So long, Tom Mulcair.
He won't be missed.
If there is any historical justice, he will be remembered as the worst leader in the history of the federal New Democratic Party and his four years at the helm will be taught as an example of how not to run a national political organization.
He wasn't always bad. He was a loyal and hardworking soldier for Jack Layton who stepped up when Layton died, providing a passionate opposition to the worst of the infractions by the Harper Conservatives. He mastered policy details and could use that knowledge effectively during debates and media interviews.
Except he was utterly ignorant to what was happening in Canadian politics and within his own party. The best politicians keep their ear to the ground and have a good instinct for what's happening. Mulcair had neither ear nor instinct and did not surround himself with people to help him address this inadequacy.
He completely missed what really happened in Alberta and the election of Rachel Notley. Albertans didn't wake up one day and come to their senses after more than four decades of Conservative rule that NDP ideology makes more sense. Notley and her party were simply a legitimate place for people angry with the mismanagement and arrogance of Allison Redford and Jim Prentice to park their vote.
Notley's campaign was a textbook display of a government in waiting, encouraging the "throw the bums out" public sentiment with promises of change and good governance.
Instead of following the same path all the way to the Prime Minister's Office, Mulcair decided he needed to become more like Stephen Harper by promising a balanced budget, and becoming bland in both style and substance. By doing so, he handed the change agenda and the anti-Harper voters to Justin Trudeau.
Who is Trudeau and what does he stand for? Doesn't matter, because he's not Harper. Easy message for voters to understand and embrace.
Mulcair deserved to lose his job as leader of the federal NDP for failing to lead his party to victory. He gave away the only two ingredients he needed to win last fall's federal election -- the progressive mantle and the discontent with Harper -- to Trudeau's Liberals.
But he wasn't done screwing up his own party.
His job after the election was to hold the NDP together. Instead, he let it tear itself to pieces by giving airtime to party radicals and allowing their Leap Manifesto to come forward for serious debate at a party convention in Edmonton. Besides spitting in the face of Notley and the Alberta NDP in their own backyard, this manifesto is also a righteous betrayal of the focus on working families that was Layton's hallmark.
Mulcair should have burned every ounce of political capital he had to oppose the Leap Manifesto. How can any Canadian with a basic knowledge of the size and geography of Canada hear, without laughing, that "high-speed rail powered by renewables and affordable public transit can unite every community in this country - in place of more cars, pipelines and exploding trains that endanger and divide us."
That idea is crazy even for the Windsor to Quebec City corridor, the most heavily concentrated region in Canada. It's utterly wasteful for the rest of a sparse population spread across the second largest country in the world. It's comical for the Canadians living north of the 55th parallel, many of whom don't even have reliable road access to the outside world.
Worst of all, it's an insult to First Nations and shocking in its patronizing racism. On one hand, the maifesto claims to embrace the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples but then it ignores decades of legal precedent by stripping away the authority of First Nations to govern themselves by developing their resources as they see fit. Aboriginal communities wanting to lift themselves out of poverty and give themselves economic autonomy with mines, pipelines and oil and gas development would not be allowed to do so if the Leap Manifesto were ever to become public policy.
Mulcair should have been first out of the gate to ridicule the authors of this nonsense and give them Elizabeth May's cell number if they wanted to call somebody who cared. Instead, his lukewarm praise of the manifesto angered the Notley NDPers and infuriated the Leapers who, like radicals of all political and ideological stripes, tolerate nothing less than full-throated support of their doctrine.
Notley and her government immediately distanced themselves from the manifesto and a federal party that would entertain such drivel.
John Horgan would be wise to do the same.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
