t accomplish what it needed to.

“Though there is a lot of respect for Tom...clearly that convention speech was an expression of the desire to turn the page and move forward,” said Rick Smith, a former chief of staff to Jack Layton who now works with the Broadbent Institute.

“I was surrounded on the convention floor by people who were looking forward to Tom’s speech and for whatever reason...I’m not sure that speech gave them what they were hoping for.”

Later that morning, delegates voted to launch a leadership contest.

Most sources who spoke to the Star agreed a number of different factions wanted to send Mulcair a message, but nobody suspected that there were enough votes to actually reject his leadership outright.

“Even though they had very different and opposite political objectives, (the two sides of the convention) ended up voting together to bring down Mr. Mulcair,” said Karl Belanger, who was national director of the party at the time. “And I’m not sure either side knew this would happen.”

Belanger said that a number of NDP donors, in his opinion upset with the Edmonton delegates’ decision, cancelled or delayed their donations in the wake of the vote.

Despite some early rumblings from caucus members like Vancouver MP Don Davies, Mulcair has been allowed to stay at the helm of the party until his successor is chosen, likely in October. Shay Purdy, who worked with both Mulcair and Jack Layton, said there was a real sense of shock in the days following the convention.

“I think that when Parliament came back, and people saw Tom in that arena that he enjoys and is really good at, people thought ‘uh oh, what have we done’,” Purdy said.

“But it’s important to note that the broader political arena has evolved quite a bit, and in a way that maybe doesn’t favour the type of politician that Tom is. It’s outside of Parliament. Jack was able to do both...Tom just couldn’t move with it.”

Several people suggested Mulcair promised the party in his leadership bid that he could deliver the 2015 election. When that didn’t happen, some turned on him.

Sally Houser, an NDP activist who helped manage the party’s last leadership convention, suggested Mulcair always had a difficult task in replacing the revered Layton.

“Obviously the death of Jack Layton was such a tragedy to so many New Democrats when we came so far, that the desire for everybody to continue on that same path maybe overshadowed our new leader and current leader,” Houser said.

But multiple sources said that Mulcair, for whatever reason, didn’t “work the room” at the convention and sway fence-sitting delegates to his cause. One anecdote, related by several sources, is on the Saturday of the convention while delegates were deciding his fate, Mulcair was dining with his family at the posh Edmonton Fairmont hotel just down the street.

Others point the finger at labour leaders abandoning Mulcair - including leaders at the Canadian Labour Congress, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, and the Alberta Federation of Labour.

While it’s not clear which of these factors sealed the fate of Mulcair’s bid to hang on to the NDP leadership, whoever assumes that mantle later this year will have to bridge these divides - between the Leapers and the Alberta NDP, between Toronto environmentalists and blue-collar union organizers, between the so-called “progressive” and “pragmatic” sides of the party.

The Star requested an interview with Mulcair for this article. As of Friday, Mulcair was not available.