By Tobi Cohen
A year after Jack Layton lost his battle with cancer, a white “ghost bike” remains chained to a post outside his formerTorontoconstituency office.
His name emblazoned in NDP orange is still displayed across the brick building, just above a pair of black and yellow “space for rent” signs.
While these remnants of his life will disappear in time, his permanent legacy remains a question.
The federal NDP soared to official Opposition status for the first time in history during the 2011 election, only to see its popular leader die before the fall session of Parliament even started — unleashing an outpouring of support and sympathy for a politician seldom seen in Canada.
As the country marks the one-year anniversary of his death Wednesday [Aug 22], there will be more displays of affection for the former leader as his widow and fellow MP Olivia Chow gather with friends and relatives at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto for a public memorial.
The anniversary also marks a time for some stock-taking for the party.
The NDP’s year involved: coming to grips with its new role as Official Opposition: teaching its large slate of young and inexperienced MPs the ropes: finding a new leader while trying to maintain party unity; and trying to build a more permanent foothold in a province that had, until now, rejected it.
With a summer’s rest and Tom Mulcair now firmly at the helm, the party will be put to the test when it returns to the House of Commons next month. What can Canadians expect from the party in the months and years to come?
The answers are mixed.
While some still attribute the NDP’s 2011 electoral feat toQuebecvoter whimsy, a love for its deceased former leader and a rejection of the Conservatives, Liberals and Bloc Quebecois, others believe a long-term political shift is at play.
“I think we’re in a transition in this country with respect to our choice of political ideals,” Ipsos Reid pollster John Wright said.
“This is more than simply a casualrelationship with a group of people who didn’t want to find favour with Conservatives or Liberals … it actually is the beginning of something.”
Wright said the NDP has barely wavered since the election in terms of support inQuebec, where the party holds a record 58 seats and continues to lead federally with 40 per cent of the popular vote – while fellow federalists lag with 24-per-cent support for the Liberals and 18 per cent for the Tories.
In the rest ofCanada, the NDP and Conservatives, he added, continue to poll neck and neck.
“One could argue that the inspiration for the NDP’s sizable turn in the last election had to do with Jack Layton. I think Jack Layton made the NDP a comfortable choice for Quebecers,” he said.
“But his legacy is actually much bigger than that. He gave political strength to a movement in theprovinceofQuebecwhich will last, I think, for a considerably long period of time.”
Quebecpundits aren’t quite as optimistic.
Bruce Hicks, aMontrealpolitical scientist who now teaches atCarletonUniversity, believes Mulcair — a well-known Quebecer and former Liberal cabinet minister in the Charest government — was a good choice for leader if the party is serious about maintaining its hold onQuebec.
That said, the party was seen to have been outshone by Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae, who could “run circles” around the NDP’s interim choice NycoleTurmel. Hicks said the NDP’s House of Commons performance has improved since Mulcair became leader but that the party’s efforts to present itself as a team rather than a one-man-show have fallen short. So too has the party’s stated goal to be the party of “proposition” not just “opposition,” he argued.
“It tends to always be Mulcair who is dominating the stories, as opposed to the team,” Hicks said.
“Because it’s an ideological party and because, for the first time at the federal level in Canadian history we have an ideological government, the two sides are opposed and the reaction on almost any issue is almost visceral. Instead of debating policy in a manner that the public watching it can pick up on nuances of debate and what actually are better or worse policy directions, it’s almost a shouting match between two ideological sides.”
Quebecers, he said, are also more interested in provincial politics and the NDP has no presence at that level to “tap into.”
With the Parti Quebecois ahead in the polls in the provincial election now underway, he added that a win for the sovereigntists could breathe new life into the Bloc Quebecois which lost a lot of its seats to the NDP in the last election.
As rumours swirl about a possible Justin Trudeau run for the Liberal leadership, Hicks said a Trudeau-led federal Liberal party “certainly would do damage to the NDP” as well.
“I think some of the election was an artifact of the time and they won’t be able to tap into that a second time,” Hicks said. “The party has nowhere to go but down.”
McGillUniversitypolitics professor Antonia Maioni attributes the ongoing support for the NDP inQuebecto the “empathy shock vote of support” followingLayton’s death and the “honeymoon bump” post-leadership convention.
“I don’t see any evidence of the NDP being what it should be which is the voice forQuebecin federal politics,” she said, citing the party’s failure to speak up during the recentQuebectuition fee debate and the ongoing provincial election.
NDP national director Chantal Vallerand says it’s been a struggle over the last year, but argues the NDP has made significant headway behind the scenes – growing its base and generating the funds it will need to mount a winning campaign in 2015.
The party signed up about 132,000 members in time for the March leadership vote, about 50,000 more than it counted six months earlier. Meanwhile, membership inQuebechad grown some 750 per cent, surpassing all butOntarioandBritish Columbiain total membership, according to the most recent figures available, released in February.
Vallerand said the party’s large contingent of fundraising staff has also been searching out the four-million-plus Canadians who voted NDP in the last election, by scouring names on petitions, NDP newsletter subscriptions and community event attendance lists in a bid to reach out beyond its base for financial support — a move that appears to be working.
Earlier this month, Elections Canada reports showed the NDP closing in on the Liberals in fundraising, having raised $3.74 million in the first six months of the year compared to the Grits, who raised $4.14 million.
“I have to say that I’m quite proud of the team. We were able to get through a lot in the past year and we still achieved our objectives,” she said.
“This summer finally feels like we’ve come to some sense of stability and we’re able to look forward and plan and really get ready for 2015.”
Brad Lavigne, the NDP’s former campaign director who left the party after the leadership race but still remains a keen observer, argues NDP MPs have “done an amazing job mastering their files” and staying “united” in the face adversity. He believes the party’s growing support is proof Canadians voted for the NDP’s vision on issues such as climate change and health care, not just for its former leader.
Strategically speaking, he said the job now is to replace Stephen Harper and that means maintaining the 102 seats it currently has and adding at least 60 more in 2015. Not onlyQuebecbut the Greater Toronto Area and Southwestern Ontario, he said, are key to that end, as is growth in the prairies andBritish Columbia. Lavigne said the NDP must also build on the youth, urban, ethnic and female vote it attracted in the last election and make “inroads” into suburban ridings and bedroom communities.
Making sure federal riding boundaries are “redrawn in a fair and balanced way” to ensure the “gerrymandering” that occurred a decade ago in Saskatchewan where the NDP was born yet remains shut out is corrected, is also important in the months ahead, Lavigne said.
“That’s certainly the next big piece of our campaign strategy,” he said. “Build in those next tier ridings that will make the difference between governing or not.”
As for theLaytonlegacy, Chow says it’s about more than the NDP breakthrough inQuebecand the party’s new era of official Oppositionhood. She says it’s about sustaining her husband’s dying message of “hope, love and optimism” and a better Canada, and she’s heartened to see those values are still very much alive.
She sees it in her party which continues to be “guided by those same principles” even though some of the “faces have changed.”
“I have to say that I’m quite proud of the team. We were able to get through a lot in the past year and we still achieved our objectives,” she said.
She also sees it in the thousands of messages that have been posted on the website DearJack.ca as part of a recent initiative by the Broadbent Institute and Layton’s close friends and relatives, who have asked Canadians to mark the anniversary of his death by posting drawings, video, text and tweets that exemplify their commitment to the ideals Layton put forward.
“I’ve been really comforted by folks that post things on DearJack.ca about what kind of impact Jack had on their lives and that they are continuing to make a difference and become involved and engaged in the political process,” she said.
“I think (Jack) would be quite proud of his family and his party and he’d say ‘move on and keep doing that important work.’ ”
