NDP, Liberals hold respective fall planning sessions
Posted September 3, 2012 12:02 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
After a tumultuous, roller-coaster year, the NDP’s 101 MPs are viewing their meeting in St. John’s, NL, as a chance to move forward with calm deliberation and, finally, some stability.
They aim to cement their claim as the only credible alternative to the Harper government and set an ambitious course for defeating the Conservatives in the next election in 2015.
The tiny Liberal caucus, meanwhile, will be meeting at a resort in Montebello, Que., grappling with how to maintain a parliamentary presence while up to a fifth of its 35 MPs plunge into a lengthy, existential leadership contest.
A year ago, it was the NDP, reeling from the untimely death of Jack Layton, that was facing an uncertain future.
Indeed, the NDP has lurched from crisis-to-crisis since the May 2011 election: Scrambling to train a raft of inexperienced MPs who never expected to be elected; coping with Layton’s illness and eventual death last summer; enduring a sometimes-bruising, seven-month leadership race; making the transition to the new leadership of Tom Mulcair while simultaneously mounting an aggressive campaign against the Harper government’s massive, omnibus budget bill.
This summer has marked the first time in 15 months that New Democrats have had time to take a deep breath and indulge in some long-term planning. And this week’s caucus retreat represents the moment when they’ll “press the reset button,” as one insider puts it.
In the short term, caucus chairman Peter Julian says New Democrats will focus on demonstrating to Canadians they are the “real opposition” to the Harper agenda. Over the longer term, Julian say the party will move more toward “proposition” — showing Canadians “what the NDP will do more effectively and what we will do differently and how we will keep the commitments that we make.”
The NDP’s newfound stability will undoubtedly make life more difficult for the Liberals, who benefited from the official Opposition’s turmoil.
“We’re in a challenging position in the sense that a leadership process is just about to begin,” said Ralph Goodale, the Liberal deputy leader.
But he makes the case that Liberals are “in a better position to cope with it than probably the NDP were a year ago, because we have a very strong interim leader.”
NDP support has bounced back since Mulcair took the helm in March, with polls over the summer suggesting the party is now tied with or even slightly ahead of the ruling Tories. The Liberals have slipped to around 22 per cent, only marginally ahead of the historic low 19 per cent of the popular vote they eked out in the disastrous May 2011 election.
