Mulcair Looks to Christmas Retirement

Outgoing NDP leader Tom Mulcair says his career in politics could end as early as December.

Mulcair told The Tyee Tuesday that he definitely won’t be running again and may not return as an MP after the Christmas break. He could leave even earlier, he said, “but who knows?”

“After Christmas I think I might be moving on,” he said. “The only thing I’ve surely decided; I’m never running in politics again, that you can put in the bank.”

His exit will be final, Mulcair said.

Mulcair said he’s looking at opportunities with universities once a new NDP leader takes over, joking the academic world “puts up with people with a lot of white hair.”

The 62-year-old political veteran is in high spirits despite the late September heat wave in Ottawa and having been up since 3 a.m. for a busy day in a northern Quebec riding.

He unplugs one of two air conditioners furiously battling the high temperature in his fifth floor office on Parliament Hill to quiet things down. It’s not doing much anyway, he quips.

There seems to be a new sense of ease with Mulcair, known for being earnest and an admitted “tough character.”

He smiles while pointing to a framed newspaper front page from a decade ago featuring a photo of him and party icon Jack Layton, who ushered the party into official opposition in 2011 before his death from cancer.

“NDP plots Quebec breakthrough,” reads the headline. Mulcair says it aloud, emphasizing the word “plots” with a hint of excitement.

Being elected four times in Quebec, being a big part of the era when the NDP came so close to government and having the most successful fundraising year in the party’s history are three points of pride Mulcair lists from his tenure.

It could be just a matter of days before he is no longer party leader. The results of the first round of ballots in the NDP’s leadership election will be revealed this weekend. If one of the four candidates wins a majority, they could take the reins by next week.

Mulcair said he still enjoys coming to work each day as his time in politics comes to an end.

“I feel stimulated,” he said. “I feel like we’re on a mission.”

Even if not in the House of Commons, Mulcair said he’ll be supporting the NDP anyway he can in the 2019 federal election.

It’s been almost two years since the party’s lofty expectations were dashed in the 2015 federal election.

Then, the NDP was Official Opposition and polls had them poised to take the government away from an embattled Conservative Party.

But the New Democrats cratered as the campaign went on and the Liberals surged, winning government.

“Our voter outreach, our electronic tools, our social media, we were a notch below the other two parties,” he said. “We had a very older approach where we had football-sized rooms of people on phones, but we didn’t have the best social media and we were being outclassed on that level.”

Months later, in April 2016, Mulcair paid the price when the party voted against his leadership at their convention in Edmonton.

Since the 2015 election fundraising has suffered as NDP has been reduced to third-party status.

The leadership race has brought in healthy amounts of cash, Mulcair said, adding he hopes the party’s next leader doubles his record-setting 2015 fundraising campaign, which raised $9 million in the third quarter.

The next election is full of promise for the party, Mulcair said, helped in part by a leftward shift in the younger demographic. The same demographic is attracted to the New Democrats’ stance on environmental issues, he said.

Mulcair said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals are pretending to be progressives. They stole from the New Democrat policy book during the election campaign then abandoned their promises once elected, he said.

The Liberals’ promise of sunny ways have become “increasingly dour,” he said, citing Trudeau’s attempt to tell the NDP what representatives they could appoint to the committee of national security and intelligence.

“It's the arrogance of power,” he said. “And I think Canadians are going to be more and more sensitive to that as time goes by.”

Mulcair praised the four candidates in the leadership race, Niki Ashton, Charlie Angus, Jagmeet Singh and Guy Caron.

He said he’ll be frugal in his suggestions to the new leader unless his experience is sought.

But Mulcair did have some words of encouragement.

During his time, he said, the party became a serious threat to take government for the first time in years and the reality still exists.

“Take that. Make that grow. Close the deal with the Canadian voting public,” he said. “I’d love nothing more than that.”