Mulcair steadily builds Quebec support in NDP leadership race

While many media reports depict Brian Topp as the favoured contender in the race to lead the NDP, Mulcair pointed out during a phone interview with Newsfirst Multimedia earlier this week that he has the support of 33 NDP MPs, compared to 10 who are committed to Topp.

Tops Topp
Although Topp has the backing of only four NDP MPs from Quebec and none so far in Ontario, Mulcair has the support of 29 NDP MPs in Quebec and four in Ontario. However, any time Topp wins support – as he did last week when Terrebonne-Blainville NDP MP Charmaine Borg, a former Mulcair campaigner, committed to Topp – each gain by Topp is often portrayed as a setback for Mulcair, while depicting Topp as coasting easily to victory.
“Every poll that’s been published so far puts me ahead of him,” Mulcair said in his defence. “We’re having a lot more fun than anybody else. We’re having a great campaign generating incredible support and enthusiasm.
“In British Columbia last week, at one of the events we went to we had to put half the crowd on the second floor of the club we had rented because there were that many people who had showed up. The campaign is creating a lot of excitement. We’re receiving endorsements from a lot of very high profile people involved in environment and sustainable development and we’re thrilled about it.”

Challenge ‘huge’
Regarding his deficit of NDP support on the home turf of Quebec, Mulcair said emphatically, “That’s a huge challenge.” In the first three weeks of the campaign, according to Mulcair, he and supporters managed to more than double the number of NDP memberships in Quebec. A standing of 1,800 rose to 4,000. “I would love to get it to close to 20,000 by the time the memberships close in February,” he said.
Mulcair acknowledges that he and Topp differ fundamentally on the direction in which they would take the NDP. Topp, a longtime NDP insider who was the party’s president since last June, tends to be identified with the NDP’s rank and file. A union activist himself, he has also unambiguously allied himself with organized labour who are longstanding supporters of the NDP.
Mulcair does not conceal the fact he hopes to build the NDP’s credibility among Canadian voters by steering the party further to the right. “If we’re on the verge of forming an NDP government four years from now, the first thing people are going to look at is whether we have the competence to manage a first-tier economy,” he said.

Modernizing the NDP
“Canada is a G-7 country. We’re one of the leading countries in the world and we’ve got to make sure that the party is up to the task.” Mulcair cited one of his supporters, New Brunswick NDP leader Dominic Leblanc, who advocates Third Way liberal thinking
“We’ve always been very good historically in the NDP in saying what we’re going to spend money on, but we’ve not been very specific about where the money’s going to come from,” Mulcair said. “So I think that a modernization of the NDP is definitely in order, and we can start that modernization with our terminology, but we can include a lot of other things in that modernization.”